Leon Trotsky

1917--2017

March 8, 2018 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

ON NOVEMBER 6, 2017, the Platypus Affiliated Society held a panel discussion at the University of Illinois at Chicago on the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution. The speakers were Jonathan W. Daly (Professor of History at UIC and author of The Watchful State: Security Police and Opposition in Russia, 1906-1917), Franklin Dimitryev (News & Letters), Greg Lucero (Socialist Party USA), and Sam Brown (Black Rose/Rosa Negra). The speakers were asked to respond to the following questions: What were the aims of the 1917 Russian Revolution? [Read More]

russian revolution 1917 spusa News & Letters black rose october revolution leon trotsky rsdlp Bolsheviks vladimir lenin

1917--2017

August 29, 2017 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

ON APRIL 8, 2017, for the closing plenary of its 9 Annual International Convention, the Platypus Affiliated Society organized a panel discussion, 1917–2017, at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago. Tasked with reflecting on the historical significance of 1917 for the Left, the panel brought together Bryan Palmer, Chair of the Canadian Studies Department at Trent University and author of numerous histories of the Left; Leo Panitch, Professor of Political Science at York University, author, and co-editor of the Socialist Register; and Chris Cutrone, President of the Platypus Affiliated Society. [Read More]

1917 Bolshevism Leon Trotsky Vladimir Lenin

Trotsky and the Frankfurt School

October 12, 2015 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

Disrespect for a reality that demands adoration as if it were a god is the religion of those, who in today’s Europe under the ‘Iron Heel’ risk their life in order to prepare a future better one. —Max Horkheimer, September 19391 LOOKING THROUGH THE REGISTER of names in the writings and letters of the circle of friends around Max Horkheimer we find only rare references to Leon Trotsky. Theodor Adorno, for instance, who claims in his Aesthetic Theory (1969) that the ambitious art has been bourgeois art, remarks approvingly that Trotsky also had said in his book Literature and Revolution (1923/24) that (after the revolution) there would be no possibility for the development of any “proletarian” art, and that there would be produced a post-bourgeois art only in the future, after an international socialist society will have been established. [Read More]

Frankfurt School Leon Trotsky

Revolutionary politics and thought

September 5, 2014 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

No coarser insult, no baser defamation, can be thrown against the workers than the remark, ‘Theoretical controversies are for the intellectuals’ —Rosa Luxemburg, Reform or Revolution (1900) Since there can be no talk of an independent ideology formulated by the working masses themselves in the process of their movement the only choice is – either bourgeois or socialist ideology… This does not mean, of course, that the workers have no part in creating such an ideology. [Read More]

C. Wright Mills Democracy Environmentalism French Revolution Hannah Arendt Ideology Jacobin Karl Marx Vladimir Lenin Leon Trotsky Organization Political party Praxis Revolution Rosa Luxemburg Theory and practice Thomas jefferson

What is Trotskyism?

November 23, 2013 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

A panel discussion organized by the Platypus Affiliated Society on November 22, 2013, at the University of Pittsburgh Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element The Platypus Affiliated Society cordially invites you to attend a discussion about the history of Trotskyism, on Pitt campus next Friday. The discussion will aim to explain the history of Trotskyism to a general audience, & discuss its political relevance in the present – no specialized knowledge will be presumed, & anyone with an interest in the history of Marxism & the Left is welcome. [Read More]

Leon Trotsky Trotskyism

Bookchin's Trotskyist decade: 1939--1948

December 1, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

MURRAY BOOKCHIN IS KNOWN TODAY as the intellectual originator of radical ecology in the early 1960s. Social ecology, as he named it, was and remains a program for the decentralization of society into small-scale communities that, in confederation, would manage and control a socialized “post-scarcity” economy. The communities would be integrated with the environment, powered by renewable energy, grounded in sophisticated automated and miniaturized technology, and self-governed by citizens in a face-to-face democracy. [Read More]

Murray Bookchin Leon Trotsky

Trotsky and Trotskyism, Lecture 7

1953--1963

July 28, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

Part 7 of the Summer 2012 Platypus Affiliated Society Primary Reading Group Lecture Series: Trotsky and Trotskyism. Recorded on 21st July, 2012 at The New School, New York. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Week 7 Readings * recommended / * supplemental reading Cornelius Castoriadis, “The workers and organization” (1959) * Cliff Slaughter, “What is revolutionary leadership?” (1960) * Revolutionary Tendency of the Socialist Workers Party/U. [Read More]

Castoriadis Cliff Slaughter Cornelius Castoriadis Deutscher Genesis of Pabloism Hal Draper Isaac Deutscher Marxism Murray Bookchin Spartacist League Tony Cliff Leon Trotsky Trotskyism

Trotsky and Trotskyism, Lecture 6

1940--1953

July 21, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

Part 6 of the Summer 2012 Platypus Affiliated Society Primary Reading Group Lecture Series: Trotsky and Trotskyism. Recorded on 21st July, 2012 at The New School, New York. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Week 6 Readings • recommended / * supplemental reading James Cannon, “The coming American revolution” (1946) C.L.R. James, Raya Dunayevskaya, et al., “Program of the minority tendency of the Workers Party/U. [Read More]

C.L.R. James Ernest Mandel Herbert Marcuse Michel Pablo Raya Dunyevskaya Leon Trotsky Trotskyism

Trotsky and Trotskyism, Lecture 5

1933--1940

July 14, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

Part 5 of the Summer 2012 Platypus Affiliated Society Primary Reading Group Lecture Series: Trotsky and Trotskyism. Recorded on 14 July, 2012 at The New School, New York. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Week 4 Readings * recommended / * supplemental reading * Trotsky, “Stalinism and Bolshevism” (1937) * Trotsky, The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International (1938) [Read More]

Leon Trotsky Trotskyism Art

1933

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

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

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 1933 presentation by Richard Rubin. [Read More]

Left Forum Leon Trotsky Walter Benjamin