Raya Dunayevskaya, born Raya Shpigel (Russian:
Ра́я Шпи́гель; May 1, 1910 – June
9, 1987), later Rae Spiegel, also known by
the pseudonym Freddie Forest, was the American
founder of the philosophy of Marxist Humanism
in the United States. At one time Leon Trotsky's
secretary, she later split with him and ultimately
founded the organization News and Letters
Committees and was its leader until her death.
== Biography ==
Of Jewish descent, Dunayevskaya was born Raya
Shpigel in today's Ukraine and emigrated to
the United States (her name changed to Rae
Spiegel) and joined the revolutionary movement
in her childhood. Active in the American Communist
Party youth organization, she was expelled
at age 18 and thrown down a flight of stairs
when she suggested that her local comrades
should find out Trotsky's response to his
expulsion from the Soviet Communist Party
and the Comintern. By the following year she
found a group of independent Trotskyists in
Boston, led by Antoinette Buchholz Konikow,
an advocate of birth control and legal abortion.
In the 1930s, she adopted her mother's maiden
name Dunayevskaya.Without getting permission
from the U.S. Trotskyist organization, she
went to Mexico in 1937 to serve as Leon Trotsky's
Russian language secretary during his exile
there. Having returned to Chicago in 1938
after the deaths of her father and brother,
she broke with Trotsky in 1939 when he continued
to maintain that the Soviet Union was a "workers'
state" even after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
She opposed any notion that workers should
be asked to defend this "workers' state" allied
with Nazi Germany in a world war. Along with
theorists such as C. L. R. James, and later
Tony Cliff, Dunayevskaya argued that the Soviet
Union had become 'state capitalist'. Toward
the end of her life, she stated that what
she called "my real development" only began
after her break with Trotsky.Her simultaneous
study of the Russian economy and of Marx's
early writings (later known as the Economic
and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844), led
to her theory that not only was the U.S.S.R.
a 'state capitalist' society, but that 'state
capitalism' was a new world stage. Much of
her initial analysis was published in The
New International in 1942-1943.
In 1940, she was involved in the split in
the Socialist Workers Party that led to the
formation of the Workers Party (WP), with
which she shared an objection to Trotsky's
characterisation of the Soviet Union as a
'degenerated workers' state'. Within the WP,
she formed the Johnson–Forest Tendency alongside
C. L. R. James (she being "Freddie Forest"
and he "J.R. Johnson", named for their party
cadre names). The tendency argued that the
Soviet Union was 'state capitalist', while
the WP majority maintained that it was bureaucratic
collectivist.
Differences within the WP steadily widened,
and in 1947, after a brief period of independent
existence during which they published a series
of documents, the tendency returned to the
ranks of the SWP. Their membership in the
SWP was based on a shared insistence that
there was a pre-revolutionary situation just
around the corner, and the shared belief that
a Leninist party must be in place to take
advantage of the coming opportunities.
By 1951, with the failure of their shared
perspective to materialize, the tendency developed
a theory that rejected Leninism and saw the
workers as being spontaneously revolutionary.
This was borne out for them by the 1949 U.S.
miners' strike. In later years, they were
to pay close attention to automation, especially
in the automobile industry, which they came
to see as paradigmatic of a new stage of capitalism.
This led to the tendency leaving the SWP again
to begin independent work.
After more than a decade of developing the
theory of state capitalism, Dunayevskaya continued
her study of the Hegelian dialectic by taking
on a task the Johnson–Forest Tendency had
set itself: exploring Hegel's Philosophy of
Mind. In 1954 she initiated a decades long
correspondence with the Critical Theorist,
Herbert Marcuse, in which the necessity and
freedom dialectic in Hegel and Marx became
a focal point of contention.http://marxist-humanistdialectics.blogspot.com/2018/03/coming-out-in-may-necessity-and-freedom.html
She advanced an interpretation of Hegel's
Absolutes holding that they involved a dual
movement: a movement from practice that is
itself a form of theory and a movement from
theory reaching to philosophy. She considered
these 1953 letters to be "the philosophic
moment" from which the whole development of
Marxist Humanism flowed.
In 1953 Dunayevskaya moved to Detroit, where
she was to live until 1984. In 1954-1955 she
and C. L. R. James engaged in a split. In
1955, she founded her own organization, News
and Letters Committees, and a Marxist-Humanist
newspaper, News & Letters, which remains in
publication today. The newspaper covers women's
struggles, the liberation of workers, people
of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual
rights and the disability rights movement,
while not separating that coverage from philosophical
and theoretical articles. The organization
split in 2008-9 and the U.S. Marxist-Humanists
(later to become the International Marxist-Humanist
Organization) was formed.
Dunayevskaya wrote what came to be known as
her "trilogy of revolution": Marxism and Freedom:
From 1776 Until Today (1958), Philosophy and
Revolution (1973), and Rosa Luxemburg, Women's
Liberation, and Marx's Philosophy of Revolution
(1982). In addition, she selected and introduced
a collection of writings, published in 1985,
Women's Liberation and the Dialectics of Revolution.
In the last year of her life she was working
on a new book which she had tentatively titled,
Dialectics of Organization and Philosophy:
The 'Party' and Forms of Organization Born
Out of Spontaneity.Raya Dunayevskaya's speeches,
letters, publications, notes, recordings and
other items are located in the Walter P. Reuther
Library at Wayne State University in Detroit.
Microfilm copies of the collection are available
from the WSU Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs.
Guides to the collection are available from
News and Letters Committees.
== Bibliography ==
=== Books ===
Trilogy of Revolution
Marxism and Freedom: From 1776 Until Today.
[1958] 2000. Humanity Books. ISBN 1-57392-819-4.
Philosophy and Revolution: from Hegel to Sartre
and from Marx to Mao. Third ed. 1989. Columbia
University Press. ISBN 0-231-07061-6.
Rosa Luxemburg, Women's Liberation, and Marx's
Philosophy of Revolution. 1991. University
of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-01838-9.
Other
Women’s Liberation and the Dialectics of
Revolution: Reaching for the Future. 1996.
Wayne State University Press. ISBN 0-8143-2655-2.
The Marxist-Humanist Theory of State-Capitalism.
1992. News & Letters Committee. ISBN 0-914441-30-2.
The Power of Negativity: Selected Writings
on the Dialectic in Hegel and Marx. 2002.
Lexington Books. ISBN 0-7391-0266-4. Image
=== Articles ===
"The Shock of Recognition and the Philosophic
Ambivalence of Lenin". TELOS, No. 5 (Spring
1970). New York: Telos Press.
=== Introductions ===
Frantz Fanon, Soweto & American Black Thought
by Lou Turner and John Alan; new introd. by
Raya Dunayevskaya. – new expanded edition,
Chicago : News and Letters, 1986
=== Archives ===
Raya Dunayevskaya Papers Walter P. Reuther
Library, Detroit, Michigan. The first portion
of the collection exists as organized and
donated by Ms. Dunayevskaya and relates to
the development of Marxist-Humanism. The second
portion was donated after Ms. Dunayevskaya’s
death and relates her last writings and unfinished
works. Documents range from 1924-1987.
Some personal manuscripts, letters and pamphlets
are held in the Mitchell Library, Glasgow,
as part of the Harry McShane Collection .
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Afary, Janet, "The Contribution of Raya Dunayevskaya,
1910-1987: A Study in Hegelian Marxist Feminism,"
Extramares (1)1, 1989. pp. 35–55.
Anderson, Kevin, chapter 8, From 1954 to Today:
"Lefebvre, Colletti, Althusser, and Dunayevskaya,"
in Lenin, Hegel and Western Marxism: A Critical
Study, University of Illinois Press: Urbana,
1995.
Anderson, Kevin, "Sources of Marxist-Humanism:
Fanon, Kosik, Dunayevskaya," Quarterly Journal
of Ideology (10)4, 1986. pp. 15–29.
Chicago Literary Review, "Marxist-Humanism,
an Interview with Raya Dunayevskaya, Chicago
Literary Review, March 15, 1985.
Easton, Judith, "Raya Dunayevskaya," Bulletin
of the Hegel Society of Great Britain (16),
Autumn/Winter 1987. pp. 7–12.
Gogol, Eugene, Raya Dunayevskaya: Philosopher
of Marxist-Humanism, Wipfandstock Publishers:
Eugene, Oregon, 2003. Archived July 28, 2009,
at the Wayback Machine.
Greeman, Richard, "Raya Dunayevskaya: Thinker,
Fighter, Revolutionary," Against the Current,
January/February 1988.
Hudis, Peter, "Workers as Reason: The Development
of a New Relation of Worker and Intellectual
in American Marxist-Humanism," Historical
Materialism (11)4, pp. 267–293.
Jeannot, Thomas M., "Dunayevskaya's Conception
of Ultimate Reality and Meaning," Ultimate
Reality and Meaning (22)4, December 1999.
pp. 276–293.
Kellner, Douglas, "A Comment on the Dunayevskaya-Marcuse
Dialogue," Quarterly Journal of Ideology (13)4,
1989. p. 29.
Le Blanc, Paul, "The Philosophy and Politics
of Freedom," Monthly Review (54)8. [1]
Moon, Terry, "Dunayevskaya, Raya," in Women
Building Chicago 1790-1990: A Biographical
Dictionary, Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2001. pp. 238–241.
Rich, Adrienne, "Living the Revolution," Women's
Review of Books (3)12, September 1986.
Rockwell, Russell, "Hegel and Social Theory
in Critical Theory and Marxist-Humanism,"
International Journal of Philosophy (32)1,
2003.
Rockwell, Russell, Hegel, Marx, and the Necessity
and Freedom Dialectic: Marxist-Humanism and
Critical Theory in the United States. Palgrave
McMillan. 2018. http://marxist-humanistdialectics.blogspot.com/2018/03/coming-out-in-may-necessity-and-freedom.html
Schultz, Rima Lunin and Adele Hast, "Introduction,"
in Women Building Chicago 1790-1990, Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2001.
== External links ==
Biography
News and Letters Newspaper
Raya Dunayevskaya Collection at Walter Reuther
Library, Wayne State University
Archive at struggle.net
Libertarian Communist Library Raya Dunayevskaya
holdings
Marxists Internet Archive Raya Dunayevskaya
Archive
Marxist-Humanist Dialectics
International Marxist-Humanist Organization
Marxist-Humanist Initiative
