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 

The Legacy of Trotskyism

 April 30, 2011  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

One of the plenary sessions held at the third annual Platypus Affiliated Society international convention, hosted by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from April 29–May 1st, 2011, set about exploring the legacy of Trotsky’s Marxism. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Transcript in Platypus Review #38 Panelists Mike Macnair, Communist Party of Great Britain (Oxford Univ. St. Hugh College) Bryan Palmer, Trent University [Read More]
Platypus International Convention 2011  Anti-Stalinism  Communism  Communist Party of Great Britain  CPGB  IBT  International Bolshevik Tendency  Leon Trotsky  Karl Marx  Marxism  Socialism  Stalinism  Trotskyism 

Art, Culture, and Politics

Marxist Approaches

 April 30, 2011  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

Panel held as part of the third annual Platypus International Convention, on Saturday, April 30, 2011, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element A transcript of Bret Schneider’s remarks appears in Platypus Review #37 Panelists Omair Hussain Lucy Parker Pac Pobric Bret Schneider Description After its apparent exhaustion as a project of social transformation, Marxism seems to remain alive as a cultural and hermeneutic endeavor. [Read More]
Platypus International Convention 2011  Aesthetics  Art  Contemporary art  Culture  Leon Trotsky  Marxism  Politics  Jacques Rancière  Theodor W. Adorno  Leon Trotsky  Walter Benjamin 

Attention to theory

Letter to the editor of "Under the Banner of Marxism"

Attention to theory

 April 3, 2011  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

ON THE OCCASION of the launch of a new theoretical journal in 1922, Under the Banner of Marxism (Pod Znamenem Marksizma), Lenin singled out the open letter that Trotsky had written to the editors in the first issue, while expressing the hope that the venture would take the shape of a “society of materialist friends of Hegelian dialectics.” Trotsky himself underscored the importance of the letter in The Stalin School of Falsification (1937), which, in pointing to the difference between the changed conditions of education of the younger members of the party from that of their older comrades, outlined the necessity of a new theoretical approach in order to safeguard the theoretical and political experience accumulated within the party. [Read More]
Marxism  Philosophy  Leon Trotsky  Translation 

Postcolonialism or postmodernism?

Postcolonialism or postmodernism?

 April 2, 2011  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

On February 11, 2011 – the day Hosni Mubarak resigned the office of President of Egypt – Chris Mansour interviewed Susan Buck-Morss, professor of political philosophy and social theory at Cornell University and author of The Origin of Negative Dialectics and Thinking Past Terror: Islamism and Critical Theory on the Left, on behalf of The Platypus Review. What follows is an edited transcript of their conversation. Chris Mansour: What were the stakes of introducing Critical Theory into a postmodern culture that widely considered its ideas obsolete? [Read More]
Marxism  Susan Buck-Morss  colonialism  postcolonialism  postmodernism  modernism  Egypt  Islam  history  Theodor W. Adorno 

Marx and Engel's Marxism

 March 20, 2011  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

A panel discussion organized by the Platypus Affiliated Society held on March 20, 2011, at Left Forum, Pace University. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Panelists Benjamin Blumberg - University of Chicago Nathan Smith - The Platypus Affiated Society Pam Nogales - New York University Richard Rubin - Platypus Tana Forrester - The Platypus Affiliated Society Description Marx and Engels were not the preeminent socialists but rather socialism’s greatest critics, distinguishing their “communism” from “reactionary,” “bourgeois” and “democratic” socialism. [Read More]
Left Forum  Left Forum 2011  Friedrich Engels  Forum 2011  Karl Marx  Marxism  New York  NYC Other  Socialism  Bourgeois Revolutions 

Lenin's Marxism

 March 19, 2011  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

A panel discussion organized by the Platypus Affiliated Society, held on March 19, 2011 at Left Forum, Pace University. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element A transcript of Paul Le Blanc’s remarks appears in Platypus Review #35 A transcript of Chris Cutrone’s remarks appears in Platypus Review #36 A transcript of Lars Lih’s remarks appears in Platypus Review #37 Panelists Chris Cutrone - The School of the Art Institute of Chicago [Read More]
Left Forum  Left Forum 2011  Leninism  Marxism  Vladimir Lenin 

On the Possibility of What Isn't

An Interview with Robert Pippin

 March 14, 2011  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

A public interview with Robert Pippin, hosted by the Platypus Affiliated Society, exploring the implications of Hegel’s thought, particularly regarding art, in the present day. Held on March 14, 2011, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Transcript in Platypus Review #36 Description Robert Pippin is a professor in the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought, the Department of Philosophy, and the College at the University of Chicago. [Read More]
Aesthetics  Art  Dialectics  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel  Hegelian  Hegelianism  Karl Marx  Marxism 

Egypt, or, history's invidious comparisons

1979, 1789, and 1848

Egypt, or, history's invidious comparisons

 March 1, 2011  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

THE UPRISING IN EGYPT, which followed soon after the toppling of the old regime in Tunisia, succeeded in bringing down Hosni Mubarak on February 11, the 32nd anniversary to the day of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. Already, before this timely coincidence, comparisons between the Iranian Revolution and the revolts gripping the Arab world had started to be made. But other historical similarities offered themselves: the various “color revolutions” in Eastern Europe and former Soviet Central Asian states and Lebanon in recent years, and the collapse of Communism in the Soviet bloc and beyond (the former Yugoslavia) starting with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. [Read More]
1789  1848  1917  Bonapartism  Egypt  Hosni Mubarak  Iran  Islamic Republic  Karl Marx  Marxism  Revolution  Walter Benjamin 

Does Marxism Really Matter?

A Teach-in on the Communist Manifesto

 February 17, 2011  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

A teach-in on the Communist Manifesto led by Platypus Affiliated Society member Jeremy Cohan, PhD candidate in Sociology at NYU, at the New School in NYC on February 17 , 2011. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Description The 20th century has made the question of Marxism an obscure one. The absence of an International Left suggests the irrelevancy of Marxism to the present. Yet historically, Marxism mattered to society at large. [Read More]
Anti-capitalism  Communist Manifesto  Marxism