A "Convoluted Mess of Nonsense"

A response to James Heartfield's review of *The Failure of Capitalist Production*

A "Convoluted Mess of Nonsense"

 January 30, 2015  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

I HAVE RELUCTANTLY DECIDED TO RESPOND to James Heartfield’s review (Platypus Review #70) of The Failure of Capitalist Production because more than a few people seem to think his review is a serious and interesting engagement with my book. I want to explain why it is not. My task is made somewhat easier because I need not deal with the self-contradictory character of Heartfield’s review. Philip Cunliffe’s critique of it in The Platypus Review #72 deals with that problem quite well. [Read More]
James Heartfield  Economics 

Adam Smith, Revolutionary

Adam Smith, Revolutionary

 November 1, 2013  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

Cornwallis's 1781 surrender at Yorktown, where American soldiers sang the British Revolutionary song 'The World Turned Upside Down' as the British laid down their arms. All references to Smith’s *Wealth of Nations* in what follows are to the two volume edition edited by R.H. Campbell and Andrew Skinner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976). References will be provided in the text in brackets. “By exposing the historical necessity that had brought capitalism into being, political economy became the critique of history as a whole” —Theodor W. [Read More]
Adam Smith  Economics 

Radical Interpretations of the Present Crisis

 December 1, 2012  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

A panel event held on Saturday, December 1st, 2012 at the Mile End campus of Queen Mary University. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Transcribed in Platypus Review #55 Panelists David Graeber Hillel Ticktin James Woudhuysen Saul Newman Moderated by Lucy Parker. Description The present moment is arguably one of unprecedented confusion on the Left. The emergence of many new theoretical perspectives on Marxism, anarchism, and the left generally seem rather than signs of a newfound vitality, the intellectual reflux of its final disintegration in history. [Read More]
Radical Interpretations of the Present Crisis  Crisis  Economic crisis  Economics 

Beyond Post-Industrial Society and Neo-Marxism

A Platypus Teach-in on the Current Economic Crisis

 November 28, 2012  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

A discussion led by Platypus Affiliated Society member Spencer A. Leonard on the current economic crisis, longue-durée social change, and the Left. This teach-in was an introduction to the some of essential problems to be explored in the Chicago iteration of the “Radical Interpretations of The Present” panel on December 3, 2012. PLEASE NOTE: Due to technical issues, only the first forty-five minutes of the talk were recorded. Video Recording Description In 1999 the prominent social theorist Moishe Postone published an artile entitled “Contemporary Historical Transformations: Beyond Post-Industrial Theory and Neo-Marxism” in which he interrogated the two predominant theories of the social change that had been formulated in the 1970s by Daniel Bell and Ernest Mandel. [Read More]
Economic crisis  Economics  Marxian economics  Moishe Postone  Neo-Marxism  Post-industrial society  Spencer A. Leonard 

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 

Finance capital

Why financial capitalism is no more "fictitious" than any other kind

 October 1, 2008  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

WITH THE PRESENT FINANCIAL MELT-DOWN in the U.S. throwing the global economy into question, many on the “Left” are wondering again about the nature of capitalism. While many will be tempted to jump on the bandwagon of the “bailout” being floated by the Bush administration and the Congressional Democrats (including Obama), others will protest the “bailing out” of Wall Street. The rhetoric of “Wall Street vs. Main Street,” between “hardworking America” and the “financial fat cats,” however, belies a more fundamental truth: the two are indissolubly linked and are in fact two sides of the same coin of capitalism. [Read More]
Authoritarianism  Bailout  Bill Clinton  Capitalism  Crisis  Economics  Financial  Freedom  Friedrich Hayek  Humanity  Ideology  Industrial  John Kenneth Galbraith  Karl Polanyi  Karl Marx  Marxism  Milton Friedman  Modern  Neo-liberalism  Organization  Production  Reforms  Reification  Socialism  Society  The Left  The Platypus Historians Group 

Andrew Kliman on his book 'Reclaiming Marx's Capital'

 January 18, 2008  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

A discussion held by the Platypus Affiliated Society and News & Letters (Marxist-Humanists) on Thursday, January 17, 2008, at the University of Chicago. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Description Andrew Kliman on his new book “Reclaiming Marx’s ‘Capital’” Marx’s critique of political economy: the relation between price and social value in proper context Andrew Kliman is Professor of Economics at Pace University, New York [Read More]
Andrew Kliman  Economic crisis  Economics  Marxian economics  Marxist-Humanists  News and Letters  Reclaiming Marx's Capital 

Interview: Ernesto Laclau

 December 1, 2007  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

CONFRONTING THE CONFUSION and fragmentation that wrought progressive politics in recent decades, Ernesto Laclau’s work attempts to theorize the path to the construction of a radical democratic politics. Drawing on Gramsci’s concept of hegemony to devise his own theory by that name, Laclau describes the processes of social articulation that creates popular political identities. By redefining democratic politics as the construction of hegemony, Laclau reminds political actors of the work necessary to construct the plurality of democratic structures vital to any emancipatory political project. [Read More]
1930s  Anti-globalization  Capitalism  Co-optation  Commodity form  Communist party  Culture  De-radicalization  Democratic  Economics  Emancipation  Emancipatory  Equivalential  Ernesto Laclau  Feminism  Freedom  Hegemony  History  Identity  Industrial  Institutionalization  Italy  Labor  Vladimir Lenin  Karl Marx  Marxism  Movements  Participation  Particularity  Plurality  Politics  Popular  Production  Progressive  Proletarian  Radical  Reification  Revolution  Surplus value  Theory  Union  Universality  Workers  Working class  WWII