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 been led by C. L. R. James and Dunayevskaya. The organization publishes a newspaper, ''News & Letters'', edited from 1955 to 1983 by Charles Denby (born Simon Owens), that tries to unite activist struggles to transform the world with what it calls the "philosophy of liberation" of

Karl Marx Karl Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet '' The Communist Manifesto'' (written with Friedrich Engels) ...

and

Marxist Humanism Marxist humanism is a philosophical and political movement that interprets Karl Marx's works through a humanist lens, focusing on human nature and the social conditions that best support Eudaimonia, human flourishing. Marxist humanists argue th ...

."Who We Are And What We Stand For," ''News & Letters'', June–July 2007, p. 12.

Views

News and Letters Committees is committed to the abolition of capitalism, the establishment of what it calls "a new human society," and

women's liberation The women's liberation movement (WLM) was a political alignment of women and feminism, feminist intellectualism. It emerged in the late 1960s and continued till the 1980s, primarily in the industrialized nations of the Western world, which resu ...

. It supports freedom struggles of workers, African-Americans and other people of color, women, and youth, and it opposes heterosexism against gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transsexuals. It has opposed both "private" capitalism and the former

Stalinist Stalinism (, ) is the totalitarian means of governing and Marxist–Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union (USSR) from 1927 to 1953 by dictator Joseph Stalin and in Soviet satellite states between 1944 and 1953. Stalinism in ...

states, which it regarded as state-capitalist, and has opposed the imperialism of both. In recent years, it has opposed what it regards as imperialist wars waged by the U.S. (and its allies) in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as Islamic fundamentalism and non-state terrorism. Arguing that a new, human society is the only viable alternative to permanent war and terrorism, it supports the struggles of what it regards as democratic, secular, anti-imperialist organizations of women and workers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Partly as a response to the past decade's movement against global capitalism and its slogan, "Another World is Possible," News and Letters Committees calls for and seeks to help develop what it calls a "philosophically grounded alternative to capitalism," rooted in the theory of post-capitalist human development that Marx sketched in his 1875 ''

Critique of the Gotha Program The ''Critique of the Gotha Programme'' () is a document based on a letter by Karl Marx written in early May 1875 to the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Germany (SDAP), with whom Marx and Friedrich Engels were in close association. Offerin ...

''. The organization has also paid particular attention to the rights of prisoners in the United States and published a short book, '' Voices from Within the Prison Walls'', on the topic in 1998.

Organization

There are News and Letters Committees in a small number of cities in the United States, including

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

Detroit Detroit ( , ) is the List of municipalities in Michigan, most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is situated on the bank of the Detroit River across from Windsor, Ontario. It had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 United State ...

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

, Memphis,

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

, and the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a List of regions of California, region of California surrounding and including San Francisco Bay, and anchored by the cities of Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose, California, S ...

. Unusually for a Marxist organisation, the groups are freely associated, and work together through a decentralized committee.

Publications

The group's major publication is ''News & Letters''. Members of News and Letters Committees occasionally contribute to other political journals with somewhat related outlooks, such as '' New Politics'', and to theoretical journals. In addition, one of the two Co-National Organizers, Olga Domanski, is listed as an editor of

Lexington Books Bloomsbury Publishing plc is a British worldwide publishing house of fiction and non-fiction. Bloomsbury's head office is located on Bedford Square in Bloomsbury, an area of the London Borough of Camden. It has a US publishing office located in ...

' Raya Dunayevskaya Series in Marxism and Humanism, which includes books by Dunayevskaya and others, including ''The Power of Negativity,'' a posthumous collection of Dunayevskaya's writings on the dialectic in

G. W. F. Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a 19th-century German idealism, German idealist. His influence extends across a wide range of topics from metaphysical issues in epistemology and ontology, to political phi ...

and in Marx.

References

{{reflist

External links