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NEWS & LETTERS, MAY 2003
Appeal to our readers
WE NEED YOUR HELP TO KEEP NEWS & LETTERS ALIVE!
Never was it more important to keep a revolutionary
journal like NEWS & LETTERS alive. No other paper anywhere presents to the
world the voices of those fighting for freedom inseparable from the articulation
of a philosophy of revolution. And such a philosophy of liberation is needed if
the movements for freedom are ever to succeed in uprooting the dehumanized world
in which we live and creating a new one based on human foundations. George Bush's pre-emptive and unconscionable attack on
Iraq was met, before the first bombs had ever fallen, with the emergence of a
worldwide, massive and multidimensional anti-war movement that has drawn in a
whole new generation of youth. At such an historic moment, it is crucial that
their activities are wedded to a positive vision of a new society that can
replace capitalism, the economic, political and social system on which the
inhumanity of Bush's drive for permanent war is based. This issue of NEWS & LETTERS celebrates the 50th
anniversary of the moment Marxist-Humanism, as a philosophy of revolution, was
born. At that time, in 1953, Raya Dunayevskaya recognized, in the unity of the
movement from practice and the movement from theory, a pathway to a new society.
News and Letters Committees has tried to develop that new beginning and that
unity of theory/practice ever since. It is why we have chosen this moment to
sponsor a class series on "Negativity and Freedom: Philosophic Challenges
to Capitalism, War and Terror," at the same time that we participate in all
other freedom activities. It is also why this spring we are publishing a new
pamphlet of MARXIST-HUMANIST WRITINGS ON THE MIDDLE EAST FROM THE 1960S TO
TODAY. Part I will present selected writings by Raya Dunayevskaya from the early
1960s to the 1980s, and Part II will consist of selected writings published in
NEWS & LETTERS since Dunayevskaya's death in 1987. It is also why we will soon publish a
"Marxist-Humanist Statement on the Black Dimension" which will show
that the opposition to capitalism and war is nowhere deeper than in Black
America--and that the Marxist-Humanist concept of "Black masses as
vanguard" has emerged over and over again in Black mass struggles against
racism, police abuse, the AIDS crisis, and the criminal injustice system, which
all define capitalist society today. Most of all, it is why we present the voices of all
forces of revolt--from labor to youth and from women to the Black dimension--in
a paper that grapples at the same time with the hard questions of what it takes
to create a new society. That is what you will read in each and every page of
this issue. For all these reasons we urgently need your help! As we
have done every year since we began in 1955, we again turn to you, our readers,
to help us meet the ever-rising costs for our office rent and the printing of
N&L--and to help us get our new publications on the Middle East and on the
Black dimension off the press. Those costs alone will surpass $5,000. NEVER WAS YOUR HELP MORE NEEDED! PLEASE GIVE AS GENEROUSLY AS YOU CAN TO HELP KEEP US ALIVE! |
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