Third Parties and the Left: Problems and Prospects

 March 18, 2012  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

Video Recording Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Panelists Nikil Saval is an editor at n+1, and a co-editor of Occupy!: Scenes from Occupied America (Verso, 2011). He is currently writing a history of office design and white-collar work. Lenny Brody is an activist, student of political change, printing industry worker, and descendant of union organizers. He fought with Martin Luther King, Jr. [Read More]
Left Forum  Left Forum 2012  Democratic Party  Election  Electoral politics  Green party  Justice party  Labor party  Third party 

The Environmentalism of Occupy

 March 18, 2012  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

PLEASE NOTE: Due to technical difficulties, the first twenty minutes of this panel were not captured onto video. We apologize for the inconvenience. The first twenty minutes as well as the full audio for the panel can be found in the audio version below. Held at Left Forum 2012 at Pace University, New York on March 18, 2012. Hosted by the Platypus Affiliated Society. Video Recording Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Panelists Phil Aroneanu(US Campaign Director, 350. [Read More]
Occupy  Left Forum  Left Forum 2012  Ecology  Environment  Environmentalism  OWS  Sustainability 

Technology, Un/Employment, and the Left

From Future Shock to OWS

 March 18, 2012  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

Video Recording Panelists George Caffentzis is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern Maine in Portland, Maine. He is a founding member of the Midnight Notes Collective. He is the author of many books and articles on money, machines and capitalism. His e-book, “No Blood for Oil!” can be downloaded gratis at radicalpolytics.org. Dr. Fred Block is Research Professor of Sociology at UC Davis with interests in economic and political sociology. [Read More]
Occupy  Left Forum  Left Forum 2012  Employment  Futurism  Post-Fordiam  Technology  Unemployment  Work 

The Significance of Art in the Occupy Movement

 March 17, 2012  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

Video Recording Panelists Noah Fischer is a Brooklyn-based artist originally from north of San Francisco. He has exhibited kinetic art installations, photographs, and sculpture in New York, Europe, and India. He has also worked collaboratively with the Berlin-based performance group andcompany&Co. Noah initiated Occupy Subways and Occupy Museums in the first weeks of OWS. Noah is the curator of the No-Eyes Viewing Wall at Brooklyn Zen Center. [Read More]
Occupy  Left Forum  Left Forum 2012  Aesthetics  Art  Occupy  Occupy museums  Occupy subways  Occupy wall street 

Finance Capital and Occupy

Marxist Perspectives

 March 17, 2012  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

Video Recording Panelists Radhika Desai is Professor at the Department of Political Studies, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. She is the author of Slouching Towards Ayodhya: From Congress to Hindutva in Indian Politics (2 rev ed, 2004) and Intellectuals and Socialism: ‘Social Democrats’ and the Labour Party (1994), She edited Developmental and Cultural Nationalisms in 2009. She is co-editing Volume 27 of Research in Political Economy with Paul Zarembka. [Read More]
Occupy  Left Forum  Left Forum 2012  Capitalism  Finance capital  Occupy  Political economy 

Arab Spring into Winter?

Challenges to the Left One Year On

 March 17, 2012  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

Video Recording Panelists Siyaves Azeri is the spokesperson of the Committee of International Relations of the Worker-communist Party of Iran. He is also a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Philosophy, Queen’s University, Kingston Canada. Azeri has taught as an assistant professor at Koc University in Istanbul; he has also taught at University of Ottawa and as a guest lecturer at Istanbul Technical University. Maria Rohaly is a coordinator for Mission Free Iran, an international organization that emerged during the 2009 uprising in Iran to amplify the demands and struggle for the goals and objectives of the revolution: freedom, equality, and humane society. [Read More]
Left Forum  Left Forum 2012  Arab Spring  Egypt  International left  Iran  Syria  Tunisia 

The antinomy of art and politics

A critique of art as "cultural resistance"

The antinomy of art and politics

 August 31, 2011  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

_AT THE 2011 LEFT FORUM, held at Pace University between March 18–21, Platypus hosted a conversation on the theme of Aesthetics in Protests. Panelists Stephen Duncombe (Reclaim the Streets), Marc Herbst (Journal of Aesthetics and Protest), Chris Mansour (Platypus), Laurel Whitney (The Yes Men), were asked to consider: “What are the historical roots that contribute to the use of current aesthetic interventions in political protests? In what ways do they expand or limit the possibilities for protests to transform the social order? [Read More]
Art  Art and Politics  Left Forum  Art and culture 

Trotsky's Marxism

'The point, however, is to change it'

 May 5, 2011  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

At the 2011 Left Forum, held at Pace University in NYC between March 18-21 , Platypus hosted a conversation on “Trotsky’s Marxism.” Panelists Ian Morrison (Platypus), Susan Williams (Freedom Socialist Party), and Jason Wright (International Bolshevik Tendency) were asked to address, “What was Trotsky’s contribution to revolutionary Marxism? At one level, the answer is clear. Above even his significance as organizer of the October insurrection and leader of the Red Army during the Russian Civil War, what makes Trotsky a major figure in the history of Marxism is his status as the leader of the Left Opposition and, later, his founding of the Fourth International. [Read More]
International Bolshevik Tendency  Left Forum  Leon Trotsky 

Lenin's Marxism

Lenin's Marxism

 May 5, 2011  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

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]
International Socialist Organization  Left Forum  Vladimir Lenin  Marxism