Abstract
Hudis and Anderson argue that the twenty-first century has experienced a revival of Marxist thought in many spheres, as well as important academic writings on Hegel. However, these two streams of thought have operated in separate spheres, since recent Marxist writing has avoided Hegel and dialectics, while academic writing on Hegel has avoided Marx and Marxism. They argue that Dunayevskaya’s writings can help to bridge this divide. In an essay that originally appeared as the introduction to Power of Negativity (2002), a posthumous collection of Dunayevskaya’s writings on the dialectic, Hudis and Anderson provide a brief intellectual biography of Dunayevskaya, stressing her work on the dialectic, but also touching on her theory of state capitalism and its relationship to a critique of Stalinism and fascism. They trace her key philosophical insight, Hegel’s absolute negativity as new beginning, from her earliest writings. Their discussion ranges from the 1953 Letters on Hegel’s Absolutes and Marxism and Freedom (1958), to her most deeply philosophical work, Philosophy and Revolution (1973), and to the writings she left in draft form at her death in 1987. In so doing, Hudis and Anderson show affinities and differences between Dunayevskaya’s concept of dialectic those of other Hegelian Marxists like Lenin, C. L. R. James, Marcuse, and Lukács. They draw still sharper contrasts between her work and that of Adorno, who rejected Hegel’s concept of negativity in favor of his version of “negative dialectics,” and of Derrida, whose deconstructionism attacked the entire dialectical tradition.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adorno, Theodor. 1973. Negative Dialectics, trans. by E. B. Ashton. New York: Seabury Press.
———. 1994. “Aspects of Hegel’s Philosophy.” In Hegel: Three Studies, trans. by Shierry Weber Nicholsen. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Anderson, Kevin. 1995. Lenin, Hegel, and Western Marxism. Champaign-Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Berthold-Bond, Daniel. 1989. Hegel’s Grand Synthesis, a Study of Being, Thought and History. Albany: SUNY Press.
Brokmeyer, Ron, Raya Dunayevskaya, et al. 1984. The Fetish of High Tech and Marx’s Unknown Mathematical Manuscripts. Chicago: News and Letters.
Butler, Judith. 1999. Introduction to a new edition of Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in 20th Century France. New York: Columbia University Press.
Coole, Dianne. 2000. Negativity and Politics. London: Routledge.
Derrida, Jacques. 1971. Positions, trans. by Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
———. 1978. “From Restricted to General Economy, a Hegelian Without Reserve.” In Writing and Difference, trans. by Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
———. 1986. Glas, trans. by J. P. Leavey and R. Rand. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
———. 1993. Specters of Marx, trans. by Peggy Kamuf. New York: Routledge.
Dunayevskaya, Raya. 1944. “A New Revision of Marxian Economics.” American Economic Review 34(3): 531–537.
———. 1982. The Raya Dunayevskaya Collection: Marxist-Humanism—A Half Century of Its World Development, on Deposit at Walter Reuther Archives of Labor History and Urban Affairs in Detroit, Michigan.
———. 1985. Women’s Liberation and the Dialectics of Revolution. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
———. 1989 [1973]. Philosophy and Revolution, from Hegel to Sartre and from Marx to Mao. New York: Columbia University Press.
———. 1991. Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation, and Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution. Champaign Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
———. 1992. The Marxist-Humanist Theory of State-Capitalism: Selected Writings by Raya Dunayevskaya. Chicago: News and Letters.
———. 1997. “May 1972 letter ‘On C.L.R. James’ Notes on Dialectics.’” Reprinted in News & Letters, October.
———. 2000 [1958]. Marxism and Freedom, from 1776 Until Today. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books.
Engels, Friedrich. 1990. Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, Marx-Engels Collected Works, Vol. 26. New York: International Publishers.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1987. The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 2, trans. by Thomas McCarthy. Boston: Beacon.
Hegel, G. W. F. 1969. Science of Logic, trans. by A. V. Miller. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.
Hoffmeyer, John H. 1996. The Presence of the Future in Hegel’s Logic. Rutherford: Associated University Presses.
Hudis, Peter. 1995. “Labor, High-Tech Capitalism, and the Crisis of the Subject: A Critique of Recent Developments in Critical Theory.” Humanity and Society 19(4): 4–20.
———. 1997. “Conceptualizing an Emancipatory Alternative: István Mészáros’ Beyond Capital.” Socialism and Democracy 11(1): 37–54.
Hudis, Peter and Kevin B. Anderson, eds. 2002. The Power of Negativity: Selected Writings on the Dialectic in Hegel and Marx. New York: Lexington Books.
James, C. L. R. 1980. Notes on Dialectics, Hegel, Marx, Lenin. Westport, Connecticut: Lawrence Hill & Co.
Jameson, Fredric. 1997. “Interview with Fredric Jameson.” In Lukács After Communism, Interviews with Contemporary Intellectuals, edited by Eva L. Corredor. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Jeannot, Thomas M. 1999. “Raya Dunayevskaya’s Conception of Ultimate Reality and Meaning.” Journal of Ultimate Reality and Meaning 22(4): 276–293.
Johnson, Patricia Altenbernd. 1989. “Women’s Liberation: Following Dunayevskaya in Practicing Dialectics.” Quarterly Journal of Ideology 13(4): 65–74.
Kellner, Douglas. 1984. Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of Marxism. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Lukács, Georg. 1975. The Young Hegel, trans. by Rodney Livingstone. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Marcuse, Herbert. 1941. Reason and Revolution. New York: Oxford.
Marx, Karl. 1958. “Critique of the Hegelian Dialectic.” In Marxism and Freedom by Raya Dunayevskaya. New York: Bookman.
———. 1975. “Critique of the Hegelian Dialectic.” In Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 3. New York: International Publishers.
———. 1976. Capital, Vol. I, trans. by Ben Fowkes. London: Pelican.
Moon, Terry. 2001. “Dunayevskaya.” In Women Building Chicago, 1790–1990: A Bibliographical Dictionary, edited by Rima Luin Schultz and Adele Hast. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Nicolapoulos, Toula and George Vassilacopoulos. 1999. Hegel and the Logical Structure of Love. London: Ashgate.
Ollman, Bertell. 1993. Dialectical Investigations. New York: Routledge.
Phillips, Andy and Raya Dunayevskaya. 1984. The Coal Miners’ General Strike of 1949–50 and the Birth of Marxist-Humanism in the U.S. Chicago: News and Letters.
Postone, Moishe. 1993. Time, Labor, and Social Domination. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Rockmore, Tom. 1992. Irrationalism: Lukács and the Marxist View of Reason. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hudis, P., Anderson, K.B. (2021). Raya Dunayevskaya’s Concept of Dialectic. In: Anderson, K.B., Durkin, K., Brown, H.A. (eds) Raya Dunayevskaya's Intersectional Marxism. Marx, Engels, and Marxisms. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53717-3_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53717-3_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-53716-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-53717-3
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)