Jeremy Corbyn

“My whole lifetime, every time you think the Left has got somewhere, the Right is one step ahead of it”1 – Mark Fisher (1968–2017) MARK FISHER WAS OFTEN ASKED what “capitalist realism” is. His most interesting answer was that it is “a pathology of the Left.”2 This cut against other definitions of his oft-used concept, which identified it with “neoliberalism.” What ties the two together is implied in the subtitle to his 2009 book – Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative? [Read More]

A panel hosted by Platypus London on October 19, 2017 at Goldsmiths, University of London. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Panelists Jack Conrad HaPe Breitman Robert Liow Lyndon White Description Labour lost the election. But Jeremy Corbyn, a veteran of the 1980’s Labour left, seems to have saved the party. Corbyn’s tenure has raised old questions about the Left’s relationship to the Labour Party. [Read More]

In every era the attempt must be made anew to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it… even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious. – Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History SINCE JEREMY CORBYN took leadership of the Labour Party in 2015, he and his party have been the North Star for many on the Left. [Read More]

On February 18th, 2017, as part of its third European Conference, the Platypus Affiliated Society organized a panel discussion, “The Crisis of Neoliberalism,” at the University of Vienna. The event brought together the following speakers: Chris Cutrone, President of Platypus; John Milios, former chief economic advisor of SYRIZA; Emmanuel Tomaselli, of the International Marxist Tendency; and Boris Kagarlitsky, of the Institute for Globalization Studies and Social Movements in Moscow. What follows is an edited transcript of their discussion. [Read More]

IN SEPTEMBER 2015, THE VETERAN RADICAL MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT Jeremy Corbyn defeated three other mainstream candidates to be elected leader of the UK Labour Party. He won over 250 thousand votes from members, registered supporters, and affiliated union members, 59 percent of the total. Corbyn was backed by most major unions, including Unite, the CWU, ASLEF, and UNISON. During the first few months of Corbyn’s leadership, he enjoyed an uneasy peace with the 230 or so members of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP, the collective organization of Labour’s members of the House of Commons), the vast majority of whom had little confidence in his leadership. [Read More]