Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2000-2001
July, 2000

The Search for New Paths to Freedom vs. the Destructive Drive of Global Capital

News and Letters Committees publishes the Draft of its Perspectives Thesis each year directly in the pages of NEWS & LETTERS. As part of the preparation for our upcoming national gathering, we urge your participation in our discussion around this thesis because our age is in such total crisis that no revolutionary organization can allow any separation between theory and practice, workers and intellectuals, "inside" and "outside," philosophy and organization. We are raising questions and ask you to help in working out the answers.

I. GLOBAL CAPITAL'S IMPACT ON THE HUMAN SUBJECT

A. Clinton's legacy: a new nuclear arms race?

Were it not for its long-range implications for the entire future of U.S.-Russian relations and global politics as a whole, one could dismiss the June 3-4 Moscow summit between Bill Clinton and Russia's Vladimir Putin as little more than a photo-opportunity for a lame duck president. However, since the summit centered on Clinton's effort to promote a U.S. "defensive shield" against nuclear missiles, which threatens to set off a new nuclear arms race, the summit has far-reaching implications that will be with us long after Clinton leaves office.

The summit contained barely a mention of the U.S. occupation of Kosova or Russia's genocidal war against Chechnya. The U.S. long ago made it clear that it will do nothing to get in Russia's way on Chechnya, even though Putin's forces have killed tens of thousands of civilians there. Clinton instead tried to convince Putin to agree to his plan to build a $60 billion anti-nuclear missile "defense" system. Putin refused, arguing that it would seriously undermine the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

It is not hard to see why Putin was unconvinced by Clinton's argument that a missile shield is needed to protect the U.S. from missile attacks by "rogue states" like North Korea. After all, North Korea, like Iran, is at least a decade away from being able to build an ICBM that could even reach the U.S.

Moreover, the impact of the historic June 14 summit between leaders of North and South Korea has made it hard for even Clinton administration spokesmen to explain why a missile defense is needed against a North Korea which appears increasingly willing to accommodate itself to Western powers. The summit represented such a dramatic shift in North Korea's stance that South Korean President Kim Dae Jung declared shortly afterward that "the threat of war has disappeared" from the Korean peninsula. Yet the administration tried to downplay its importance out of concern that such talk exposes the hollowness of its rationale for missile defense.

Russia, like China, senses that the U.S. missile plan is really directed against itself. It fears it could be a first step toward developing a more elaborate missile defense system which would give U.S. rulers the illusion they could inflict a nuclear first strike against any adversary without fear of retaliation.

Russia is already responding by taking steps to modernize its offensive nuclear capacity. China announced on May 10 that if the U.S. goes ahead with the missile defense it will "significantly expand" its nuclear forces. There is little question that Russia and China are in no position to match the U.S. missile for missile in any new arms race. Yet even a modest growth in their nuclear arsenals can have a dramatic effect on world politics. China now has 18 ICBMs capable of reaching the U.S., but it has a stockpile of fissionable material capable of building 2,700 additional nuclear warheads. If China increases its nuclear arsenal, India, its rival, will as well. And Pakistan will do the same to match India.

Since India and Pakistan almost went to war over Kashmir last year, and shelling continues along their border, the threat of nuclear war is no abstraction to those in South Asia. India is the one place in the world at the moment with a growing anti-nuclear weapons movement.

Insane as is Clinton's effort to carry on the mantle of Reagan's "Star Wars," it pales in comparison with what is in store for us should Bush win the election. He is attacking Clinton's missile-defense plan-for not being extensive enough! Led by Jesse Helms, the Republicans are calling for a much larger missile defense system, even though it has never been proven that it is technologically feasible to shoot down incoming missiles. That this would entail tearing up existing arms-control treaties does not bother the Republicans in the least.

The Republicans showed their colors earlier this year when the Senate voted down the nuclear test ban treaty-a development which shocked even U.S. allies for its shortsightedness and arrogance. At the time, Gore said he would make arms control an issue in the presidential elections. As of now he has done no such thing. Gore, who is as committed to a missile-defense system as Clinton, is hardly in a position to take the high road on arms control.

Even the U.S.'s closest European allies oppose its plans for missile defense. Putin tried to take advantage of this at a meeting with German Chancellor Schroeder in late June, where both condemned Clinton's proposal. Schroeder even said he was in favor of creating a "strategic partnership" with Russia.

The political fall-out from the U.S.'s drive for missile defense shows that the end of the Cold War and the collapse of many state-capitalist regimes which called themselves "Communist" did nothing to change the self-destructive nature of capitalism. Whether it be nuclear powers like the U.S., Russia and China, or aspirants to the nuclear club like North Korea, one thing is true of them all-while they rush to spend billions on weapons of mass destruction, they will not stop to raise the living standards of their masses. Capital will not allow it.

B. Human life and the commodification of science

Nothing more exposes capital's inhumanity than the execution in Texas of Shaka Sankofa (Gary Graham) last month. The refusal of George W. Bush to even consider commuting his sentence, despite Sankofa's clear innocence, was aimed at demoralizing the growing movement against capital punishment and the criminal injustice system. It may also be the system's dress rehearsal for what it has in store for Mumia Abu-Jamal-unless we stop them.

The state's drive to destroy life via the death penalty is part and parcel of a system which privileges things over people, profit and power over life, the self-expansion of capital at the expense of the expansion of human talents and abilities.

One of the most striking indicators of this is the 11 million in the U.S. who have been added to the list of those lacking health insurance over the last decade. The uninsured now total 47 million. The lack of health insurance translates into a 25% higher risk of death. Even those with health insurance are increasingly at risk. A recent Supreme Court ruling essentially called profits the first priority of HMOs, so patients cannot sue for any injuries inflicted on them by skimping on services.

The problem of health care has hardly received any attention so far in the U.S. presidential campaign. Bush has not only executed more inmates than any governor, he also presides over a state with one of the worst records of any in public health. Texas is at the top of the nation in rates of AIDS infection, diabetes, and tuberculosis, and near the bottom in immunizations, mammograms, and access to physicians. Only John McCain's Arizona has a higher rate of growth of those lacking health insurance. Gore has been almost as silent on this issue as Bush.

The issue of health care gets to the heart of the contradictions facing global capitalism, given the enormous amount of money being invested in genetic engineering and biotechnology. The claim is that the extension of high tech to the biological realm will result in an improvement of human health through the treatment and eradication of various diseases. Yet the commodified form in which the "biotech revolution" is unfolding suggests that things are moving in a quite different direction.

To discern this direction we need only look at capital's impact on the health crisis in Africa. Africa faces a health crisis of gargantuan proportions: it accounts for 70% of new AIDS cases worldwide, and AIDS has reduced average life expectancy in Africa by 20 years-erasing all the gains made since World War II. The country devoting the most money to AIDS research, the U.S., has concentrated most of its funding on finding a vaccine for a subtype of AIDS prevalent in the northern hemisphere-leaving Africa totally out of the picture. And even though some drug companies have said they will cut the price of AZT and other AIDS drugs, the price is still way out of reach for almost all Africans.

The one place in Africa where the rate of AIDS infection has fallen is Uganda. It has fallen there not because of aid or advice provided by western capital, but because Ugandan women have taken the lead in educating the populace about the dangers of HIV transmission. That this is occurring at a moment when the rate of HIV infection is rising again in some sections of the U.S., especially among inner-city youth, indicates that the African masses have much to teach us on the AIDS issue.(1)

Africa's health crisis is by no means restricted to AIDS. Millions die there yearly from treatable diseases like sleeping sickness, malaria and tuberculosis. Recent reports show that 1.7 million have died in Congo over the last two years from a breakdown in health services connected to the war.

Even though drugs are available for many diseases afflicting Africans, they are being pulled off the market because drug companies feel they cannot generate enough profit from their sale to them! Africa accounts for 1% of world drug sales, compared to 80% for the U.S., West Europe, and Japan. Drug companies would much rather invest in drugs to cure male baldness than life-saving drugs for workers in underdeveloped countries. As Francois Gros of Aventis, a company that recently pulled a drug for African sleeping sickness off the market put it, "We're an industry in a competitive environment-we have a commitment to deliver performance to shareholders."

The commodification of the health care system should give pause to those with illusions about the "biotech revolution." The huge amount of capital now being invested in genetic engineering is not limited to the genetic manipulation of crops like corn and soybeans, which now account for over half the U.S. market. It includes efforts to genetically manipulate animal reproduction, through cloning and other measures, and even efforts to artificially create life. Last month scientists reported that they created the world's first synthetic DNA molecules-which means that artificial organisms could be created within two years.

The point is not whether or not the intent of such remarkable intellectual advances is to alleviate human suffering. It is that as soon as such creativity is shackled to the value-form assumed by products of labor under capitalism, everything takes on a life of its own-to the detriment of life itself. Capital is inexorably driven to increase value, to expand, to self-expand, regardless of human potential or natural limits. As soon as any invention or intellectual breakthrough is brought under the sway of capital, it serves the purpose of augmenting value, regardless of what is required for human self-development.

This is reflected in capitalism's growing preference to seek genetic solutions to social problems. It is much more profitable for a company to claim that a disease can be cured by manipulating genes than trying to alleviate the environmental conditions (such as man-made pollutants) which may trigger a genetic disposition toward a given illness. And just as it is more profitable for capital to invest in cures for baldness than sleeping sickness, the effects of biotechnology will be used to benefit a narrow portion of the world's populace, if that.

The most troubling part of today's drive for genetic manipulation is that it takes little heed of the social and environmental consequences, precisely because the self-expansion of value is so much at stake in it. Recognition of this underlines the mass opposition to genetically engineered food in Europe and India and the growing protests against it in the U.S., such as the rally of 6,000 in Boston this spring.

As one critic put it in writing of the genetic manipulation of crops-which is but the tip of the iceberg of the biotech revolution-"The transformation of plant genetics is being accelerated from the measured pace of biological evolution to the speed of next quarter's earnings report. Such haste makes it impossible to foresee and forestall: unintended consequences appear only later, when they may not be fixable, because novel life-forms aren't recallable" ("A Tale of Two Botanies," Amory B. Lovins and Hunter L. Lovins, WIRED, April 2000).

It is not alone a renewed nuclear arms race which threatens the life of this planet, but genetic engineering and global warming as well. As the expression of the domination of means of production over means of consumption, of dead labor over living labor, capital's tendency for self-destruction has always been as real as its drive for self-expansion.

Just as state-capitalism used science's ability to uncover the basic laws of physics to unleash the destructive power of the atom bomb, so restructured state-capitalism is now using the discovery of the basic laws of biology to unleash the destructive power of biotechnology. In each case, the role of the state remains decisive-as seen in the large investment of the U.S. government in the human genome project.

This makes newly concrete Marxist-Humanism's insistence, projected since its birth in the workers' struggles against automated production in the 1950s, that there is no solution to human development short of a total uprooting of the separation of mental from manual labor that is the very basis of capital. As Raya Dunayevskaya wrote in MARXISM AND FREEDOM, "The challenge of our times is not to machines, but to humanity. Intercontinental missiles can destroy mankind, but they cannot solve its human relations. The creation of a new society remains the human endeavor" (p. 287).(2) The question is whether a movement will emerge which will meet this challenge today.

II. NEW SUBJECTIVE CHALLENGES TO GLOBAL CAPITAL

A. Defying capitalism's new 16th century

One event which helps illuminate the nature of the present moment was a trip that Clinton made to Portugal in June, en route to his summit in Moscow. Its purpose was to quiet the fears of the European allies about his missile-defense plan. The visit began with a ceremony at Belem Tower-a fort at the entrance of Lisbon harbor built in the 16th century, which Portuguese explorers of Asia, Africa, and the Americas-as well as slave traders-departed from. President Sampao of Portugal declared at the ceremony that "our increasingly globalized world owes a lot to their deeds."

Sampao was not wrong that the globalization of capital that we hear so much about today owes much to the 16th century. Capitalism first emerged as a global system with the opening up of Asia, Africa and America to colonialism and the slave trade in the 16th century. Marx called it "the rosy dawn of capitalist accumulation." As Marx said of the new stage of globalization reached with 19th century capitalism, "There is no denying that bourgeois society has for the second time experienced its 16th century, a 16th century which, I hope, will sound its death knell just as the first ushered it into the world. The proper task of bourgeois society is the creation of the world market, at least in outline, and the production based on that market."(3)

It is no exaggeration to say that capitalism is now experiencing yet another 16th century, as seen in its incessant drive for global expansion and effort to commodify ever more areas of human and natural existence. At the same time, the vast inequities generated by this stage of capital accumulation point to a return to the brutal exploitation and racism which defined capitalism's origin. Whether its death knell will be sounded this time around is the question that remains to be answered.

What creates potential for answering this question is the emergence of a new generation of activists and thinkers reaching for new ideas, struggles, and organizational forms with which to challenge the dominance of global capital.

The protest against the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle brought this to the forefront. Seattle rekindled the spirit of anti-capitalist defiance through an unprecedented coalescence of students, workers, environmentalists, feminists, gays and lesbians and Third World activists. It fired the imagination of tens of thousands around the country, as seen in how the spirit of Seattle helped reinvigorate revolutionary May Day in marches held in over a dozen cities around the country.

Such new openings are not limited to Seattle. New labor struggles have occurred, from the organizing campaign of home-care workers in Los Angeles to nationwide strikes of janitors and from the 49-day walkout of nurses in Worcester, Mass. to the strike of Boeing's engineers-the largest walkout of "high tech" workers ever. New protests against police abuse and the racist criminal injustice system also arose, as did marches and rallies in defense of gay and lesbian rights. And new student struggles emerged, from campus movements against sweatshops to the 11-day boycott of classes by 10th graders, and some fourth graders, in Massachusetts in April against standardized testing.

It is not just the number of protests that is striking, but their character. A level of solidarity between students and workers is occurring which has not been seen in decades. There is also a new level of cross-border labor solidarity between workers at home and abroad. And there is more direct, open discussion of the need to abolish capital and the state than we have seen for a very long time.

What fuels this opposition is recognition of the inequities of global capital. Three billion in the world today lack basic sanitation, three billion live on less than $2 a day, and over a billion lack adequate food and nutrition. Far from being a legacy of "Third World backwardness" that global capital will sooner or later get around to tackling, these conditions are the product of capital's restructuring over the last three decades.

According to the UN Development Project, "No fewer than 100 countries-either developing or in transition-have experienced serious economic decline over the past three decades." Worst off of all is Sub-Saharan Africa. Even the World Bank was forced to admit in a study released in June that sub-Saharan Africans are poorer today than 30 years ago.

According to Caroline Thomas, "The explosive widening of the gap between rich and poor states (and between rich and poor people) evident over the last 50 years has been exacerbated in the 1990s....The dynamic of economic driven globalization has led to a global reproduction of Third World social problems....Concentration of wealth, and social exclusion, seem to be part of a single global process" ("Where is the Third World Now?" THE INTERREGNUM: CONTROVERSIES IN WORLD POLITICS, 1989-99, ed. by Michael Cox, Ken Booth, and Tim Dunn).

Global capital has clearly proven itself incapable of putting a dent in the endemic problems of poverty and inequality in the largest economy on earth, the U.S., let alone anywhere else-despite the vast increases in labor productivity achieved through computerized technology and reorganized work processes. Though labor productivity in the U.S. grew 46.5% over the last 24 years, most workers are earning less, adjusted for inflation, than 24 years ago, and are working far harder. Though unemployment is at the lowest level in the U.S. for years, significant wage growth is still not occurring. And while the number of billionaires have quadrupled over the past decade, those living below the poverty line have increased 10%, to 34.5 million.

The fact that women are bearing the brunt of these conditions, as seen in the disproportionate number of women lacking basic employment, education, and health care, while being subjected to spousal abuse and an array of forms of sexual harassment, explains why women are in the forefront of the resistance to the conditions imposed by restructured capitalism. Just as many of the new generation of anti-sweatshop labor organizers are women, be it in the Mississippi Delta or in Indonesia, so are many of those leading the campaigns against globalization. This is evident from each of the major protests against global capital this year, be it Seattle, the April protest in Washington D.C., or the UN conference on global women's issues.(4)

A revival of movement activity seems to be occurring on every continent. In Norway, the largest industrial strike in years occurred in May against management and the trade union leadership. In Ukraine 40,000 miners went on strike in May against unpaid wages and working conditions that have killed hundreds of miners. In South Africa four million participated in a strike on May 10 against mass unemployment. In India 20 million went on strike May 11 against efforts to open the economy to global competition by privatizing state enterprises. And in China a three-day pitched battle between 20,000 miners and soldiers broke out in May in Yangjiazhanzi in response to mass layoffs.

New protests are also occurring in Latin America, especially in Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru and Argentina. All of them face the mailed fist of state repression. This is especially so in Mexico, even though the ruling PRI has just lost the presidential election to Fox of the PAN. The Zapatistas warned in a communiqué in late June that regardless of who becomes president, the state may try to move against them and the autonomous communities which have fueled the movement in Chiapas since 1994.

B. The racist core of capital accumulation-and its opposition

It is not only in Mexico that such repression is showing itself. It is increasingly evident in the U.S., as anyone subjected to police abuse can attest.

The serial murders by police and the state, largely of Blacks and Latinos, reveals the totalitarian dimension of U.S. "democracy" that has become more visible than ever. It is part of an effort to suppress the rebellious outlook of youth as a whole, white as well as Black. This will reach a frightening new stage if Bush becomes president. Whereas Gore seems not to have found his voice to articulate much of anything, Bush has folded the Christian Right into his campaign in stealth fashion. Recent Supreme Court decisions-like upholding the Effective Death Penalty Act, which makes it easier for the state to carry out its license to kill, and striking down aspects of the Violence Against Women Act on the basis that it violates "states' rights"-are tailor-made for Bush's agenda.

The movement that has arisen against prison warehousing, the death penalty, and police abuse represents a mass rejection of this repressive apparatus. Yet so far most of the protests against globalization and those against the criminal injustice system have not come together. This was evident at the Washington D.C. IMF-World Bank protest, which drew relatively few Black residents of D.C. or other areas. It was even more evident at the protests against the OAS in Windsor, Ontario, in June.

The gap between opposing globalization overseas and connecting with the struggles of Blacks and Latinos against capital here at home is one of the most important contradictions facing today's activists. It cannot be resolved by abstract appeals to Black-white unity or by reducing the problem to tactics and strategy. It can be resolved only by explicitly opposing the racist material and ideological structures of U.S. society and breaking from pragmatist attitudes which skip over the need for a philosophy of liberation to serve as the unifying thread of freedom struggles.

As one prisoner wrote: "Failure to immediately and continuously address the theoretical questions that define a movement not only leads to a false unity, but to a weak identity through which reactionary forces can infiltrate and co-opt a movement."(5)

This is not the first time we have faced this problem. In the 1960s a new generation of revolutionaries arose inspired by Black masses in the Freedom Now! movement. By the late 1960s, however, many white New Left activists moved away from the Civil Rights Movement for the sake of focusing solely on the movement against the war in Vietnam. The extent of the resulting separation of white and Black became evident at the high point of the student movement, May 1970. While the killing of four students by the National Guard at Kent State initiated a national outcry, much less was said about the killing of two Black students at Jackson State.

History never repeats itself the same way twice, and today's situation is not the same as the 1960s. Yet just as the revolts of the 1960s were set into motion by the Black dimension, so the first serious challenge to U.S. capital in the post-Cold War era was initiated by Blacks and Latinos. Foremost in this was the Los Angeles rebellion of 1992. It was a direct response to police abuse. It was also a direct challenge to capital. Though derided by the bourgeois press as "looting," the actions of the Black and Latino (and in some cases white youth) in clearing out stores reflected a drive to strip products of labor of their value-form by treating them as objects of use, instead of as exchange. Brief as it was, Los Angeles 1992 opened the first breach in the seeming invincibility of post-Cold War capitalism.

What can help bridge the gap between today's anti-globalization protests and the legacy of revolt born from the L.A. rebellion is the Marxist-Humanist concept of Black Masses as Vanguard of the American Revolution.(6) It is crucial to confront, for if the movement against global capital fails to connect to the struggles of the revolutionary Black dimension, it will not be able to clearly distinguish itself from tendencies which oppose "globalization" from a decidedly reactionary standpoint.

C. Contradictions in the movement against global capital

The position of the AFL-CIO bureaucracy in the debate over extending permanent normal trade relations to China is one reflection of how narrow some critics of "globalization" can be. AFL-CIO President Sweeney's opposition to the China trade bill was hardly distinguishable from Teamsters President James Hoffa Jr., who is considering endorsing arch-reactionary and anti-Semite Pat Buchanan for president.

This is not the only example of narrow nationalist and pro-capitalist forces trying to influence the anti-globalization movement. Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader has held several friendly meetings with Buchanan over the past year, and Mike Dolan of Public Citizen, one of the organizations which helped organize the Seattle protest, has praised Buchanan for his supposed "passionate defense of the legitimate expectations of working families in the global economy."

The way in which some rightists and leftists are able to come together in the name of opposing "globalization" should come as no surprise to anyone who was attentive to what emerged during the war over Kosova last year. A significant section of the U.S. Left not only refused to support the struggle of the Kosovars against "ethnic cleansing" but openly allied themselves with reactionary, narrow nationalist elements-on the grounds that they too opposed the U.S. air war against Serbia.(7)

What we called last year a threat of an emerging "red-brown alliance" in the West is not restricted to responses to the war in Kosova. The response to the crisis in Kosova reflected a problem confronting all of today's movements-the difficulty being encountered in articulating a revolutionary alternative to capitalism.

This difficulty has everything to do with the legacy of the unfinished and aborted revolutions of the past century. In the 20th century any number of efforts to negate capitalism stopped short at the abolition of private property and the "free" market. Instead of a new society, we ended up with state-capitalist regimes which called themselves "communist" or "socialist." The collapse of many of those regimes in East Europe and the Third World in the 1980s and 1990s could have become a new opening to liberation, that is, to a return to Marx's concept of a "revolution in permanence" that does not stop its development until all alienated human relationships, beginning at the point of production and extending to the whole of society, are fundamentally transformed.

The problem, however, is that revolutionary theoreticians failed to meet the mass revolts with a comprehensive philosophy of liberation. The great divide between Marx's Marxism and established Marxism was not seriously projected.

As a result, it remains very unclear today what the alternative to capital really is. Faced with the enormous difficulty of articulating an alternative, not just to the IMF or WTO, but to the very existence of capitalism, many refrain from raising the issue-preferring instead to focus for now on more tangible and immediate critiques of various forms and manifestations of globalization.

This is reflected in the tendency to critique "corporate greed"-as if it can be eliminated without uprooting capitalism. This leaves the door open for anti-revolutionary elements which oppose aspects of "globalization" from a nationalist and pro-capitalist position to pose themselves as part of the movement.

The problem is not resolved simply by issuing abstract critiques of capitalism. The Stalinists and their fellow travelers certainly did plenty of that in years past. But their efforts to oppose capitalism only led to a new form of exploitation, totalitarian state-capitalism, because what remained untouched was the most fundamental problem of all-the existence of forced, alienated labor. Without creating a new kind of labor which dispenses with the separation between mental and manual, it is impossible to uproot either capitalism or its manifestations.

It therefore bears repeating that for Marx capital is not simply a thing but a social relation mediated through the instrumentality of things. Capital is the expression of a specific social form of labor-of abstract, undifferentiated, alienated labor. So long as the very activity of laboring is reduced to an alienated, thingified activity-that is, so long as human relations take on the form of relations between things-capital will continue to oppress us, with all its destructive consequences. Important as it is to demand "a rejection of neo-liberal politics" and "all forms of oppression and exploitation such as patriarchy, white supremacy, and imperialism,"(8) to skip over the need to uproot the alienated character of the labor process essentially amounts to assuming the permanence of the capital-relation.

Today's realities demand a break from all pragmatist attitudes which consider theoretical questions, and most of all a philosophy of revolution, as "divisive" or of secondary importance. For neither a serious critique of capital nor a notion of its liberating alternative is possible without turning anew to the whole of Marx's new continent of thought and of revolution.

Here is where the philosophy of Marxist-Humanism takes on new importance. Beginning with the development of the theory of state-capitalism as a new world stage in the 1940s, Raya Dunayevskaya creatively returned to Marx's Marxism by showing that the abolition of capitalism hinges upon the abolition of alienated labor. As against the tendency of many radicals to get lost in the world of objective things, of property and market relations-as if nationalizing property or abolishing the "free" market constituted "socialism"-she returned to Marx's humanist concept of freely associated labor as the antithesis of value production.

This emphasis on creating new human relations freed from the constraints of value production-beginning with but by no means restricted to transforming relations at the point of production-defined her entire development of Marxist-Humanism. It underlined its view of the four forces of revolution-workers, women, youth, Blacks and other minorities.

Marxist-Humanism pinpointed the content of these forces as lying in a drive to negate all conditions in which human relations take the form of relations between things. In articulating the subjectivity of the "new passions and new forces," Dunayevskaya showed that they bring to life the Hegelian and Marxian notion of "absolute negativity." In showing that the movements from practice bring to life the most abstract philosophic conceptions, she issued a challenge for revolutionary theoreticians to meet them with a philosophy of revolution which makes explicit their drive for a total uprooting. This underlined her restatement over four decades of Marx's thought as a philosophy of "revolution in permanence."

It is hard to think of a philosophy better situated to speak to the movement against global capital than Marxist-Humanism. It speaks to the desire to abolish capital, to create non-elitist forms of organization, to achieve a coalescence of revolutionary forces, and to break down the hallmark of class society-the division between mental and manual labor-in the course of the struggle for a new society.

The question is whether Marx's philosophy of revolution as restated by Marxist-Humanism will achieve the kind of organizational expression that can enable the concept of "revolution in permanence" to become the beacon of today's struggles. To confront this, we need to turn anew to the problem of revolutionary organization.

III. BEYOND CAPITALISM: PROJECTING A NEW ALTERNATIVE THROUGH A UNITY OF PHILOSOPHY AND ORGANIZATION

"The dialectic is revolutionary through and through, no matter what positivistic conclusions Hegel himself tried to foist upon it. Because it is revolutionary through and through, the dialectic demands an organization of people for its realization that are Marxist-Humanists through and through."
—Raya Dunayevskaya, 1961(9)

One of the most striking developments of the past year is the way many of the new struggles show a clear preference for non-hierarchical and decentralized forms of organization. This was especially evident at the Seattle protest, as well as elsewhere.

This desire for decentralized organizational forms is of tremendous significance. As Dunayevskaya said of the spontaneous emergence of such forms of organization in earlier revolutions and freedom struggles, "The demand for decentralization involves...first, the depth of the necessary uprooting of this exploitative, sexist, racist society. Second, the dual rhythm of revolution; not just the overthrow of the old, but the creation of the new; not just the reorganization of objective, material foundations but the release of subjective personal freedom, creativity, and talents. In a word, there must be such appreciation of the movement from below, from practice, that we never again let theory and practice get separated" (ROSA LUXEMBURG, WOMEN'S LIBERATION, AND MARX'S PHILOSOPHY OF REVOLUTION , p. 108).

This does not mean that spontaneous organizational forms by themselves resolve the basic problem confronting efforts at social transformation. This is because those involved in mass struggles "also search for an organization different from their own in the sense that they want to be sure there is a totality of theory and practice" to help ensure the creation of a totally new society.(10) As new forms of organization spring from grassroots struggles, its participants also look for ways to connect with organizations different from their own which can provide them with needed theoretical direction. The problem is that more often than not they encounter organizations which are more interested in controlling them than in offering a comprehensive view on how to transform society.

The fact that spontaneous forms have often been taken over by elitist groups does not negate the need for an organization of revolutionary theoreticians armed with a philosophy which spells out how to continue the struggle for a new society past the conquest of state power. It makes it even more important. It can be seen by the way tendencies from liberals to vanguardist Marxists to anarchists are already trying to claim the mantle of the struggles against global capital. What remains missing on their part is an effort to meet these spontaneous forms with a philosophy of liberation which spells out not only what we are against but what we are for.

To see what is involved in working this out for today, we need to turn to the dialectics of organization and philosophy-beginning with the ground Marx himself provided for it.

A. Marx's concept of organization revisited

Marx remains our founder, not just when it comes to questions of theory, but to organization as well. From the start of his new continent of thought and revolution in the 1840s he did not separate the two.

Marx's ECONOMIC AND PHILOSOPHIC MANUSCRIPTS of 1844 marked the birth of a philosophy of revolution. Its content ranged from the concept of alienated labor and its absolute opposite-freely associated labor-to man/woman relations as the "measure" of society to the projection of a "thoroughgoing humanism" which unites materialism with idealism in opposition to both capitalism and "vulgar communism." The 1844 Manuscripts was also the "philosophic moment" for his concept of organization. At no time was this defined by the elitist notion of a vanguard party. It was rather defined by responsibility for an idea-the idea of a total uprooting of class society. Marx practiced this concept in the organizations he was part of, from the Communist League to the First International.

Yet it was not until 1875, with his CRITIQUE OF THE GOTHA PROGRAM, that Marx reached to fully concretize his philosophic moment of 1844 for organization. Marx's CRITIQUE OF THE GOTHA PROGRAM consisted of a sharp critique of his followers for submerging Marxian principles for the sake of organizational unity with the followers of Ferdinand Lassalle, whom he had castigated as "a future workers' dictator."

Marx's CRITIQUE was far more than a critique of a political program. It was a critique of an entire attitude towards organization and philosophy. Marx blasted the program's declaration that "labor is the source of all wealth," which forgets that nature is just as much the source of use-values. He exposed how little his followers understood what capital is, in failing to grasp that the problem lies not in distribution or exchange, but in production. And he attacked their call for workers to "strive for their emancipation within the framework of the present-day national state" as a regression from the internationalism of the First International. Marx was not just critiquing his followers for political opportunism. He was objecting to the way a "Marxist" organization had detached itself from the very idea of "revolution in permanence."

For Marx, however, critique was never just critique as opposition, but a matter of projecting the absolute opposite in an affirmative way. It's seen in how the 1875 CRITIQUE contained his fullest projection of what a new society will be like after the transcendence of value production. He wrote:

"In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual under the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor, from a mere means of life, has itself become the prime necessity of life; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of cooperative wealth flow more abundantly-only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be fully left behind and society inscribe on its banners: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."

Marx was not putting off for a far-distant future the creation of a new kind of labor which dispenses with value production. Nor was he posing the abstract, alienated kind of labor characteristic of capitalism as the "principle" of a new society. On the contrary, he was posing the uprooting of the "peculiar social form" of labor characteristic of capitalism as the fundamental prerequisite for the abolition of capital.

That this is projected not just "in general," but in the midst of a critique of an organizational document, shows that for Marx the "historic right to exist" of a Marxist organization is defined by its responsibility for developing the principles of "revolution in permanence." He was thereby making explicit the concept of organization integral to his work from as early as the 1844 Manuscripts.

The question is, why did it take 30 years for Marx to so sharply project this? The reason may be that by 1875 Marx had experienced a tremendous philosophic development in completing the French edition of Vol. I of CAPITAL and creating a comprehensive body of ideas. The question of organization took on new importance once the self-determination of the Idea reached a new stage of development.

Unfortunately, Marx's CRITIQUE OF THE GOTHA PROGRAM did not become the ground of organization in post-Marx Marxism. Even those who did return to the CRITIQUE in terms of the need to smash the bourgeois state, such as Lenin, failed to draw any connection between the CRITIQUE and the concept of organization. Instead, Lenin's concept of the vanguard party, which owed much more to Lassalle than to Marx, became a veritable fetish. Nor did anti-Leninists return to Marx's CRITIQUE as part of reconsidering the question of organization. The inseparability of organization from projecting a vision of a new society rooted in a concept of "revolution in permanence" never became the ground of post-Marx Marxism. It has everything to do with the failure of post-Marx Marxists of our era to respond to the changes in global capital by projecting a liberating vision of the future.

This does not mean the task of working out a new relation between philosophy and organization has come to an end. For we have something that no previous generation of Marxists possessed-the ability to grasp the self-determination of the Idea of Marx's Marxism as a totality, now that Marxist-Humanism has unearthed his philosophy of "revolution in permanence" from the Archives.

B. The single dialectic of philosophy/organization

Marxist-Humanism's entire development has consisted of working out what Marx's Marxism means for today. MARXISM AND FREEDOM, FROM 1776 UNTIL TODAY (1958), established the American roots and world humanist concepts of Marx's Marxism by exploring the development from the 1844 Manuscripts to Capital in light of state-capitalism and the struggles against it in our age. PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION: FROM HEGEL TO SARTRE AND FROM MARX TO MAO (1973), explored the source of Marx's Marxism-Hegel's dialectic of "absolute negativity"- both in and for itself and in relation to its impact on Marx, Lenin, and the revolutionaries of the 20th century. Its central category-"Absolute Negativity as New Beginning"-in turn became the impetus for a critical reexamination of the greatest post-Marx Marxists, in ROSA LUXEMBURG, WOMEN'S LIBERATION, AND MARX'S PHILOSOPHY OF REVOLUTION (1982). Its discovery of the "new moments" of Marx's last decade-which include his writings on man/woman relations, technologically underdeveloped societies, and indigenous peoples in the ETHNOLOGICAL NOTEBOOKS-cast a new illumination on Marx as a whole by revealing that "no concept of his was separate from that of permanent revolution" (p. 192).

This opened new doors on the whole question of organization. The discovery of the whole of Marx's thought and its divide from "post-Marx Marxism, beginning with Engels, as pejorative" showed that achieving continuity with Marx on the level of today's realities calls for a new relation between philosophy and organization.

As Dunayevskaya wrote in 1981: "We have, unfortunately, all too often stopped at the committee-form of organization, rather than philosophy and organization. And it is the philosophy that is new, totally new, not the committee form of organization, crucial as that form is to fight vanguardism" (THE RAYA DUNAYEVSKAYA COLLECTION [RDC], 7126). In 1982 she said the key is "Organizational responsibility for one's philosophic stand for a new society....Philosophy itself does not reach its full articulation until it has reached the right organizational form" (RDC, 7514).

It is not that "on the one hand" there is a need for organization, while "on the other" there is a need for philosophy. Rather, the task is to work out philosophy and organization as a single dialectic.

Dunayevskaya spoke to this in 1984, in commenting on her decision to change the title of the chapter of her Luxemburg book dealing with the CRITIQUE OF THE GOTHA PROGRAM. Originally it was entitled "The Philosopher of Permanent Revolution and Organization Man" but she changed it to "The Philosopher of Permanent Revolution Creates New Ground for Organization." She made the change "to reveal that the little word 'and' did not mean that Organization was a separate corollary to Marx's philosophy of 'revolution in permanence.' The difference... is between still keeping the philosophy and organization in separate categories and finally projecting the single dialectic in objective and subjective development" (SUPPLEMENT TO RDC, 17177).

The task of concretizing this single dialectic led her to journey anew into Hegel's philosophy as she worked on a planned book on "Dialectics of Organization and Philosophy." She explored anew Hegel's PHENOMENOLOGY OF MIND, SCIENCE OF LOGIC and Smaller LOGIC, Lenin's PHILOSOPHIC NOTEBOOKS, Marx's 1844 critique of Hegel and Marxist-Humanism's breakthrough on Hegel's Absolutes of 1953. While the 1953 breakthrough had been achieved with the question of organization in mind, the relation between organization and the dialectic in philosophy took on new importance with the projection of "revolution in permanence as ground for organization." As she wrote in 1986, "Unless we work out the dialectic in philosophy itself, the dialectic of organization, whether it be from the vanguard party or that born from spontaneity, would be just different forms of organization, instead of an organization that is so inseparable from its philosophic ground that form and content are one" (SUPPLEMENT TO RDC, 10789).

Dunayevskaya's work on the "Dialectics of Organization and Philosophy" was left unfinished with her death in 1987. While it is impossible to know where her work on it would have taken her, it is clear that she was in no way departing from the fundamental principles which have defined us since our origin. On the contrary, in her "Presentation on the Dialectics of Organization and Philosophy" of June 1, 1987, she returned to the "philosophic moment" of the birth of Marxist-Humanism, the 1953 "Letters on Hegel's Absolutes," seeing it as the ground and roof for working out a new relation between philosophy and organization.(11)

Assuming organizational responsibility for philosophy does not take away from the need for a decentralized committee form, for working out a new unity between workers and intellectuals, and for having a newspaper in which theoretical projection and voices of subjects of revolt are inseparable. If anything, it only makes them more important.

The point is to develop these and other dimensions of our organizational life through a collective journey into the dialectic of philosophy. Dunayevskaya addressed what this requires after completing PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION: "We can't think that we are meeting that task by just saying, we recognize that it's not Substance but Subject.... Subject isn't all there is to subjectivity, in the universal sense, because subjectivity in the universal sense includes the theory. It cannot be complete until you're just as good in taking down that self-determination of the Idea as taking down the Subject talking" ("Our Original Contribution to the Dialectic of Absolute Idea as New Beginning," RDC, 5628).

Achieving this is how we can ensure that Marx's philosophy of revolution as restated by Marxist-Humanism reaches the kind of organizational expression that will enable the concept of "revolution in permanence" to become the beacon of today's struggles. By doing so we can play a critical role in speaking to the search by a new generation for new concepts and organizational forms with which to challenge capital.

C. Political-philosophic-organizational tasks

Much of our work of the past year speaks to this. It includes securing a new edition of MARXISM AND FREEDOM in the U.S. and PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION in China. We also issued new pamphlets on Kosova and on prisoner struggles, intervened in the battle of ideas in outside presses, and analyzed new objective and subjective developments in NEWS & LETTERS newspaper. We have become an important force in the prisoner solidarity movements and, in some areas, in the movement against police abuse. Our British colleagues have made important strides in work with their new publication, HOBGOBLIN. We also tried to speak to the new moment disclosed by Seattle in a series of classes held nationwide on "Beyond Capitalism: The Struggle for a New Society Against Today's Globalized Capital."

Important as such work has been, we cannot be satisfied with our current state of organizational growth and outreach, given the many challenges presented by the objective situation. We need to undergo a much deeper philosophic-political-organizational self-development, beginning with an all-organizational collective dialogue and discussion on the problem of "the dialectics of organization and philosophy" in light of today's realities. This defines all of our tasks of the coming year.

This begins with undertaking responsibility for keeping the major works of Marxist-Humanism in print and securing a publisher for the collection of writings by Dunayevskaya on the dialectic which we have called "The Power of Negativity." Since the aim of all our work seeks to manifest the inseparability of theory and practice, the development of NEWS & LETTERS newspaper is of special importance-both in eliciting voices of revolt "unseparated from the articulation of a philosophy of liberation" and in generating new outreach and distribution that can truly expand the horizons of our organization.

The unity of theory and practice is especially manifested in two pamphlets which we are now readying for publication-one consisting of selected writings from Felix Martin, who was a writer, columnist and Labor Editor of N&L over a period of 27 years until his death last year, the other a pamphlet which will engage in a battle of ideas over Marx's value theory. In different ways, each seeks to demonstrate what a critique of capitalism rooted in a Marxist-Humanist philosophy can mean for projecting new visions of the future which are inherent in the present.

This underlies our perspectives with all the forces of revolt. Nowhere is this more important than with the Black dimension. It is this which has motivated our aim to present a "Marxist-Humanist Statement on the Black Dimension" for today. Of great importance as well is our work with women's liberationists to develop what we consider Marxist-Humanism's unique and specific contributions to the Women's Liberation Movement in the ongoing battle of ideas. We also seek to deepen our activities in the movement against police abuse and the prisoner solidarity movement, as well as in the environmental and queer liberation movements.

The finances demanded to publish NEWS & LETTERS and make the new pamphlets a reality is one way we seek to break down the division of "inside" and "outside." From our beginnings our friends and readers have contributed to the special additional sustaining fund we need to keep going, and this year is no exception.

When NEWS & LETTERS began Dunayevskaya wrote, "The Absolute Idea, or the concept of the new society, means that the totality of crisis is so pervasive that the average person, who might ordinarily have been concerned with but one aspect, such as wages...now searches instead for a totality of outlook...This desire for a new way of life compels a search for 'little groups' or newspapers such as NEWS & LETTERS" (SUPPLEMENT TO RDC, 12130).

This has become even more true today, in light of the emergence of a new generation reaching for ways to combat global capitalism. Our aim is to demonstrate that the self-determination of the Idea is neither abstract or external to reality, but is living proof that revolutionary ideas remain a power in today's world.

—The Resident Editorial Board

NOTES

1. For an analysis of the political crisis of African states in relation to ongoing mass unrest, see "The challenge of Africa in crisis," by Lou Turner, NEWS & LETTERS, June 2000. [back]

2. MARXISM AND FREEDOM , FROM 1776 UNTIL TODAY, p. 287. This has just appeared in a new edition by Humanity Books. [back]

3. Letter of Marx to Engels, Oct. 8, 1858. This was written shortly after Marx completed his GRUNDRISSE, with its section on "Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations." [back]

4. For more on this, see "Women shake up dominance of global capital," by Maya Jhansi, NEWS & LETTERS, March 2000. [back]

5. For an extensive discussion of this by a prisoner, see "On the movement against global capital," by Todd C. Morrison, NEWS & LETTERS, May 2000. [back]

6. This concept is comprehensively developed in AMERICAN CIVILIZATION ON TRIAL: BLACK MASSES AS VANGUARD, (Chicago: News and Letters, 1984 [orig. ed. 1963]). [back]

7. For our analyses of the war over Kosova, see our pamphlet KOSOVA: WRITINGS FROM NEWS & LETTERS, 1998-99. [back]

8. This is from a statement of principles of the Direct Action Network, one of the organizers of the Seattle protest. [back]

9. We have reprinted the full text of this letter from February 1961 on page 4 of this issue of NEWS & LETTERS. [back]

10. This is from a series of notes written as part of Dunayevskaya's work on "Dialectics of Organization and Philosophy" in 1987. See SUPPLEMENT TO THE RAYA DUNAYEVSKAYA COLLECTION , Vol. 13, 10955. [back]

11. For the text of the "Presentation on the Dialectics of Organization and Philosophy" of June 1, 1953 and the 1987 "Letters on Hegel's Absolutes," see THE PHILOSOPHIC MOMENT OF MARXIST-HUMANISM (Chicago: News and Letters, 1989). [back]