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NEWS & LETTERS, July 2002
Draft for Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 2002-2003
Permanent war or revolution in permanence?
We present the draft of the "Marxist-Humanist
Perspectives for 2002-2003," in order to promote the widest discussion
possible. We look forward to a dialogue with you, our readers, as part of the
effort to break down the separation between inside and outside, theory and
practice, philosophy and organization. *** Introduction: India, Pakistan and the risk of nuclear
war The perilous nature of today's objective situation is
disclosed by the ongoing threat of nuclear war between India and Pakistan, which
places in jeopardy the lives of tens of millions. Though India and Pakistan have
for now backed off from a direct confrontation, the seeds have been planted for
a conflagration that could still be set off at any time. India has positioned half a million troops along its
border in response to attacks by Pakistan-supported terrorists in
Indian-controlled Kashmir. Pakistan has responded by test-firing ballistic
missiles and refusing to rule out the first use of nuclear weapons in the event
of an Indian attack. Pakistan's rulers are deeply committed to the Islamic
fundamentalists who have used Kashmir as a launching pad for attacks on India,
while India is led by a Hindu fundamentalist government that refuses to grant
the people of Kashmir any degree of autonomy. The rise of religious
fundamentalism on both sides is fueling a conflict that places into question the
very survival of South Asia. The depth of the fundamentalist threat gripping South
Asia was evidenced in March, when over 2,000 Muslims were massacred by Hindu
fundamentalists in supposed response to a massacre of Hindus in Godhara,
Gujarat. Over 100,000 remain in refugee camps as a result of these attacks.
Right-wing fundamentalist groups who have links to the Indian government had
been working for months to prepare the conditions for this massacre, such as
circulating manuals with instructions on how to engage in the mass murder of
Muslims. Meanwhile, Pakistan, which for years used its links with
Al Qaeda and other Islamic fundamentalist groups to hit away at India's
occupation of half of Kashmir, is using the conflict to divert attention from
its own profound social crises. The conflict over Kashmir, which has lingered for half a
century, is not going to go away. The crisis there reflects the wound of
partition that has never healed. India and Pakistan are engaging in a game of nuclear
brinkmanship, using the threat of war as a way to gain the attention and support
of the U.S., which has allied itself with Pakistan's Musharraf while at the same
time moving much closer to India as part of its "war against
terrorism." As each power uses the threat of war to gain the support of the
U.S., the administration finds itself increasingly drawn into a conflict that
threatens to divert attention from its aim of extending the "war against
terrorism" to states like Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. The India-Pakistan conflict has global ramifications.
China continues to occupy a part of Kashmir and has long been allied with
Pakistan. It is not likely to idly stand by while India launches a major attack
on Pakistan. China has been building up its own nuclear arsenal in response to
the crisis in South Asia. This has in turn led Japan's leaders to begin to
openly discuss breaking its 50-year taboo against building nuclear weapons. The
means to do so are at hand since Japan possesses one of the largest stockpiles
of weapons-grade plutonium in the world. The conflict between India and Pakistan has exposed the
hollowness of Bush's claim that his nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia,
concluded in May, has minimized the risk of nuclear confrontation. The danger of Bush's policies lies not only in the 2,000
nuclear warheads that the U.S. and Russia each keep under the arms treaty,
enough to destroy the world many times over. Nor is it only that the treaty
fails to provide for the dismantling of nuclear weapons, allowing them to be
stored for potential future use. It's that Bush's unilateral decision six months
ago to scuttle the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia and to commit the
U.S. to developing a new generation of high-tech nuclear weapons for possible
use against states like Iraq, Iran, and North Korea has already made the
unthinkable thinkable for a host of states, India and Pakistan included. While the Bush administration has decried the
development of "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq and Iran, it has
done nothing to stop India and Pakistan from continuing to develop the most
destructive mass weapon of all, nuclear missiles. In fact, so consumed is Bush
with his "war against terrorism" that he used his visit with Putin to
call Russian aid to Iran "the world's foremost weapons-proliferation
problem," as if the likelihood of tens of millions dying from a nuclear
exchange between India and Pakistan were a secondary matter! The conflict between India and Pakistan shows that U.S.
imperialism is not the only regressive force facing us today. No less
threatening are the perils posed by reactionary religious fundamentalism,
whether of an Islamic, Hindu, Christian or Jewish variety. Just as the September
11 terrorist attacks revealed the deadly threat posed by reactionary religious
fundamentalism, the conflict between India and Pakistan shows that it can set
off a chain reaction leading to an outright nuclear holocaust. In light of this, it is futile to consume all our time
and energy on simply opposing only the regressive acts of U.S. rulers. To
effectively oppose capitalism-imperialism we must unfurl a banner of liberation
that is absolutely opposed to BOTH fundamentalist terrorism AND imperialist war.
We continue to live in an age of absolutes, in which we
confront a struggle for absolute freedom against capital's drive for total
destruction. Marxist-Humanists have a key role to play in helping today's
freedom struggles develop a much-needed TOTAL view. I. The objective crises of war and terrorism "Every beginning must be made from the Absolute,
while every progress is merely the exhibition of the Absolute....The progress is
therefore not a kind of overflow." —G.W.F. Hegel A. The U.S. drive for single world mastery What predominates over everything today is the
counter-revolutionary power of U.S. imperialism. The September 11 terrorist
attacks clearly played into the U.S.'s hands, by providing the Bush
administration with an opportunity to embark on an unprecedented drive to extend
U.S. dominance overseas. Since forcing the Taliban from power in Afghanistan, the
U.S. has secured military bases and troop depots in over a dozen countries, from
Pakistan to Uzbekistan and from Tajikistan to Georgia. U.S. forces are active in
the largest array of countries since World War II. One example is the new U.S.
base in Kyrgyzstan, which will house 3,000 U.S. military personnel. The U.S. has
also sent troops and "advisors" to Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. There
is even talk of the U.S. sending military aid to Nepal. Meanwhile, U.S. military forces are in the Philippines
and Bush is readying new arms shipments to Indonesia. The U.S. is also sending
hundreds of millions of dollars in extra military aid to Colombia, which is
locked in a brutal civil war into which the U.S. is increasingly being drawn. Even this is the tip of the iceberg. The U.S. now has 70
military "advisor" missions operating around the globe. The
administration has even declared that it will launch a pre-emptive strike
against any nation with the capacity for developing weapons of mass destruction. There seems no lack of arrogance on the part of the Bush
administration—whether it be its scuttling of the Kyoto Accords on global
warming; undermining the treaty banning land mines; rejecting the biological
weapons convention; or repudiating the statute creating a world court to try war
criminals. The U.S. recently threatened to pull out its
"peacekeepers" from the newly independent nation of East Timor because
of a clash with its allies over whether U.S. troops could be turned over to the
international criminal court in the Hague. The U.S. rejects its authority and
insists on "the principle of immunity" for any future acts committed
by its forces anywhere—just when the Hague tribunal has finally put Milosevic
on trial for some of his crimes in Bosnia and Kosova. It isn't that the U.S. has completely succeeded in
dominating every aspect of world politics. It is often forced to make
compromises in its drive for single world mastery. No doubt the administration
would have preferred to forego even the limited nuclear arms reduction treaty
with Russia, since it had earlier denounced such agreements as
"unnecessary." The fear of Islamic fundamentalism since September 11,
however, forced Bush to promise Russia a role (however symbolic) in NATO and to
sign onto the nuclear arms reduction treaty, in exchange for getting Russian
assent for its greater military role in Central and South Asia. This fear of
Islamic fundamentalism has for the first time drawn all the major state powers
together—the U.S., West Europe, Russia and China. But while the U.S. may not everywhere have a clear field
before it, it IS reaching for single world domination. The U.S. is the gendarme
of globalized capitalism, ready at an instant to use its military force to
defend capital anywhere. This drive for single world mastery has economic as well
as political implications. It is brought into focus by the recently-passed farm
bill. Bush pushed through (with the support of the Democrats) a $190 billion
agriculture bill that dramatically increases farm subsidies to U.S.
agribusiness. This means that no matter how far the price falls for products
like wheat, corn, rice and cotton, agribusiness has no incentive to reduce
production. This will have a devastating effect not only on family
farms in the U.S. but on farmers throughout the world. The ones to suffer most
will be those in sub-Saharan Africa, where farm production accounts for close to
20% of total economic activity. African farms will be unable to compete with the
state-subsidized low prices of commodities produced by U.S. agribusiness. As one
report put it, "This farm bill, I think it's fair to say, will put millions
of small farmers out of business in Africa" (see "U.S. Exports Misery
to Africa with Farm Bill," by Warren Vieh, Los Angeles Times, May 27,
2002). Coming on top of an array of social crises afflicting sub-Saharan Africa,
from deepening poverty to the ravages of AIDS, this is sure to have a serious
impact, especially in Mali, Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Malawi. The farm bill is instructive because it helps show that
we are not witnessing a WITHDRAWAL of the state from economic activity but
rather a RESTRUCTURING of a state-capitalist global economic system.
Neoliberalism does not eliminate the state from the economy; it utilizes the
state to meet the specific demands posed by capital's drive for self-expansion. The role of the state has changed in many respects. No
longer does the state directly own the bulk of the means of production, as it
did in the Soviet Union. And less and less does the state maintain the social
safety net through New Deal-type legislation, at least in the U.S. The
particular agents of capital have become less tied to the dictates of specific
national states, as capital scours the world for ever-cheaper wages and raw
materials in the face of the tendency for the rate of profit to decline. But capital as a whole, as a GLOBAL system, remains tied
to the state. This is most of all seen in the vast increments in military
spending that Bush has pushed through, with virtually no Congressional
opposition. At the apex of the state-capitalist world system lies the U.S.
military which ensures the stability and functioning of global capital. B. The war at home The U.S.'s drive for permanent war is subsuming any and
all discussion of the real social crises brewing inside the U.S. Though the recession has been declared over,
unemployment is rising. Wages are stagnant and workers are paying higher
premiums for health insurance—where they can obtain it at all. Over 47 million
are without health insurance. Medicare—the largest and most regulated piece of
the social medical pie—is being purposively underfunded because of Bush's
budget priorities. Increasingly doctors are turning down Medicare patients. Meanwhile federal and state budgets were based on the
expectations arising from the "bubble economy" of the 1990s, and the
bubble has now burst. California alone faces a $25 billion deficit—which it is
using to push through a 60% cut in an already ravaged health care budget. Across
the country budgets for health, education, and welfare are being severely cut
back, with little or no public discussion. The gutting of the federal welfare system, which started
under Clinton and has accelerated under Bush, has further exacerbated these
problems. Recent studies show that half of former welfare recipients who were
forced into "workfare" programs are unable to buy food or pay rent or
utility bills. Another study showed mothers who were pushed from welfare to
workfare were just as likely to be depressed as they were before being forced
into jobs, and that they spent less time with their children. Most crucially, 10 years after the Los Angeles
rebellion, all the social ills which produced it continue to confront Blacks and
Latinos. The gap between whites and the rest of America in income, education,
and health care continues to widen. South Central Los Angeles, the epicenter of the 1992
rebellion, has the largest percentage of people without health coverage in Los
Angeles County, which itself has the largest rate of uninsured residents in the
U.S. Almost 50% of adults in South Central L.A. have no health insurance. Some
20% of mothers who give birth have no access to prenatal care. Black and Latino
residents of South Central have the highest numbers of deaths due to diabetes,
heart disease, and lung cancer in the country. Meanwhile the issue which set off the rebellion—rampant
police abuse—has only increased. Chicagoans were shocked at the recent
decision of Federal and local prosecutors not to file charges against Chicago
police officers who murdered, in two separate instances, LaTanya Haggerty and
Robert Russ after high speed chases through the Black community in 1999. In
another recent case, five white Cook County sheriff's deputies who shot at a
Black couple were cleared of wrongdoing, even though they were caught on tape
laughing and saying, "Let's go kill 'em" while chasing them for miles.
Clearly, the post-September 11 climate has made it harder than ever to bring
killer police to justice. One year after the Cincinnati rebellion refocused the
nation's attention on the endemic problems of racism and police abuse, even the
most minimal efforts to bring racist cops to justice are being undermined. In Cincinnati itself, the police have responded to last
year's rebellion by engaging in a job slowdown against the Black community. Over
the past year 77 people, most of them Black, have been victims of shootings,
compared with nine the previous year. In response to this unbenign neglect by
the police, civil rights groups organized an economic boycott of Cincinnati, but
September 11 largely pushed it into the background. Mayor Luken—who has done
nothing to halt the racist climate pervading the police department—has
referred to the boycotters as "economic terrorists." Throughout the country racial profiling has been
extended to Muslims and Arab-Americans. This has been given "legal"
sanction by Attorney General Ashcroft's announcement of a "domestic
espionage program" which will require over 100,000 immigrants, mainly from
the Middle East and Africa, to register with the justice department. The
administration has also lifted the restrictions on spying against political
organizations that were imposed in the mid-1970s in response to the exposés
about the FBI's COINTELPRO and repression meted out against civil rights,
anti-war, and Black liberation activists. The rulers may think that they can get away with their
effort to subsume the realities facing Black America through the "war
against terrorism." What they do not realize is that the class and social
divisions of this country have always been placed into focus most sharply by the
struggles of Black Americans. New stages of imperialist intervention overseas
have always been met by new forms of opposition by the Black dimension at
home.(1) The seeds are being planted for yet another social explosion. We must oppose the way Bush-Ashcroft are using their
"war against terrorism" to roll back the most basic human rights and
civil liberties. We must oppose their effort to subsume any discussion of the
real problems afflicting the U.S. But to do so we need a TOTAL view that opposes
the inhumanity of their deeds AND of the reactionary tendencies which carried
out the September 11 attacks. These terrorist attacks strengthened Bush by enabling
him to garner widespread support for his reactionary policies. Islamic
fundamentalism has again and again strengthened U.S. imperialism by taking
actions which have undermined revolutionary forces and solidified
counter-revolutionary policies. Khomeini's saber-rattling and the taking of
hostages at the U.S. embassy in Iran by Islamic fundamentalists in 1979 helped
Reagan achieve political ascendancy. Today, an anti-feminist, homophobic
fundamentalism of an even more reactionary bent is enabling the inheritors of
Reaganism to impose their regressive agenda upon this country. C. The challenge of September 11 The way in which reactionary fundamentalist tendencies
have helped strengthen the power of U.S. imperialism poses a serious CONCEPTUAL
challenge to the movements against war and global capital. It became evident after September 11 that those in the
Left who limited themselves to opposing Bush, while remaining silent about the
threat of counter-revolutionary Islamic fundamentalism, made it easier for the
rulers to try to discredit the peace movement. The American public is deeply
worried and concerned at the threat posed by fundamentalist terrorism. No
anti-war movement will prove viable if it fails to speak to this. Moreover, by focusing everything on the U.S. as enemy
number one, many on the Left have failed to solidarize with the true liberatory
forces who have the potential to transform today's realities—such as the women
in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria and elsewhere who have been fighting the
repressive force of Islamic fundamentalism for years. Nowhere is there a more sane, humane, and revolutionary
voice than those of Afghan women. This was made evident in June, when a group of
warlords in Afghanistan tried to tell women delegates how to vote at the LOYA
JIRGA, which is trying to create a new Afghan government. "The women told
the strongmen to get lost and said they would vote as they pleased" (See
"Afghan Women Grab Stage," CHICAGO TRIBUNE, June 13, 2002). The Left's reluctance to develop a comprehensive
critique of fundamentalism has isolated it not just from these voices but also
from those of women in the U.S. who are deeply concerned about the mounting
threat posed by various kinds of fundamentalism. Women are raising their voices
against fundamentalism not only because of what is happening overseas, but
because they are feeling the effects of the rise of right-wing Christian
fundamentalism in the U.S., as seen in everything from restrictions on the right
to abortion to domestic abuse to the overall conditions of family and everyday
life. As we insisted from the moment September 11 happened,
the political situation demands a total view rooted in the projection of a
comprehensive opposition to both terrorism and war. Without such a total ground
of opposition, we argued, the movement would not prove able to project a
liberatory alternative.(2) The need for a total view is not only imperative when it
comes to Bush's "war against terrorism." It is needed for all the
crises facing us, at home and abroad. That is especially true when it comes to
the need to solidarize with the Palestinian struggle against Israel's brutal and
illegal occupation. Bush continues to support Israel's Ariel Sharon acting
as he pleases, despite the murder of hundreds of Palestinians by Israel. To the
extent that Bush has feigned interest in restraining Sharon, it is mainly in
order to cool off tensions in the region long enough to allow him to extend his
permanent war to Iraq. Clearly the lives and suffering of the Palestinian people
mean absolutely nothing to Bush. Growing anger at Bush's Middle East policies brought
100,000 to a protest in Washington, D.C. in April. There are now plans to
organize a Freedom Summer in the West Bank and Gaza as a way to further
solidarize with the Palestinians, in a direct link to the spirit of the civil
rights struggles of the 1960s. Yet does the likelihood of a U.S. attack on Iraq mean
that the anti-war movement should remain silent about the crimes of Saddam
Hussein? Can it remain silent about the crimes of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and
"left" tendencies like the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine, whose use of suicide bombings against Israelis has repeatedly
strengthened Sharon? Choosing the "lesser evil" has never been the
road to a truly revolutionary pole of opposition. Many are so overwhelmed by the U.S. as "enemy
number one" that they take the non-revolutionary stance of making the issue
who is the guiltiest party, rather than projecting the need to change the system
as a whole. Yet a truly liberatory politics demand that we project a total view
which opposes not only the actions of our rulers but also those of reactionary
forces which claim to oppose them. Over 30 years ago the founder of Marxist-Humanism, Raya
Dunayevskaya, insisted during the civil war against the Palestinians in Jordan: "It is not enough to stop at making clear what we
are AGAINST, to stand opposed to imperialist war, no matter who is the
'aggressor.' It is not enough to hold high the banner of the totally new
society, based on human foundations, that we are FOR. It becomes of the essence
to separate ourselves from those who also claim to be for a new society, but
think that a social revolution can be achieved through terrorism... "It becomes more imperative than ever for those who
are trying to build a new world to...learn that wild, mindless terrorism—whether
of an Arab commando or a self-proclaimed 'revolutionary' of the American New
Left—not only does not wreck 'the system.' It provides exactly the fuel needed
to stoke the fires of repression....Marxist-Humanists work toward the goals of
national liberation and social revolution for a totally new society. 'A plague
on both your houses' is a religious, not a human solution. But a SEPARATION FROM
all plague-ridden houses is the only way at this moment to express the truly
independent Marxist stand" ("Middle East Cauldron Explodes," NEWS
& LETTERS, October 1970). This is not just a call to have "correct
politics." It is a call to root one's politics in a philosophy of
liberation which projects not only what we are against, but what we are FOR.
Achieving that means grappling anew with dialectical philosophy. As we argued this year in our statement "Why the
Anti-war Movement Needs a Dialectical Perspective," dialectical philosophy,
as developed in the body of ideas of Marxist-Humanism, has taken on new
importance in light of the need to project a liberating alternative to the false
opposites of imperialist war and terrorism. Its source remains Hegel's notion
that forward movement emerges not just from the negation of obstacles to
freedom, but from "the negation of the negation." In the aftermath of September 11, we can no longer
assume that limiting ourselves to the first negation of capitalism will move us
toward liberation. Stopping at the first negation increasingly fails to produce
even the most minimal advance. The political realities of our time suggest that
in fighting the particular injustices of this society we must BEGIN from the
second negation. Without a new vision of revolution, of new human
relations, of an end to the separation between mental and manual labor, our
efforts to oppose the system will prove futile. This makes Marxist-Humanism's
central contribution—Absolute Negativity as New Beginning—of critical
importance for today's anti-war and anti-globalization movements, and which
separates us from all other radical tendencies, including Trotskyists and other
anti-Stalinists who stop at first negation. II. New challenges from the movement in Argentina A. A new form of mass self-organization? Though the movement against global capital which
exploded upon the historic stage with the Seattle protest of 1999 was thrown off
course by September 11, it has by no means perished. It is seen in the protest
of 300,000 in Barcelona in March. It is seen in the large demonstrations that
greeted Bush recently in Berlin and Paris and in the millions in France who came
into the streets against Jean-Marie Le Pen. And it is seen in efforts to create
a European Social Forum, along the lines of the Porto Alegre conference of
anti-globalization activists in Brazil. At the same time, important labor struggles are arising.
Though European capital would like to smash the labor movement along the lines
of what Reagan and Thatcher achieved, the march of two million in Italy this
spring against efforts to restructure the labor laws and the recent strikes in
Germany indicate that the rulers will be in for a tough fight. At the same time, political strikes have broken out in
countries ranging from South Korea to South Africa and from Iran to China. In China, workers in the northeast, in Liaoyang,
initiated a massive protest in March against layoffs that will go into effect as
a result of China's recent admission to the World Trade Organization, and they
are now demanding an independent union. The workers have managed to maintain
their independent labor organizations, despite severe repression. Perhaps most significant is the new movement in
Argentina. A protest by the Centro de Trabajadores Argentinos on May 29 led to
1,000 roadblocks as well as demonstrations and marches across the country. Half
a million participated in these activities. The situation in Argentina is of critical importance.
Only a few years ago it was heralded as a model of neoliberal economic
restructuring, and yet today it faces total bankruptcy and collapse. It has
experienced an enormous social explosion over the past several months, marked by
large-scale industrial strikes, the spontaneous formation of neighborhood
assemblies, and ongoing street protests by the unemployed, the PIQUETEROS. The
ranks of this new movement of employed and unemployed workers includes a
preponderance of women, who in many cases have assumed its leadership. It is a
grassroots, decentralized, anti-hierarchical movement. The rise of the PIQUETEROS predates the current crisis;
they appeared five years ago in the impoverished communities of the provinces.
Since December, when Argentina's default on its foreign debt led to the collapse
of four governments in a matter of weeks, they have become an engine of an
expanding social movement. A key development that has arisen since December is the
neighborhood assemblies. These sprang up in January as groups of neighbors began
meeting on streetcorners to discuss and plan alternatives to the present system.
There are now over 300 assemblies throughout the country. These neighborhood
organizations meet once a week to organize protests (CACEROLAS), defend those
who are being thrown out of their apartments or who are having their utilities
shut off, coordinate soup kitchens to feed themselves, etc. ASAMBLEISTAS are aware that their form of organization
and principles can potentially constitute a decentralized form of government to
replace the ruling class. What is remarkable is how ferociously opposed the
ASAMBLEAS are to being controlled, and to any hint of a vertical, top down
hierarchy. They insist on independence, autonomy, self-determination,
encouraging all to learn how to voice their opinions and rotating
responsibilities. They are explicitly for individual, personal self-development
at the same time as they are for fighting the powers that be with everything
they've got at their disposal. Their insistence on autonomy does not mean they all
remain isolated. Once a week there are ASAMBLEAS INTERBARRIALES, or mass
meetings of the various ASAMBLEAS, and so far there's been one national
gathering as well, in March. At these larger meetings each local assembly elects
one or two delegates to speak and vote on the issues raised. The delegate is
also rotating and subject to recall. The assemblies have not only proclaimed their autonomy
but have had to fight for it. In the past couple of months Trotskyist and Maoist
parties have attempted to exert control over some of the assemblies and have
been severely rebuked. Some say the participation in the assemblies has dwindled
as a result of this fight, while others contend it has only strengthened them. One report from Buenos Aires declares: "Ordinary people are seriously discussing
self-management, spontaneously understanding direct democracy...you have the
makings of an irresistible popular rebellion, a grassroots uprising which is
rejecting centralized political power....For many, the idea of the assemblies is
to build power from the bottom up. Some have compared themselves to existing
movements like the Zapatistas, who have no intention of 'taking over' the state.
It's a young movement, with as yet a lot of questions still being
asked."(3) Most important of all is the occupation by workers of a
number of factories and worksites. Brukman, Zanon, and Panificadora Cinco are
factories that have been taken over by workers over the past year. Brukman is a textile plant in Buenos Aires that used to
employ 400, nearly all women. The workers have been running the plant on their
own for seven months, and defended themselves against an attempt by the police
in March to throw them out. Zanon is a ceramics factory in Neuque, one of Latin
America's largest ceramics producers. When the company stopped production on the
grounds that it was no longer profitable, rather than join the growing ranks of
Argentina's unemployed, the workers decided to occupy the factory and keep the
production line running themselves. "We showed that with two day's worth of
production, we were able to pay the wages of all the workers for that
month," one of the workers involved in the occupation stated. "This
fight has opened our eyes to a lot of things. Now we have no full-time
officials. The officials work eight hours like everyone else and we do our union
activity after hours. The decisions are all made at general assemblies of
workers, not behind closed doors."(4) Workers have also occupied a mine in Río Turbío and a
textile factory in Buenos Aires which opened its doors to an International
Women's Day festival. These worker-run endeavors are setting examples for
factories around the country. B. Struggles search for theory While the developments in Argentina show much promise,
they raise many questions. Peronism remains a factor in Argentinean politics.
Moreover, the neighborhood assemblies contain an array of different classes and
political interests. Many in the assemblies consist of middle class people who
are primarily concerned about their inability to make withdrawals from the
banks. Some of their demands are far from revolutionary. Yet many of the ASAMBLEAS consider the occupied plants
to be the highpoint in their struggle; they call for the population to defend
the workers there to the death. Many ASAMBLEISTAS see in workers' control a
mirror of their own defense of autonomy. In light of this and the battles against the vanguardist
leftist groups, one might assume that the ASAMBLEISTAS would question the merits
of statifying property as an economic solution, since that is what defines the
vanguardists' concept of socialism. Yet so far this does not appear to be the
case. All of the ASAMBLEAS hold re-statifying the recently privatized industries
as a high priority. This is a serious problem, for it obscures the real
issue—the need to abolish the domination of labor by capital. Capital has no
problem existing in nationalized as well as privatized form, as the tragic
history of the state-capitalist regimes that called themselves
"socialist" in Russia, China and East Europe showed. To make
nationalization vs. privatization the key issue detracts attention from the real
problem—the existence of capital and the need to uproot it through the
creation of new human relations that dispense with value production. Privatization and neoliberalism must of course be
opposed, since private property is the manifestation of the exploitation of
person by person through the instrumentality of the machine. Yet history shows
that unless the negation of private property immediately moves to breaking down
the separation between mental and manual labor, we will still confront
exploitative capitalism, even if under a different name. As Raya Dunayevskaya argued, "What Marx proposed
instead was that, in place either of the profit motive of capitalism or the
substitution of state for private ownership, the principle of the new society be
the freedom of man, the reconstitution of his wholeness, the development of all
his innate talents, the unity of mental and manual labor which exploitative
society has fragmented, alienating from man not only the products of his labor
but the very activity of labor."(5) She also maintained, "For Marx the abolition of
private property was a MEANS toward the abolition of alienated labor, not an end
in itself. He never tired of stressing that which is of primary importance is
NOT the form of property, but the mode of production....As Marx put it in his
earlier writings, as long as there exists 'power OVER individuals,' 'private
property must exist.' To Marx, private property is THE POWER TO DISPOSE OF THE
LABOR OF OTHERS. That is why he so adamantly insisted that to make 'society' the
owner, but to leave the alienated labor alone, is to create 'an abstract
capitalist'....Marx insisted that the abolition of private property means a new
way of life, a new social order only if 'freely associated individuals' and not
abstract 'society' becomes the masters of the socialized means of
production."(6) The Argentine movement has once more placed these
questions on the historic agenda through the creative self-activity arising from
the neighborhood assemblies, the factory occupations, and struggles of the
PIQUETEROS.(7) Their emergence places new urgency on working out the question of
"what happens after," of how to ensure that the struggle against the
system does not reproduce the hierarchies and alienations of capitalist society
in the effort to overthrow it. How are revolutionaries responding to this situation?
The autonomist Marxist theorist Tony Negri spoke to this in a recent interview
on Argentina when he stated, in response to those who have "a nationalist
discourse [that] leans to the state": "The point is [instead] to find
a new form of management for the present period. An experiment of new forms of
common management, public and private."(8) Is that all that Negri has to project in light of the
present situation, a mixture of private and state management? What about the
projection of a concept of socialism that transcends the limitations that were
encountered over the past century? Is anyone seriously addressing the question
of "what happens AFTER" the revolution? Negri seems to have little to offer along those lines
because he rejects dialectical philosophy. Dialectics is the very basis for
projecting new visions of the future which are inherent in the present. The
question of "what happens after" cannot be seriously grappled with,
let alone answered, outside of the context of the dialectic of SECOND negativity—that
is, the kind of negativity which does not just posit opposition to the old, but
which moves toward the creation of the new. The present situation calls not just for an embrace of
the spontaneous movements but to raise and work out the PHILOSOPHIC questions
being posed by them. The workers will do what they will do; history shows that
at key turning points masses of people will respond to the inhumanity of capital
by developing new forms of non-hierarchical, decentralized organization. The
question is what do you as a revolutionary have to offer in terms of ideas,
concepts, perspectives that can help answer that most difficult question of all—what
happens after? Is a new bureaucracy once again to confront us after the
overthrow of the old? Is it possible truly to uproot capital, by bringing to
life Marx's concept of "revolution in permanence"? Raya Dunayevskaya repeatedly explored these issues in
her reinterpretation of Hegel's dialectic of second negativity. As she put it in
her "Rough Notes on Hegel's SCIENCE OF LOGIC" in 1961, which is found
in the new book THE POWER OF NEGATIVITY: "In reaching the final chapter [of the SCIENCE OF
LOGIC on], the Absolute Idea, [Hegel] is through with all which we would
politically describe as 'taking over'; that is to say, capitalism will develop
all technology so perfectly for us that all the proletariat will have to do will
be to 'take over.' As we reject this concept politically, Hegel rejects it
philosophically. He has now so absorbed all the other systems that, far from
taking over, he is first going back to a TOTALLY NEW BEGINNING.... "The whole LOGIC (both logic and LOGIC) is a logic
of self-determination and never more so than at the VERY POINT when you have
reached an Absolute—say, growing internationalization of capital. You then go
NOT to taking over, but breaking it down to the new beginning in the
self-determination of nations; or when the state had reached the high stage of
centralization, you most certainly do not go to taking over, but rather to the
destruction of the state."(9) There are many aspects of Marxist-Humanism's philosophic
legacy which speak to the questions arising from today's movements from
practice. Now is the time to engage them with the full philosophic ground that
is available to us. Working out a new level of dialogue with revolutionary
forces becomes central to our effort to work out organizational responsibility
for the philosophy of Marxist-Humanism. III. The power of negativity in today's changed world Assuming organizational responsibility for the dialectic
of second or absolute negativity is the challenge that the founder of
Marxist-Humanism projected as she "rounded out" Marxist-Humanism in
the 1980s. As part of our effort to meet this challenge we have issued a new
collection of her writings on dialectics, THE POWER OF NEGATIVITY. This work
provides us with a new opening for developing national and international
relations on the ground of Marxist-Humanism's unique philosophic contributions. THE POWER OF NEGATIVITY brings together a range of
Dunayevskaya's writings on dialectics—from her philosophic correspondence with
C.L.R. James and Grace Lee in the 1940s and 1950s to her breakthrough on Hegel's
Absolutes in the 1950s, and from speeches and essays on Marx's Humanism and
Hegel's dialectic in the 1960s and 1970s to her work on the problem of
dialectics of organization in the 1980s. The book discloses how Hegel's
Absolutes impacted Marx's vision of a new society and remains of key importance
in light of today's movements from practice. THE POWER OF NEGATIVITY greatly illuminates the
contributions contained in the three major works of Marxist-Humanism—MARXISM
AND FREEDOM (1958), PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION (1973), and ROSA LUXEMBURG, WOMEN’S
LIBERATION AND MARX’S PHILOSOPHY OF REVOLUTION (1982). It shows how
Marxist-Humanism developed an alternative both to vanguardists and to those who
emphasize spontaneity but stop short of a new relation between philosophy and
practice. As Dunayevskaya wrote in 1987, "We are the only
ones who speak of philosophy NOT merely in general, not as if it were only
theoretical rather than inseparable from practice, NOT as something that has no
relationship to 'program,' but as dialectics 'in and for itself,' so that we can
work it out as dialectics of revolution and dialectics of organization as a
single dialectic rather than as 'the Party, the Party, the Party.' In a word, as
opposed to the Party, we put forth a body of ideas that spells out the second
negativity which continues the revolution in permanence after victory. The
principle of revolution in permanence doesn't stop with a victory over
capitalism; indeed, it doesn't stop until the full abolition of any division
between mental and manual labor. Full self-development of man/woman that leads
to truly new human relationships remains the goal."(10) THE POWER OF NEGATIVITY shows, from the beginning of
Part I, how deeply rooted was Marx's humanism in Hegel's dialectic of second
negativity. As Dunayevskaya wrote in her "Presentation on the Dialectics of
Organization and Philosophy" of June 1, 1987 in reference to Marx's 1844
"Critique of the Hegelian Dialectic": "Marx articulates the great
merit of Hegel in discovering the 'negation of the negation,' and the great
demerit of this same Hegel in enveloping it in such mysticism by dealing with it
as various stages of consciousness, rather than as men and women thinking. Marx,
on the other hand, declares himself not only against capitalism and 'vulgar
communism,' but proclaims his philosophy to be 'a new Humanism.'" Marx's
unchaining of Hegel's dialectic of second negativity, she shows, became the
ground for the concept of revolution and of organization that he projected for
the rest of his life. In 1844 Marx broke off his commentary on Hegel just as
he began commenting on the PHILOSOPHY OF MIND, the work in which Hegel most
fully develops the concept of second negativity. It posed a challenge for future
generations to pick up where Marx left off. It was not, however, until the
philosophic breakthrough that led to Marxist-Humanism—Dunayevskaya's 1953
"Letters on Hegel's Absolutes"—that a direct return to Hegel's
concept of absolute negativity was achieved. That 1953 breakthrough became the
ground for the entire subsequent development of Marxist-Humanism, including its
concept of organization. With THE POWER OF NEGATIVITY in hand we can now see how
each stage in the development of Marxist-Humanism represented a further
exploration and concretization of the dialectic of absolute negativity. Part II, which focuses on the period of the first work
in her "trilogy of revolution," MARXISM AND FREEDOM (1958), shows how
Dunayevskaya embarked on a direct exploration of Hegel's Absolutes in light of
the realities facing the freedom struggles of the post-World War II era. The
African Revolutions; the workers' battles against automation; the new youth
struggles for a different way of life were all explored in light of Hegel's
Absolutes and Marx's Humanism. Part III, which covers the period in which she wrote her
second major work, PHILOSOPHY OF REVOLUTION (1964-71), shows how she plunged
even deeper into Hegel's Absolutes in light of the freedom struggles of the
1960s and their failure to reach a successful revolution. Part IV, which covers 1972-81, shows how the development
of the category which is central to PHILOSOPHY OF REVOLUTION, "Absolute
Negativity as New Beginning," speaks to such figures as Engels, Lenin,
Lukács, Fanon, and Adorno. Part V, on the period of the 1980s, discloses that the
concept of "Absolute Negativity as New Beginning" helped lead to the
new category of "post-Marx Marxism, beginning with Engels, as
pejorative" and to the discovery of Marx's Marxism as a philosophy of
"revolution in permanence." The recognition that Marx's Marxism is a philosophy of
"revolution in permanence," discussed in ROSA LUXEMBURG, WOMEN’S
LIBERATION AND MARX’S PHILOSOPHY OF REVOLUTION (1981), came from the discovery
of previously unknown writings from Marx's last decade, like his ETHNOLOGICAL
NOTEBOOKS. However, what enabled Dunayevskaya to see these writings disclosed a
"new Marx" WHICH NO POST-MARX MARXIST HAD FULLY BUILT UPON was her 40
years of labor in restating Marx's thought on the basis of the dialectic of
absolute negativity. Her journey of discovery into Hegel's Absolutes, including
her exploration of parts of Hegel which Marx did not explicitly comment upon,
led her to forge the link of continuity with Marx's Marxism. In a word, our age has something that no other
generation had access to—a view of Marx's Marxism as a philosophy of
"revolution in permanence." The discovery of the depth and breadth of
Marx's Marxism flowed from Marxist-Humanism's original voyage of discovery into
Hegel's Absolutes. In bringing together many of her writings on dialectics, THE
POWER OF NEGATIVITY opens new doors to grasping and projecting what Marx's
Marxism means for today. In 1985, as she looked back on 40 years of theoretic
development, Dunayevskaya wrote: "Without knowing Marx as a totality
through all of his fundamental writings, it was impossible to understand all the
ramifications of the very first of Marx's writings in 1843-44 as a historic
break in thought."(11) Much the same could be said about her development of
Marxist-Humanism. It was only with the rounding out of Marxist-Humanism as a
body of ideas in the 1980s that it became possible to begin to understand all
the ramifications of the initial breakthrough that led to Marxist-Humanism, the
1953 "Letters on Hegel's Absolutes." As she summed up her philosophic
contribution at the end of her life, Dunayevskaya saw that her exploration of
Hegel's concept of "absolute negativity" contained the "ground
and roof" for working out a new relation between dialectical philosophy and
revolutionary organization. Our aim is to work out this relation for today. We
cannot afford to keep the body of ideas of Marxist-Humanism in a separate
enclave from our response to ongoing political realities and objective events.
The need for a total view compels us to build our organization on the basis of
Marxist-Humanism's unique philosophic contributions. IV. Political, philosophic, and organizational tasks This year we reached a new point in our effort to
overcome the separation between philosophy and organization with an
international conference of Marxist-Humanists in Amsterdam. This conference
marked the first time that Marxist-Humanists from so many nations had the
opportunity to get together, exchange thoughts and experiences, and develop
perspectives for further collaboration. The determination of all those present,
whether from the U.S. or Ukraine, Britain or The Netherlands, India and West
Africa to develop international relations on the basis of THE POWER OF
NEGATIVITY, the trilogy of revolution, and the Archives of Marxist-Humanism
represents a critical step forward for our national as well as international
relations. Just as the Amsterdam conference raised the perspective
for international relations to flow from the philosophic contributions of
Marxist-Humanism, so that is needed when it comes to the tasks facing News and
Letters Committees in the U.S. This year we placed ourselves as part of the
contradictions facing the freedom movements by helping to organize a tour, in
New York and Chicago, of members of the Revolutionary Association of the Women
of Afghanistan (RAWA). This tour, which impacted thousands of people, was part
of our effort to project the voices of genuine human solidarity against the dead
ends of terror and war. At the moment when THE POWER OF NEGATIVITY came off the
press we were involved in such diverse activities as projecting a unique
position on September 11, building the RAWA tour, continuing our work with
revolutionary prisoners, and holding classes on dialectical philosophy. Because of the urgency to continue and deepen such work,
we will issue a pre-Convention discussion bulletin on THE POWER OF NEGATIVITY.
Each report to our national Convention will focus on perspectives for projecting
this book. This includes the reports on News & Letters newspaper; on
revolutionary organization; on Marxist-Humanist Archives; on Women's Liberation;
on the Black Dimension; on Youth; and Finances. The new point reached with THE POWER OF NEGATIVITY calls
on us to place new emphasis on outreach, from distributions of News &
Letters to lit sales. It points up the need for our projection within the
movements to be both concrete about its relationship to where the struggle is
and explicit about the universals of Marxist-Humanism. There are plenty of
others who are willing to engage in activities and political debates. But only
we have accepted organizational responsibility for the new relationship of
theory and practice that is at the heart of Marxist-Humanism. Projection is the
essence of all our tasks for the year to come. Achieving this requires not letting go of
Marxist-Humanist organizational consciousness. Neither reverting to the elitist
party, as do the vanguardists, nor dumping all responsibility on the backs of
the masses, as did C.L.R. James (aka J.R. Johnson), can suffice in light of the
present moment. Just as organizational consciousness without the dialectic is
just another form of vanguardism, so posing "the need for philosophy"
without organizational consciousness is another form of Johnsonism. Our task is
to project philosophy unseparated from achieving continuity with the
Marxist-Humanist concept of organization. All this underlines the importance of our planned
publications, such as the new edition we will be issuing of AMERICAN
CIVILIZATION ON TRIAL, the Marxist-Humanist Statement on the Black Dimension,
and our pamphlet on "Marx's Value Theory and the Struggle Against Global
Capital." Perspectives for building the only Marxist-Humanist organization
in the U.S. through these and other publications will be discussed at the
Convention. The central challenge facing us was spelled out by our
founder in 1986: "By organization being kept inseparable from philosophy,
we see that there is no way for dialectics to be in two different places, one
for organization and the other for philosophy. There is a single dialectic of
objective/subjective. It is not ended in that relationship. That is where the
task first begins. That is the Absolute Method. No other method will do. This is
why Hegel, once he criticized the empiric and critical method as one...proved
that if any philosopher tried not to go to the Absolute Method, THE dialectic,
he would retrogress....And that is why Marx never departed from Hegel's
dialectic of thought, even in his discovery of a new continent of thought and of
revolution. That is what remains the ground of Marxist-Humanism."(12) —The Resident Editorial Board NOTES 1. For a historic-philosophic survey of the U.S. in
terms of this, see American Civilization on Trial, Black Masses as Vanguard
(Chicago: News and Letters, 1984). 2. See "Terrorism, Bush's retaliation show
inhumanity of class society," by Peter Hudis (News & Letters, October
2001) and "Confronting Permanent War and Terrorism: Why the Anti-War
Movement Needs a Dialectical Perspective." 3. Letter from Argentina [Feb. 15, 2002]
[http://argentinanow.tripod.com.ar/lisa2.html] 4. See "Argentines Speak Out: Voices from the
Neighborhood Assemblies" [http://argentinanow.tripod.com.ar/ 6.html]. 5. "Humanism and Marxism," by Raya
Dunayevskaya, in The Humanist Alternative, edited by Paul Kurtz (1971) 6. Marxism and Freedom, from 1776 until Today, by Raya
Dunayevskaya (Amherst, New York: Humanity Books, 2000 [orig. 1958]), pp. 61-62. 7. Marxist-Humanism has deep roots in Argentina, as seen
from the correspondence between Dunayevskaya and Silvio Frondizi, the great
Argentinean Marxist. See Women's Liberation and the Dialectics of Revolution by
Raya Dunayevskaya (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999), pp.163-71. 8. "Tony Negri habla sobre Argentina,"
entrevista con Eduardo Sadier [Feb. 25, 2002] [www.eurosur.org/rebelion] 9. "Rough Notes on Hegel's Science of Logic"
[1961], in THE POWER OF NEGATIVITY: Selected Writings on the Dialectic in Hegel
and Marx, by Raya Dunayevskaya (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2002), pp. 71-72. 10. "The Year of Only Eight Months" (Jan. 3,
1987), in Supplement to the Raya Dunayevskaya Collection, microfilm no. 10690. 11. "Call for Convention" (1986), in
Supplement to RDC, microfilm no. 16598. 12. "Marxist-Humanist Perspectives, 1986-87," in Supplement to RDC, microfilm no. 11026. |
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