Communism

Marx@200: The point is to change the world (Knoxville, 3.27.19)

May 16, 2019 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

Panel discussion on the life and legacy of Karl Marx as a revolutionary intellectual, hosted by the Platypus Affiliated Society on March 27, 2019 at the University of Tennessee (Knoxville). Speakers: Dr. Harry Dahms, University of Tennessee (Sociology) Dr. Arnold Farr, University of Kentucky (Philosophy) Dr. Spencer Leonard, Platypus Affiliated Society Moderated by AJ Knowles. Description: This past year marked the 200^th^ birthday of Karl Marx, than whom, as even his ideological opponent Isaiah Berlin had to admit, “no thinker in the nineteenth century has had so direct, deliberate and powerful an influence upon mankind. [Read More]

19th Century 20th Century Communism Critical Theory eco-socialism economic crisis Karl Marx Knoxville Marxism psychoanalysis Revolution socialism

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

CPGB contra Lukács

January 11, 2014 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

A Platypus-wide teach-in on the CPGB’s campaign against Lukács and its stakes for Platypus as a project. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Description Held on Saturday January 11 1-4PM at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago 112 S. Michigan Ave. room 920 while simultaneously broadcast internationally via Livestream. Paul Demarty's historical chart of Lukács's influence on Platypus The preparatory readings for this event are as follows and can be found at: [Read More]

Communism CPGB Marxism Socialism Trotskyism

The Birth of a Revolution?

Mary Gabriel interviewed by Spencer A. Leonard on "Love and Capital"

February 28, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

On February 28, 2012, the radio program Radical Minds on WHPK-FM Chicago broadcast an interview with Mary Gabriel, the author of Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2011). The interview was conducted by Spencer A. Leonard of the Platypus Affiliated Society.

Audio Recording

Transcript in Platypus Review #47

Mary Gabriel Communism Karl Marx Marxism Radical Minds Socialism

"Thirty years of counter-revolution"

January 29, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

_LAST SUMMER, SPENCER A. LEONARD interviewed Clyde Young, a veteran member of the Revolutionary Communist Party. The interview was broadcast on June 31, 2011 on the radio show Radical Minds on WHPK – FM Chicago. What follows is an edited transcript of their conversation. A shorter version of this interview ran in the broadsheet edition of Platypus Review issue 43._ Spencer A. Leonard: Everyone hears a lot about the 1960s, the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr. [Read More]

1970s Bob Avakian Clyde Young Communism Vladimir Lenin Maoism Radical Minds RCP (USA) Civil Rights Third World

The Legacy of Trotskyism

April 30, 2011 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

One of the plenary sessions held at the third annual Platypus Affiliated Society international convention, hosted by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from April 29–May 1st, 2011, set about exploring the legacy of Trotsky’s Marxism. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Transcript in Platypus Review #38 Panelists Mike Macnair, Communist Party of Great Britain (Oxford Univ. St. Hugh College) Bryan Palmer, Trent University [Read More]

Platypus International Convention 2011 Anti-Stalinism Communism Communist Party of Great Britain CPGB IBT International Bolshevik Tendency Leon Trotsky Karl Marx Marxism Socialism Stalinism Trotskyism

The Idea of Communism

Badiou, Althusser and Lacan (Chicago, 4/12/11)

April 23, 2011 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

A teach-in by Platypus member Chris Cutrone on April 12, 2011 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Description Alain Badiou’s recent book (2010) is titled with the phrase promoted by his and Slavoj Žižek’s work for the last few years, “the communist hypothesis.” Žižek has spoken of “the Badiou event” as opening new horizons for both philosophy and communism. [Read More]

Communism Alain Badiou

The Marxist hypothesis

A response to Alain Badiou's 'communist hypothesis'

November 6, 2010 | The Platypus Affiliated Society • Other languages: Ελληνικά

Against Badiou ALAIN BADIOU’S RECENT BOOK (2010) is titled with the phrase promoted by his and Slavoj Žižek’s work for the last few years, “the communist hypothesis.”1 This is also the title of Badiou’s 2008 essay in New Left Review2 on the historical significance of the 2007 election of Nicolas Sarkozy to the French Presidency.3 There, Badiou explains his approach to communism as follows: What is the communist hypothesis? [Read More]

Alain Badiou Communism Karl Marx Marxism Slavoj Žižek Theodor W. Adorno Walter Benjamin

Book Review: Randi Storch. Red Chicago: American Communism at its Grassroots, 1928-35.

October 10, 2009 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

Urbana-Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2009. It was not the economics of Communism, nor the great power of trade unions, nor the excitement of underground politics that claimed me; my attention was caught by the similarity of workers in other lands, by the possibility of uniting scattered but kindred peoples into a whole. —Richard Wright, Black Boy RANDI STORCH’S RED CHICAGO takes to task prevailing caricatures of American Communism during the so-called “Third Period” of the late twenties and early thirties, a period in the history of American Communism frequently criticized for its growing ideological rigidity, its organizational Stalinization, and its ultimate failure to revitalize the flagging world revolution and to check the threat of fascism. [Read More]

AFL-CIO American Communist Party Communism Labor Trade Union Unity League Chicago