Is Marx back?

 May 9, 2010  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

IN LIGHT OF the recent economic crisis, Marxist theory has enjoyed a resurgence of interest. This most recent is the last of many returns to Marx’s work throughout the 20th century. Still, the question poses itself: Why return to Marx, yet again? What does this move tell us about our contemporary situation? Most important, what do previous returns to Marx tell us about capitalism and those who have self-consciously struggled against it? [Read More]
Leo Panitch  Karl Marx  Politics  Vietnam  1968  Imperialism 

Gillian Rose's 'Hegelian' critique of Marxism

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

Gillian Rose's 'Hegelian' critique of Marxism

 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

Rejoinder to David Black

 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 

Book review: Karl Korsch, Marxism and Philosophy

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]
/20th Century  Adolph Reed  Anarchism  Council communism  Critical theory  Emancipation  Fred Halliday  György Lukács  History  History of the Left  Ideology  Karl Korsch  Vladimir Lenin  Karl Marx  Marxism  Max Horkheimer  New Left  Rosa Luxemburg  Theodor W. Adorno  Leon Trotsky 

notes to Rousseau

 June 30, 2009  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

The reading group schedule with links to the readings for the summer has been posted here Platypus Marxist reading group summer 2009, June 28 - August 16 Radical bourgeois philosophy: Kant-Hegel-Nietzsche We will address the greater context for Marx and Marxism through the issue of bourgeois radicalism in philosophy in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Discussion will emerge by working through the development from Kant and Hegel to Nietzsche, but also by reference to the Rousseauian aftermath, and the emergence of the modern society of capital, as registered by liberals such as Adam Smith and Benjamin Constant. [Read More]
Chris Cutrone  critical theory  Discussion  emancipation  freedom  Karl Marx  Marxism  Robert Pippin  Jean-Jacques Rousseau 

My dialogue with Kliman on Chicago Political Workshop, Principia Dialectica and Marxist Humanism

 May 28, 2009  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

[Andrew Kliman wrote:] Reply to Chicago Political Workshop, Chris Cutrone, and Principia Dialectica On plagiarism, Postone, and the present May 27, 2009 Dear Comrades, First, I want to respond to the charge that I plagiarize Moishe Postone, by categorically denying it. When, last July, Sean of Principia Dialectica put forward the allegation of plagiarism (using somewhat different words), I tried to overlook it. I thought that the charge wouldn’t be taken seriously, given that Sean left it wholly unsubstantiated. [Read More]
capitalism  critical theory  Discussion  Karl Marx  Marxism  Principia Dialectica  the Left 

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 

notes on Adorno

 May 18, 2009  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

I am writing with some brief notes on Adorno’s 1942 essay “Reflections on Class Theory.” Another writing by Adorno we read in the group, “Imaginative Excesses,” the final section of the aphorisms orphaned from Minima Moralia (1944-47), published in New Left Review as “Messages in a Bottle,” Adorno addresses the division and necessary unity of “workers and intellectuals.” One passage in particular should be emphasized, that “Those schooled in dialectical theory are reluctant to indulge in positive images of the proper society, of its members, even of those who would accomplish it. [Read More]
/20th Century  Add new tag  Chris Cutrone  Discussion  Karl Marx  Marxism  Theodor W. Adorno 

Symptomology

Historical transformations in social-political context

Symptomology

 May 15, 2009  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society  • Other languages: Ελληνικά

Marx ridiculed the idea of having to “prove” the labor theory of value. If Marxian theory proved to be the means whereby the real relations of bourgeois society could be demonstrated in their movement, where they came from, what they were, and where they were going, that was the proof of the theory. Neither Hegel nor Marx understood any other “scientific” proof. The more concrete the negation of the need, the more abstract, empty and flamboyant becomes the subjective mediation. [Read More]
/20th Century  Crisis  Critical theory  David Harvey  Karl Marx  Marxism  Michel Foucault  Neo-liberalism  New Left  Barack Obama  Reflections 

notes on Lenin, The State and Revolution (1917)

 March 30, 2009  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

I am writing with some notes towards discussion of Lenin’s The State and Revolution (1917). The first point to make is that this is least controversial of the three texts by Lenin we read in the group, the other two being What is to be done? (1902) and “Left-Wing” Communism: an infantile disorder (1920). (Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism (1916) is also somewhat controversial.) There are potentially 3 Lenins: vanguardist; utopian; and conservative. [Read More]
Chris Cutrone  Discussion  Vladimir Lenin  Karl Marx  Marxism  Rosa Luxemburg  Leon Trotsky