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 

Notes on Luxemburg's The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions (1906)

 March 23, 2009  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

I am writing with some notes on Rosa Luxemburg’s Mass, Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions (1906), which we read as our second text from the period of the 1905 Revolution in Russia. First, on the 1905 Revolution, it needs to be emphasized that this was not only a prelude to and “rehearsal” for the 1917 Russian Revolution, but was itself a world-historic event that was galvanizing for the international Left and workers movement, as well as giving shape to 20th Century political trends more generally. [Read More]
Anarchism  Chris Cutrone  Discussion  Vladimir Lenin  Marxism  Rosa Luxemburg  Leon Trotsky 

excerpt from Trotsky

 March 16, 2009  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

From Leon Trotsky (1879-1940), Results and Prospects (1906), VII. The Pre-Requisites of Socialism: http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/rp07.htm “Undoubtedly, the concentration of production, the development of technique and the growth of consciousness among the masses are essential pre-requisites for socialism. But these processes take place simultaneously, and not only give an impetus to each other, but also retard and limit each other. Each of these processes at a higher level demands a certain development of another process at a lower level. [Read More]
Chris Cutrone  Discussion  emancipation  ideology  Karl Marx  Marxism  Revolution  Socialism  Leon Trotsky 

Going it alone: Christopher Hitchens and the death of the Left

Book Review: Simon Cottee and Thomas Cushman (eds.). *Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left*.

Going it alone: Christopher Hitchens and the death of the Left

 March 15, 2009  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

New York: New York University Press, 2008. IF IT DID NOT COME TO END IN 1989, as conservative critic Francis Fukuyama expected, this is because, in Hegel’s sense, as freedom’s self-realization in time, History had already ceased. Long before the new geopolitical configurations and institutional forms of the post-Soviet world, a new and unprecedented, though scarcely recognized, political situation had taken shape: The last threads of continuity connecting the present with the long epoch of political emancipation were severed. [Read More]
Christopher Hitchens  Enlightenment  Iraq  Marxism  Moralism  Terror  The Left  War  Anti-war 

notes on Lukács

 March 9, 2009  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

I am writing with some brief, partial notes from our discussion at UChicago at yesterday’s (Sun. 3/8/09) reading group, on several essays from György Lukács’s 1923 book History and Class Consciousness. I want to emphasize and discuss in particular a couple of passages, from the (original, 1922) Preface, and the essay “What is Orthodox Marxism?” (1919). Specifically, I wish to discuss Lukács’s use of categories, “materialist dialectics,” and his meaning of Marxism as a “method,” which might otherwise prove confusing or tricky. [Read More]
Chris Cutrone  Discussion  György Lukács  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel  Hegelian  Karl Korsch  Vladimir Lenin  Karl Marx  Marxism  Theodor W. Adorno  Walter Benjamin 

notes on Spartacists on Lenin and the vanguard party

 March 1, 2009  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

I am writing with some notes and suggestions for discussion on the Spartacist League pamphlet on “Lenin and the vanguard party” (1978): http://www.bolshevik.org/Pamphlets/LeninVanguard/LVP%200.htm I’d like to quote at length from Spartacist founder James Robertson’s 1973 speech “In Defense of Democratic Centralism” that is included in the pamphlet as supplemental material (and is edited in the pamphlet but given in its entirety on-line): http://www.bolshevik.org/Pamphlets/LeninVanguard/LVP%20Robertson%20to%20Spartacus-BL.htm “What we are dealing with in the period from the founding of Iskra to the founding of the Bolshevik Party in 1912 is the transformation of the Bolshevik faction from a revolutionary social-democratic into an embryonic communist organization. [Read More]
Chris Cutrone  Discussion  History  Vladimir Lenin  Marxism  the Left 

Trotsky on art and politics: "with a sword or at least a whip in hand"

 February 26, 2009  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

Re: Platypus: “They had friends, they had enemies, they fought, and exactly through this they demonstrated their right to exist.” – Trotsky, on the history of new political and artistic movements (1938) http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/06/artpol.htm Not a single progressive idea has begun with a “mass base,â€? otherwise it would not have been a progressive idea. It is only in its last stage that the idea finds its masses – if, of course, it answers the needs of progress. [Read More]
/20th Century  Chris Cutrone  Discussion  Marxism  Marxism  Platypus  the Left  Leon Trotsky  Trotskyism 

Trotsky on art and politics: "with a sword or at least a whip in hand"

 February 26, 2009  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

Re: Platypus: “They had friends, they had enemies, they fought, and exactly through this they demonstrated their right to exist.” – Trotsky, on the history of new political and artistic movements (1938) http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/06/artpol.htm Not a single progressive idea has begun with a “mass base,â€? otherwise it would not have been a progressive idea. It is only in its last stage that the idea finds its masses – if, of course, it answers the needs of progress. [Read More]
/20th Century  Chris Cutrone  Discussion  Marxism  Marxism  Platypus  the Left  Leon Trotsky  Trotskyism 

notes on Lenin, What is to be done?---Platypus "neo-Leninism?"

 February 23, 2009  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

I am writing with some notes and suggestions on Lenin’s What is to be done? (1902). I’d like to start with a quotation from Lenin’s first footnote, in the chapter “Dogmatism and Freedom of Criticism:” At the present time (as is now evident), the English Fabians, the French Ministerialists, the German Bernsteinians, and the Russian Critics all belong to the same family, all extol each other, learn from each other, and together take up arms against “dogmatic” Marxism. [Read More]
Chris Cutrone  Discussion  Karl Korsch  Vladimir Lenin  Marxism  organization  Politics  Rosa Luxemburg  the Left 

Is Marx Back?

An Interview with Leo Panitch

 February 19, 2009  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

The economic crisis, as many commentators and critics are quick to point out, has rekindled interest in – and anxieties over – Marxism. Although many on the Left hope this renewed curiosity marks the beginning of a radical turn, similar revivals of anti-capitalist politics in the 1930s, 1960s, and 1990s failed to achieve the revolutionary transformations they sought. Has Marxism returned as a significant political force? How might this translate into the possibility for a revitalized Left? [Read More]
Anti-capitalism  Karl Marx  Marxism  Radicalism  Socialism  Socialist Register