The Imperialism Question and the Twentieth Century

A panel discussion event held on May 28, 2010, at the 2010 Platypus International Convention held at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Panelists Atiya Khan Spencer A. Leonard Sunit Singh Description To many on the Left today, opposition to imperialism has become a political litmus test of sorts, but historically anti-imperialism was by no means an exclusively leftist political project whether we are speaking of right-wing anti-colonialism in the metropole or in the colonies. [Read More]

2001

The Decline of the Left in the 20th Century: Toward a Theory of Historical Regression

2001
ON APRIL 18, 2009, the Platypus Affiliated Society conducted the following panel discussion at the Left Forum Conference at Pace University in New York City. The panel was organized around four significant moments in the progressive separation of theory and practice over the course of the 20th century: 2001 (Spencer A. Leonard), 1968 (Atiya Khan), 1933 (Richard Rubin), and 1917 (Chris Cutrone). The following is an edited transcript of the 2001 presentation by Spencer A. [Read More]

Book review: Karl Korsch, Marxism and Philosophy

Book review: Karl Korsch, Marxism and Philosophy
[Marx wrote,] “[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.”1 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]

Afghanistan, internationalism and the Left

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]