Marcuse, Fromm and Dunayevskaya: A New Window on Critical Theory

During the years 1954 to 1978, the Marxist-Humanist and feminist philosopher Raya Dunayevskaya corresponded separately but intensively with two noted members of the Frankfurt School, Herbert Marcuse and Erich Fromm. The correspondence covered dialectical social theory, socialist humanism, the structure and contradictions of modern capitalism, and feminism and revolution. As a whole, these exchanges illustrate the deeply Marxist and humanist concerns of all three of these thinkers. The correspondence also highlights their significant differences as they discussed the degree to which the ideas of Marx and Hegel could continue to underpin an analysis of capitalist modernity and its forces of opposition.

Read

Democracy, Social Change, and One-Dimensionality: Reviving Marcuse

The dialectical conception of change was first elaborated in Hegel’s philosophy. It reversed the traditional logical setting of the problem by taking change as the very form of existence, and by taking existence as a totality of objective contradictions. Every particular form of existence contradicts its content, which can develop only through breaking this form and creating a new one in which the content appears in a liberated and more adequate form.

Social change was no longer an event occurring in or to a more or less static system, but the very modus existentiae of the system, and the question was not how and why changes took place but how and why an at least provisional stability and order was accomplished.

The above passages contain a type of inquiry that is central to all of Marcuse’s work. Every text by Marcuse is an exercise in the above type of dialectic.

Read

Marcuse & Fromm: A New Window on Critical Theory

During the years 1954 to 1978, the Marxist-Humanist and feminist philosopher Raya Dunayevskaya corresponded separately but intensively with two noted members of the Frankfurt School, Herbert Marcuse and Erich Fromm. The correspondence covered dialectical social theory, socialist humanism, the structure and contradictions of modern capitalism, and feminism and revolution. As a whole, these exchanges illustrate the deeply Marxist and humanist concerns of all three of these thinkers. The correspondence also highlights their significant differences as they discussed the degree to which the ideas of Marx and Hegel could continue to underpin an analysis of capitalist modernity and its forces of opposition.

Read