International Socialist Organization

The single-payer insurance model is the basis of the health care systems of other advanced industrial nations such as the United Kingdom and Canada, so what accounts for the apparent impracticality of achieving this reform in the United States? If the single-payer system is so much more rational and humane than the alternatives, why does it play such a marginal role in American politics? And if one is seriously committed to this reform, how might the situation change? [Read More]

At the 2011 Left Forum, held at Pace University in NYC between March 18–21, Platypus hosted a conversation on “Lenin’s Marxism.” Panelists Chris Cutrone of Platypus, Paul Le Blanc of the International Socialist Organization, and Lars T. Lih the author of Lenin Reconsidered: “What is to be Done” in Context were asked to address, “What was distinctive about Vladimir Lenin’s Marxism? What was its relationship to the other forms of Marxism and Marxists of his era? [Read More]

A roundtable discussion hosted by Platypus NYU Monday, November 8, 2010 Video Recording Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Transcripted in Platypus Review #32 Panelists Kenyon Farrow, Queers for Economic Justice Greg Gabrellas, Platypus Gary Mucciaroni, Political Science, Temple University Sherry Wolf, International Socialist Organization Moderated by Jeremy Cohan. Descriptipon With roots in earlier radical traditions, movements that sought to radically redefine the relationship of sex, politics, and freedom erupted onto the historical stage in the 60s. [Read More]

Information session for organizers of the May 1, 2008 International Workers’ Day demonstration in Chicago, held on April 23, 2008 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Co-sponsored by the Students for a Democratic Society and the Platypus Affiliated Society.

Audio Recording

Panelists

Tania Unzueta, May 1st Youth

Jorge Mujica, Movimiento 10 de Marzo

Shaun Harkin, International Socialist Organization

However difficult the task of grasping and confronting global capital might be, it is crucially important that a global internationalism be recovered and reformulated… The Left should be very careful about constituting a form of politics that, from the standpoint of human emancipation, would be questionable, at the very best, however many people it may rouse. —Moishe Postone, “History and Helplessness” (2006) A moderated panel discussion and audience Q & A on issues of global capital, imperialism and war, possibilities for progressive political opposition, and the problems and tasks for the Left in the post-Cold War and post-9/11 world raised by the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. [Read More]