Back to Herbert Spencer!

Industrial vs. militant society

Back to Herbert Spencer!

 January 12, 2016  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

HERBERT SPENCER’S GRAVE faces Marx’s at Highgate Cemetery in London. At his memorial, Spencer was honored for his anti-imperialism by Indian national liberation advocate and anti-colonialist Shyamji Krishnavarma, who funded a lectureship at Oxford in Spencer’s name. Marx and Spencer's facing graves.Photograph by Christian Fuchs, http://fuchs.uti.at/ What would the 19th century liberal, Utilitarian and Social Darwinist, Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), who was perhaps the most prominent, widely read and popular philosopher in the world during his lifetime – that is, in Marx’s lifetime – have to say to Marxists or more generally to the left, when such liberalism earned not only Marx’s own scorn but also Nietzsche’s criticism? [Read More]
Anti-imperialism  Anti-war  Benjamin Constant  Capitalism  Carl Schmitt  Freedom  Martin Heidegger  Imperialism  Karl Marx  Liberalism  Libertarian  Max Weber  Friedrich Nietzsche  Paul Lafargue  Socialism  Theodor W. Adorno  Herbert Spencer  Featured Articles 

Imperialism: What is it, why should we be against it?

Imperialism: What is it, why should we be against it?

 July 9, 2010  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

ON JANUARY 30, 2007, Platypus hosted its first public forum, “Imperialism: What is it – Why should we be Against it?” The panel consisted of Adam Turl of the International Socialist Organization (ISO), Kevin Anderson of the Marxist-Humanist group News and Letters, Nick Kreitman of the new Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Danny Postel of Open Democracy, and Chris Cutrone of Platypus. What follows is an edited transcript of this event; the full video can be found online at the above link. [Read More]
Afghanistan  Bosnia  Bush administration  History of the Left  Iraq  Imperialism  War  Anti-war  ISO  Marxism  New SDS  Vietnam 

Remarks on Chris Cutrone's 'Iraq and the election: the fog of 'anti-war' politics'

 March 15, 2009  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

I WAS INTRIGUED TO FIND in The Platypus Review #7 a commentary by Chris Cutrone on the U.S. role in world politics. I found it more sophisticated and original than anything I had previously come across in the mainstream media either here or in Europe. Before launching my machine, I would like to situate myself. I’m a foreigner, philosopher of sorts, and not a student any more (That means I’m old. [Read More]
Anti-war  War  Bush administration  Capitalism  Democracy  Exchanges  Francis Fukuyama  Imperialism  Iraq  Neo-conservatism  Reagan  Wilsonianism 

Going it alone: Christopher Hitchens and the death of the Left

Book Review: Simon Cottee and Thomas Cushman (eds.). *Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left*.

Going it alone: Christopher Hitchens and the death of the Left

 March 15, 2009  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

New York: New York University Press, 2008. IF IT DID NOT COME TO END IN 1989, as conservative critic Francis Fukuyama expected, this is because, in Hegel’s sense, as freedom’s self-realization in time, History had already ceased. Long before the new geopolitical configurations and institutional forms of the post-Soviet world, a new and unprecedented, though scarcely recognized, political situation had taken shape: The last threads of continuity connecting the present with the long epoch of political emancipation were severed. [Read More]
Christopher Hitchens  Enlightenment  Iraq  Marxism  Moralism  Terror  The Left  War  Anti-war 

Afghanistan, internationalism and the Left

 February 1, 2009  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

THE FOLLOWING INTERVIEW was conducted as an email exchange between Andony Melathopoulos and Terry Glavin in December 2008. Terry Glavin is a Canadian journalist, an outspoken critic of the anti-war movement’s call to withdrawal foreign troops from Afghanistan and a founder of the Afghanistan Canada Solidarity Committee (afghanistan-canada-solidarity.org). Andony Melathopoulos: You just returned from a trip to Afghanistan and have been busy writing about your experience in the Canadian news media and, most recently, in an online piece in Democratiya (”Afghanistan: A Choice of Comrades,” Winter (15), 2008). [Read More]
Afghanistan  Christopher Hitchens  Exchanges  Fred Halliday  War  Anti-war  internationalism 

Iraq and the election

The fog of "anti-war" politics

 October 1, 2008  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

BARACK OBAMA HAD, UNTIL RECENTLY, made his campaign for President of the United States a referendum on the invasion and occupation of Iraq. In the Democratic Party primaries, Obama attacked Hillary Clinton for her vote in favor of the invasion. Among Republican contenders, John McCain went out of his way to appear as the candidate most supportive of the Bush administration’s policy in Iraq. Looking towards the general election, it is over Iraq that the candidates have been most clearly opposed: Obama has sought to distinguish himself most sharply from McCain on Iraq, emphasizing their differences in judgment. [Read More]
Adolph Reed  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad  ANSWER  Anti-imperialism  Anti-war  Ba'athism  Bill Clinton  Bush administration  Democracy  Democrats  Election  History  History of the Left  Imperialism  Iran  Iraq  ISO  Joe Biden  Kurds  Liberalism  NATO  Barack Obama  Occupation  Politics  RCP (USA)  Republicans  Saddam Hussein  Saudi Arabia  Shia  Sunni  The Left  The Right  U.N  Vietnam  World Can't Wait 

Five questions to the student Left

 October 1, 2008  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

AN INTERVIEW WITH SDS MEMBER Rachel Haut published in the September issue of this publication provoked widespread comment in radical circles.1 We welcome the discussion but worry that it remains ensconced within the sterile jargon and petty antinomies of the actually-existing-Left. More fundamental questions exist than, say, the position of sectarian groups within the SDS – questions that unsettle the comfortable assumptions of radical politics. There’s a temptation to think such of questioning as an irrelevant, academic obstruction to real action. [Read More]
Anti-war  Capitalism  Class  Identity  Ideology  Imperialism  Movement  New SDS  Organization  Politics  Racism  Radicals  Reflections  Society  Students  Transformation 

Ba'athism and the history of the Left in Iraq

Violence and politics

 March 1, 2008  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

SINCE THE 1960s the saturation of brutality and violence in Iraq has caused considerable confusion among Leftists in regards to both its political meaning and causes. One cannot fully understand the character of Saddam Hussein’s Arab Ba’ath Socialist Party without taking into account that it achieved political power by systematically killing off the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) and quelling other political dissent with acts of extreme cruelty. The eight year battle of attrition instigated by Hussein, known as the Iran-Iraq War, caused over half a million Iraqi deaths, and the ethnic cleansing campaigns directed against the Kurds resulted in countless more. [Read More]
ANSWER  Anti-Americanism  Anti-war  Ba'athism  Hadi Saleh  Hanna Batatu  History of the Left  Ian Morrison  Ideology  Imperialism  Iraq  Iraqi Communist Party  Kanan Makiya  Vladimir Lenin  Nationalism  Politics  Racism  Ramsey Clark  Reactionary  Regression  Republic of Fear  Saddam Hussein  Unions  US Labor Against the War  Violence  War