Book Description
In this classic exposition of Marxist thought, Raya Dunayevskaya, with clarity and great insight, traces the development and explains the essential features of Marx's analysis of history. Using as her point of departure the Industrial and French Revolutions, the European upheavals of 1848, the American Civil War, and the Paris Commune of 1871, Dunayevskaya shows how Marx, inspired by these events, adapted Hegel's philosophy to analyze the course of history as a dialectical process that moves "from practice to theory." The essence of Marx's philosophy, as Dunayevskaya points out, is the human struggle for freedom, which entails the gradual emergence of a proletarian revolutionary conciousness and the discovery through conflict of the means for realizing complete human freedom.
In spite of the profound derailment of Marxist political philosophy in the twentieth century, Dunayevskaya points to developments such as the Hungarian revolt of 1956 and the civil rights struggles in the United States as signs that the indomitable quest for freedom on the part of the downtrodden cannot forever be repressed. The Hegelian dialectic of events propelled by the spirit of the masses thus moves on inexorably with the hope for future achievement of political, economic, and social freedom and equality for all.
About the author
Raya Dunayevskaya, who died in 1987, was a highly respected and influential philosopher, political activist, and femenist. She was the founder of Marxist Humanism in the United States.
