A book talk by David Black (International Marxist-Humanists), author of “The Philosophical Roots of Anti-Capitalism” on “Alfred Sohn-Rethel’s Neo-Kantian Marxism: A Critique”, held at the Inaugural European Conference of the Platypus Affiliated Society on Saturday, July 19, 2014 at Goldsmiths College, London.
Does Marxism Really Matter?
A Teach-in on the Communist Manifesto
A teach-in on the Communist Manifesto led by Platypus Affiliated Society member Jeremy Cohan, PhD candidate in Sociology at NYU, at the New School in NYC on February 17 , 2011.
Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Description The 20th century has made the question of Marxism an obscure one. The absence of an International Left suggests the irrelevancy of Marxism to the present. Yet historically, Marxism mattered to society at large.
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Is Marx Back?
An Interview with Leo Panitch
The economic crisis, as many commentators and critics are quick to point out, has rekindled interest in – and anxieties over – Marxism. Although many on the Left hope this renewed curiosity marks the beginning of a radical turn, similar revivals of anti-capitalist politics in the 1930s, 1960s, and 1990s failed to achieve the revolutionary transformations they sought.
Has Marxism returned as a significant political force? How might this translate into the possibility for a revitalized Left?
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The New School occupation and the direction of student politics
THE OCCUPATION OF THE NEW SCHOOL Graduate Faculty building on 65 5th Ave. began in the late evening on December 17, 2008 and lasted over thirty hours. In the build-up to the action, differences arose respecting the aims and potential effectiveness of an occupation.
Against both a negotiating committee and concrete demands, a group calling itself the “Autonomous Faction of Non-cooperation Against the Division of Labor,” pushed to extend the occupation.
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Beyond the Politics of Anti-Gentrification
A Response to Laura Schmidt
DESSIE LIVES IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD of Woodlawn, three blocks south of the University of Chicago, with her father and four cats. Her apartment is part of Grove Parc Plaza, a Section 8 development project built in the late 1960s, but like many public housing residents across Chicago, Dessie doesn’t know how much longer she will be able to hold on to her home. Last year, Grove Parc was threatened with foreclosure by the Department for Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and despite an organized and vocal campaign by the members of the Grove Parc Tenants Association to save it, the future of the complex is still in doubt.
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To the victor, the spoils
Review of Artforum's May 2008 issue May '68'
We succeeded culturally. We succeeded socially. And we lost politically… I always say: ‘thank God!’
—Daniel Cohn-Bendit in interview on 1968, conducted by Yascha Mounk for The Utopian (2008)
[O]ne asks with whom the adherents of historicism actually empathize. The answer is inevitable: with the victor… Whoever has emerged victorious participates to this day in the triumphal procession in which the present rulers step over those who are lying prostrate.
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The Hundred Days campaign: the present and future of SDS
FROM JULY 24 UNTIL JULY 28 2008, the new Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) had its third annual national convention in College Park, Maryland. At the convention, national campaigns were presented and voted on by the attendees. A major campaign introduced at the convention was the Hundred Days campaign, which seeks to organize and engage newly politicized Americans in politics beyond the campaign season. During the first one hundred days of the next administration the campaign will organize two nationwide weeks of action to ensure that the people remain involved in politics after the election cycle.
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The 3 Rs: Reform, Revolution, and "Resistance"
The Problematic Forms of "Anticapitalism" Today
A moderated panel discussion and audience Q & A on problems of strategies and tactics on the Left today, held on November 6, 2007, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Transcripted in Platypus Review #4
Panelists Michael Albert (Z Magazine, author of Parecon: Life After Capitalism)
Chris Cutrone (Platypus)
Stephen Duncombe (Gallatin School of New York University, editor of Cultural Resistance Reader)
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