Raya Dunayevskaya: Philosopher of Marxist-Humanism

This study of the origins and development of Marxist-Humanism probes the philosophic-organizational labors of Raya Dunayevskaya. Beginning with her work as secretary to Leon Trotsky in exile in Mexico in 1937-38 the book explores her development of state-capitalist theory in the 1940s and her thought-dive into Hegels Absolutes in the 1950s. Each of Dunayevskayas major works--Marxism and Freedom (1958) Philosophy and Revolution (1973) and Rosa Luxemburg Womens Liberation and Marxs Philosophy of Revolution (1983)--is examined inseparable from the objective world events and revolu-tionary subjectivity that unfolded from the 1940s into the 1980s. The U.S.-Russia super-power rivalry the Sino-Soviet Conflict the rise of the Afro-Asian-Latin American and East European revolts and revolutions together with the Black Di-mension Womens Liberation anti-war youth and rank-and-file labor struggles in the United States--all in fusion with the re-creation of the Hegelian and Marxian dialectic in the later half of the twentieth century--formed the contours of Dunayevskayas labors traced within this new work. Her final unfinished and unpublished studies on Dialectics of Organization and Philosophy are examined in the concluding part. On Raya Dunayevskaya . . . The first thing to strike a reader ranging through Dunayevskayas books is the vitality combativeness relish impatience of her voice. Hers is not the prose of a disembodied intellectual. She argues; she challenges; she urges on; she expostulates; her essays have the spontaneity of an extemporaneous speech or of a notebook--you can hear her thinking aloud. . . . Raya Dunayevskaya caught fire from Marx met it with her own fire brought to the events of her lifetime a revitalized refocused Marxism. . . . Shes trying to think and write the revolution in the revolution. --Adrienne Rich Raya Dunayevskayas Marx Dunayevskayas book goes beyond the previous interpretations. It shows not only that Marxian economics and politics are throughout philosophy but that the latter is from the beginnings economics and politics --Herbert Marcuse Preface to Marxism and Freedom [Dunayevskaya] is permeated by the conviction that socialism and freedom are indivisible united and can only exist together. She is a radical Humanist who deeply believes that the betterment of the welfare of all humanity can be achieved without the loss of individual freedom through a new Humanism. --Erich Fromm Foreword to Philosophy and Revolution Eugene Gogol was one of Raya Dunayevskayas secretaries in the 1980s. He served as managing editor of the Marxist-Humanist newspaper News & Letters 1980-1992.