Overview of all pages with the authors #Chris Cutrone

Revolutionary politics and thought

September 5, 2014 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

No coarser insult, no baser defamation, can be thrown against the workers than the remark, ‘Theoretical controversies are for the intellectuals’ —Rosa Luxemburg, Reform or Revolution (1900) Since there can be no talk of an independent ideology formulated by the working masses themselves in the process of their movement the only choice is – either bourgeois or socialist ideology… This does not mean, of course, that the workers have no part in creating such an ideology. [Read More]

C. Wright Mills Democracy Environmentalism French Revolution Hannah Arendt Ideology Jacobin Karl Marx Vladimir Lenin Leon Trotsky Organization Political party Praxis Revolution Rosa Luxemburg Theory and practice Thomas jefferson

The concept of the Left and right

July 4, 2014 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

We are the 99%! —Occupy Wall Street (2011) The Left must define itself on the level of ideas, conceding that in many instances it will find itself in the minority. —Leszek Kolakowski, The Concept of the Left (1968) Description THE DISTINCTION OF THE LEFT and the right was never clear. But following the failure of the Old Left, the relevance of these categories has increasingly ceased to be self-evident. [Read More]

1914 in the history of Marxism

May 6, 2014 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

At the Platypus Affiliated Society’s annual International Convention, held at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago April 4–6, 2014, Chris Cutrone delivered the following President’s Report. An edited transcript of the presentation and subsequent discussion appears below. A full audio recording is available online at <sixth-annual-platypus-international-convention>. Cover of the Vorwärts, the SPD's party organ in 1914; the headline reads, 'Social Democracy and the War!' The SPD voted for war credits to the First World War almost 100 years ago on August 4 1914. [Read More]

1914 /2nd International August 4 Bebel Imperialism Karl Kautsky Karl Liebknecht Vladimir Lenin Marxism Nationalism Pacifism Rosa Luxemburg RSDLP SPD War Woodrow Wilson WWI

Why still read Lukács?

The place of "philosophical" questions in Marxism

February 1, 2014 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

The following is based on a presentation given on January 11, 2014 in Chicago. György Lukács in 1913 The role of “critical theory” Why read György Lukács today?1 Especially when his most famous work, History and Class Consciousness, is so clearly an expression of its specific historical moment, the aborted world revolution of 1917–19 in which he participated, attempting to follow Vladimir Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg. [Read More]

György Lukács cpgb communist party of great britain weekly worker

Revolution without Marx?

Rousseau, Kant and Hegel

November 1, 2013 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

Introduction BOURGEOIS SOCIETY CAME INTO FULL RECOGNITION WITH ROUSSEAU, who in the *Discourse on the Origin of Inequality* and On the Social Contract, opened its radical critique. Hegel wrote: “The principle of freedom dawned on the world in Rousseau.” Marx quoted Rousseau favorably that “Whoever dares undertake to establish a people’s institutions must feel himself capable of changing, as it were, human nature… to take from man his own powers, and give him in exchange alien powers which he cannot employ without the help of other men. [Read More]

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Immanuel Kant Jean-Jacques Rousseau Karl Marx

Internationalism fails

October 1, 2013 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

THE “ANTI-IMPERIALIST LEFT” considers itself opposed to all U.S. government action as “imperialist” on principle. But, as Trotsky wrote to his followers in 1938, “Learn to think!” while one may oppose the government politically, to oppose the government putting out a fire, especially when there is no alternative agency for doing so, is nonsense. But the “Left” today is not the inheritor of Trotsky, but rather of what he pitilessly assailed, the policy of the Stalinist “Popular Front Against War and Fascism” of the 1930s, for which the shibboleth was, “Which side are you on? [Read More]

Internationalism Imperialism

10 years after the Iraq War

The inevitability of failure -- and of success

February 1, 2013 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

LEADING PUBLIC MEMBER of the Socialist Workers Party of the United Kingdom, Richard Seymour, who made a name for himself with the book The Liberal Defense of Murder (2008), polemicizing against campaigns of “humanitarian” military intervention such as the Iraq War, recently released his book on the late Christopher Hitchens, Unhitched, demonstrating that Hitchens remains an enduring and indeed indispensable phenomenon in the present system of thinking on the “Left.” [Read More]

Christopher Hitchens Iraq Richard Seymour Tariq Ali

Class consciousness (from a Marxist perspective) today

November 1, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society • Other languages: Deutsch, Ελληνικά

FOR MARXISTS the division of modern socioeconomic classes is not the _cause_ of the problem of capitalism but rather its effect. Modern classes are different from ancient separations between castes, such as between the clergy or priestly caste, and the noble aristocracy or warrior caste, and the vast majority of people, “commoners,” or those who were ignorant of divinity and without honor, who, for most of history, were peasants living through subsistence agriculture, a mute background of the pageantry of the ancient world. [Read More]

Lenin and the Marxist Left after #Occupy

June 7, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

ON MARCH 31ST, 2012, the Platypus Affiliated Society invited Ben Lewis of the Communist Party of Great Britain and Tom Riley of the International Bolshevik Tendency to speak on the theme of “Lenin and the Marxist Left after #Occupy” at the 2012 Platypus International Convention held at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The original description of the event reads as follows: “The occasion for this panel is, in part, Pham Binh’s recent critique of Tony Cliff’s biography of Lenin, which was circulated on the web and published in the Communist Party of Great Britain’s Weekly Worker, and the responses in on-going debate by Paul LeBlanc and Paul D’Amato. [Read More]

/20th Century CPGB Vladimir Lenin Marxism Politics Leon Trotsky PR Occupy PR Lenin

1873--1973: The century of Marxism

The death of Marxism and the emergence of neo-liberalism and neo-anarchism

June 7, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

AT THE 2012 PLATYPUS AFFILIATED SOCIETY’S (PAS) annual International Convention, held at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago March 30–April 1, Chris Cutrone, President of the PAS, delivered the following presentation, which has been edited for clarity. A full audio recording is available online by clicking the above link. IN THE TRADITION we established just two years ago, there is a Platypus President’s report, speaking to the historical moment. [Read More]

Anarchism History History of the Left Vladimir Lenin Karl Marx Marxism Stalinism The Left Theodor W. Adorno Trotskyism