Marxism

Marx@200: The point is to change the world (Knoxville, 3.27.19)

May 16, 2019 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

Panel discussion on the life and legacy of Karl Marx as a revolutionary intellectual, hosted by the Platypus Affiliated Society on March 27, 2019 at the University of Tennessee (Knoxville). Speakers: Dr. Harry Dahms, University of Tennessee (Sociology) Dr. Arnold Farr, University of Kentucky (Philosophy) Dr. Spencer Leonard, Platypus Affiliated Society Moderated by AJ Knowles. Description: This past year marked the 200^th^ birthday of Karl Marx, than whom, as even his ideological opponent Isaiah Berlin had to admit, “no thinker in the nineteenth century has had so direct, deliberate and powerful an influence upon mankind. [Read More]

19th Century 20th Century Communism Critical Theory eco-socialism economic crisis Karl Marx Knoxville Marxism psychoanalysis Revolution socialism

Marxism and Feminism

May 5, 2018 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

On February 17, 2018 the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted a discussion at its Fourth Annual European Conference at Goldsmith’s University on the subject of “Marxism and Feminism.” The event’s speakers were Roxanne Baker of the International Bolshevik Tendency; Judith Shapiro, Undergraduate Tutor at the London School of Economics; and Sarah McDonald of the Communist Party of Great Britain. The event was moderated by Erin Hagood of Platypus. What follows is an edited transcript of the discussion, an audio recording of which is available online at the above link. [Read More]

The Platypus Review Feminism Marxism IBT CPGB

Marxism in the Age of Trump

July 21, 2017 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

ON APRIL 7, 2017 the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted a discussion at its Ninth Annual International Convention in Chicago on the subject of “Marxism in the Age of Trump.” The event’s speakers were Chris Cutrone, President of the Platypus Affiliated Society and teacher of Critical Theory at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; Catherine Liu, Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Irvine and author of The American Idyll: Academic Anti-Elitism as Cultural Critique; and Greg Lucero, a founding member of the Revolutionary Students’ Union and a member of the Chicago chapter of the Socialist Party USA. [Read More]

Marxism Donald Trump Populist Party

Marxism in the Age of Trump

April 7, 2017 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

Recording of the opening plenary of the 9 Annual International Platypus Convention, at the University of Chicago, April 7, 2017. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element An edited transcript was published in Issue #98 of the Platypus Review Panelists Chris Cutrone, Platypus Affiliated Society Greg Lucero, Socialist Party USA Catherine Liu, University of California Irvine Description The long anticipated outcome of the 2016 US Presidential Election — the coronation of Hillary Clinton — was dramatically derailed by the twin “populist” insurgencies of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. [Read More]

Donald Trump Marxism

Critical authoritarianism

November 8, 2016 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

Immanent critique WHENEVER APPROACHING ANY PHENOMENON, Adorno’s procedure is one of immanent dialectical critique. The phenomenon is treated as not accidental or arbitrary but as a necessary form of appearance that points beyond itself, indicating conditions of possibility for change. It is a phenomenon of the necessity for change. The conditions of possibility for change indicated by the phenomenon in question are explored immanently, from within. The possibility for change is indicated by a phenomenon’s self-contradictions, which unfold from within itself, from its own movement, and develop from within its historical moment. [Read More]

Article The Platypus Review /20th Century Marx Marxism The Platypus Review Theodor W. Adorno Walter Benjamin Authoritarianism Authoritarian Personality

Platypus Nashville Reading Group - Fall 2016

September 30, 2016 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

Summer and Fall/Autumn 2016 – Winter 2017 Every Monday, 7:00-9:00 pm Bongo Java, 2007 Belmont Blvd. I. What is the Left?—What is Marxism? • required / * recommended reading Marx and Engels readings pp. from Robert C. Tucker, ed., Marx-Engels Reader (Norton 2nd ed., 1978) Week A. Radical bourgeois philosophy I. Rousseau: Crossroads of society | Aug. 8, 2016 Whoever dares undertake to establish a people’s institutions must feel himself capable of changing, as it were, human nature, of transforming each individual, who by himself is a complete and solitary whole, into a part of a larger whole, from which, in a sense, the individual receives his life and his being, of substituting a limited and mental existence for the physical and independent existence. [Read More]

critical theory History of the Left Marxism Platypus Socialism

Women: the Longest Revolution?

Platypus 2016 convention

June 18, 2016 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

Held on Saturday April 2, 2016. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Panelists Marilyn Nissim-Sabat (Lewis University) Christine Riddiough (Chicago Women’s Liberation Union) Judith Gardiner (University of Illinois at Chicago) Description Named after Juliet Mitchell’s 1966 essay, this panel will explore the long history of the struggle for women’s liberation from the vantage point of the Left today. Mitchell critiques bourgeois feminist demands such as the right to work and equal pay to posit the need instead for equal work. [Read More]

Platypus International Convention Platypus International Convention 2016 Marxism Women Juliet Mitchell Feminism Women's liberation

Black Politics and the American Left

Platypus 2016 convention

June 18, 2016 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

Held on Saturday April 2, 2016. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Panelists Christoph Lichtenberg (IBT) Xavier Danae Maatra (Chicago Freedom School) Description Beneath a consensus of avowed anti-racism, the American Left remains conflicted about whether and how to politicize race. This panel seeks to shed historical light on today’s political impasses, asking: How has racism changed throughout U.S. history, and to what degree has racism been overcome in America? [Read More]

Platypus International Convention Platypus International Convention 2016 Black politics Marxism race racism

Horkheimer in 1943 on party and class

January 12, 2016 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

Without a socialist party, there is no class struggle, only rackets HORKHEIMER’S REMARKABLE ESSAY “On the sociology of class relations” (1943)1 is continuous with Adorno’s contemporaneous “Reflections on class theory” (1942) as well as his own “The authoritarian state” (1940/42), which similarly mark the transformation of Marx and Engels’s famous injunction in the Communist Manifesto that “history is the history of class struggles.” All of these writings were inspired by Walter Benjamin’s “On the concept of history” (AKA “Theses on the philosophy of history,” 1940), which registered history’s fundamental crisis. [Read More]

/20th Century Capitalism Communist party Critical theory Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel History Vladimir Lenin Liberalism Karl Marx Marxism Max Horkheimer Political party Socialism Socialist Socioeconomic SYRIZA Theodor W. Adorno Walter Benjamin

A Prelude to the History of the Left

November 1, 2007 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

THE PLATYPUS HISTORIANS GROUP is a collective of members of Platypus who are researchers into the history of the Left. We will be publishing this series on the History of the Left under this collective authorship to indicate the collaborative nature of our research and the questions it raises. Each article under this byline will be written by one or several members of this collective, but with contributions and review by as many others of this group as possible and appropriate to the topics essayed. [Read More]

1789 1917 1960s 1968 Capitalism Defeat Enlightenment History of the Left Humanity Marxism Movements Ronald Reagan Sectarianism Socialism Stalinism The Platypus Historians Group Trotskyism