Overview of all pages with the tags #French Revolution

Revolutionary politics and thought

September 5, 2014 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

No coarser insult, no baser defamation, can be thrown against the workers than the remark, ‘Theoretical controversies are for the intellectuals’ —Rosa Luxemburg, Reform or Revolution (1900) Since there can be no talk of an independent ideology formulated by the working masses themselves in the process of their movement the only choice is – either bourgeois or socialist ideology… This does not mean, of course, that the workers have no part in creating such an ideology. [Read More]

C. Wright Mills Democracy Environmentalism French Revolution Hannah Arendt Ideology Jacobin Karl Marx Vladimir Lenin Leon Trotsky Organization Political party Praxis Revolution Rosa Luxemburg Theory and practice Thomas jefferson

Capital in history

The need for a Marxian philosophy of history of the Left

October 1, 2008 | The Platypus Affiliated Society • Other languages: Deutsch, Español, Ελληνικά

The following is a talk given at the Marxist-Humanist Committee public forum on The Crisis in Marxist Thought, hosted by the Platypus Affiliated Society in Chicago on Friday, July 25th, 2008. I want to speak about the meaning of history for any purportedly Marxian Left. We in Platypus focus on the history of the Left because we think that the narrative one tells about this history is in fact one’s theory of the present. [Read More]

1789 1930s 1960s 19th Century Bourgeois Capital Capitalism Class consciousness Crisis Degeneration Domination Friedrich Engels Freedom French Revolution György Lukács Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel History History of the Left Industrial Revolution Karl Korsch Vladimir Lenin Marxism Marxist-Hummanist Committee Modern Moishe Postone Politics Proletariat Regression Revolt of the Third Estate Rosa Luxemburg The Left Theodor W. Adorno Leon Trotsky Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin

May 1, 2008 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

WALTER BENJAMIN OCCUPIES a unique place in the history of modern revolutionary thought: he is the first Marxist to break radically with the ideology of progress. His thinking has therefore a distinct critical quality, which sets him apart from the dominant and “official” forms of historical materialism, and gives him a formidable methodological superiority. This peculiarity has to do with his ability to incorporate into the body of Marxist revolutionary theory insights from the Romantic critique of civilization and from the Jewish messianic tradition. [Read More]

Anarchism Bolshevism Critical theory Frankfurt School French Revolution György Lukács Historical materialism History Ideology Karl Marx Marxism Profiles Progress Theology Theory Violence Walter Benjamin

Jeff Wall: The Return of the Modern? (a Review)

February 2, 2008 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

ONE OF THE HIGHLIGHT EXHIBITIONS of the summer of 2007 in Chicago was The Art Institute’s retrospective exhibition on the work of Jeff Wall. This occasion marked the first time that the Art Institute exhibited a solo show of a photographer. Jeff Wall’s large-scale color transparencies, mounted in light boxes, covered the same walls that have previously displayed Rembrandts, Girodets, and Manets. The exhibition provided the opportunity to reconsider the present condition of photography as art. [Read More]