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EVENTS IN CATALONIA in the last two months represent the biggest challenge ever faced by the Spanish regime since its establishment in 1978. The explosion of the masses on to the scene has acquired at points insurrectionary features. Where does this movement come from? What is its character and how can it move forward in the face of Spanish state repression? On October 27, 2017, the Catalan Parliament, following the mandate of the October 1 independence referendum, proclaimed the Catalan Republic. [Read More]

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]

THE ACCOUNT OF HISTORY is the theory of the present: How did we get here; and what tasks remain from the past – that however appear to be “new” today? As Adorno put it, “the new is the old in distress.”1 This is true of capitalism and its crisis now. The present crisis is a crisis of the world system of capitalism that emerged in the 20th century, a crisis of the capitalist world created by the Second Industrial Revolution at the end of the 19th century – in fits and starts (such as the two World Wars and the Cold War) but nonetheless consistently and inexorably. [Read More]

China Mieville. October: The Story of the Russian Revolution. London: Verso, 2017; Tariq Ali. The Dilemmas of Lenin: Terrorism, War, Empire, Love, Revolution. London: Verso, 2017. IN AN INTERVIEW HE GAVE to discuss his new book, October, China Mieville observed that to his surprise, there has been comparatively little published on the centenary of the Russian Revolution. This means that public commentary and reflection on the revolution is inevitably poorer as a result, and that more expectation is piled onto those books that have come out. [Read More]

ON MAY 11, 2017, Stefan Hain and Sebastian Vogel of the Platypus Affiliated Society conducted an interview with Sascha Staničić of the Sozialistische Alternative [SAV] and author of Anti-Sarrazin: Argumente Gegen Rassismus, Islamfeindlichkeit und Sozialdarwinismus (2011). What follows is a translation of the edited transcript of their conversation as published in the sixth issue of Die Platypus Review. Stefan Hain and Sebastian Vogel: In its program Die Linke describes itself as a socialist party that wants to achieve “democratic socialism” through projects of gradual reform. [Read More]