Crisis of the eurozone and the Left

Responses to the global economic downturn

 July 3, 2012  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

THE FOLLOWING TRANSCRIPT is from an event that took place on April 2, 2012 at the University of Chicago, in conjunction with the 2012 Platypus International Convention, titled “Responses to the Global Economic Downturn.” Members and contacts of the Platypus Affiliated Society in Europe were invited to speak on their experience of leftist responses to the economic downturn. The speakers included Haseeb Ahmed (Netherlands), Valentin Badura (Austria), Cengiz Kulac (Austria), Moritz Roeger (Germany), Jerzy Sobotta (Germany), and Thodoris Velissaris (Greece). [Read More]
Crisis  Eurozone  Germany  Greece  Occupy 

Responses to the Global Economic Downturn

 April 2, 2012  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

A public forum with students, activists and organizers from across the globe held on April 2, 2012. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Transcript in Platypus Review #48 Panelists Haseeb Ahmed (Maastricht) Valentin Badura (Austria) Cengiz Kulac (Austria) Moritz Roeger (Germany) Jerzy Sobotta (Germany) Thodoris Velissaris (Greece) Moderated by Pam C. Nogales C. Description From teach-ins in the UK, occupations in Austria and Germany and protests in the Netherlands and Greece, responses to the economic downturn are international in character. [Read More]
Platypus International Convention 2012  Austria  Crisis  Europe  Germany  Global financial crisis  Greece  International  Internationalism  Maastricht  Netherlands 

Crisis of the Left: Thessaloniki

 November 23, 2011  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

Video Recording 23/11/2011 Φιλοσοφική Σχολή Α.Π.Θ. Ομιλητές: Στάυρος Μαυρουδέας Χρήστος Λάσκος Γρηγόρης Τσιλιμαντός Μπάμπης Κουρουνδής Συντονιστής: Θοδωρής Βελισσάρης @Thessaloniki, Greece: Wednesday, Nov. 23, 6:00 – 9:00pm New building of School of Philosophy, Room 112 Aristotle University An international forum on the CRISIS OF THE LEFT Chicago | NYC | Philly | Boston | Thessaloniki A panel of the Crisis of the Left international forum held on November, 23, 2011 at Aristotle University [Read More]
Crisis of the Left  Γρηγόρης Τσιλιμαντός/Grisgoris Tsilimantos  Θοδωρής Βελισσάρης/Thodoris Velissaris  Μπάμπης Κουρουνδής/Babis Kouroundis  Στάυρος Μαυρουδέας/Stavros Mavroudeas  Χρήστος Λάσκος/Xristos Laskos  Anti-authoritarian Movement  Aristotle University  Crisis  Crisis of the left  Front of the Greek Anti-capitalist Left  Political Secretariat of SY  Socialist Workers Party's Regional Committee of Thessaloniki  Thessaloniki 

Crisis of the Left: New York City

 November 16, 2011  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

A panel discussions hosted by The Platypus Affiliated Society om New York City on November 16, 2011. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Panelists Bertell Ollman Carl Dix Marco Roth Nikil Saval Paul Berman Moderated by Jeremy Cohan. Description Crisis: Pathol. The point in the progress of a disease when an important development or change takes place which is decisive of recovery or death. “…Existing strategies and theories seem inadequate in a bewildering contemporary political scene. [Read More]
Crisis of the Left  Crisis  Dissent  Leftism  N+1  RCP USA  Revolutionary Communist Party  Revolutionary Communist Party USA  The New Republic 

notes on Adorno in 1968-69

 May 26, 2009  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

I am writing with some very brief notes on Adorno’s last writings from 1968-69, the “Marginalia to Theory and Praxis,” “Resignation,” “Late Capitalism or Industrial Society? (AKA “Is Marx Obsolete?”),” and the Adorno-Marcuse correspondence of 1969. The center of Adorno’s critique of the 1960s New Left was their romantic opposition to capitalism, found, for example, in their desideratum of the unity of theory and practice. Rather, Adorno asserted the progressive-emancipatory aspect of the separation of theory and practice. [Read More]
/20th Century  Chris Cutrone  crisis  critical theory  Discussion  György Lukács  Karl Korsch  Vladimir Lenin  Karl Marx  Marxism  Rosa Luxemburg  the Left  Theodor W. Adorno  Leon Trotsky  Walter Benjamin 

Symptomology

Historical transformations in social-political context

Symptomology

 May 15, 2009  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society  • Other languages: Ελληνικά

Marx ridiculed the idea of having to “prove” the labor theory of value. If Marxian theory proved to be the means whereby the real relations of bourgeois society could be demonstrated in their movement, where they came from, what they were, and where they were going, that was the proof of the theory. Neither Hegel nor Marx understood any other “scientific” proof. The more concrete the negation of the need, the more abstract, empty and flamboyant becomes the subjective mediation. [Read More]
/20th Century  Crisis  Critical theory  David Harvey  Karl Marx  Marxism  Michel Foucault  Neo-liberalism  New Left  Barack Obama  Reflections 

Why the U.S. stimulus package is bound to fail

 March 15, 2009  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

MUCH IS TO BE GAINED by viewing the contemporary crisis as a surface eruption generated out of deep tectonic shifts in the spatio-temporal disposition of capitalist development. The tectonic plates are now accelerating their motion and the likelihood of more frequent and more violent crises of the sort that have been occurring since 1980 or so will almost certainly increase. The manner, form, spatiality and time of these surface disruptions are almost impossible to predict, but that they will occur with greater frequency and depth is almost certain. [Read More]
Capitalism  Crisis  Debt  Failure  Giovanni Arrighi  Hegemony  Keynesianism  Karl Marx  New Deal  Reflections  Stimulus 

notes on Feb. 15 reading Korsch "Marxism and Philosophy" (1923)

 February 15, 2009  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

‘[Humanity] always sets itself only such problems as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely it will always be found that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or are at least understood to be in the process of emergence’ [Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859)]. This dictum is not affected by the fact that a problem which supersedes present relations may have been formulated in an anterior epoch. [Read More]
/20th Century  Chris Cutrone  crisis  critical theory  Discussion  History  ideology  Karl Korsch  Vladimir Lenin  Karl Marx  Marxism  Philosophy  Platypus  Revolution  Rosa Luxemburg  Socialism  vulgar Marxism 

Trotsky on "degeneration" and "entire generations passing into discard" (1933)

 February 7, 2009  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

It is not a question of counterposing abstract principles… [W]ith the degeneration of organizations, with the passing of entire generations into discard… the necessity… arises of mobilizing fresh forces on a new historical stage… With inevitable halts and partial retreats it is necessary to move forward on a road crisscrossed by countless obstacles and covered with the debris of the past. Those who are frightened by this had better step aside. [Read More]
Chris Cutrone  crisis  Discussion  History  Marxism  Politics  the Left  Leon Trotsky  Trotskyism 

Living Marxism

 December 1, 2008  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

ONE OF THE STRANGER SIGHTS in today’s banking crisis is the sudden popularity of Karl Marx. The Manifesto is flying off the shelves, and business execs are boning up on Marx’s crisis theory in much the same way that they used to lap up Sun Tzu’s Art of War, or parrot Heraclitus’ saying that there is nothing permanent but change. Today’s economic dislocation, though, does not correspond to the crisis of overaccumulation that Marx explained in the third volume of his book Capital. [Read More]
Crisis  Economics  Karl Marx  Marxism  RCP (UK)  Value  Living Marxism