116

IN A RECENT ARTICLE on the transgender liberation movement, David Faes mobilizes a critique of the electoral strategies of the homo/transnormative political struggle. Faes’s critique reprimands the methods of LGBTQ+ activists on the Left for pursuing social change through “existing civic institutions and the Democratic Party.”1 He claims that the effect of such a strategy is ultimately “the political miseducation of the youth they aim to enlist to such a cause. [Read More]

Prepared opening remarks presented at the closing plenary of the 11th annual Platypus Affiliated Society international convention, April 6, 2019, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. A complete audio recording of the event, including response by Richard Rubin and audience Q&A, is available at: https://archive.org/details/Redeeming20thCentury040619 The 20th century A SENIOR TEACHING COLLEAGUE of mine at the University of Chicago revised the college core syllabus, which he said needed to be “brought into the 21^st^ century. [Read More]

THE PLATYPUS AFFILIATED SOCIETY’S project is to think through the impact of defeat and decline on the revolutionary Left’s theory and praxis. Reading and viewing Platypus materials online, we quickly learn how important the nexus between philosophy and politics is for this project.[^1] Although both my political and philosophical opinions (left social democratic and egregiously eclectic, respectively) differ profoundly from those of Platypus, I find great value in engaging with their viewpoint on the relationship between philosophy and politics. [Read More]

“THE REVOLUTION MAROONED,” published in the Platypus Review #114,[^1] contains valuable observations on the heroism and tragedy of the Cuban revolution. It also demonstrates how Trotskyist methodology has lost the ability to explain the present convincingly. An examination of how Trotskyists responded to the Cuban revolution reveals degenerative weaknesses in their interpretation, most notably an equivocal conception of Stalinism. Over time, the Trotskyists’ understanding of Stalinism transformed from a historically specific manifestation of opportunism into a distinct ideological category. [Read More]