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The extensive correspondence between Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979) & Raya Dunayevskaya (1910-1987) covers the years 1954 to 1979. During this period they debated several issues: (1) the relation of G. W. F. Hegel to Karl Marx; (2) the effects of automation & other technological changes on the working class & its relation to other oppositional social groups, eg, blacks, youth, & women; & (3) the type of critique to make of established communist societies. Their dialogue sheds new light on some of their major published writings, eg, Marcuse's Reason and Revolution (1941), Soviet Marxism (1958), & One-Dimensional Man (1964), & Dunayevskaya's Marxism and Freedom (1958), & Philosophy and Revolution (1973). AA

Raya Dunayevskaya's theory of state capitalism, first developed in the 1940s as an analysis of Stalin's Russia, is here related to her subsequent work (1953-87) on Hegel, on Marxist humanism and on Marxism and feminism. Her concept of Hegel's "absolute negativity as new beginning" is connected to her voluminous writings on Marx's major works: 1844 Essays, Grundrisse, Capital, Ethnological Notebooks. Contrasts and comparisons are drawn to the writings of others on these issues including Lange, James, Marcuse, Geras, Markovic, Rosdolsky, Krader and Shanin.

A discussion of Russian-US social theorist & philosopher Raya Dunayevskaya, focusing on two aspects of her theoretical work: (1) the concept of state capitalism, & (2) her analysis of the humanist content of Karl Marx's writings. Based on analysis of both her published work (eg, see Marxism and Freedom, 1958) & unpublished material (located in the Raya Dunayevskaya Collection at Wayne State U, Detroit, Mich), it is argued that for Dunayevskaya, as compared to other writers, the key to determining the essential capitalist nature of the USSR was Marx's concept of alienated labor & law of value & surplus value, which, she showed, held or were even intensified under a totalitarian planned economy. Thus, not planning, but workers' emancipation was the key feature of socialism. Her writings on state capitalism later addressed Mao Tse-tung's China as well. Dunayevskaya's writings on G. W. F. Hegel's concept of absolutes & on Karl Marx's humanism are discussed. 57 References. Modified AA