Karl Marx

Does Marxism Even Matter?

September 25, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

How does Marxism still matter? A teach-in led by Jacob Cayia on September 25, 2012, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Description In the mid-19th century, Marx and Engels observed, in the Communist Manifesto, that a specter was haunting Europe, the specter of Communism. A century and a half later, it is Marxism itself that continues to haunt the Left, while capitalism remains. [Read More]

The birth of a revolution?

June 7, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

ON FEBRUARY 28, 2012, the radio program Radical Minds on WHPK-FM Chicago broadcast an interview with Mary Gabriel, the author of Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2011). The interview was conducted by Spencer A. Leonard of the Platypus Affiliated Society. What follows is an edited transcript of their conversation. Spencer A. Leonard: Love and Capital is a biography not only of Marx but of his family and intimate circle, above all Friedrich Engels. [Read More]

Love and Capital Karl Marx Marxism Mary Gabriel

1873--1973: The century of Marxism

The death of Marxism and the emergence of neo-liberalism and neo-anarchism

June 7, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

AT THE 2012 PLATYPUS AFFILIATED SOCIETY’S (PAS) annual International Convention, held at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago March 30–April 1, Chris Cutrone, President of the PAS, delivered the following presentation, which has been edited for clarity. A full audio recording is available online by clicking the above link. IN THE TRADITION we established just two years ago, there is a Platypus President’s report, speaking to the historical moment. [Read More]

Anarchism History History of the Left Vladimir Lenin Karl Marx Marxism Stalinism The Left Theodor W. Adorno Trotskyism

Liberalism and Marx

May 1, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

ON MARCH 17, 2012, Ross Wolfe and Pam Nogales of the Platypus Affiliated Society interviewed Domenico Losurdo, the author, most recently, of Liberalism: A Counter-History (2011). What follows is an edited transcript of their conversation. Full audio and video recordings of the interview can be found by clicking the above links. Liberalism A counter-history Ross Wolfe: How would you characterize the antinomy of emancipation and de-emancipation in liberal ideology? [Read More]

Domenico Losurdo Liberalism Karl Marx Marxism

The New Left zombie is dead! Long live Occupy!

April 1, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

IN THE EIGHTEENTH BRUMAIRE, Marx disagrees with Hegel’s famous quote about history when he writes, “Hegel remarks somewhere that all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce…”1 Occupy is not a return to the New Left, a farce of the sixties. Usually history becomes codified once the right academic authorities have made their case most palatable to other academic authorities. [Read More]

C. Wright Mills Eighteenth Brumaire Karl Marx New Left OWS Occupy Slavoj Žižek David Haack PR Occupy

Marx at the margins

March 1, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

_LAST SUMMER, SPENCER A. LEONARD interviewed Kevin Anderson, author of Lenin, Hegel, and Western Marxism (1995) and Marx at the Margins (2010). The interview was broadcast on August 2, 2011 on the radio show * Radical Minds* on WHPK – FM Chicago. What follows is an edited transcript of their conversation._ Spencer A. Leonard: Broadly describe your aims and ambitions in writing Marx at the Margins. Kevin Anderson: One aim was that, in the past couple of decades - Really the past three decades since the publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism, there have been a number of critiques of Marx that centered on charges of Eurocentrism, ethnocentricsm, and so forth. [Read More]

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Kevin Anderson Karl Marx Marx at the Margins Marxism Radical Minds

The Birth of a Revolution?

Mary Gabriel interviewed by Spencer A. Leonard on "Love and Capital"

February 28, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

On February 28, 2012, the radio program Radical Minds on WHPK-FM Chicago broadcast an interview with Mary Gabriel, the author of Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2011). The interview was conducted by Spencer A. Leonard of the Platypus Affiliated Society.

Audio Recording

Transcript in Platypus Review #47

Mary Gabriel Communism Karl Marx Marxism Radical Minds Socialism

Does Marxism Even Matter?

A Teach-in on the Communist Manifesto

February 6, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

A teach-in with Platypus Affiliated Society member Chris Mansour. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Description In the mid-19th century, Marx and Engels famously observed in the Communist Manifesto that a specter was haunting Europe: the specter of Communism. 160 years later, it is Marxism itself that haunts us. In the 21st century, it seems that the Left abandoned Marxism as a path to freedom. [Read More]

Communist Manifesto Karl Marx Marxism

The Relevance of Lenin Today

December 17, 2011 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Video Recording Transcript in Platypus Review #48 Description The Encyclopedia Britannica’s entry on Lenin states that, If the Bolshevik Revolution is – as some people have called it – the most significant political event of the 20th century, then Lenin must for good or ill be considered the century’s most significant political leader. Not only in the scholarly circles of the former Soviet Union, but even among many non-Communist scholars, he has been regarded as both the greatest revolutionary leader and revolutionary statesman in history, as well as the greatest revolutionary thinker since Marx. [Read More]

Bolshevik Revolution Vladimir Lenin Leninism Karl Marx Marxism Russian revolution

The elusive "threads of historical progress"

The early Chartists and the young Marx and Engels

December 1, 2011 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

THE FIRST EVER REACTION by the Victorian ruling class to “Marxism” is found in a London Times leader of September 2, 1851 on “Literature For The Poor,” “only now and then when some startling fact is bought before us do we entertain even the suspicion that there is a society close to our own, and with which we are in the habits of daily intercourse, of which we are as completely ignorant as if it dwelt in another land, of another language in which we never conversed, which in fact we never saw. [Read More]

Chartism Chartists Friedrich Engels Historical Progress Karl Marx