OFFICIAL CALL FOR PLENUM

to Work Out Marxist-Humanist Perspectives for 2009-2010

March 16, 2009

To All Members of News and Letters Committees

Dear Friends:

Our world in crisis is staring down the twin abysses of war and economic collapse. So deep is the global economic meltdown, which the rulers are desperately trying to limit to "only" a devastating recession, that President Obama had to admit in his Feb. 24 speech to Congress that "You donÕt need to hear another list of statistics to know that our economy is in crisis, because you live it every day." That does not mean that he is ready to admit that the crisis comes from the inner workings of the capitalist system. But some bourgeois economists are openly worrying that they see no exit from this crisis. Its global reach has spread not only hunger and poverty, joblessness and homelessness, but revolt from Iceland to Martinique, and frequent unrest among China's 200 million unemployed.

Far from disappearing amid this turmoil, racism, sexism, anti-gay and anti-immigrant hysteria in all these countries are being exploited by the rulers to divert revolt, and are being fought by the freedom movementsÑfrom the Afro-Colombians to the Queer liberation movement kicked into high gear by the serious attack on freedom represented by California's Proposition 8. (See Oct.-Nov. 2008 and Dec. 2008-Jan. 2009 News & Letters, respectively.)

With the situation getting worse, not better, Obama is doing his best to exhort the working class to wait patiently for his "recovery and reinvestment" plan to bring relief, but the successful factory occupation by workers at Republic Windows and Doors has not been forgotten. It is in just such circumstances that Marx's analysis of capitalist crisis is once again coming to the fore, and even the billionaire financier George Soros has been reading Capital.

What had been the foremost issue of the presidential campaignÑwarÑbut was eclipsed by the economic crisis, is in fact integrally related to it, not least because war is what the capitalist system turns to in its hour of need. As Obama was promising to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011, he was already moving unprecedented numbers into Afghanistan and stepping up bombings in Pakistan.

The drive to war and exploitation has brought out opposition not only within the U.S. but movements across the world striving to break out of the capitalist-imperialist system. In countries like Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador, that has meant a move to the left and actual battles over how to reorganize society, while across Latin America it has meant a serious battle and ferment of ideas. In Mexico the Spanish translation of Raya Dunayevskaya's Philosophy and Revolution has just been reprinted, and her Marxism and Freedom is being used in high school classes and activist study groups.

Faced with the alternatives between descent into barbarism, war, and runaway climate chaos on the one hand, or the revolutionary abolition of capitalism and reconstruction of society on a new human foundation on the other, it is crucial not to let theory and practice get separated and thus once again allow revolution to be deflected or destroyed from within.

In trying to fulfill that task this past year, we have not only sought to maintain our newspaper and organization in the face of adversity. We have the right to be proud of how we have revitalized both the paper, as appreciated by many readers who have written to us, and the locals, which have evinced a new spirit. But that is not all that is involved as we returned with new eyes to how the founder of Marxist-Humanism faced the question of where to begin a new organization and philosophy, in our own effort to make a fresh start in 2008-2009. To that end we have worked to project the Marxist-Humanist body of ideas as the basis for establishing continuity with Marx, just when the global economic crisis is raising the need to return to Marxism in order to make revolutionary new beginnings. This underscores the urgency of our work on publishing a collection of Dunayevskaya's writings on Marx, and the importance of the current series of classes in which all the locals have been participating with members and friends.

Marxist-Humanism is not only a return to Marx's Humanism but its re-creation for a new age of state-capitalism, an age of counter-revolution coming from within revolution and of its opposite, the reach for total freedom. This re-creation of Marx's Humanism came about in the context of movements from practice that were themselves forms of theory, from workers battling automation in the U.S. to uprisings against Communist totalitarianism to anti-colonial revolts, when Dunayevskaya dug into Marx's roots in Hegel seeking to end the separation between organization and philosophy. Her breakthrough on Hegel's Absolutes as comprising the unity of the movement from practice and the movement from theory marked the philosophic moment of Marxist-Humanism, the birthtime of a new philosophy.

Working out Dunayevskaya's category of "the philosophic moment as determinant"--that is, the philosophic point that governs all the concretizations that follow--is what can help us with all our tasks because the birth of a philosophy takes place amid a whole battle of ideas and contains within itself many moments that different times and situations call on to be developed. The Marxist-Humanist body of ideas has been tested by objective developments, by war and revolution, counter-revolution and new forces and new passions arising in the world, by movements from practice and battles of ideas. Marxist-Humanist philosophy is needed in organization as well as in theory, in activity as well as in the movement toward reconstructing society on new human foundations. The philosophic moment as determinant is key to projecting the Marxist-Humanist body of ideas as totality, which is needed to confront counter-revolution in all its forms and to allow revolution to develop in permanence.

The Plenum this year, which is the meeting of the National Editorial Board members of News and Letters Committees, opens in Executive Session Friday evening, May 22. Beginning on Saturday morning, May 23, and running through Sunday, May 24, all other sessions of the Plenum will be open to all members and to invited friends, who are given the same privileges to the floor for discussion....

At the Plenum we will take the measure of how we have fared in making a fresh start this past year and how we have met the test of world developments. All our activities, from participation nationally and internationally in struggles from below to the classes, from the newspaper and website to revolutionary finances, will be discussed vigorously in the two days of the Memorial Day weekend.

With this Call, we are asking the Chicago local to host the Plenum and to be responsible for a Saturday evening party to greet out-of-towners. All locals and members at large are asked to let the Center know at least two weeks in advance who will be attending the Plenum, in order for the host local to plan meals and arrange for housing.

Pre-Plenum discussion begins with the issuing of this Call. A draft Perspectives Thesis will be published in the April/May issue of News & Letters so that it can be discussed by members and friends, correspondents and critics, before the Plenum. Articles for pre-Plenum Discussion Bulletins must be submitted to the Center by Monday, April 20. Any articles after that date must be copied in your local and brought to the Plenum to be distributed there. Discussion within our local committees and with all those we can reach and whom we may wish to invite to the Plenum becomes a measure of the inseparability for us between preparation for our Plenum and all our activities throughout the pre-Plenum period.

--The Resident Editorial Board

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