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

"A new world racing towards us"

December 1, 2013 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

ON OCTOBER 28, 2013, Spencer A. Leonard interviewed Bill Ayers, former member of Students for a Democratic Society and the Weather Underground and author of the memoirs *Fugitive Days* (2001) and Public Enemy (2013). What follows is an edited transcript of their conversation. The Weather Underground symbol on the cover of *Prairie Fire*. About the letters to police and journalists that would accompany Weather Underground bombings in the 1970s, Ayers writes in *Fugitive Days*, 'Each letter had a logo hand-drawn across the page -- our trademark thick and colorful rainbow with a slash of angry lightning cutting through it. [Read More]

Adam Smith, Revolutionary

November 1, 2013 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

Cornwallis's 1781 surrender at Yorktown, where American soldiers sang the British Revolutionary song 'The World Turned Upside Down' as the British laid down their arms. All references to Smith’s *Wealth of Nations* in what follows are to the two volume edition edited by R.H. Campbell and Andrew Skinner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976). References will be provided in the text in brackets. “By exposing the historical necessity that had brought capitalism into being, political economy became the critique of history as a whole” —Theodor W. [Read More]

Adam Smith Economics

Marx's liberalism?

An interview with Jonathan Sperber 

July 1, 2013 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

ON JUNE 25, 2013, Spencer A. Leonard and Sunit Singh interviewed Jonathan Sperber, historian of the 1848 revolutions and author of the acclaimed new biography Karl Marx: A Nineteenth Century Life (2013), on the radio show Radical Minds broadcast on WHPK – FM (88.5 FM) Chicago. What follows is an edited version of the interview that was conducted on air. Spencer A. Leonard: Let me start off by asking a very general question. [Read More]

Marxism Liberalism

For liberty and union

February 1, 2013 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

SPENCER A. LEONARD interviewed noted Civil War historian James McPherson, author of the classic Battle Cry of Freedom (1988), to discuss the new Lincoln biopic by Steven Spielberg and the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. The interview was broadcast on January 29, 2013 on the radio show Radical Minds on WHPK – FM (88.5 FM) Chicago. What follows is an edited transcript of their conversation. Spencer A. Leonard: 150 years ago, on January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued his famous Emancipation Proclamation. [Read More]

History James McPherson Abraham Lincoln

Election 2012: An interview with Jill Stein

November 6, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

ON NOVEMBER 3, 2012, Spencer A. Leonard interviewed 2012 Green Party candidate Jill Stein. What follows is an edited transcript of the interview. Spencer A. Leonard: You have written that, “It is time for the Left to be realistic about how it is going to build the power we need to make the changes we want.”1 In what ways has the Left been unrealistic in the past? How is your candidacy intended to break with that, in howsoever modest a way? [Read More]

Jill Stein Radical Minds /2012 Election

Election 2012: An interview with Luis J. Rodriguez

November 1, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

ON SEPTEMBER 11, 2012 the radio program *Radical Minds* on WHPK (88.5 FM) broadcast an interview with Luis J. Rodriguez. The interview was conducted by Edward Remus and Spencer A. Leonard of the Platypus Affiliated Society. Rodriguez has forty years of experience as an organizer among diverse communities and is the author of 15 books. He co-founded the Network for Revolutionary Change in October of 2011, and in July of 2012 he joined the Justice Party’s 2012 presidential campaign as Rocky Anderson’s running mate. [Read More]

Luis J. Rodriguez

Election 2012: An interview with Cornel West

November 1, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

LAST MAY, the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted a conversation on the campus of the University of Chicago between Carl Dix of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA and Cornel West, a veteran member of the Democratic Socialists of America, the co-author of The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto (2012), and Professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice at the Union Theological Seminary in New York. Watson Ladd and Spencer A. [Read More]

Cornel West /2012 Election

"These petrified relations must be forced to dance"

October 1, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

ON AUGUST 22, 2012, Douglas La Rocca and Spencer A. Leonard of Platypus interviewed Dick Howard, professor emeritus at Stony Brook University and the author of The Specter of Democracy: What Marx and Marxists Haven’t Understood and Why, among other books. What follows is an edited transcript of their interview. Spencer A. Leonard: In The Development of the Marxian Dialectic (1972), you countered Louis Althusser on the question of Marx’s relationship to the Young Hegelians and, through them, to German Idealism as a whole. [Read More]

Democracy Dick Howard

The birth of a revolution?

June 7, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

ON FEBRUARY 28, 2012, the radio program Radical Minds on WHPK-FM Chicago broadcast an interview with Mary Gabriel, the author of Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2011). The interview was conducted by Spencer A. Leonard of the Platypus Affiliated Society. What follows is an edited transcript of their conversation. Spencer A. Leonard: Love and Capital is a biography not only of Marx but of his family and intimate circle, above all Friedrich Engels. [Read More]

Love and Capital Karl Marx Marxism Mary Gabriel

Splits, regroupments, war, and revolution in Germany, 1914--1920

A conversation with Ben Lewis

May 1, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

_LAST WINTER, on their radio show Radical Minds on WHPK-FM Chicago, Spencer A. Leonard and Watson Ladd interviewed Ben Lewis, a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and co-author and translator, together with Lars T. Lih, of Zinoviev and Martov: Head to Head in Halle (2011). The interview originally was broadcast on December 6, 2011. What follows is an edited transcript of their conversation._ Spencer A. Leonard: Please give a brief overview of Zinoviev and Martov: Head to Head in Halle. [Read More]

Ben Lewis CPGB Eduard Bernstein Lars T. Lih Rosa Luxemburg SPD German Revolution