1930s

Adorno's Leninism

April 21, 2010 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

A talk given by Platypus member Chris Cutrone at Loyola University, on April 21st, 2010. Cosponsored by Pi Sigma Tau, STAND, and SAF. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Transcript in Platypus Review #37 Description The German Marxist critical theorist Theodor W. Adorno (1903-69) is known, along with his friend and mentor Walter Benjamin, for the critique of mid-20th century art and culture. What is less well understood is the specific character of Adorno’s Marxism, how his political perspective related to his philosophical concerns. [Read More]

1920s 1930s 1940s 1960s Vladimir Lenin New Left Old Left

What are intellectuals good for?

February 27, 2010 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

ON THURSDAY NOVEMBER 19, 2009, Platypus Review Editor-in-Chief Spencer A. Leonard discussed with author George Scialabba a new volume of essays entitled What are Intellectuals Good For? (Boston: Pressed Wafer Press, 2009). Their discussion was conducted live on “Radical Minds,” a radio show Leonard conducts weekly with co-host Greg Gabrellas on WHPK 88.5 FM in Chicago. Leonard and Scialabba’s discussion focused chiefly on a single theme of the book, the connections and disconnects between the intellectuals of the anti-Stalinist Old Left forged in America in the 1930s and the New Left that emerged decades later in the early 1960s. [Read More]

1930s George Scialabba Intellectual space New Left Radical Minds

Resurrecting the 30s

A response to David Harvey and James Heartfield

May 15, 2009 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

Over! What a stupid name. Why over? Over pure nothing, it is all the same. Why have eternal creation, When all is subject to annihilation? Now it is over. What meaning can one see? It is as if it had not come to be, And yet it circulates as if it were. —Mephistopheles, in Goethe’s Faust THE LAST FORTY YEARS have been conceptually bewildering for the Left. The withering of working class movements and the rise of the new social movements have coincided with a global shift away from national state-centric (or “Fordist”) modes of accumulation towards a more “global,” neo-liberal capitalism. [Read More]

1930s David Harvey James Heartfield Neo-liberalism Reflections The Left Exchanges

Capital in history

The need for a Marxian philosophy of history of the Left

October 1, 2008 | The Platypus Affiliated Society • Other languages: Deutsch, Español, Ελληνικά

The following is a talk given at the Marxist-Humanist Committee public forum on The Crisis in Marxist Thought, hosted by the Platypus Affiliated Society in Chicago on Friday, July 25th, 2008. I want to speak about the meaning of history for any purportedly Marxian Left. We in Platypus focus on the history of the Left because we think that the narrative one tells about this history is in fact one’s theory of the present. [Read More]

1789 1930s 1960s 19th Century Bourgeois Capital Capitalism Class consciousness Crisis Degeneration Domination Friedrich Engels Freedom French Revolution György Lukács Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel History History of the Left Industrial Revolution Karl Korsch Vladimir Lenin Marxism Marxist-Hummanist Committee Modern Moishe Postone Politics Proletariat Regression Revolt of the Third Estate Rosa Luxemburg The Left Theodor W. Adorno Leon Trotsky Walter Benjamin

Interview: Ernesto Laclau

December 1, 2007 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

CONFRONTING THE CONFUSION and fragmentation that wrought progressive politics in recent decades, Ernesto Laclau’s work attempts to theorize the path to the construction of a radical democratic politics. Drawing on Gramsci’s concept of hegemony to devise his own theory by that name, Laclau describes the processes of social articulation that creates popular political identities. By redefining democratic politics as the construction of hegemony, Laclau reminds political actors of the work necessary to construct the plurality of democratic structures vital to any emancipatory political project. [Read More]

1930s Anti-globalization Capitalism Co-optation Commodity form Communist party Culture De-radicalization Democratic Economics Emancipation Emancipatory Equivalential Ernesto Laclau Feminism Freedom Hegemony History Identity Industrial Institutionalization Italy Labor Vladimir Lenin Karl Marx Marxism Movements Participation Particularity Plurality Politics Popular Production Progressive Proletarian Radical Reification Revolution Surplus value Theory Union Universality Workers Working class WWII