Raya Dunayevskaya | |
|---|---|
 Dunayevskayac. 1960s | |
| Born | Raya Shpigel May 1, 1910 |
| Died | June 9, 1987(1987-06-09) (aged 77) |
| Other names | Freddie Forest; Rae Spiegel; Rae Dwyer |
| Movement | Johnson–Forest Tendency |
| Spouse | John Dwyer[1] |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Western Marxism,Marxist humanism,Hegelian Marxism,Marxist feminism |
| Main interests | Social theory,social revolution,social movements,dialectical philosophy,Marxistpraxis,women's liberation |
| Notable ideas | State capitalism, movement from practice that is itself a form of theory, absolute negativity as new beginning |
Raya Dunayevskaya (bornRaya Shpigel,Рая Шпигель; May 1, 1910 – June 9, 1987), laterRae Spiegel, also known by the pseudonymFreddie Forest, was theAmerican founder of thephilosophy ofMarxist humanism in the United States. At one timeLeon Trotsky's secretary, she later split with him and ultimately founded the organizationNews and Letters Committees and was its leader until her death.[2]
OfLithuanian Jewish descent, Dunayevskaya was born Raya Shpigel in thePodolia Governorate of theRussian Empire (present-dayUkraine) and emigrated to the United States in 1922 (her name changed to Rae Spiegel) and joined the revolutionary movement in her childhood.[3]
Active in theCommunist Party USA youth organization, she was expelled at age 18 and thrown down a flight of stairs when she suggested that her local comrades should find outLeon Trotsky's response to hisexpulsion from theSoviet Communist Party and theComintern. By the following year she found a group of independentTrotskyists inBoston, led byAntoinette Buchholz Konikow, an advocate ofbirth control and legalabortion.[4] In the 1930s, she adopted her mother's maiden name Dunayevskaya.[5]
Without getting permission from the U.S. Trotskyist organization, she went toMexico in 1937 to serve as Trotsky's Russian language secretary during hisexile there.[4][6]
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 theSoviet Union was a "workers' state" even after theMolotov–Ribbentrop Pact. She opposed any notion that workers should be asked to defend this "workers' state" which had signed a non-aggression pact withNazi Germany. Along with theorists such asC. L. R. James, and laterTony Cliff, Dunayevskaya argued that the Soviet Union had become "state capitalist".[7] Toward the end of her life, she stated that what she called "my real development" only began after her break with Trotsky.[8]
Her simultaneous study of the Russian economy and of Marx's early writings (later known as theEconomic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844), led to her theory that not only was theUSSR a "state capitalist" society, but that "state capitalism" was a new world stage. Much of her initial analysis was published inThe New International in 1942–1943.
In 1940, she was involved in the split in theSocialist Workers Party (SWP) that led to the formation of theWorkers Party (WP), with which she shared an objection to Trotsky's characterisation of the Soviet Union as a "degenerated workers' state". Within the WP, she formed theJohnson–Forest Tendency alongsideC. 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 wasbureaucratic collectivist.
Differences within the WP steadily widened, and in 1947, after a brief period of independent existence during which they published a series of documents, the tendency returned to the ranks of the SWP. Their membership in the SWP was based on a shared insistence that there was a pre-revolutionary situation just around the corner, and the shared belief that aLeninist 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 rejectedLeninism 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 toautomation, especially in theautomobile industry, which they came to see as paradigmatic of a new stage ofcapitalism. This led to the tendency leaving the SWP again to begin independent work.
After more than a decade of developing the theory ofstate capitalism, Dunayevskaya continued her study of theHegelian dialectic by taking on a task the Johnson–Forest Tendency had set itself: exploringHegel'sPhanomenologie Des Geistes. In 1954 she initiated a decades long correspondence with the critical theoristHerbert Marcuse, in which the necessity and freedom dialectic in Hegel and Marx became a focal point of contention. She advanced an interpretation of Hegel'sabsolutes 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 ofMarxist Humanism flowed.
In 1953 Dunayevskaya moved to Detroit, where she was to live until 1984. In 1954–1955 she and C. L. R. James engaged in a split[clarification needed]. In 1955, she founded her own organization,News and Letters Committees, and a Marxist-Humanist newspaper,News & Letters, which remains in publication today. The newspaper covers women's struggles, the liberation of workers, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual rights and the disability rights movement, while not separating that coverage from philosophical and theoretical articles. The organization split in 2008-2009 and the U.S. Marxist-Humanists (later to become theInternational 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), andRosa 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.[9]
Raya Dunayevskaya's speeches, letters, publications, notes, recordings and other items are located in the Walter P. Reuther Library atWayne State University inDetroit. Microfilm copies of the collection are available from the WSU Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs and PDF copies are online atthe Raya Dunayevskaya Memorial Fund website. Guides to the collection are available from News and Letters Committees and in PDF form at the RDMF website.
