Raya dunayevskaya biography templates

  • Raya Dunayevskaya founded Marxist-Humanism in the United States.
  • Written by Raya Dunayevskaya and Michael Flug.
  • Born in Russia, she was brought to the U.S. as a child.

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    Richard Greeman

    WE MOURN the passing of Raya Dunayevskaya, the Russian-born philosopher and revolutionary whose long and rik life was dedicated to the revolutionary self-emancipation of humankind. Her voluminous writings, the many struggles in which she participated, and the memories of the thousands she touched with her words, deeds and example, are a remarkable living legacy.

    Her sixty-odd years of revolutionary thought and activity are summed up in three remarkable books, Marxism and Freedom (1957), Philosophy and Revolution (1973), Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation, and Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution (1982), and in the Marxist­Humanist organization she founded and led until her death, News and Letters Committees.

    At all times it was Dunayevskaya’s method to try to meet the utmaning of mass revolutionary creativity coming “from below” with a corresponding development in revolutionary thought in beställning to lay the grund for a new un

  • raya dunayevskaya biography templates

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    Raya Dunayevskaya’s Marxist Humanism and the Alternative to Capitalism

    The upsurge of interest in socialism in recent years has unfolded in a context defined by one of the most massive and creative movements against racist dehumanization in the history of the United States. The movements against police abuse and for black lives clearly suggest that the effort to forge an alternative to capitalism hinges on developing an intersectional Marxism that treats race, gender, and sexuality as seriously as class. So do the ongoing struggles against the sexism and homophobia that has often manifested itself within leftist organizations.  

    For this reason, one figure in the history of Marxism who has been receiving increased attention is Raya Dunayevskaya (1910–87). Dunayevskaya challenged the premises of established Marxism by promoting a humanist alternative to the myriad forms of alienation that define modern society. As Adrienne Rich put it:

    Dunayevskaya vehemently opposed the notion t

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    Raya Dunayevskaya

    Raya Dunayevskaya founded Marxist-Humanism in the United States. During a lifetime in the Marxist movement, she developed a revolutionary body of ideas: the theory of state-capitalism; the philosophy of Marxist-Humanism as rooted in the U.S. in labor, the Black dimension and women’s liberation; the global concept of the inseparability of philosophy and revolution as the dialectics of liberation. These concepts have been developed in three major works: Marxism and Freedom (published in 1958); Philosophy and Revolution (published in 1973); and Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation, and Marx's Philosophy of Revolution (published in 1982).

    Born in Russia, she was brought to the U.S. as a child. She became Russian Secretary to Leon Trotsky in exile in Mexico in 1937-38, during the period of the Moscow Trials and the Dewey Commission of inquiry into the charges made against Trotsky. At the outbreak of World War II, she broke with Trotsky in opposition t