The meeting began with a reading some of the FAQs, followed by short talks by Anne Jaclard and Mike Dola. The discussion then involved everyone, as they explored the issues and re-examined their own experiences.

Play Part 1 (talks) of meeting now

Play Part 2 (discussion) of meeting now

FAQs

(and Far-Too-Infrequently

Asked Questions)

About the Occupy Movement

and MHI’s Relationship to It

.

On Zuccotti Park, Reclaiming Space, and Withdrawing from the System

1. Why do you say that the occupation of Zuccotti Park was unsuccessful?

The functioning of Wall Street was not disrupted. Occupy Wall Street never occupied Wall Street. Zuccotti Park was occupied––but only with Bloomberg’s consent, and it was cleared out the moment he withdrew that consent. And the occupation didn’t achieve what those who proposed it wanted: in the end, no autonomous space was reclaimed, so the effort to remake society by multiplying and weaving together autonomous spaces is back to Square One. Even worse, precious little progress was made during the occupation in articulating and working out what the movement is for, or how to solve the serious social and economic problems we now confront.

2. Are you saying that symbolic forms of resistance are ineffective in the long term?

No. We think that symbolic forms of resistance can be effective in some cases, as part of a more total process of resistance and efforts to transform society. According to David Graeber, the Zuccotti Park occupation was not a symbolic act of resistance, but an effort to “get as many people as possible to camp in some public place and start rebuilding society as we’d like to see it.” We take him at his word. Our critique of the Zuccotti Park occupation therefore does not treat it as a symbolic act of resistance, or as a prefiguration of the kinds of human relationships that will be possible in a different society, but as a failed effort to start rebuilding society within the existing society.

3. What are the drawbacks of emphasizing space, the pure-democratic form, outreach, and action?

We don’t think that a new society can be created within the existing one by multiplying and weaving together autonomous spaces. Capitalism is too “totalizing” a system to allow genuine alternatives to it (as distinct from alternatives that are disguised forms of capitalism) to peacefully coexist within it or to compete with it successfully. The creation of a new society requires much more than democratic decision-making. If the economic laws of capitalism remain in control of our lives, we can decide to eliminate unemployment, produce for need instead of for profit, and so on, but we won’t be able to successfully implement what we decide. So the pure-democratic form, as well as outreach and action, are means to achieve certain goals. But we need more than means; we need a clear understanding of the goals and what exactly must be changed in order to achieve them.

4. Why do you think personal experience of new social relations isn’t an adequate basis for a movement?

We don’t think that the main social and economic problems we face can be overcome in a lasting way within capitalism. We’ll need to establish a free communal society that’s not governed by the economic laws that govern capitalism. For instance, to succeed with capitalism, producers are forced to maximize production and minimize costs, and this is the main cause of inequality, poverty, unemployment, alienated labor, etc. Efforts to create new social relationships without challenging this dynamic––either by ignoring it or doing things differently in the “cracks” of the system––can only go so far.

5. You criticize the fact that much of the Left fails to make the struggle for a new society integral to the day-to-day struggles it is involved in. Aren’t we overcoming the separation between our ultimate goals and our immediate activity by acting as if we were already free?

No, we delude ourselves if we think that we can live as if we were free without actually being free. Freedom is not a state of mind; it is the condition in which people are not forced to work and live in a way that exploits humans and destroys nature. Right now, and as long as the capitalist system exists, we all have to live within it. Capitalist relations affect and dominate every aspect of life.

6. Why can’t we just opt out of the capitalist system and find some other way to survive?

The world-wide system of “value production” can’t be changed by opting out of it. A few people can dumpster-dive for food instead of working. But we can’t all do so; if no one worked, where would tomorrow’s leftovers come from? Nor can we escape the system. For example, if you individually hand-make shoes or form a cooperative, you still have to buy the materials and sell the shoes in an international market. Buyers want the shoes as cheaply as possible. How can you compete successfully against companies that produce similar shoes using exploited labor without driving down the cost of your shoes by exploiting yourself? The system must be uprooted and replaced with a wholly different way of working, not just distributing. And we need a system in which it’s possible to produce for human needs, not for the sake of expanding abstract wealth (“profit”).

7. What do you mean by value production and capitalist exploitation?

Value is abstract wealth. Value production occurs when the purpose of production isn’t just to produce concrete things, goods and services, but to produce wealth in the abstract. The driving force of capitalism is the maximum expansion of abstract wealth (i.e., maximum accumulation of capital). This is achieved by forcing people to work for a living and extracting the maximum possible labor from workers while paying them the minimum possible. That’s exploitation; and because the goal is to expand abstract wealth without limit, it’s capitalist exploitation.

It’s true that some people get rich off the backs of others as a result, but that’s not what drives the system; capitalist companies are forced to operate in this way in order to be competitive. So a focus on greedy capitalists loses sight of the underlying problem, the drive to expand abstract wealth without limit. We have to overcome this drive­­––and the economic laws that force capitalists to operate in this way––in order to have a society in which we produce directly to satisfy human needs.

One of the signs in the initial week of the occupation.

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On Theory, Philosophy, and their Relationship to Movements

8. Why do you think that a movement needs a theoretical basis or perspective?

We need theory to understand that the economic laws that govern capitalism are the main barrier, and to understand how they dominate everything, even things that they might seem not to dominate. We need theory to work out exactly what must be changed in order to overcome these laws. This isn’t obvious; things can seem to be alternatives that actually aren’t, or that wouldn’t work, etc. Working all this out is the only way we can be confident that a viable emancipatory alternative to capitalism is possible. And confidence that it’s really possible is crucial––without it, most people won’t be willing to put their lives on the line. So if we want a movement that’s big and broad enough to fundamentally change society, we need the theory and philosophy that can give us this confidence.

9. Wouldn’t having a particular theoretical basis/perspective limit the potential movement by alienating people who have different opinions?

All movements involve individuals who bring to them different ideas of what is happening and what to do about it. If different theories and perspectives are brought into contact, in open and fair debate, differences can be clarified and theoretical questions can be resolved. But if the different theories and perspectives just lie side-by-side, without being brought into contact, clarification and theoretical development are impeded. A movement that has a coherent and worked-out explanation of what has gone wrong, and what can be done about it, might attract many more people than a movement that obtains a premature and superficial “unity” by means of vague formulations that lack substance and explanatory power.

10. Why do you say we need to understand how capitalism works; isn’t it sufficient to educate people on all the evil it does and tell them those evils are related and “we need to get rid of the whole system”?

“Educating people” about the effects of capitalism does not show how the effects are related–why should they take our word for it? Nor does it give a whiff of how to get rid of the system because it doesn’t identify the causes. If we don’t know the causes, we don’t know how to get rid of the effects. Understanding how capitalism functions is the beginning point for (1) understanding why everyone can’t just drop out of it, and (2) figuring out what must be uprooted in order to create a different system of production and life.

11. How can we get people to understand how capitalism functions?

This can’t be done simply. It requires things like the formation of study groups and discussions with people such as MHI who are serious about working out theoretical questions in conjunction with workers, youth, women, African-Americans and others who want to change the system. It requires organizations that treat theory as a vital part of change, and that regard discussion and study of Marx’s work as a top priority, not just a sideline activity.

12. Assuming that, at this point in U.S. history, a social movement will not immediately emerge with a fully developed critique of capital and plan for revolution, what are the sorts of theoretical ideas/discussions that are necessary now and what might emerge with time?

We don’t think that social movements should have to shoulder all of the responsibility for working out the theoretical problems of the revolutionary process, or that they can shoulder all of the responsibility. A lot of sustained attention and hard labor is needed to really work these problems out. So, in addition to mass movements, we need people (working people, intellectuals, and others) and organizations like MHI, whose contribution to the revolutionary process consists largely of sustained theoretical work.  They need to share ideas and knowledge with the larger movements and learn from them. This theoretical activity is needed now and is taking place now, so there aren’t really any “stages” in the process. MHI’s goal is for mass movements that strive for freedom to lay hold of Marx’s philosophy of revolution and recreate society on its basis, but we can’t predict when or whether that will happen.

We think it’s crucial to:

• Discuss and explore the causes of our social problems. If we don’t know the causes, we can’t solve them. And it’s important to distinguish between causes and effects. For instance, we think that the power of corporations and income inequality are effects of the capitalist system, not root causes of our problems. Obviously, many people do not yet share this view, so a full and free discussion of causes and effects is needed.
• Identify what exactly must be changed, and all of what must be changed, in order to actually transcend capitalism. We can’t just decide what we would like the new society to look like, implement our decisions, and assume that things will work out as we expect. Actions have unintended consequences. To avoid making decisions that will have disastrous consequences, a lot of hard theoretical labor is needed.

There are many other theoretical problems that demand attention as well, of course.

13. What is unique about the philosophy of Marxist-Humanism? How does it differ from all of the philosophies espoused by other Marxists and anarchists?

The most important difference is that Marxist-Humanism rejects both the notion that working people are “backward” and therefore need to be led by a vanguard, and the notion that society can be revolutionized solely by means of spontaneous activity from below. The creation of a new society requires not only the destruction of the old one but the creation of totally new social relations. We won’t automatically become free by getting the “rich parasites,” the state, etc., off our backs. We need to overcome the economic laws of capitalism and run economic and social life according to wholly different principles. Spontaneous activity by itself will not work out what these principles are or how they can be implemented. The success of the creative aspect of the revolutionary process requires sustained focus on these issues, ongoing philosophical and theoretical development, ongoing dialogue involving working people, intellectuals, and others, and organizations like MHI that are committed to making sure that these issues do get worked out––not by ourselves alone, by any means.

Another unique aspect of Marxist-Humanism is that it holds that Marx had a unique, humanist philosophy, centered on the development of human capacities as an end-in-itself, rather than as a mere means to achieve external goals, such as the expansion of production. Our organization judges everything in light of this vision of humanity’s possible future. It is the foundation of our own efforts to help work out new principles for social and economic life, as well as the foundation of our day-to-day political activity and commentary. We are trying to help forge a new unity of philosophy and organization, in which mass movements striving for freedom lay hold of Marx’s philosophy of revolution and recreate society on its basis.

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On Strategy and Slogans

14. Wouldn’t making demands limit the politics of OWS? Can we make demands without selling out to reformist politics?

Revolutionary socialists have always struggled for reforms, as part of the revolutionary struggle. Demands are always demands for reforms, but they’re not always instances of reformist politics. They are reformist only if they are demands to improve the functioning or fairness of the present system. For example, if workers demand higher wages on the grounds that this will make their lives better, that’s not reformist. But if they demand higher wages on the grounds that this will make capitalism fairer, or if living-wage campaigns demand higher wages on the grounds that this will solve a supposed underconsumption problem and thereby “make the private-enterprise economy work better” (as Paul Marlor Sweezy advocated), then the demand for higher wages is reformist.

In any case, we doubt that the debate in OWS over demands was about reform vs. revolution. It was most likely a tactical move to lump together reformists and revolutionaries who wanted OWS to demand reforms on non-reformist grounds. The likely purpose of this was to make the strategy of rebuilding society on our own, here and now, seem to be revolutionary, and indeed the only truly revolutionary strategy.

15. Why do you criticize OWS’s framing of the problem as “the 99%” versus “the 1%”?

This attempt to appeal to as broad a mass of people as possible is actually nationalistic, and therefore exclusionary. In terms of wealth, one out of every twelve members of “the 99%” in the U.S. is part of “the 1%” on the global level. And people in this country with incomes at the poverty line are in the top 14% of the global income distribution![1] Even worse, framing things in terms of “the 99%” versus “the 1%” seems to suggest that redistribution of wealth and income would solve our major social and economic problems. It wouldn’t. If we completely eliminated inequality––redistributed income evenly throughout the world––we’d all be living on less than 1/4 of the current U.S. standard of living.[2] Is that the future we’re fighting for?

It is also misleading, at best, to think of capitalism as a system that operates so as to benefit the rich. If that were so, there wouldn’t have been a financial crisis or Great Recession, which they didn’t want or benefit from. Between 2007 and 2009, the income of the top 1% fell by 34%, while everyone else’s income fell by only 4%. The drop in income suffered by the top 1% accounts for more than 70% of the total drop in income between 2007 and 2009. [3] In any case, inequality is only a surface manifestation of a deeper problem that can’t be eliminated without eliminating capitalism: people spend their whole lives doing unfulfilling and often dangerous work, and do what their bosses tell them to do, only because they’d starve otherwise. If the threat of starvation went away, the system would grind to a halt.

.On Organizational Structures and Forms

16. What is wrong with a structure consisting solely of General Assemblies (in which everyone is present and votes) and Working Groups (which people join voluntarily and which have some independent decision-making power)?

These structures by themselves do not guarantee democracy. Direct participation of everyone can result in unfairness. Those who don’t have the time and flexibility to continually participate in long meetings tend to be shut out of decision-making. When a working group gets to make decisions for others, people who aren’t members the working group, that’s obviously not democratic. Its decisions might differ from those that the group as a whole would make. Such a structure can easily become less democratic than one in which elected representatives make decisions. We don’t say that general assemblies and working groups lead inevitably to undemocratic ends, just that the simplest structure is not necessarily the most democratic.

17. Doesn’t any additional structure necessarily entail hierarchy (which is by definition undemocratic)?

Not necessarily. Whether it results in hierarchy or not depends largely on the organization’s philosophy and its commitment to making the actual operation of the organization reflect the philosophy. Many reform and revolutionary movements have faced these questions in the past. Some of them were non-hierarchical and democratic even though they had representative democracy instead of direct democracy, and had additional organizational structure.

18. How were they able to still be non-hierarchical and democratic?

In general, they established safeguards such as democratically elected representatives who could be recalled at any time, frequent elections of position-holders, steering committees whose members rotate, the membership’s ability to vote to overturn position-holders’ decisions at any time, special provisions for rights of minorities, etc.

19. But isn’t it easier to guard against hierarchy if you only have facilitators, but no position-holders?

Only if the “facilitators” are actually nothing more than facilitators; that is, only if the job of facilitator doesn’t become a position in which you can exercise power over others. It is possible to say that you have no leaders or position-holders when you do have them de facto. For example, you could have “facilitators” who are not members of a working group but who  nevertheless monitor it, intervene in its discussions, report on its activities and discussions to a small group that  hasn’t been elected as the leadership, and try to ensure that this small group’s hidden agenda is carried out by the working group. This is a lot less democratic than openly electing position-holders to exercise limited authority, subject to safeguards.

20. What is the relationship between the form of organization now and the future organization of society?

There may or may not be a relationship. What is appropriate for a small group in one specific place may not be appropriate for all of society throughout the world. So there are limits to what can be learned from experience.

More importantly, we think that “form” of organization is not the crucial element that determines the character of a society. Democratic decision-making processes cannot ensure that all people are actually in control of their lives. For that to be the case, everyone in the world needs to possess means of livelihood in a non-capitalist system of production, and there needs to be full equality regardless of sex, race, nationality, etc. So attempts to create a new society by establishing new forms of organization, or by practicing loving relationships, bountiful artistic expression, and such, are far from sufficient.

————-
[1] The first statistic is based on data in “The World Distribution of Household Wealth,” James B. Davies, Susanna Sandström, Anthony Shorrocks, and Edward N. Wolff, UNU-WIDER Discussion Paper No. 2008/03, February 2008. The second is reported in Courtney Blair, “Compared to the Rest of the World Americans Are All the 1%,” www.policymic.com/articles/2636/compared-to-the-rest-of-the-world-americans-are-all-the-1 .

[2] In 2010, GDP per capita at purchasing power parity in the world as a whole was less than 24% of the U.S. figure. Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators, data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators .

[3] Source: Internal Revenue Service, Statistics of Income, Individual Income Tax Rates and Tax Shares, Table 5, http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/indtaxstats/article/0,,id=96679,00.html. These are the most recent data available.

Time for Theoretical & Practical Assessments”

MHI sponsored an open discussion entitled “6 Months of Occupy Wall Street: Time for Theoretical & Practical Assessments,” on March 23, 2012, in New York City.  The announcement for the meeting said,

“Mike Dola, Anne Jaclard, and other OWS activists and thinkers will lead off an open discussion about what OWS has accomplished, what it has not, and whether its direction might instigate a reorganization of society. We will emphasize the theories—explicit and implicit—on which OWS has been based, examining some ideas advanced by David Graeber, Marina Sitrin, Rick Wolff, and other popular speakers, as well as its practice in relation to working class and other struggles.

“Is OWS anti-capitalist because it adds “capitalism” to the list of evils in the world?  Is every left movement doomed to replicate the separation between thought and activity that characterizes life under capitalism? These questions and more will be addressed as we attempt an evaluation that is largely absent within the OWS movement itself. All are welcome to participate.”

An audio recording of the meeting is below. The principal speakers were, in this order but interspersed with others in attendance: Mike Dola of MHI; Darren Caffey, an activist in university student organizations; Jodi of OWS’ People of Color Working Group and other groups; Amin Husain of OWS, and other OWS activists and writers for “Tidal”; and Anne Jaclard of MHI.

Play MHI Public Session on OWS now

WE’RE HAVING ANOTHER DISCUSSION OF OWS ON MAY 9 – SEE ANNOUNCEMENT AT LEFT.

Please read “FAQs about the Occupy Movement and Marxist-Humanism” in preparation for that discussion. Its title refers to the essay, “The Make-Believe World of David Graeber.”

On September 11 (see below), I posted the following comment on a piece by Kevin Anderson published on his group’s website.

One important obstacle to dialectical thought is the practice of throwing around unsubstantiated and false charges. For instance, allegations like this:

“the attempt to ground a viable Marxist-Humanist organization in an ever-narrower set of formalistic rules about organizational structure that crowds out the philosophical-political grounding necessary to any serious Marxist organization.”

I’m reminded of Hegel’s comment that “I have been only too often and too vehemently attacked by opponents who were incapable of making the simple reflection that their opinions and objections contain categories which are presuppositions and which themselves need to be criticized first before they are employed.”

Presuppositions like the “crowding out” bit–as if it were self-evident that Marxist-Humanist philosophy and Marxist-Humanist organization are, and must always remain, opposites that jockey for position and crowd one another out!

And presuppositions like the “attempt to ground” garbage. You know damned well that Marxist-Humanist Initiative (which you’re attacking but refraining from saying so) is attempting “to create an organization so firmly rooted in its philosophy that it will not succumb to diversions that may arise from personal agendas, and that will be capable of developing and concretizing that philosophy over the long haul, regardless of who its members may be.” [www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org, home page]

There’s a HUGE difference–a veritable Grand Canyon–between that and an alleged “attempt to ground a viable Marxist-Humanist organization in an ever-narrower set of formalistic rules about organizational structure that crowds out the philosophical-political grounding”

Now it is true that, to support his false allegation, Anderson refers us to Peter Hudis’ attack on Marxist-Humanist Initiative. But the problem is that Hudis falsely represents MHI’s position on the relationship of philosophy to organization, as has been demonstrated in detail in “Hudis Falsely Represents MHI Position on Relationship of Philosophy to Organization” [www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/philosophyorganization/hudis-falsely-represents-mhi-position-on-relationship-of-philosophy-to-organization].

Six months have passed since this document was published. Its disproof of Hudis’ false allegations has not been challenged. That’s because the disproof cannot be challenged.

Truth is good. Falsehood is bad.

For some reason, his group’s website has not (yet) published the comment.

The reason can’t be that the comment is critical. The website does publish critical comments. For instance, one comment on his piece contains the following statement: “your marxist humanism must turn into stalinism.” That’s a good deal more critical than what I wrote. So there has to be another reason why my comment hasn’t (yet) been published. Maybe the truth hurts?

[Note, added on Oct. 2, 2010: I've been asked to explain the picture below. It's a screenshot that I took when I submitted my reply, in order to be able to provide evidence that I did submit it. You can see, above it, another comment on Anderson's piece that was published and does appear below it on the site. (When you submit a comment to their site, it appears on your screen just as if it were published, but other people can't see it unless and until the powers that be approve it, and they haven't approved mine.)]

]]> http://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/philosophy-organization/reply-to-kevin-anderson.html/feed 0 http://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/philosophy-organization/what-is-marxist-humanist-internationalism-draft-dont-publish.html http://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/philosophy-organization/what-is-marxist-humanist-internationalism-draft-dont-publish.html#comments Mon, 13 Sep 2010 05:00:30 +0000 MHI http://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/philosophy-organization/what-is-marxist-humanist-internationalism-draft-dont-publish.html What is Marxist-Humanist internationalism? Although a full answer requires a much longer analysis than this piece, the question provides a useful context for evaluating some recent events. So we ask here whether internationalism means (1) establishing an organization with the word “international” in its name, like the International Marxist-Humanist Organization (IMHO) that insists on excluding Marxist-Humanist Initiative (MHI) even though we share its philosophic principles, or whether it means (2) contributing to a world-wide development of Marx’s humanist philosophy of revolution by analyzing capitalism at this historic moment of crisis. We counterpose these two concepts of internationalism in light of the recent practice of organizations calling themselves Marxist-Humanist: on one hand, IMHO’s refusal to recognize the propriety of MHI’s joining with it, and on the other, MHI’s own unique practice of Marxist-Humanist internationalism which focuses on (2) above.

I. IMHO admits it excludes MHI for a reason contrary to its own stated principles.

When IMHO was established earlier this year, it published Principles and invited all who agreed with them to join with it in the new organization. Yet when MHI responded that it was doing so, IMHO  rejected our participation even though we share its philosophic principles, as it well knows (its principles have much in common with our own, both deriving from the years in which our members worked together). Since our earlier report about this matter, MHI has received a second letter from IMHO, again rejecting our participation. What is interesting about the second letter is its outright admission of IMHO’s reason for rejecting MHI: it admits that its action is based not on any principled, philosophic differences, but on our public objection to Peter Hudis’ untrue characterizations of us in an earlier public writing of his. Here is what IMHO wrote in its second letter rejecting MHI’s participation (sent June 18):

“In response to your disingenuous statement of June 6 2010 that you haven’t attacked the IMHO, we would point out that your article of March 19 2010 (‘Hudis Falsely Represents MHI Position on Relationship of Philosophy to Organization’) attacks an IMHO members [sic] who is who is [sic] helping to organise the [IMHO] conference and who serves on the steering committee of the USMH [US Marxist-Humanists] – the body that initiated the conference call in the first place.”

Apparently, IMHO has collapsed itself into Peter Hudis! How else can it claim that our setting the record straight about what this one person wrote about us, in his own name and months before the existence of IMHO, is now equivalent to an attack on IMHO? How bizarre that our setting the record straight on Hudis’ statement is even called an “attack” on Hudis, when it is a factual refutation of his untrue description of us.

Since our only statement about IMHO is our June 1 statement that announced our full agreement with IMHO’s principles and our decision to join with it, this is surely a false and unprincipled reason for excluding us–unless IMHO is really unable to distinguish between itself and Hudis, that is, if it is in fact a clique centered around one person rather than an organization centered around the philosophy of Marxist-Humanism. Dislike of our response to Hudis’ criticism of us is not a legitimate reason for excluding a group which shares IMHO’s principles.¹ Surely this is a bureaucratic maneuver to exclude MHI from IMHO for personal or competitive reasons, or even worse, to protect and maintain a clique if not outright cult of personality around Hudis.

In spite of our having been excluded from the formation of IMHO, we said only good things about its Principles. And we attempted to join with it, as the statement invited all who agreed to do. We must continue to insist that we have joined with IMHO, because we cannot allow USMH and IMHO to claim a monopoly on the principles we share. That could mislead people into thinking that MHI’s philosophy is not Marxist-Humanist. So we join with IMHO even though we remain unrecognized and relegated to a special, lowly class of members, lacking the right to participate in any of its functions–contrary to all principles of Marxist-Humanist organization.

By their refusal to recognize our existence and right to join with IMHO, our former comrades boxed themselves into having to admit outright their real reason for excluding us, which is an illegitimate one. Their June letter is an admission that they simply eschew principle when it comes to their wish for exclusive control. This is cliquish behavior, just like the clique that took over News and Letters Committees three years ago and pushed out half the members (see “Why a New Organization?”). There is a lesson in this sad repetition of principle-jettisoning when one’s clique’s control is threatened: those who refuse to examine history more deeply than by repeating “News and Letters lacked an understanding of philosophy,” are bound to succumb to the pull of the same bad practices that infected News and Letters.

IMHO/USMH have made clear that they don’t want us to participate because we spoke up to correct Hudis’ gross public misrepresentations of us in our article “Hudis Falsely Represents MHI Position on Relationship of Philosophy to Revolution,” which also calls for cooperation among Marxist-Humanists. In addition to the fact that our document has nothing to do with IMHO and is not an “attack” on anyone, one wonders: Is it IMHO’s policy to expel anyone who says anything critical about another member, or just anything critical of its leaders? We hope that this policy appears in the rules that IMHO said it was going to produce at its recent conference, the one we were excluded from. The public has yet to see any information about IMHO’s structure or rules. What about the case in which one person or group has told falsehoods about another? Apparently, IMHO is unconcerned with truth, honesty, and proper debating tactics.

We believe in rational argument, not attacks, and we have refrained from saying publicly (or, for that matter, privately) anything about Hudis’ organizations or their members which is not political, philosophical, and/or organizational–and true. We value honesty and openness, and condemn lies and gossip. But USMH cannot say the same. In addition to Hudis’ essay perpetuating lies about us, as “Hudis Falsely” details, USMH and IMHO’s public statements criticizing unspecified organizations in the abstract are clearly aimed at us. How else to explain critiques that seem to come out of nowhere and seem absurd? For only one example: IMHO’s call for a conference says, seemingly gratuitously, in its third sentence, that Marxist-Humanism is not “a mere set of organizational statutes and rules that guards against the threat of bureaucratic practices,” followed, in a dizzying juxtaposition, by a statement that it is instead “a philosophy of liberation.” Of course that statement is true, but no one ever said anything to the contrary! It is obviously meant to imply that MHI thinks Marxist-Humanism is “a mere set of organizational statutes…”  In truth, our Principles and By-Laws stress the integrality of philosophy and organization, and they do not even mention bureaucratic practices. IMHO’s silly juxtaposition is undoubtedly part of USMH’s attempts to claim that we are somehow less “philosophical” than they are because we created a new structure and conduct ourselves in accordance with rules.

A pattern of behavior has emerged in which Hudis and USMH apparently think they can state any lie at all as long as it doesn’t actually name us, even if it is clear to anyone familiar with our shared history and current organizations that it means to defame us. They seem to think this is a proper standard of behavior, but it is not. We suggest that IMHO be honest enough to recognize that USMH has been on a campaign to discredit MHI. Perhaps USMH is still trying to justify the fact that its future members broke up the interim organization to which we all belonged in March 2009, without any notice to or consultation with our future members, and that they refused to consider an umbrella organization when we raised the idea then, and that USMH has not had one word to say to us since it pre-arranged that vote, and it has done its utmost to exclude us from IMHO and to alienate our mutual friends from us.

Anyone can start an “international” organization (or pancake restaurant) by declaring it to be international. Now apparently not only News and Letters, but other organizations that call themselves Marxist-Humanist, violate essential principles of Marxist-Humanism by operating though bureaucratic edicts or cults of personality. The proofs of internationalism and of Marxist-Humanism lie not in an organization’s name, but in the content of that organization’s practice.

2.  MHI practices internationalism by engaging in international cooperation to develop theory that can help transcend capitalism.

Although MHI doesn’t have the word “international” in our name, our organization is open to international members and supporters. Today, it is possible to actually have an organization without borders–just as the working class has no borders–and that is our orientation. More important than one’s name or location, we believe, is the content of one’s organizational practice. In our view, there exists a Marxist-Humanist form of practice of internationalism, and it does not consist of signing up old friends overseas to merge with a particular U.S. group. Rather, it consists of contributing theoretically to the development of Marxist-Humanist philosophy in light of objective events internationally and in partnership with people around the world who also see Marx’s theory as a force for revolution.

MHI is internationalist in the Marxist tradition because we are engaged internationally in sharing and deepening Marxist-Humanist ideas pertinent to this period of world economic crisis. Recent visits to England, France, and Argentina, as well as international correspondence and conferences, have revealed an interest outside the U.S. in the recovery of Marx’s Marxism and the development of its meaning for today, and, specifically, an appreciation for the theoretical and empirical work that MHI has produced to date.

MHI’s analyses of the crisis are being discussed internationally and are becoming rallying points for those who oppose current popular Left analyses that lead away from Marx and revolutionary change. Works published on our website and in print² are finding audiences and discussants overseas among those who see the failings of the popular Left idea that this is an irreducibly financial crisis. Some actual Marxists do remain in the world, and they are happy to find our work: people who reject the notion that the latest crisis is a crisis of “neoliberalism/financialized capitalism” instead of a crisis of capitalism, and who reject the politics that flow from this (or create it). They are joining us in discussing and spreading what we have presented in order to elaborate Marx’s concept of crisis for today.

Such work is the practice of dialectics. It consists of digging into the essence and functioning of capitalism in order to understand what must be uprooted and transcended. We need to understand capitalism before we can envision with any concreteness a social transformation in which capitalism will be replaced with a mode of production planned and run by freely associated workers. We believe that this practice, and not factional maneuvering dressed up as “internationalism,” is what the world needs from an organization claiming a Marxist-Humanist philosophy.

Our model is the work of Raya Dunayevskaya, who analyzed 20th century events–the transformation of the Russian Revolution into state-capitalism; the Third World national revolutions that, once in power, chose the capitalist road over relying on their own resource of “human power”; Mao’s substitution of voluntarism for workers’ and peasants’ self-development in China. All were compared and contrasted by her to Marx’s categories of capitalism and to what its abolition would mean. Her theory zoomed in on, and revealed the economic relations at the heart of, all seemingly political positions. In this tradition, we are looking at the actual fall in the rate of profit underlying the current crisis (see “The Persistent Fall in Profitability Underlying the Current Crisis”) in order to discern its implications for capitalism’s transcendence.

Inextricably related to understanding this moment of capitalism is the problematic of what has to be changed in order to break with it and begin a new society based on a new mode of production. MHI is not merely talking about this question as needing to be theorized; rather, we have taken the plunge into beginning to work out some of the questions involved. We have presented some ideas in our public talks this year, most recently presentations in London on “What must be changed in order to transcend capitalism?”

We are engaged in this work not to vindicate Marx or ourselves, but to give Marx’s Marxism a chance to flourish and become a “force for revolution,” as Raya Dunayevskaya called the power of ideas. Only an actual revolution in the mode of production will give the world a chance to create a truly socialist society. This cannot come about if we stop at analyzing the phenomena of capitalism without working out how it generates its own destruction and lays the ground for releasing a new mode of production that entails and engenders new human relations.

IMHO’s practices are insufficient to meet the challenge of the times because its principles remain abstract (in addition to being controverted by its practice). A truly international Marxist-Humanist organization cannot be declared successful when, like IMHO, it is a mere organizational regroupment. A truly international Marxist-Humanist organization only begins to succeed if it engages in the process of developing an international, concrete dialogue that actually begins to develop answers to the vital problematics of today and tomorrow.

Put in terms of dialectical philosophy, the hollowness of IMHO’s declarations of “success” in articles about its recent conference, is described by this passage in Hegel’s Science of Logic:

“The impatience that insists merely on getting beyond the determinate–whether called beginning, object, the finite, or in whatever other form it be taken–and finding itself immediately in the absolute, has before it as cognition nothing but the empty negative, the abstract infinite; in other words, a presumed absolute that is presumed because it is not posited, not grasped; grasped it can only be through the mediation of cognition, of which the universal and immediate is a moment, but the truth itself resides only in the extended course of the process and in the conclusion.” (A.V. Miller translation, Humanities Paperback edition, pp. 841-842)

IMHO presents itself as being “immediately in the absolute,” when the “international” in its name is merely an “empty negative” of “national.” Declaring oneself international is hardly original and does nothing to work out the dialectic of Marxism needed in these times. Restoring and developing Marx and Dunayevskaya’s Marxism is still the task that remains to be done.

Marxist-Humanist Initiative

September 12, 2010

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1. Also illegitimate is the letter’s reference to us as “a group which has declared both the USMH and LCC [London Corresponding Committee] as its ‘enemies’.” This fabrication is apparently a reference to a letter we wrote to the LCC’s publication, The Hobgoblin, in which we complained that it had made itself our enemy by publishing only Hudis’ misrepresentations of us and not answering any of our many letters asking it to publish our response. We never “declared” anyone our enemy–we never even mentioned USMH or IMHO. IMHO’s letter to us gets backwards who has made whom into an enemy; its exclusion of us from participation in its organization is the best evidence of that.

2. Including, among others, “Appearance and Essence: Neoliberalism, Financialization, and the Underlying Crisis of Capitalist Production” and “The Persistent Fall in Profitability Underlying the Current Crisis: New Temporalist Evidence.”

On June 6, we received this e-mail message signed “The International Marxist-Humanist Organisation”:

Dear MHI,

We wish to inform that you are not members of the IMHO. Nobody becomes a member of an organisation just by declaring themselves a member. The IMHO is not a regroupment initiative; nor is it an attempt to rebuild links with people who have proven that they are incapable of behaving in a comradely manner, as seen in the MHI’s recent public attack on us.

While anyone is welcome to attend our July 2 public forum on the centenary of Dunayevskaya’s birth, any effort to force one’s way into our conference the next day without a invitation would be an aggressive infringement on our democratic right to assemble and function as an organization.

—The International Marxist-Humanist Organisation

Needless to say, we were quite dismayed by this message, and responded on June 9:

Dear International Marxist-Humanist Organisation,

You write that we “are incapable of behaving in a comradely manner, as seen in the MHI’s recent public attack on us.” We are quite perplexed by this statement. The only thing we’ve written about IMHO is our public statement of last week, which announces our joining with it. The statement doesn’t attack IMHO, or even criticize it. It highly praises IMHO.

You write, “Nobody becomes a member of an organisation just by declaring themselves a member.” True, but one can join with an effort by being invited to do so and accepting the invitation. That’s what we’ve done.

All who agree with IMHO’s statement of principles have been invited to join with it, and your invitation isn’t accompanied by any other conditions. So, if we were to refrain from joining with IMHO, the impression would be created that we do not agree with these principles. We cannot allow that to happen. We cannot allow the particular groups within IMHO that refuse to cooperate with MHI to monopolize the principles shared by MHI and IMHO.

The unsupported hypothesis that we intend to crash the conference, by force no less!, is baseless and false. Having joined with IMHO, we wish to participate in the normal fashion.

We look forward to an honest discussion of the above issues.

Comradely regards, Marxist-Humanist Initiative

At this time, we have received no direct response to our June 9 e-mail. On June 10, the U.S. Marxist-Humanists published on the homepage of their website a single line “Clarification,” attributed to the “International Marxist-Humanist Organization”: “Despite some recent claims to the contrary, we are not affilitated [sic] with the New York-based Marxist-Humanist Initiative.”

Again, as stated in our June 9 e-mail, those who agree with IMHO’s statement of principles were invited to join with it. If we were to refrain from joining with IMHO, the impression would be created that we do not agree with these principles. Moreover, we cannot allow the particular groups within IMHO that refuse to cooperate with MHI to monopolize the principles shared by MHI and IMHO. And, again, we call for an honest discussion of the issues.

The future of Marxist-Humanism is by no means assured. Forging the broadest unity possible among people and groups that have expressed agreement with some basic Marxist-Humanist principles is therefore urgently important. As part of our continuing effort to achieve this goal, we intend to provide an analysis of, and fuller response to, the latest turn of events in the near future.

Executive Committee of Marxist-Humanist Initiative

In a April 18, 1976 piece, “Our Original Contribution to the Dialectic of the Absolute Idea as New Beginning:  In Theory, and Leadership, and Practice,” Dunayevskaya stated,

[A]t the height of Capital, we see [Marx] breaking up the Absolute Idea by speaking about the general absolute law of capitalist accumulation.  But its opposite was always taken to be only the unemployed army – and not the absolutely, totally opposite which we take it to be now.  Marx only mentioned it as ‘the new passions and new forces for the reconstruction of society.’  The negation of the negation at that point certainly wasn’t spelled out.

What I think Dunayevskaya’s original contribution was – what she made explicit that was only implicit in Marx – is her philosophic moment of 1953.  The revolutionary development of the working class is impelled by the logic of capital.  That’s the process of capitalist accumulation.  It has an Absolute: accumulated capital at one poll, misery and unemployment at the other.  There’s a diremption; we cannot go further.  To transcend this absolute opposition, we need a new beginning.  To have a new society, we can’t rest on the dialectic generated by capital.  There needs to be a second moment of negativity, one that doesn’t arise spontaneously from the logic of capital, but is self-liberation.  This second moment of negativity is rooted in a passion to reconstruct society on new beginnings, not just in the oppressiveness of capitalism.

Dunayevskaya is singling out the subjectivity of self-liberation, which Marx’s discussion of the negation of the negation only intimated.  It is at this point that Logic is “thrown out”; it gives way to a new relation of theory to practice.  There’s a new dialectic in which the movement toward freedom is not driven by the logic of oppressive capital; the movements from theory and practice now develop through one another.  This intermerging of theory and practice does not come spontaneously – this is Dunayevskaya’s original contribution – they must freely self-develop together.

To begin to flesh out the textual basis of the above interpretation, I offer the following comments:

(1) I believe that the “Our Original Contribution” text is, in part, a return to and elaboration of pp. 92-94 of Dunayevskaya’s Philosophy and Revolution, which also discusses the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation (AGLCA) in Marx’s Capital, the negation of the negation, and “new passions and new forces.”  It is an extremely important passage, in my opinion. Dunayevskaya refers to the accumulation of capital vs. misery and unemployment as a “diremption – absolute, irreconcilable contradiction[ ]” in the first paragraph on p. 93.  This is the basis of my comment that the AGLCA is “a diremption; we cannot go further.  To transcend this absolute opposition, we need a new beginning.”  In the next paragraph on p. 93, Dunayevskaya writes, “‘The negation of the negation’ allows in but the faintest glimmer of the new, ‘new passions and new forces’ for the reconstructing of society, but no blueprints of the future there.” It seems to me that this is another way of saying that “new forces and new passions” is only implicit in Marx’s discussion of “negation of the negation,” though other interpretations are perhaps also plausible.

(2) “[T]he absolute general law of capitalist accumulation” (AGLCA) is stated on p. 798 of Capital, Vol. I (Penguin/Vintage editions.), near the end of section 4 of Chapter 25, though the chapter as a whole is also called “The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation.”  To understand the importance of “absolute” here, it is helpful to read the whole chapter, and see how frequently the laws of capitalist development that Marx identifies here are not absolute, but “relative.”  Part of what is involved in this distinction, I believe, is that much of the trajectory of capitalist development depends upon (is “relative” to) contingent factors, but the growth of the reserve army (and the increasing misery – in a specific sense – of the proletariat (p. 799)) are inevitable (“absolute”) under capitalism.

(3) It is also helpful to read what comes before p. 798, including Chapters 23-24, to get a sense of the AGLCA as the culmination of a process of development.  This will be important to Dunayevskaya’s understanding of “the logic of Capital.”  This is a phrase from Lenin’s Philosophic Notebooks.  He didn’t refer specifically to a real process of development (he was referring to section 3 of Chapter 1 ofCapital, on the “form of value” being modeled on Hegel’s U-P-I (universal-particular-individual)). But in her May 12, 1953 letter on Hegel’s Absolute Idea and thereafter (e.g., Philosophy and Revolution, pp. 93-94), Dunayevskaya interprets “logic of Capital” as a real process, the logic of capital; her words are “the dialectic of bourgeois society.”  Both the May 12, 1953 and the discussions in Philosophy and Revolution compare Lenin’s claim (the “form of value” is based on U-P-I) – to her claim (the AGLCA is based on the Absolute Idea); apparently, Dunayevskaya sees her insight as being rooted in and as a further development of, Lenin’s insight.

(4) Dunayevskaya’s “new passions and new forces” comes from Marx’s phrase “new forces and new passions” in Ch. 32 of Capital, Vol. I (p. 928).  A page and a half later, Marx calls the revolution against capitalism “the negation of the negation,” because capitalism “negates” the individual property of the direct producers, while the revolution will restore their individual property (thus negating the negation), but on a “higher level” (in the Hegelian manner), i.e., as common property.  Dunayevskayavery audaciously reads the reference to “new forces and new passions” as part of the process of “the negation of the negation.”  This is very audacious not only because they are a page and a half apart, but also because Marx’s “new forces and new passions” is a reference to the bourgeoisie and their greed!  (See “the most infamous, the most sordid, … of passions” later in the paragraph on p. 928.)  Marx is referring to the so-called “primitive accumulation” he has been discussing in Chapters 26-31, the bourgeois expropriation of the direct producers (small, independent peasants) that gave rise to capitalism.  The connection of this to the negation of the negation is indeed very implicit!

(5) But there is some textual warrant for Dunayevskaya’s interpretation, and her point, if I understand it, is brilliant. Marx writes (p. 928) that “new forces and new passions spring up in the bosom of society, forces and passions which feel themselves to be fettered by that society.  It has to be annihilated; it is annihilated.”  If I understand Dunayevskaya’s point, it consists of two things.

• What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.  If Marx understood that revolution involves new forces and passions, why should we limit that recognition to the immediate context (the capitalist revolution against the free peasants)?  What is to prevent it from being part of the revolutionary process “as such”?  Why should it not apply equally to the revolution againstcapitalism, the negation of the negation?
• More importantly, Marx’s “feel themselves to be fettered …. It has to be annihilated” is a recognition that material conditions in the narrow sense are not the sole driving force of the revolutionary process (I say “narrow sense” because, in the previous sentence, Marx refers to the new forces and passions as the “material means of … destruction” of the old society).  Dunayevskaya undoubtedly saw in this passage not only the drive to be free (unfettered), and not only the subjectivity (feeling) involved in the process of liberation, but the anticipation of the new (in the case of the bourgeoisie, they were salivating after the money they could make in the new society!).  The reason I say this is that when she referred to “new passions and new forces,” she regularly defined this more precisely as “‘new passions and new forces’ for the reconstructing of society” (Philosophy and Revolution, p. 93), or some similar expression.

(6) There is a whole lot involved in this.  I’ll just single out one thing.  The standard post-Marx Marxist understandings of the revolutionary process were either vanguardist/voluntarist – the vanguard party, with its advanced consciousness “from outside,” was the driving force behind the revolutionary development of the masses – or fatalistic and spontaneist – the process of capitalist development creates its own gravediggers automatically, spontaneously, with the inevitability of a natural process.  The Johnson-Forest Tendency, of which Dunayevskaya (Forest) was co-leader, had already broken with the former conception a few years before 1953.  In the 1953 letters, I believe, Dunayevskaya was above all breaking philosophically from C.L.R. James’ (Johnson’s) spontaneism.  It is quite important that James continually stressed and stressed again Marx’s phrase “trained, united and organized by the very mechanism of the capitalist process of production” in the paragraph right before “negation of the negation” on p. 929 of Capital, Vol. I.  Taken by itself, the phrase, and indeed the whole paragraph, can easily be read as suggesting that Marx, too, had a fatalistic and spontaneist conception of the revolutionary process.  What I think Dunayevskaya was saying is that, while the workers are indeed spontaneously revolutionary – this flows automatically from them being “trained, united and organized by the very mechanism of the capitalist process of production,” and from the AGLCA that continually separates them from the means of making a living and from property, that makes technology an alien power, etc. – this is necessary but not sufficient for there to be a new society.  There also needs to be a positive moment, the creation of the new.  The new society is founded upon the idea of a new society, the passion to reconstruct society on new beginnings, but this is only a beginning. Subjective self-liberation is a process that requires self-development.  In her May 20, 1953 letter on Hegel’s Absolute Mind, Dunayevskaya writes, “Mind itself, the new society, is ‘the mediating agent in the process.’” And this requires a dual movement of theory and practice, in which both sides develop.  I could try to justify this last point through a fairly complex and difficult interpretation of her interpretation of the three final syllogisms of Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind.  In lieu of that, let me just refer now to p. 60 of Dunayevskaya’s Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation, and Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution (emphasis in original):

Luxemburg was absolutely right … that the Marxist movement … “reckons on the organization and the independent, direct action of the masses” …. However, she is not right in holding that, very nearly automatically, it means so total a conception of socialism that a philosophy of Marx’s concept of revolution could likewise be left to spontaneous action.  Far from it.  … in the 1905 Revolution, … spontaneity was absolutely the greatest, but failed to achieve its goal.

Note the linkage of automaticity and spontaneism, the implication that a total conception of socialism is needed for a successful revolution, and the claim that this cannot be left to spontaneity. There needs to be a new relation of theory and practice, a new relation of masses to Marx’s philosophy of revolution. Groups like ours are needed to help the masses acquire the total conception of socialism that they themselves will need in order to have a successful revolution.

There’s a lot more I could say.  For instance, I haven’t even touched on what Dunayevskaya called Hegel’s “throwing out of the Logic” at the end of the Philosophy of Mind, which I think was related, in her view, to the subjectivity of self-liberation, as against the development of the proletariat by means of the logic of capital.  I hope to take this up in a future essay.

The author examines Dunayevskaya’s method of concretizing Marx and suggests that Hegel and Marx together spell out the material, conceptual ground for developing an alternative to capitalism today.

Note: This essay was originally published in the June 2004 issue of News & Letters. It received a virulently negative response from some of those who now lead the remnants of News and Letters Committees. They rejected the perspective that Marxist-Humanism needs to be concretized anew in the face of new realities. Pretending that their abstractions were concrete, they rejected the very idea that Marxist-Humanism needs to be concretized *in theory*–as if events and actions make philosophy concrete by themselves, without the need for theoretical mediation.

Raya Dunayevskaya’s essay, “Marx’s Humanism Today,” published in Erich Fromm’s collection, SOCIALIST HUMANISM: AN INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM (Doubleday, 1965; Anchor Books, 1966) …, was a response to the battles over the humanism of Marx that she faced in 1965. It was not only a summary of her earlier work on this theme, but it intervened in the battle of ideas going on at the time in order to meet the demands of the moment in a concrete way. Taking this method as a challenge to us to be just as concrete when responding to today’s objective situation, I will argue that we face a new situation in 2004, different from that of 1965, and that, if we are to respond concretely, revolutionaries need to begin theorizing an alternative to capitalist society.

SPECIFICITY OF THE 1965 ESSAY

Let us begin by looking at the history leading up to Dunayevskaya’s essay. It came seven years after her groundbreaking book MARXISM AND FREEDOM. A key purpose of that book was to expose the “veritable conspiracy” to hide the humanism of Marx that had prevailed for decades. On the one hand, Marx had been suppressed by official Communism–not only by the Russians, who failed to publish his 1844 HUMANIST ESSAYS, but also by deliberate mistranslations and misinterpretations of his works, including his greatest work, CAPITAL. The suppression was perpetuated not only by the Russian and Chinese governments, but also by fellow-traveling intellectuals all over the world. The Marxist Left had so little interest in Marx’s 1844 ESSAYS, that the first to resurrect them were European Catholics after World War II, who used them in their struggles with the Communist parties for the hearts and minds of the masses.

On the other hand, McCarthyism in the U.S. suppressed Marx by identifying him with existing Communist states. As Dunayevskaya wrote, in MARXISM AND FREEDOM’s introduction, “Today, in the face of the constant struggle of man for full freedom on both sides of the Iron Curtain, there is a veritable conspiracy to identify Marxism, a theory of liberation, with its opposite, Communism, the theory and practice of enslavement.” The book drew a sharp new division in the world. It both exposed “existing Communism” as state-capitalism, and challenged the anti-Stalinist Left to develop Marx’s philosophy of liberation as an alternative pole of attraction.

But the world changed radically between 1958 and 1965. Starting in the 1940s, and up to MARXISM AND FREEDOM’s publication, Dunayevskaya had been virtually the only English-language theorist (except for Herbert Marcuse) to write about Marx’s humanism. His 1844 ESSAYS had not even been published in English until she included two as an appendix to MARXISM AND FREEDOM. But the 1950s witnessed the start of new mass movements that pulled Marx’s humanism out of the archives and onto the world stage. Third World revolutions against colonialism, Eastern European revolts against so-called Communism, and the Black “Freedom Now” movement in the U.S. compelled discussion of Marx’s humanism.

Fromm’s collection was a culmination of this resurgent interest in Marx’s humanism. Widely read and translated into many languages, it contained essays by authors from many countries who had varied concepts of socialism and humanism, including Bertrand Russell and Norman Thomas, as well as Marxists and Marxologists. The breadth of the new discussion compelled Dunayevskaya to sharpen the differences between her thought and those of others.

By 1965, Marx’s humanism had become such a hot topic that even some Communist parties and theorists began to claim they were for it. As Dunayevskaya writes in the 1965 essay, “the Russian Communist line changed….the claim now became that the Soviets were the rightful inheritors of ‘militant humanism.’” A battle raged in and outside the French CP over its purported endorsement of humanism; fellow-traveling intellectuals such as Sartre supported it, while those such as Althusser vigorously attacked it. His READING CAPITAL, which contains a critique of Sartre for his defense of humanism, was also published in 1965.

Far from welcoming this new-found Communist “humanism,” Dunayevskaya recognized it as an attempt to quiet the masses’ interest in genuine Marxism. It was no longer sufficient to reveal the humanism of Marx; she now needed to distinguish it from its misrepresentations and distortions. Her essay sharply separates Marx’s humanism from the Communist version, but she also distinguishes it from liberal interpretations of Marx. By stripping Marx’s humanism of its specificity, she argues, the liberal academics “leave the door wide open” for Russia and China to cloak their exploitative, capitalist character and policies.

In response to this problem, the essay not only warns against leaving Marx’s humanism abstract; it also demonstrates how CAPITAL “signifies Marx’s ‘return’ to his own philosophic humanism…on a more concrete level, which, rather than diminishing Marx’s original humanist concepts, deepens them.” If Marx’s humanism is invoked without specifying its further, concrete development, its enemies can transform it “into an abstract[ion] that would cover up…the need to abolish the conditions preventing ‘realization’ of Marx’s philosophy, i.e., the reunification of mental and manual abilities in the individual.”

WHAT’S NEW TODAY

Following Dunayevskaya’s method of being concrete when responding to the objective situation, let us identify what is new and what is not in 2004, so that we can think through the needed response. I argue that we face a different situation in 2004 from that of 1965, and that, to respond to it concretely, we need to theorize an alternative to capitalism. Today, although there are still “vulgar communists” around who defend statified property as socialism, few argue any longer that Marx rejected his youthful humanism when he became “scientific.” And despite an anti-humanist reaction in parts of the academic Left, the concept of humanism has had a great influence in the world.

Many social movements of the past 40 years have based themselves on humanist ideas that share some aspects of Marx’s, such as the goals of individual freedom and self-development, including the Black liberation movement and the women’s and GLBT movements. So established is “humanism” in the U.S. that liberal intellectuals like the editors of THE NEW YORKER, present the political struggle in the U.S. today as one between Christian fundamentalists and humanists. A hair-raising cartoon by Lee Lorenz in the May 10 issue shows a full-scale military assault on a suburban home with a mild-looking man in the doorway. The caption reads, “2:12 p.m. Aug. 16, 2007. The last secular humanist is flushed from his spider hole.”

But the concept of humanism most often expressed is undeveloped and fuzzy. It is surely a step backward that, in today’s reactionary climate, we are called on to defend secular humanism. Marx’s humanism does not even figure in the battle of ideas, because Marx barely appears. So we are facing a different, perhaps harder job than in the 1960s, when there was widespread discussion about Marxism.

The changed terrain hits you when you read Dunayevskaya’s 1965 essay. It remains a great summary of Marx’s humanism, but the Russian and Chinese Communists against whom she argued are no longer the main enemy. Nor is there much of a Marxist Left to contest the implications of Marx’s humanism. As Dunayevskaya argued, what is crucial for a successful revolution that actually establishes a new, human society, is the re-creation of Marx’s philosophy for our age. But few are working to re-create it today.

Instead, public discussion of Marxism has dwindled to almost none, and most people view thoroughgoing social transformation as so impossible that it is hardly worth discussing. So the 1965 essay certainly does not solve the problems we face. Our job, it seems to me, is not simply to re-publish it. We need also to accompany it with a discussion of what it means to be continuators of Marx’s and Dunayevskaya’s ideas at a historic moment when revolution seems to be off the agenda. I suggest that the first order of business is to show that an alternative to capitalism is indeed possible.

This problem is addressed in News and Letters Committees’ Perspectives for 2003-04, which calls upon revolutionaries to concretize a vision of post-capitalist society. To begin this work, it is necessary to study Marx, for a fuller understanding of his achievements on this. It is crucial to explicate the inner workings of capital, rather than discussing his work at a level so general that people fail to catch the historic specificity of capitalism’s mechanisms. And it is crucial not to read Marx in light of one’s own particular concerns, but rather to draw out of his work the principles that can aid our search for capitalism’s absolute opposite.

If we have correctly identified the challenge facing us today, our task may be harder than ever. That is because Marx gave only brief hints about what a post-capitalist society would be like. To break through his and our own abstractions about it, we need to understand his method of analysis with sufficient precision to get inside the dialectic of CAPITAL and concretize it.

Dunayevskaya’s warning in 1965 against turning Marx’s humanism into an abstraction, and her discussion of the need for “thought to proceed to…concrete truths,” seem to me to be crucial to the perspective of concretizing an alternative to capitalism. Some of us have long repeated the goal of abolishing the separation between mental and manual labor and of becoming whole human beings. It is high time to say what we mean by that. If we fail to “proceed to concrete truths,” why should any one believe that a new society is possible?

‘PROCEEDING TO CONCRETE TRUTHS’

Dunayevskaya writes, “The totality of the world crisis demands a new unity of theory and practice, a new relationship of workers and intellectuals….This new stage in the self-liberation of the intellectual from dogmatism can begin only when, as Hegel put it, the intellectual feels the ‘compulsion of thought to proceed to… concrete truths.’”

The dogmatism she had in mind here was the intellectuals’ belief in the backwardness of the masses, which resulted in their tailending “actually-existing socialism.” What I am concerned with here is a different dogmatism, the belief that “there is no alternative” to capitalism. What remains key, however, is Hegel’s methodology, which we need in order to work out a new direction for revolutionary thought, and thereby break through this new dogmatism.

Hegel’s reference to “proceeding to concrete truths” is no call to leave theory behind and rush into practice, since his dialectic remained in the realm of thought. Rather, Hegel is describing the method of development of ideas–how thought, when allowed to continue its own logical development, can end up at concrete truths. Dogmatism cuts off the dialectic in thought before it can develop to its logical end

Throughout her writings, Dunayevskaya developed the importance of the dialectical impulse to follow out the logic of ideas. In a 1985 talk called “The Power of Abstraction” (contained in THE POWER OF NEGATIVITY, Lexington Books, 2002), she said,

Remember how rarely you think something through to the end. Indeed, if you do follow an abstract thought to the end, and if your Idea is the wrong one, you will wind up sounding like an idiot. That is, thinking ‘in and for itself’ will end up by proving that the Idea is no Universal. But if your Idea was correct, the concretization will prove you a genius. Ideas ‘think,’ not sequentially, but consequentially, related to other Ideas that emerge out of HISTORIC ground, and do not care where all this might lead to….

Why do we so rarely think through ideas to the end? Why are we so reluctant to do hard mental labor? It seems that many in today’s anti-war, anti-globalization, and other movements think of ideas as bare, undeveloped abstractions. They think that ideas can only be concretized by political practice–usually in the form of the same old street demonstrations around single issues, sometimes even by making unprincipled alliances. Such people must be assuming that a new, human society will just flow out of more and more protest activity, or from their good intentions, without the need ever to face any theoretical problems.

Why do some assume this, when history has so clearly proven otherwise? Perhaps many don’t consider ideas as a force for revolution because they have never considered it possible to make ideas concrete, and have never experienced the process. Therefore they cannot grasp Hegel’s notion of concretizing IDEAS as a necessary mediation between the objective world and the ideal one we seek to realize.

Perhaps some hold back from thinking through alternatives to capitalism because the present moment looks so bleak that the project seems futile. But the objective situation only underscores the need to engage in this process. We need to do so not only because we live in retrogressive times, but because, as the U.S.’s morass in Iraq shows, the empire is unstable. There are opportunities for fundamental change.

Hegel’s method alone is not sufficient, however, for thinking through alternatives to capitalism. As noted above, we simultaneously need a firm grasp of Marx’s Marxism, which alone contains an understanding of the specific “nature” of capitalism that allows it to be transcended.

Hegel cannot tell us what the new society will be like; his idea of freedom remained abstract. Marx alone laid the basis for envisioning non-capitalist society. But Marx can “tell” us this only if we practice what Dunayevskaya singled out from Hegel–following an idea to its conclusion. Indeed, she understood Marx to have followed the drive to freedom inherent in the Hegelian dialectic to its conclusion; she said that he transformed Hegel’s revolution in philosophy into a philosophy of revolution.

Thus, Hegel and Marx together spell out the material, conceptual ground for developing an alternative to capitalism. Only hard mental labor can give direction to the tasks we face today. Even though Marx avoided giving a “blueprint” of postcapitalist society, the need to work out an alternative to capitalism has been the perspective inherent in revolutionary Marxism since its birth 160 years ago, in Marx’s 1844 ESSAYS. It is time for those who dream of a different future to proceed to concrete truths.

Concretizing Marx’s Alternative To Capitalism: A Marxist-Humanist Perspective

Chair: Ray McKay
Presenters:
Joshua Howard – “Commodity Fetishism and Today’s Economic Crisis.”
Seth G. Weiss – “Silicon Valley Socialism: A Critical Examination of Richard Wolff and Stephen Resnick’s Conception of Post-capitalist Society.”
Anne Jaclard – “One System, Two Moments”
Discussant: Andrew Kliman