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CAMPAIGNING STRONGLY AGAINST AUSTERITY and for greater democracy in Spain, the political party Podemos (“We Can”) gained popularity immediately upon its formation in early 2014. In the elections to the European Parliament of that year it won 5 seats (equivalent to 8% of the Spanish vote). On October 17, 2014, Lucy Parker and David Mountain of the Platypus Affiliated Society interviewed Eduardo Maura, Professor of Philosophy at University of Madrid and spokesperson for Podemos. [Read More]

A panel discussion titled “Is there a need for left unity?” at the Platypus European Conference, was held at Goldsmiths University, London, on July 19, 2014. The following is an edited version of a contribution by Barbara Dorn an International Bolshevik Tendency (IBT) supporter to the panel. It has been republished from www.bolshevik.org. El Lissitzky's Workers of the World Unite design for 'Die Vier Grundrich numgrarten' 1928. [Read More]

Coda to “What is political party for Marxism? Democratic revolution and the contradiction of capital: On Mike Macnair’s Revolutionary Strategy (2008),” Platypus Review 71 (November 2014). Originally published in abridged form as a letter in Weekly Worker 1035 (November 20, 2014). THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL OF THE 1930s recognized that the two historic constituencies of revolutionary politics, the masses and the party, had failed: the masses had led to fascism; and the party had led to Stalinism. [Read More]

THERE IS A FAIR AMOUNT one could take issue with in James Heartfield’s review of Andrew Kliman’s The Failure of Capitalist Production – not least the redundant polemical sideswipes that generate heat but do not shed light. But rather than arbitrating between Kliman and Heartfield, I want to focus instead on the main contradiction in Heartfield’s argument, as it is Heartfield’s argument that has the most far-reaching implications for how we might think about capitalism and the prospects for social change. [Read More]