History

Postcolonialism or postmodernism?

April 2, 2011 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

On February 11, 2011 – the day Hosni Mubarak resigned the office of President of Egypt – Chris Mansour interviewed Susan Buck-Morss, professor of political philosophy and social theory at Cornell University and author of The Origin of Negative Dialectics and Thinking Past Terror: Islamism and Critical Theory on the Left, on behalf of The Platypus Review. What follows is an edited transcript of their conversation. Chris Mansour: What were the stakes of introducing Critical Theory into a postmodern culture that widely considered its ideas obsolete? [Read More]

Marxism Susan Buck-Morss colonialism postcolonialism postmodernism modernism Egypt Islam history Theodor W. Adorno

Book review: Karl Korsch, Marxism and Philosophy

September 3, 2009 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

[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]

The Platypus Synthesis

History, Theory, and Practice

June 14, 2009 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

At the 1st annual international convention of the Platypus Affiliated Society, in Chicago, June 12-14, 2009, the concluding plenary event, a discussion on Platypus’s theoretical stance, its raison d’etre, and where the project will be going. Audience question-and-answer discussion follows. Held on June 14, 2009 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element A transcript can be found here [Read More]

Platypus International Convention Platypus International Convention 2009 History Platypus Platypus Affiliated Society Practice Theory

notes on Lenin, "Left-Wing" Communism an Infantile Disorder (1920)

April 13, 2009 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

From Lenin’s “Left-Wing” Communism – An Infantile Disorder (1920): http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ “[E.g.,] Parliamentarianism has become “historically obsolete”. That is true in the propaganda sense. However, everybody knows that this is still a far cry from overcoming it in practice. Capitalism could have been declared – and with full justice – to be “historically obsolete” many decades ago, but that does not at all remove the need for a very long and very persistent struggle on the basis of capitalism. [Read More]

/20th Century Chris Cutrone Discussion History Vladimir Lenin Politics Rosa Luxemburg the Left Leon Trotsky

notes on Spartacists on Lenin and the vanguard party

March 1, 2009 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

I am writing with some notes and suggestions for discussion on the Spartacist League pamphlet on “Lenin and the vanguard party” (1978): http://www.bolshevik.org/Pamphlets/LeninVanguard/LVP%200.htm I’d like to quote at length from Spartacist founder James Robertson’s 1973 speech “In Defense of Democratic Centralism” that is included in the pamphlet as supplemental material (and is edited in the pamphlet but given in its entirety on-line): http://www.bolshevik.org/Pamphlets/LeninVanguard/LVP%20Robertson%20to%20Spartacus-BL.htm “What we are dealing with in the period from the founding of Iskra to the founding of the Bolshevik Party in 1912 is the transformation of the Bolshevik faction from a revolutionary social-democratic into an embryonic communist organization. [Read More]

Chris Cutrone Discussion History Vladimir Lenin Marxism the Left

notes on Feb. 15 reading Korsch "Marxism and Philosophy" (1923)

February 15, 2009 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

‘[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’ [Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859)]. 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]

/20th Century Chris Cutrone crisis critical theory Discussion History ideology Karl Korsch Vladimir Lenin Karl Marx Marxism Philosophy Platypus Revolution Rosa Luxemburg Socialism vulgar Marxism

note on recent readings: Slaughter, Nettl, Luxemburg

February 10, 2009 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

After the recent discussion of Luxemburg’s pamphlet on Reform or Revolution? (1900/08), there might be some confusion regarding the relationship between Luxemburg’s formulations and the raison d’etre of Platypus as an organized project today.—What is the point of reading Luxemburg today? Whereas Luxemburg was critiquing Eduard Bernstein and other “revisionists’” arguments that the development of capitalism had made proletarian social revolution superfluous or even harmful, Luxemburg was arguing that such historical “development” must be seen as symptomatic of the growing and deepening crisis of capitalism, and that the organized Marxist social-democratic labor and political movement must be seen as part of that history, part of that crisis. [Read More]

capitalism Discussion emancipation History Marxism organization Politics Revolution Rosa Luxemburg Socialism society the Left

Trotsky on "degeneration" and "entire generations passing into discard" (1933)

February 7, 2009 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

It is not a question of counterposing abstract principles… [W]ith the degeneration of organizations, with the passing of entire generations into discard… the necessity… arises of mobilizing fresh forces on a new historical stage… With inevitable halts and partial retreats it is necessary to move forward on a road crisscrossed by countless obstacles and covered with the debris of the past. Those who are frightened by this had better step aside. [Read More]

Chris Cutrone crisis Discussion History Marxism Politics the Left Leon Trotsky Trotskyism

Heidegger's conservative-reactionary misunderstanding of freedom

February 5, 2009 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

… [M]odern man finds his own ‘essence’ in his greatest discovery, namely, that the most important thing is to turn ‘life’ into a ‘lived experience’ and to make all possibilities of lived-experience accessible generally to all in an equal manner so that through this universality of ‘lived experience’ ‘life’ may prove and actualize itself as the unconditioned whole… Without initiating its own self-destruction, how could that which has made itself beforehand the goal of itself and has put all goal-setting at the service of this goal, ever inquire into a goal? [Read More]

Chris Cutrone Discussion emancipation freedom History

Obama: three comparisons: MLK, JFK, FDR

The coming sharp turn to the Right

November 1, 2008 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

IN PREVIOUS ARTICLES I have addressed the Presidential campaign of Barack Obama in terms of the historical precedents of MLK, Jr. (the end of “black politics”) and JFK (Iraq and the election). Now I wish to address the final and perhaps most important but problematic comparison that might be available, FDR. MLK, Jr., JFK and FDR span the political imagination of the preceding generation, the “baby-boomers” who came of age in the 1960s, the time of the “New Left. [Read More]

Franklin Roosevelt History History of the Left John F. Kennedy Martin Luther King Barack Obama