Overview of all pages with the authors #Chris Cutrone

Obama: Progress in regress

The end of "black politics"

September 1, 2008 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

THE ELECTION OF BARACK OBAMA will be an event. But it has proven confusing for most on the “Left,” who claim to want to overcome anti-black racism and achieve social justice. Rejection of Obama on this basis has been as significant as the embrace of his candidacy. There is as much anxiety as hope stirred by Obama, especially regarding the significance of his blackness. For instance, the usually discerning and astute black political scientist and critical intellectual commentator Adolph L. [Read More]

"Let the dead bury the dead!"

Response to Principia Dialectica (UK) on May 1968

May 1, 2008 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

THE NEW MAYDAY MAGAZINE (UK) and Platypus have been in dialogue on the issues of anarchism and Marxism and the state of the “Left” today in light of history. (Please see “Organization, political action, history and consciousness” by Chris Cutrone for Platypus, and “Half-time Team Talk” by Trevor Bark for Mayday, in issues #2, February 2008, and #4, April-May 2008, respectively.) Principia Dialectica, another new British journal, also has taken note of Platypus (see “Weird gonzo leftoid journal,” April 15, 2008), specifically with our interview of Moishe Postone on “Marx after Marxism” (in issue #3, March 2008). [Read More]

1968 Anarchism Exchanges György Lukács Marxism Mayday Moishe Postone Principia Dialectica Theodor W. Adorno Trevor Bark Walter Benjamin

The 3 Rs: Reform, Revolution, and "Resistance"

The problematic forms of "anticapitalism" today

April 1, 2008 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

After the failure of the 1960s New Left, the underlying despair with regard to the real efficacy of political will, of political agency, in a historical situation of heightened helplessness, became a self-constitution as outsider, as other, rather than an instrument of transformation. Focused on the bureaucratic stasis of the Fordist, late 20th Century world, the Left echoed the destruction of that world by the dynamics of capital: neoliberalism and globalization. [Read More]

Review: Angela Davis "How does change happen?"

March 1, 2008 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

ON THE FRIGID WINTER EVENING of Thursday, January 24, Angela Davis, a former Communist Party activist associated in the 1960s–70s with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Black Panther Party, and current Professor in the History of Consciousness program at the University of California at Santa Cruz, gave the annual George E. Kent lecture (in honor of the first black American tenured professor) at the University of Chicago Rockefeller Chapel, to an overflow audience from the campus and surrounding community. [Read More]

Angela Davis

Organization, political action, history, and consciousness

On anarchism and Marxism

February 1, 2008 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

Socialism is the first popular movement in world history that has set itself the goal of bringing human consciousness, and thereby free will, into play in the social actions of mankind… to try to take its history into its own hands; instead of remaining a will-less football, it will take the tiller of social life and become the pilot to the goal of its own history. —Rosa Luxemburg, The Crisis of German Social Democracy (1915) [Read More]

Anarchism Consciousness Exchanges History History of the Left Marxism Organization Political action

The Left is dead! Long live the Left!

Vicissitudes of historical consciousness and possibilities for emancipatory social politics today

November 1, 2007 | The Platypus Affiliated Society • Other languages: Ελληνικά

The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. —Karl Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852) The theorist who intervenes in practical controversies nowadays discovers on a regular basis and to his shame that whatever ideas he might contribute were expressed long ago – and usually better the first time around. —Theodor W. Adorno, “Sexual Taboos and the Law Today” (1963) [Read More]

19th Century /20th Century capitalism consciousness counterrevolution crisis Vladimir Lenin Critical Theory defeat depoliticization emancipation György Lukács Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel History History of the Left humanity ideology Imperialism Industrial Revolution Iraq Karl Korsch liberalism Marxism Karl Marx Moishe Postone Negative Dialectics New Left Friedrich Nietzsche opportunism Philosophy Political economy Politics postmodernism Revolution Robert Pippin Rosa Luxemburg Social Democracy Social Democratic Party of Germany SPD Socialism society Stalinism Theodor W. Adorno utopianism Walter Benjamin war

The relevance of Lenin today

January 1, 0001 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

If the Bolshevik Revolution is – as some people have called it – the most significant political event of the 20th century, then Lenin must for good or ill be considered the century’s most significant political leader. Not only in the scholarly circles of the former Soviet Union, but even among many non-Communist scholars, he has been regarded as both the greatest revolutionary leader and revolutionary statesman in history, as well as the greatest revolutionary thinker since Marx. [Read More]

Vladimir Lenin

The Left is dead! Long live the Left!

Vicissitudes of historical consciousness and possibilities for emancipatory social politics today

January 1, 0001 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. —Karl Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852) The theorist who intervenes in practical controversies nowadays discovers on a regular basis and to his shame that whatever ideas he might contribute were expressed long ago – and usually better the first time around. —Theodor W. Adorno, “Sexual Taboos and the Law Today” (1963) [Read More]

"Race" in social-historical and political context

January 1, 0001 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

Dear Editors, I would like to respond to Chris Cutrone’s article, “Review: Angela Davis ‘How does change happen?’” from the March 2008 issue #3. I agree with Cutrone’s general sentiment that we as a country have failed to productively engage the problem of race, and that an honest critique of capitalism is pretty much absent from American politics. However, one does not necessarily follow the other. I disagree that a discussion of capitalism must necessarily displace a discussion of race, a term which Cutrone disrespectfully frames in quotation marks and describes as a “distraction” and “inadequate category. [Read More]

Race Angela Davis