Karl Korsch

Ends of philosophy

August 5, 2018 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

Prepared opening remarks for an internal discussion by members of Platypus on “Marxism and philosophy” to be held on August 11, 2018. Misery MARXISM CONSIDERED PHILOSOPHY as “bourgeois ideology.” This meant, first and foremost, radical bourgeois philosophy, the modern philosophy of bourgeois emancipation, the thought of the revolt of the Third Estate. But pre-bourgeois philosophy, traditional philosophy, was also addressed as bourgeois ideology, as ideology. But ideology is a modern phenomenon. [Read More]

Karl Korsch Philosophy

Book Review: Karl Korsch, Marxismus und Philosophie

July 1, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

The first English translation of August Thalheimer’s 1924 review of Karl Korsch’s seminal work, Marxism and Philosophy, appears below. The review originally appeared in the Soviet journal Under the Banner of Marxism (Pod Znamenem Marksizma), 4-5 (1924): 367–373). For an earlier discussion of Korsch’s book, see Chris Cutrone’s review of the 2008 reprint of Marxism and Philosophy released by Monthly Review Press, in Platypus Review 15 (September 2009), and the original translation of Karl Kautsky’s review of Korsch that was published in Platypus Review 43 (February 2012) [Read More]

August Thalheimer Book Review Karl Korsch Philosophy

A destroyer of vulgar-Marxism

Book review: Karl Korsch, _Marxism and Philosophy_ (Leipzig: C.L. Hirschfeld, 1923)

January 30, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

Karl Kautsky’s 1924 review of Karl Korsch’s Marxism and Philosophy appears below in English for the first time.1 It is hoped that other reviews of Marxism and Philosophy will also be made available in the very near future, not least by leading German communists such as August Thalheimer. Given the highly disputed theoretical legacy of both Kautsky and Korsch, the publication of this review will doubtless add to the debate on the idea of a “coming of age” of Marxism in the late 1860s. [Read More]

Book Review History of the Left Karl Kautsky Karl Korsch Vladimir Lenin Marxism

The politics of Critical Theory

Third Annual Platypus International Convention: Opening plenary

July 9, 2011 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

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]

1960s György Lukács Herbert Marcuse Karl Korsch Vladimir Lenin Max Horkheimer Platypus Convention Rosa Luxemburg Theodor W. Adorno Critical Theory Frankfurt School

Lenin's liberalism

June 1, 2011 | The Platypus Affiliated Society • Other languages: Ελληνικά

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 LeBlanc 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]

Karl Korsch Vladimir Lenin Liberalism Marxism Theodor W. Adorno

Gillian Rose's 'Hegelian' critique of Marxism

Book review: Gillian Rose, 'Hegel Contra Sociology.' London: Verso, 2009.

March 15, 2010 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

GILLIAN ROSE’S MAGNUM OPUS was her second book, Hegel Contra Sociology (1981).1 Preceding this was The Melancholy Science: An Introduction to the Thought of Theodor W. Adorno (1978), a work which charted Rose’s approach to the relation of Marxism to Hegel in Hegel Contra Sociology.2 Alongside her monograph on Adorno, Rose published two incisively critical reviews of the reception of Adorno’s work.3 Rose thus established herself early on as an important interrogator of Adorno’s thought and Frankfurt School Critical Theory more generally, and of their problematic reception. [Read More]

György Lukács Karl Korsch Vladimir Lenin Karl Marx Marxism Rosa Luxemburg Theodor W. Adorno Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Sociology Gillian Rose

Rejoinder to David Black

On Karl Korsch's Marxism and Philosophy

February 26, 2010 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

DAVID BLACK’S VALUABLE COMMENTS and further historical exposition (in Platypus Review 18, December 2009) of my review of Karl Korsch’s Marxism and Philosophy (Platypus Review 15, September 2009) have at their core an issue with Korsch’s account of the different historical phases of the question of “philosophy” for Marx and Marxism. Black questions Korsch’s differentiation of Marx’s relationship to philosophy into three distinct periods: pre-1848, circa 1848, and post-1848. But attempting to defeat Korsch’s historical account of such changes in Marx’s approaches to relating theory and practice means avoiding Korsch’s principal point. [Read More]

David Black György Lukács History of the Left Karl Korsch Vladimir Lenin Karl Marx Marxism Max Horkheimer Rosa Luxemburg The Left Theodor W. Adorno Leon Trotsky

1917

The Decline of the Left in the 20th Century: Toward a Theory of Historical Regression

November 18, 2009 | The Platypus Affiliated Society • Other languages: Ελληνικά, Deutsch

ON APRIL 18, 2009, the Platypus Affiliated Society conducted the following panel discussion at the Left Forum Conference at Pace University in New York City. The panel was organized around four significant moments in the progressive separation of theory and practice over the course of the 20th century: 2001 (Spencer A. Leonard), 1968 (Atiya Khan), 1933 (Richard Rubin), and 1917 (Chris Cutrone). The following is an edited transcript of the 1917 presentation by Chris Cutrone. [Read More]

Bolshevik Revolution György Lukács Karl Korsch Vladimir Lenin Revolution Rosa Luxemburg Socialism Left Forum

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]

notes on Adorno in 1968-69

May 26, 2009 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

I am writing with some very brief notes on Adorno’s last writings from 1968-69, the “Marginalia to Theory and Praxis,” “Resignation,” “Late Capitalism or Industrial Society? (AKA “Is Marx Obsolete?”),” and the Adorno-Marcuse correspondence of 1969. The center of Adorno’s critique of the 1960s New Left was their romantic opposition to capitalism, found, for example, in their desideratum of the unity of theory and practice. Rather, Adorno asserted the progressive-emancipatory aspect of the separation of theory and practice. [Read More]

/20th Century Chris Cutrone crisis critical theory Discussion György Lukács Karl Korsch Vladimir Lenin Karl Marx Marxism Rosa Luxemburg the Left Theodor W. Adorno Leon Trotsky Walter Benjamin