Forgetting Mark Fisher

Forgetting Mark Fisher

 April 1, 2019  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

“My whole lifetime, every time you think the Left has got somewhere, the Right is one step ahead of it”1 – Mark Fisher (1968–2017) MARK FISHER WAS OFTEN ASKED what “capitalist realism” is. His most interesting answer was that it is “a pathology of the Left.”2 This cut against other definitions of his oft-used concept, which identified it with “neoliberalism.” What ties the two together is implied in the subtitle to his 2009 book – Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative? [Read More]
Mark Fisher  Accelerationism  post-capitalism  Communism  Neoliberalism  Capitalism  Capitalist Realism  Jeremy Corbyn 

The future of socialism

What kind of illness is capitalism?

The future of socialism

 April 2, 2018  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

An abridged version of this article was presented at the 4th Platypus European Conference closing plenary panel discussion, “What is the Future of Socialism?,” with Boris Kagarlitsky (Institute of Globalization and Social Movements), Alex Demirovic (Rosa Luxemburg Foundation), Mark Osborne (Alliance for Workers’ Liberty; Momentum) and Hillel Ticktin (Critique journal), at Goldsmiths University in London on February 17, 2018. The liquidation of [Marxist] theory by dogmatization and thought taboos contributed to the bad practice… The interrelation of both moments [of theory and practice] is not settled once and for all but fluctuates historically… Those who chide theory [for being] anachronistic obey the topos of dismissing, as obsolete, what remains painful [because it was] thwarted… The fact that history has rolled over certain positions will be respected as a verdict on their truth-content only by those who agree with [Friedrich] Schiller that “world history is the world tribunal. [Read More]
Capitalism  Theodor W. Adorno  Friedrich Nietzsche  Alain Badiou 

The end of the Gilded Age

Discontents of the Second Industrial Revolution today

The end of the Gilded Age

 December 2, 2017  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

THE ACCOUNT OF HISTORY is the theory of the present: How did we get here; and what tasks remain from the past – that however appear to be “new” today? As Adorno put it, “the new is the old in distress.”1 This is true of capitalism and its crisis now. The present crisis is a crisis of the world system of capitalism that emerged in the 20th century, a crisis of the capitalist world created by the Second Industrial Revolution at the end of the 19th century – in fits and starts (such as the two World Wars and the Cold War) but nonetheless consistently and inexorably. [Read More]
Gilded Age  History  Capitalism  Theodor W. Adorno 

Trans Liberation Teach-in, Frankfurt

 October 17, 2016  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Event Description The political and cultural Left, which have stood for increasing the scope of freedom, have historically shifted positons on issues of gender and sexuality. For instance, where once the Left challenged gender and family norms in society, there has been a turn to advocation participation in predominant institutions, for instance in legal reforms and the medical industry: there has been some conflict in LGBTQ circles over the politcs of the trans identity, whether it should be considered a subjective development or an objective condition, and further if it should be considered at all by the Left. [Read More]
LGBTQ  Transgender  Trans Liberation  identity  identity politics  Capitalism  Gender  Sexuality  Trans 

Horkheimer in 1943 on party and class

 January 12, 2016  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

Without a socialist party, there is no class struggle, only rackets HORKHEIMER’S REMARKABLE ESSAY “On the sociology of class relations” (1943)1 is continuous with Adorno’s contemporaneous “Reflections on class theory” (1942) as well as his own “The authoritarian state” (1940/42), which similarly mark the transformation of Marx and Engels’s famous injunction in the Communist Manifesto that “history is the history of class struggles.” All of these writings were inspired by Walter Benjamin’s “On the concept of history” (AKA “Theses on the philosophy of history,” 1940), which registered history’s fundamental crisis. [Read More]
/20th Century  Capitalism  Communist party  Critical theory  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel  History  Vladimir Lenin  Liberalism  Karl Marx  Marxism  Max Horkheimer  Political party  Socialism  Socialist  Socioeconomic  SYRIZA  Theodor W. Adorno  Walter Benjamin 

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 

Radical Interpretations of the Present Crisis, NYC

 November 14, 2012  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

A panel event held at the New School in New York City on November 14, 2012. Video Recoding Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Transcribed in Platypus Review #56 Panelists Loren Goldner Co-Editor at Insurgent Notes; authors: Ubu Saved From Drowning: Class Struggle and Statist Containment in Portugal and Spain, 1974-1977 (2000), “The Sky Is Always Darkest Just Before the Dawn: Class Struggle in the U. [Read More]
Radical Interpretations of the Present Crisis  Capital  Capitalism  Economic crisis  Karl Marx  Marxism 

Global Rut

Chris Cutrone on CrossTalk

 October 15, 2012  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

Platypus Affiliated Society member Chris Cutrone on RT’s Crosstalk, hosted by Peter Lavelle, on the global economic crisis. “The IMF has released a report that predicts the hoped-for global economic growth is again endangered. Why is this happening? Why has the Great Recession come back so early? Did it ever end? Has austerity made things worse? And is there a way to avoid the ‘fiscal cliff’ issue in Washington? [Read More]
Austerity  Capitalism  Crisis  Crosstalk  Economic crisis  Great Recession  Martin Hennecke  Policy  Recession  RT  Seijiro Takeshita  Socialism  Stimulus 

A Prelude to the History of the Left

 November 1, 2007  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

THE PLATYPUS HISTORIANS GROUP is a collective of members of Platypus who are researchers into the history of the Left. We will be publishing this series on the History of the Left under this collective authorship to indicate the collaborative nature of our research and the questions it raises. Each article under this byline will be written by one or several members of this collective, but with contributions and review by as many others of this group as possible and appropriate to the topics essayed. [Read More]
1789  1917  1960s  1968  Capitalism  Defeat  Enlightenment  History of the Left  Humanity  Marxism  Movements  Ronald Reagan  Sectarianism  Socialism  Stalinism  The Platypus Historians Group  Trotskyism