Does Marxism Even Matter?

 September 25, 2012  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

How does Marxism still matter? A teach-in led by Jacob Cayia on September 25, 2012, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Description In the mid-19th century, Marx and Engels observed, in the Communist Manifesto, that a specter was haunting Europe, the specter of Communism. A century and a half later, it is Marxism itself that continues to haunt the Left, while capitalism remains. [Read More]
Communist Manifesto  Friedrich Engels  Karl Marx  Marxism 

The elusive "threads of historical progress"

The early Chartists and the young Marx and Engels

The elusive "threads of historical progress"

 December 1, 2011  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

THE FIRST EVER REACTION by the Victorian ruling class to “Marxism” is found in a London Times leader of September 2, 1851 on “Literature For The Poor,” “only now and then when some startling fact is bought before us do we entertain even the suspicion that there is a society close to our own, and with which we are in the habits of daily intercourse, of which we are as completely ignorant as if it dwelt in another land, of another language in which we never conversed, which in fact we never saw. [Read More]
Chartism  Chartists  Friedrich Engels  Historical Progress  Karl Marx 

Marx and Engel's Marxism

 March 20, 2011  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

A panel discussion organized by the Platypus Affiliated Society held on March 20, 2011, at Left Forum, Pace University. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Panelists Benjamin Blumberg - University of Chicago Nathan Smith - The Platypus Affiated Society Pam Nogales - New York University Richard Rubin - Platypus Tana Forrester - The Platypus Affiliated Society Description Marx and Engels were not the preeminent socialists but rather socialism’s greatest critics, distinguishing their “communism” from “reactionary,” “bourgeois” and “democratic” socialism. [Read More]
Left Forum  Left Forum 2011  Friedrich Engels  Forum 2011  Karl Marx  Marxism  New York  NYC Other  Socialism  Bourgeois Revolutions 

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