Herbert Marcuse

On April 6, 2018, the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted a panel discussion, Fifty Years of 1968, as the opening plenary of its 10th International Convention, 1918–2018: A Century of Counterrevolution, held in Chicago. Speaking at the event were Abdul Alkalimat, professor of African-American studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champagne, and author of numerous books, including Malcolm X for Beginners; Joseph Estes, a member of Platypus and of the Campaign for a Socialist Party; Johnny Mercer, a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain and an artist working in Chicago; and Mitchel Cohen, pamphleteer, poet, and founder of the Red Balloon Collective at SUNY Stony Brook in 1969. [Read More]

The following short article was originally published in the Brandeis University Yearbook for 1963. Marcuse taught at Brandeis as Professor of Politics and Philosophy from 1958 to 1965. During those years he wrote and published his most famous work, One-Dimensional Man (1964), which, though largely forgotten today, served as a major touchstone for the New Left. Marcuse, together with a handful of other professors, wrote his essay in response to a general solicitation by the yearbook committee. [Read More]

Part 6 of the Summer 2012 Platypus Affiliated Society Primary Reading Group Lecture Series: Trotsky and Trotskyism. Recorded on 21st July, 2012 at The New School, New York. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Week 6 Readings • recommended / * supplemental reading James Cannon, “The coming American revolution” (1946) C.L.R. James, Raya Dunayevskaya, et al., “Program of the minority tendency of the Workers Party/U. [Read More]

THE OPENING PLENARY of the third annual Platypus Affiliated Society international convention, held April 29–May 1, 2011 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, was a panel discussion between Nicholas Brown of the University of Illinois at Chicago, Chris Cutrone of Platypus, Andrew Feenberg of Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, and Richard Westerman of the University of Chicago. The panelists were asked to address the following: “Recently, the New Left Review published a translated conversation between the critical theorists Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer causing more than a few murmurs and gasps. [Read More]

A workshop held on May 29, 2010 at the 2010 Platypus International Convention at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Led by Pablo Ben. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Description An analysis of how sexuality as a sphere of modern life was formed due to the emergence of capitalism. Sexuality did not exist before the 18th century and it has emerged since then in several parts of the world following the expansion of global capitalism. [Read More]

IN MAY OF 2009 SCIENTISTS IN BERLIN claimed to have unearthed the corpse of the martyred revolutionary leader Rosa Luxemburg. Stored in the cellar of a hospital, the corpse had neither a head, nor feet, nor hands. The stump of a corpse of Rosa Luxemburg lay rotting in a basement, subjected to the un-tender mercies of modern forensic science. Less than fourteen years after the death of one of its greatest leaders, the German Left died. [Read More]