History

Remember the future!

A rejoinder to Peter Hudis on "Capital in History"

November 1, 2008 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

HISTORICAL CONSCIOUSNESS ARTICULATES the problem of what “ought” to be with what “is.” The question is how the necessities of emancipatory struggles in the present relate to those of the past. The tasks revealed by historical Marxism have not been superseded but only obscured and forgotten, at the expense of emancipatory social politics in the present. Dunayevskaya and post-Trotskyism The problem with Raya Dunayevskaya lies in the belief that there has been any real theoretical or practical political progress since the failure of the revolutions of 1917-19. [Read More]

Iraq and the election

The fog of "anti-war" politics

October 1, 2008 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

BARACK OBAMA HAD, UNTIL RECENTLY, made his campaign for President of the United States a referendum on the invasion and occupation of Iraq. In the Democratic Party primaries, Obama attacked Hillary Clinton for her vote in favor of the invasion. Among Republican contenders, John McCain went out of his way to appear as the candidate most supportive of the Bush administration’s policy in Iraq. Looking towards the general election, it is over Iraq that the candidates have been most clearly opposed: Obama has sought to distinguish himself most sharply from McCain on Iraq, emphasizing their differences in judgment. [Read More]

Adolph Reed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ANSWER Anti-imperialism Anti-war Ba'athism Bill Clinton Bush administration Democracy Democrats Election History History of the Left Imperialism Iran Iraq ISO Joe Biden Kurds Liberalism NATO Barack Obama Occupation Politics RCP (USA) Republicans Saddam Hussein Saudi Arabia Shia Sunni The Left The Right U.N Vietnam World Can't Wait

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

To the victor, the spoils

Review of Artforum's May 2008 issue May '68'

September 1, 2008 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

We succeeded culturally. We succeeded socially. And we lost politically… I always say: ‘thank God!’ —Daniel Cohn-Bendit in interview on 1968, conducted by Yascha Mounk for The Utopian (2008) [O]ne asks with whom the adherents of historicism actually empathize. The answer is inevitable: with the victor… Whoever has emerged victorious participates to this day in the triumphal procession in which the present rulers step over those who are lying prostrate. [Read More]

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

Introduction to the history of the Left

Changes in the meaning of class struggles

March 1, 2008 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

Why do we need a “history of the Left?” PLATYPUS DIFFERS FROM OTHER TENDENCIES and organizations on the Left to the extent that we find it necessary and desirable to reexamine the history of the Left to help understand problems on the Left in the present. For focusing on the history of the Left and its problems, Platypus has been accused by a variety of Marxists of obscuring the “fundamental social divide” of the “class struggle” of the “proletariat” vs. [Read More]

History of the Left History

The Failure of Pakistan

Perspectives on the crisis, its past, present, and future

February 2, 2008 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

A teach-in, panel discussion and moderated audience Q & A on the failure of the Left in Pakistan, held on February 2, 2008, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Related reading can be found in the Platypus Review #2 Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Panelists -Ayesha Siddiqa (author of Military Inc, Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy) on “Pakistan’s Military Economy” -Manan Ahmed (University of Chicago) on “The Populism of the Bhuttos” [Read More]

Crisis Failure History Manan Ahmed Military Pakistan Panel discussion Populism The Left

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]

Organization, political action, history, and consciousness

On anarchism and Marxism

February 1, 2008 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

Socialism is the first popular movement in world history that has set itself the goal of bringing human consciousness, and thereby free will, into play in the social actions of mankind… to try to take its history into its own hands; instead of remaining a will-less football, it will take the tiller of social life and become the pilot to the goal of its own history. —Rosa Luxemburg, The Crisis of German Social Democracy (1915) [Read More]

Anarchism Consciousness Exchanges History History of the Left Marxism Organization Political action

Interview: Ernesto Laclau

December 1, 2007 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

CONFRONTING THE CONFUSION and fragmentation that wrought progressive politics in recent decades, Ernesto Laclau’s work attempts to theorize the path to the construction of a radical democratic politics. Drawing on Gramsci’s concept of hegemony to devise his own theory by that name, Laclau describes the processes of social articulation that creates popular political identities. By redefining democratic politics as the construction of hegemony, Laclau reminds political actors of the work necessary to construct the plurality of democratic structures vital to any emancipatory political project. [Read More]

1930s Anti-globalization Capitalism Co-optation Commodity form Communist party Culture De-radicalization Democratic Economics Emancipation Emancipatory Equivalential Ernesto Laclau Feminism Freedom Hegemony History Identity Industrial Institutionalization Italy Labor Vladimir Lenin Karl Marx Marxism Movements Participation Particularity Plurality Politics Popular Production Progressive Proletarian Radical Reification Revolution Surplus value Theory Union Universality Workers Working class WWII