Raya Dunayevskaya (born Raya Shpigel, ; May 1, 1910 - June 9, 1987), later Rae Spiegel, also known by the pseudonym Freddie Forest, was the

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

founder of the

philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. ...

Marxist humanism Marxist humanism is an international body of thought and political action rooted in an interpretation of the works of Karl Marx. It is an investigation into "what human nature consists of and what sort of society would be most conducive to hum ...

in the United States. At one time

Leon Trotsky Lev Davidovich Bronstein. ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky; uk, link= no, Лев Давидович Троцький; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trotskij'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky''. (), was a Russian ...

's secretary, she later split with him and ultimately founded the organization

News and Letters Committees News and Letters Committees is a small revolutionary-socialist organization in the United States. History Founded in 1955 by Raya Dunayevskaya, the Committees trace their origin to a split in the Correspondence Publishing Committee, which had ...

and was its leader until her death.

Background

Lithuanian Jewish Lithuanian Jews or Litvaks () are Jews with roots in the territory of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania (covering present-day Lithuania, Belarus, Latvia, the northeastern Suwałki and Białystok regions of Poland, as well as adjacent ...

descent, Dunayevskaya was born Raya Shpigel in the

Podolian Governorate The Podolia Governorate or Podillia Governorate (), set up after the Second Partition of Poland, was a governorate ('' gubernia'', ''province'', or ''government'') of the Russian Empire from 1793 to 1917, of the Ukrainian People's Republic fro ...

of the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War ...

(present-day

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inva ...

) and emigrated to the United States in 1922 (her name changed to Rae Spiegel) and joined the revolutionary movement in her childhood.

Career

Trotskyism

Active in the

American Communist Party The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revo ...

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 The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International, was a Soviet-controlled international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress to "struggle by ...

. By the following year she found a group of independent Trotskyists in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

, led by Antoinette Buchholz Konikow, an advocate of

birth control Birth control, also known as contraception, anticonception, and fertility control, is the use of methods or devices to prevent unwanted pregnancy. Birth control has been used since ancient times, but effective and safe methods of birth contr ...

and legal

abortion Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus. An abortion that occurs without intervention is known as a miscarriage or "spontaneous abortion"; these occur in approximately 30% to 40% of pre ...

. In the 1930s, she adopted her mother's maiden name Dunayevskaya. Without getting permission from the U.S. Trotskyist organization, she went to

Mexico Mexico (Spanish language, Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a List of sovereign states, country in the southern portion of North America. It is borders of Mexico, bordered to the north by the United States; to the so ...

in 1937 to serve as

's Russian language secretary during his

exile Exile is primarily penal expulsion from one's native country, and secondarily expatriation or prolonged absence from one's homeland under either the compulsion of circumstance or the rigors of some high purpose. Usually persons and peoples suf ...

there.

Independent

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 The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

was a " workers' state" even after the

Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact , long_name = Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , image = Bundesarchiv Bild 183-H27337, Moskau, Stalin und Ribbentrop im Kreml.jpg , image_width = 200 , caption = Stalin and Ribbentrop shaking ...

. She opposed any notion that workers should be asked to defend this "workers' state" allied with

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

in a

world war A world war is an international conflict which involves all or most of the world's major powers. Conventionally, the term is reserved for two major international conflicts that occurred during the first half of the 20th century, World WarI (1914 ...

. 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 The ''Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844'' (german: Ökonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte aus dem Jahre 1844), also referred to as the ''Paris Manuscripts'' (') or as the ''1844 Manuscripts'', are a series of notes written between Apri ...

''), led to her theory that not only was the U.S.S.R. a " state capitalist" society, but that '

state capitalism State capitalism is an economic system in which the state undertakes business and commercial (i.e. for-profit) economic activity and where the means of production are nationalized as state-owned enterprises (including the processes of capital ...

' was a new world stage. Much of her initial analysis was published in ''The New International'' in 1942–1943.

Workers Party

In 1940, she was involved in the split in the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) 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 In Trotskyist political theory, a degenerated workers' state is a dictatorship of the proletariat in which the working class' democratic control over the state has given way to control by a bureaucratic clique. The term was developed by Leon Tro ...

'. 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 Bureaucratic collectivism is a theory of class society. It is used by some Trotskyists to describe the nature of the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin and other similar states in Central and Eastern Europe and elsewhere (such as North Korea). ...

Socialist Workers Party

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 Leninism is a political ideology developed by Russian Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin that proposes the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat led by a revolutionary vanguard party as the political prelude to the establishm ...

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 Leninism is a political ideology developed by Russian Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin that proposes the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat led by a revolutionary vanguard party as the political prelude to the establish ...

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 Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, namely by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machines ...

, especially in the automobile industry, which they came to see as paradigmatic of a new stage of

capitalism Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, private ...

. This led to the tendency leaving the SWP again to begin independent work. After more than a decade of developing the theory of

, Dunayevskaya continued her study of the Hegelian

dialectic Dialectic ( grc-gre, διαλεκτική, ''dialektikḗ''; related to dialogue; german: Dialektik), also known as the dialectical method, is a discourse between two or more people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing ...

by taking on a task the Johnson–Forest Tendency had set itself: exploring Hegel's ''

Philosophy of Mind Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the ontology and nature of the mind and its relationship with the body. The mind–body problem is a paradigmatic issue in philosophy of mind, although a number of other issues are add ...

''. In 1954 she initiated a decades long correspondence with the critical theorist

Herbert Marcuse Herbert Marcuse (; ; July 19, 1898 – July 29, 1979) was a German-American philosopher, social critic, and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Born in Berlin, Marcuse studied at the Humboldt University ...

, in which the necessity and freedom dialectic in Hegel and Marx became a focal point of contention. 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 Marxist humanism is an international body of thought and political action rooted in an interpretation of the works of Karl Marx. It is an investigation into "what human nature consists of and what sort of society would be most conducive to hum ...

flowed.

News and Letters Committees

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,

, 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 th
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''.

Legacy

Raya Dunayevskaya's speeches, letters, publications, notes, recordings and other items are located in the Walter P. Reuther Library at

Wayne State University Wayne State University (WSU) is a public research university in Detroit, Michigan. It is Michigan's third-largest university. Founded in 1868, Wayne State consists of 13 schools and colleges offering approximately 350 programs to nearly 25,000 ...

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at t ...

. Microfilm copies of the collection are available from the WSU Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs and PDF copies are online a
the Raya Dunayevskaya Memorial Fund website
Guides to the collection are available from News and Letters Committees and in PDF form at the RDMF website.

Bibliography

Books

* Trilogy of Revolution ** '' Marxism and Freedom: From 1776 Until Today''. 9582000. Humanity Books. . ** ''Philosophy and Revolution: from Hegel to Sartre and from Marx to Mao''. Third ed. 1989. Columbia University Press. . ** ''Rosa Luxemburg, Women's Liberation, and Marx's Philosophy of Revolution''. 1991. University of Illinois Press. . * Other ** ''Women's Liberation and the Dialectics of Revolution: Reaching for the Future''. 1996. Wayne State University Press. . ** ''The Marxist-Humanist Theory of State-Capitalism''. 1992. News & Letters Committee. . ** ''The Power of Negativity: Selected Writings on the Dialectic in Hegel and Marx''. 2002. Lexington Books.
Image

Articles

* "The Shock of Recognition and the Philosophic Ambivalence of Lenin". ''TELOS'', No. 5 (Spring 1970). New York
Telos Press

Introductions

* Lou Turner and John Alan, ''Frantz Fanon, Soweto & American Black Thought''; new introduction by Raya Dunayevskaya. – new expanded edition, Chicago: News and Letters, 1986.

References

External links

News and Letters Newspaper

Raya Dunayevskaya Collection at Walter Reuther Library, Wayne State University

Libertarian Communist Library Raya Dunayevskaya holdings

Marxist-Humanist Dialectics

International Marxist-Humanist Organization

Marxist-Humanist Initiative
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dunayevskaya, Raya 1910 births 1987 deaths People from Vinnytsia Oblast People from Mogilyovsky Uyezd (Podolian Governorate) Ukrainian Jews Soviet emigrants to the United States American people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent Members of the Workers Party (United States) 20th-century American writers 20th-century American philosophers 20th-century American women writers American humanists American Marxists American revolutionaries Jewish anti-racism activists Feminist philosophers Jewish feminists Jewish humanists Jewish philosophers Jewish socialists Marxist feminists Marxist humanists Marxist theorists Hegelian philosophers Political philosophers American women philosophers Women religious writers Communist women writers American socialist feminists Women Marxists