[Marxism] Raya Dunayevskaya book

["Charles Brown" <cbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

From: "Eugene Gogol"

-clip-
In the last pasragraph Absolute Idea chapter of Science of Logic, Hegel

tells the reader that there is another sphere, Mind, where the Idea

manifests itself.

^^^^
CB: Can you give a paraphrase in more common language of what Hegel is
getting at in the Idea manifesting itself in Mind ?

^^^^^


 It was thus to Philosophy of Mind, and particularly its

last chapter, Absolute Mind, that Dunayevskaya went to continue her probing

of Hegel. Lenin did not feel the need in his day to go there. He felt his

grasp of Hegel allowed him to return to the realm of practice. And certainly


much of his practice post the Philosophic Notebooks was deeply

revolutionary. But Dunayevskaya, more than three decades later, after

Stalinism and at the same time after the maturity of mass movements from

below, particularly one that impacted her thought, the Miners' General

Strike of 1949-50, felt the need to probe deeper into Hegel's Absolutes. In

exploring Absolute Mind, she found within Hegel's Absolute, not alone a

movement from theory to practice, but from the practice of the masses to

theory. She spoke of the unity of those two movements as the entrance to a

new society.

^^^^
CB: This is plausible, but what do you do with the criticism that Lenin's
actual practice was so much more, oh , outstanding than Raya D's. We don't
have a rev as the result of Raya's practice.  So, as to who is correct
theoretically about the relation between theory and practice, and what ever
Hegel might have to say worthwhile on these, I'd have to choose Lenin of
Raya D.
 How do you respond to that ?

^^^^^^

Later in her probing of Lenin, her critique of him became sharper. She

argued that philosophically, though he commented on the Absolute Idea

chapter of Hegel, conceptually, he never fully entered it. I know all of

this is said here in a short-hand way.

^^^^^^^
CB: Right, can you reiterate in a way that is in a bit more common language.
Whatever Lenin "entered" it seems to have worked better than what Hegel or
Dunayevskaya "entered".

^^^^^^^



The best way to follow her movement

her might be to look at the collection of her writings on the dialectic in

Hegel and Marx that was issued after her death. Its called The Power of

Negativity, published by Lexington. One could start with her 1953 Letters on


Hegel's Absolutes reprinted in that book.

^^^^^

CB: Actually, I've looked at this some, but I have trouble picking up the
thread.

^^^^^

And of course, one isn't trying to academically tease out "fine points."

The point for Dunayevskaya was trying to workout the relationship between

philosophic creation, re-creation as in Marx and his concretization in

political-organizational practice. She argued that the Marxists post-Marx,

even when great revolutionaries, didn't establish a philosophic continuity

with Marx's Marxism. Without that they were rudderless when new

objective-subjective moments arose. Even Lenin, who certainly was

magnificent in terms of the Russian Revolution, didn't fully re-create

Marxism in the period After the revolution.


^^^^^^

CB: But Marx never "created" a revolution . Lenin seems the best Marxist of
all, even better than Marx on this score. Marx's main "creation" of
revolution is through Lenin. No Lenin, Marx is a nobody.



Hope this is at least a beginning

Best,

Gene Gogol

^^^^^^^

Thanks . It is

Charles



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