Left Forum 2019

On June 30, 2019 at the Left Forum at Long Island University Brooklyn in New York City, the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted a panel titled \“The New Deal and American Socialism\“. Description: The New Deal is widely associated with socialism. This association holds true not only within the popular imagination shared across many sections of American society, but also within the historical imagination of the contemporary Left. This panel will consider the New Deal as it appeared to organized political tendencies that struggled for socialism during and after the 1930s. [Read More]

On June 30, 2019 at the Left Forum at Long Island University Brooklyn in New York City, the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted a panel titled \“Beyond Sect or Movement: What is a Political Center?\” Description: In his 1973 essay, \“Anatomy of the Micro-Sect,\” Hal Draper gives a definition of a party as opposed to a ‘movement’ or the ‘sects’ that seemed to dominate 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]