Overview of all pages with the authors #Efraim Carlebach

Labour once more

February 1, 2020 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

Author’s note: This article was originally presented as a teach-in on the history of the Labour Left[^1] given to the Platypus chapter at the London School of Economics on December 5, 2019, a week before the UK election, in which Boris Johnson’s Conservatives won a landslide majority and inflicted a resounding defeat on Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour. The argument follows that of my article “‘Last illusions’: The Labour Party and the Left,” published in issue 97 of this review in 2017. [Read More]

What makes a history Marxist?

An interview with John Rees on The Leveller Revolution

October 2, 2019 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

On Wednesday, August 28th, 2019, Efraim Carlebach interviewed John Rees, historian, activist and lead organizer of Counterfire, about his book The Leveller Revolution and the memory of the English revolution today. The questions were prepared with Richard Rubin. What follows is an edited transcript of the interview. During the interview, Boris Johnson announced the prorogation of the British Parliament, provoking comparisons to the English civil war. A postscript on the Brexit political crisis is appended. [Read More]

Forgetting Mark Fisher

April 1, 2019 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

“My whole lifetime, every time you think the Left has got somewhere, the Right is one step ahead of it”1 – Mark Fisher (1968–2017) MARK FISHER WAS OFTEN ASKED what “capitalist realism” is. His most interesting answer was that it is “a pathology of the Left.”2 This cut against other definitions of his oft-used concept, which identified it with “neoliberalism.” What ties the two together is implied in the subtitle to his 2009 book – Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative? [Read More]

Mark Fisher Accelerationism post-capitalism Communism Neoliberalism Capitalism Capitalist Realism Jeremy Corbyn

"Those Twenties"

An interview with Lawrence Parker on the National Left-Wing Movement

November 2, 2018 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

On July 21, 2018, Efraim Carlebach interviewed Lawrence Parker about his latest book, Communists and Labour – The National Left-Wing Movement 1925–1929. The book is available on lulu.com.1 What follows is an edited transcript of the interview.1 Efraim Carlebach: How did you come to write this book? Lawrence Parker: I wrote a book a while ago with a similar theme, a short pamphlet on the beginnings of Maoist organizations – or Marxist-Leninist revolutionary groups – in Britain, including The Leninist, which is still around in the shape of the CPGB/Weekly Worker. [Read More]

The unchanging core of Marxism

December 2, 2017 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

ON OCTOBER 14, 2017, Efraim Carlebach interviewed Ian Birchall at Birchall’s home in Edmonton, north London. In 1962, Birchall joined the International Socialists, a tendency led by Tony Cliff and the organizational forerunner of the extant Socialist Workers Party (UK), founded in 1977. Though he is no longer a member of the Socialist Workers Party, Birchall has remained a leading figure of the International Socialist tendency for over half a century. [Read More]

SWP (UK) Tony Cliff Cliffism Ian Birchall

Last illusions

The Labour Party and the Left

June 5, 2017 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

In every era the attempt must be made anew to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it… even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious. – Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History SINCE JEREMY CORBYN took leadership of the Labour Party in 2015, he and his party have been the North Star for many on the Left. [Read More]

Labour Party (UK) Jeremy Corbyn