Marxism

The birth of a revolution?

June 7, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

ON FEBRUARY 28, 2012, the radio program Radical Minds on WHPK-FM Chicago broadcast an interview with Mary Gabriel, the author of Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2011). The interview was conducted by Spencer A. Leonard of the Platypus Affiliated Society. What follows is an edited transcript of their conversation. Spencer A. Leonard: Love and Capital is a biography not only of Marx but of his family and intimate circle, above all Friedrich Engels. [Read More]

Liberalism and Marx

May 1, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

ON MARCH 17, 2012, Ross Wolfe and Pam Nogales of the Platypus Affiliated Society interviewed Domenico Losurdo, the author, most recently, of Liberalism: A Counter-History (2011). What follows is an edited transcript of their conversation. Full audio and video recordings of the interview can be found by clicking the above links. Liberalism A counter-history Ross Wolfe: How would you characterize the antinomy of emancipation and de-emancipation in liberal ideology? [Read More]

Domenico Losurdo Liberalism Karl Marx Marxism

1873--1973: The century of Marxism

April 1, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

A presentation by Chris Cutrone, President of the Platypus Affiliated Society, delivered on April 1, 2012 as part of the 2012 Platypus Affiliated International Convention held at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, upon the subject of the death of Marxism and the emergence of neo-liberalism and neo-anarchism.

Audio Recording

Transcript in Platypus Review #47

Platypus International Convention 2012 Marxism Neo-liberalism Neoanarchism Neoliberalism

Marx at the margins

March 1, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

_LAST SUMMER, SPENCER A. LEONARD interviewed Kevin Anderson, author of Lenin, Hegel, and Western Marxism (1995) and Marx at the Margins (2010). The interview was broadcast on August 2, 2011 on the radio show * Radical Minds* on WHPK – FM Chicago. What follows is an edited transcript of their conversation._ Spencer A. Leonard: Broadly describe your aims and ambitions in writing Marx at the Margins. Kevin Anderson: One aim was that, in the past couple of decades - Really the past three decades since the publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism, there have been a number of critiques of Marx that centered on charges of Eurocentrism, ethnocentricsm, and so forth. [Read More]

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Kevin Anderson Karl Marx Marx at the Margins Marxism Radical Minds

The Birth of a Revolution?

Mary Gabriel interviewed by Spencer A. Leonard on "Love and Capital"

February 28, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

On February 28, 2012, the radio program Radical Minds on WHPK-FM Chicago broadcast an interview with Mary Gabriel, the author of Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2011). The interview was conducted by Spencer A. Leonard of the Platypus Affiliated Society.

Audio Recording

Transcript in Platypus Review #47

Mary Gabriel Communism Karl Marx Marxism Radical Minds Socialism

Does Marxism Even Matter?

A Teach-in on the Communist Manifesto

February 6, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

A teach-in with Platypus Affiliated Society member Chris Mansour. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Description In the mid-19th century, Marx and Engels famously observed in the Communist Manifesto that a specter was haunting Europe: the specter of Communism. 160 years later, it is Marxism itself that haunts us. In the 21st century, it seems that the Left abandoned Marxism as a path to freedom. [Read More]

Communist Manifesto Karl Marx Marxism

A destroyer of vulgar-Marxism

Book review: Karl Korsch, _Marxism and Philosophy_ (Leipzig: C.L. Hirschfeld, 1923)

January 30, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

Karl Kautsky’s 1924 review of Karl Korsch’s Marxism and Philosophy appears below in English for the first time.1 It is hoped that other reviews of Marxism and Philosophy will also be made available in the very near future, not least by leading German communists such as August Thalheimer. Given the highly disputed theoretical legacy of both Kautsky and Korsch, the publication of this review will doubtless add to the debate on the idea of a “coming of age” of Marxism in the late 1860s. [Read More]

Book Review History of the Left Karl Kautsky Karl Korsch Vladimir Lenin Marxism

The Relevance of Lenin Today

December 17, 2011 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Video Recording Transcript in Platypus Review #48 Description The Encyclopedia Britannica’s entry on Lenin states that, If the Bolshevik Revolution is – as some people have called it – the most significant political event of the 20th century, then Lenin must for good or ill be considered the century’s most significant political leader. Not only in the scholarly circles of the former Soviet Union, but even among many non-Communist scholars, he has been regarded as both the greatest revolutionary leader and revolutionary statesman in history, as well as the greatest revolutionary thinker since Marx. [Read More]

Bolshevik Revolution Vladimir Lenin Leninism Karl Marx Marxism Russian revolution

A cry of protest before accommodation?

The dialectic of emancipation and domination

December 1, 2011 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

HOW ARE WE TO REGARD the history of revolutions? Why do revolutions appear to fail to achieve their goals? What does this say about consciousness of social change? One common misunderstanding of Marx (against which, however, many counter-arguments have been made) is with respect to the supposed “logic of history” in capital. The notion of a “historical logic” is problematic, in that there may be assumed an underlying historical logic that Marx, as a social scientist, is supposed to have discovered. [Read More]

History History of the Left Marxism Revolution

Whither Marxism?

Why the occupation movement recalls Seattle 1999

November 1, 2011 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

THE PRESENT OCCUPATION MOVEMENT expresses a return to the Left of the late 1990s, specifically the 1999 anti-World Trade Organization protests in Seattle. They both have taken place in the last year of a Democratic U.S. Presidential administration, been spearheaded by anarchism, had discontents with neoliberalism as their motivation, and been supported by the labor movement. This configuration of politics on the Left is the “leaderless” and “horizontal” movement celebrated by such writers as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (Empire, Multitude, Commonwealth), John Holloway (Change the World without Taking Power), and others. [Read More]

Anarchism Marxism Occupy Occupy Wall Street Seattle Globalisation