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Coda to “The Sandernistas: The Final Triumph of the 1980s,” Platypus Review 82 (December 2015). THE PRIMARY ELECTIONS for the nomination of the Democrat and Republican candidates for President have demonstrated the depth and extent of the disarray of the two parties. Sanders has successfully challenged Hillary and has gone beyond being a mere messenger of protest to become a real contender for the Democratic Party nomination. But this has been on the basis of the Democrats’ established constituencies and so has limited Sanders’s reach. [Read More]

IN HIS FEBRUARY 2016 review of Doug Henwood’s new book, My Turn: Hillary targets the presidency, Gregor Baszak summarizes Henwood’s disdain for Hillary Clinton and his ambivalence toward Bernie Sanders. (See Gregor Baszak, “Book Review: Doug Henwood, My Turn: Hillary Targets the Presidency,” Platypus Review 83, February 2016. Available online at 2016/01/30/book-review-doug-henwood-my-turn-hillary-targets-the-presidency-new-york-or-books-2016/) Baszak concludes the Sanders campaign is another step toward liquidating the Left into the Democratic Party, what some call the “graveyard of social movements. [Read More]

*THE PLATYPUS REVIEW* PUBLISHED an interview with Nelson Peery on December 6, 2015, not long after his death.1 Nelson was a 92-year-old revolutionary communist with more than 75 years experience in the political growth of Marxist study and organizing in the United States. He was for almost forty years my teacher and guide. I helped found with Nelson and hundreds of other revolutionaries the Communist Labor Party (CLP), the National Organizing Committee (NOC), and the League of Revolutionaries for a New America (LRNA). [Read More]

ON JULY 13, 2015, Jerzy Sobotta spoke with Stefan Bollinger, member of the Historical Commission of Die LINKE (the Left Party) and former political scientist and historian at Humboldt University, Berlin. Their discussion concerned the end of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the transformation of its formerly governing party, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, or SED) into a new political entity, Die LINKE. An edited transcript of their conversation follows. [Read More]