Overview of all pages with the authors #Spencer A. Leonard

Trotskyists drew a line at supporting the Democrats

An interview with Wayne Price

March 1, 2020 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

The following is an edited transcript of an interview with Wayne Price conducted on September 14th, 2019. Wayne Price is a former member of the International Socialists and the author of The Abolition of the State: Anarchist & Marxist Perspectives, Anarchism & Socialism: Reformism or Revolution? and Value of Radical Theory: An Anarchist Introduction to Marx’s Critique of Political Economy. Spencer Leonard: Let’s begin at the beginning. How were you first politicized? [Read More]

"We should not look back to the New Left"

An interview with Dan La Botz

November 1, 2019 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

On September 26, 2019, Matt Cavagrotti and Spencer A. Leonard of the Platypus Affiliated Society conducted an interview via email with Dan La Botz, a longtime labor union activist and the author of A Troublemaker’s Handbook: How to Fight Back Where You Work — And Win! *(1991), *Rank-and-File Rebellion: Teamsters for a Democratic Union (1991), and What Went Wrong? the Nicaraguan Revolution: A Marxist Analysis (2016). What follows is a transcript of their exchange. [Read More]

Beyond sect or movement

What is a political center?

September 1, 2019 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

The following is an edited transcript of a panel that took place at the Left Forum in New York City on June 30, 2019. The panelists were asked to respond to the following description: In his 1973 essay, ”Anatomy of the Micro-Sect,” Hal Draper defines a party as opposed to a “movement” or the “sects” that dominated the Left of his time: A sect presents itself as the embodiment of the socialist movement, though it is a membership organization whose boundary is set more or less rigidly by the points in its political program rather than by its relation to the social struggle. [Read More]

Nobody wanted to hear, "You're reactionary in what you're doing"

An Interview with Earl Silbar

June 1, 2019 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

On April 23, 2019, Stephanie Gomez interviewed Earl Silbar, co-editor of the recently published You Say You Want a Revolution: SDS, PL, and Adventures in Building a Worker-Student Alliance (2018). Spencer A. Leonard helped draft the questions. On April 25, an edited version of the original interview was aired in an episode of “Radical Minds,” a radio show on WHPK 88.5 FM in Chicago, hosted by Gomez. What follows is an edited transcript of the interview, including follow-up questions. [Read More]

"Through the lens of the national liberation struggle"

An Interview with Carl Davidson

June 1, 2019 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

On February 20, 2019, Spencer A. Leonard interviewed veteran of the New Left and New Communist Movement Carl Davidson, who recently edited a collection of “lost writings of SDS” entitled Revolutionary Youth & the New Working Class (2011).1 What follows is an edited transcript of that interview. Spencer A. Leonard: Tell me about your own early politicization and experience in the SDS. What does the phrase “Prairie Power,” with which your cohort was associated, mean? [Read More]

"On the side of the oppressed"

An interview with David Gilbert

June 1, 2019 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

On April 20, 2019, Spencer A. Leonard wrote to David Gilbert by the post, sending him written interview questions. Gilbert replied with his responses in a letter dated May 12, 2019. A former member of the Weather Underground, Gilbert is currently imprisoned at the Wende Correctional Facility for his role in a 1981 armored car robbery that resulted in the deaths of two police officers and a security guard. He has written two books: No Surrender: Writings from an Anti-Imperialist Political Prisoner (2004) *and* Love and Struggle: My Life in SDS, the Weather Underground, and Beyond (2011). [Read More]

Karl Marx, utopian socialist

An interview with Gregory Claeys

August 1, 2018 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

On May 9, 2018, Spencer A. Leonard interviewed Gregory Claeys, historian of socialism and author of Machinery, Money and the Millennium: From Moral Economy to Socialism, 1815–1860 (1987), Imperial Sceptics: British Critics of Empire, 1850–1920 (2010), and Marx and Marxism (2018), among others. The day after recording the interview it was broadcast on “Radical Minds” on WHPK–FM (88.5 FM) in Chicago. What follows is an edited version of the interview. [Read More]

Utopia Socialism Karl Marx

To unite the many

April 4, 2015 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

ON FEBRUARY 17, 2015, Gregor Baszak and Spencer A. Leonard of the Platypus Affiliated Society conducted an interview with Adolph L. Reed, Jr., author of The Jesse Jackson Phenomenon (1986), W. E. B. Du Bois and American Political Thought (1997), and Stirrings in the Jug (1999). What follows is an edited transcript of their conversation. Spencer A. Leonard: At the beginning of the essay you recently published in Harper’s titled “Nothing Left” you write that the major period of the Left’s influence on the course of American politics was from the mid-1930s to the end of the Second World War. [Read More]

2001

The Decline of the Left in the 20th Century: Toward a Theory of Historical Regression

November 18, 2009 | The Platypus Affiliated Society • Other languages: Ελληνικά, Deutsch

ON APRIL 18, 2009, the Platypus Affiliated Society conducted the following panel discussion at the Left Forum Conference at Pace University in New York City. The panel was organized around four significant moments in the progressive separation of theory and practice over the course of the 20th century: 2001 (Spencer A. Leonard), 1968 (Atiya Khan), 1933 (Richard Rubin), and 1917 (Chris Cutrone). The following is an edited transcript of the 2001 presentation by Spencer A. [Read More]

Afghanistan Fred Halliday Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Iran Iranian Revolution Michel Foucault Moishe Postone New Left Stalinism Left Forum Theodor W. Adorno

The Decline of the Left in the 20th Century: Toward a Theory of Historical Regression

Questions and Answers

November 17, 2009 | The Platypus Affiliated Society • Other languages: Ελληνικά

ON APRIL 18, 2009, the Platypus Affiliated Society conducted the following panel discussion at the Left Forum Conference at Pace University in New York City. The panel was organized around four significant moments in the progressive separation of theory and practice over the course of the 20th century: 2001 (Spencer A. Leonard), 1968 (Atiya Khan), 1933 (Richard Rubin), and 1917 (Chris Cutrone). The following is an edited transcript of the Q & A session that followed. [Read More]

Left Forum History