Marxism

The relevance of critical theory to art today

January 1, 2011 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

ON SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2010, Platypus hosted a panel entitled “The Relevance of Critical Theory to Art Today” moderated by Chris Mansour at The New School for Social Research in New York. The panel consisted of Philosophy Professors J.M. Bernstein (The New School), Lydia Goehr (Columbia University), and Gregg Horowitz (Pratt Institute and Vanderbilt University), and Chris Cutrone (Adjunct Assistant Professor of Art History, Theory and Criticism, School of the Art Institute of Chicago), Member of Platypus. [Read More]

Art Marxism Art and culture Theodor W. Adorno Leon Trotsky Walter Benjamin

Up in the air: The legacy of the New Communist Movement

December 1, 2010 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

_ON OCTOBER 17, 2010, Spencer A. Leonard interviewed Max Elbaum, author of Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao, and Che, to discuss the New Communist Movement of the late 1960s and 1970s. The interview was aired during two episodes of Radical Minds on WHPK – FM Chicago, on October 26 and November 9. What follows is an edited transcript of the interview._ Spencer A. Leonard: To start off in the broadest possible way, how and when did the New Communist Movement emerge? [Read More]

Anti-intellectualism Antonio Gramsci Black Belt thesis Black Panther Communist party History of the Left Vladimir Lenin Marxism Max Elbaum New Communist Movement Orthodoxy SNCC The Left Weather Underground

"A Black Man Speaks of Marx"

The Sartre-Fanon Dialogues of the 1940s and 1950s

November 17, 2010 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

A talk held on November 17, 2010 at the University of Illinois. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Description In the years immediately following World War II French intellectuals Jean-Paul Sartre and Frantz Fanon turned their attention to racism, anti-semitism and anti-black racism. Both men were engaged with both. Neither wrote from identity, but rather both sought to link their reflections to Marxism, to its failure and possible reconstitution. [Read More]

Anti-black racism Anti-Semite and Jew Anti-semitism Black Orpheus Black Skin White Masks Frantz Fanon Jean-Paul Sartre Karl Marx Marxism Racism Jean-Paul Sartre Wretched of the Earth

Rethinking the New Left (Chicago, 11/9/10)

November 9, 2010 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

Public forum organised by the Platypus Affiliated Society on November 9th 2010 at the University of Chicago. Co-sponsored by The Global Voices Lecture Program of International House, with the support of the University of Chicago Student Activities Fund Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Panelists Mark Rudd Alan Spector Osha Neumann Tim Wohlforth Moderated by Spencer A. Leonard Description The memory of the 1960s, which has long kindled contestation and debate on the means and ends of freedom politics, is rapidly fading into the political unconscious. [Read More]

1960s Anarchism Marxism Movement New Left Politics SDS Socialism

The Marxist hypothesis

A response to Alain Badiou's 'communist hypothesis'

November 6, 2010 | The Platypus Affiliated Society • Other languages: Ελληνικά

Against Badiou ALAIN BADIOU’S RECENT BOOK (2010) is titled with the phrase promoted by his and Slavoj Žižek’s work for the last few years, “the communist hypothesis.”1 This is also the title of Badiou’s 2008 essay in New Left Review2 on the historical significance of the 2007 election of Nicolas Sarkozy to the French Presidency.3 There, Badiou explains his approach to communism as follows: What is the communist hypothesis? [Read More]

Alain Badiou Communism Karl Marx Marxism Slavoj Žižek Theodor W. Adorno Walter Benjamin

Chinoiserie

A critique of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA's 'New Synthesis'"

August 5, 2010 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

Review of ‘Communism: The Beginning of a New Stage’, a Manifesto from the RCP, USA; and Raymond Lotta, Nayi Duniya, and K. J. A., ‘Alain Badiou’s ‘Politics of Emancipation’: A Communism Locked Within the Confines of the Bourgeois World’ Demarcations 1 (Summer – Fall 2009). Communism: The Beginning of a New Stage. Lotta et al. is available online. Prologue DAVID BHOLAT ADOPTED, as epigraph for his essay “Beyond Equality,” the following passage from Joseph Schumpeter’s classic 1942 book Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy: [Read More]

Alain Badiou Bob Avakian Cultural Revolution David Bholat Joseph Schumpeter Immanuel Kant Vladimir Lenin Maoism Karl Marx Marxism RCP (USA) Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Imperialism: What is it, why should we be against it?

July 9, 2010 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

ON JANUARY 30, 2007, Platypus hosted its first public forum, “Imperialism: What is it – Why should we be Against it?” The panel consisted of Adam Turl of the International Socialist Organization (ISO), Kevin Anderson of the Marxist-Humanist group News and Letters, Nick Kreitman of the new Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Danny Postel of Open Democracy, and Chris Cutrone of Platypus. What follows is an edited transcript of this event; the full video can be found online at the above link. [Read More]

Afghanistan Bosnia Bush administration History of the Left Iraq Imperialism War Anti-war ISO Marxism New SDS Vietnam

Against dogmatic abstraction

A critique of Cindy Milstein on anarchism and Marxism

July 1, 2010 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

AT THE LEFT FORUM 2010, held at Pace University in New York City in March, Cindy Milstein, director of the Institute for Anarchist Studies, spoke at a panel discussion on anarchism and Marxism, chaired by Andrej Grubacic, with fellow panelists Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Andrew Curley. The topic of Milstein’s talk was the prospect for the “synthesis of anarchism and Marxism” today.1 The relation between anarchism and Marxism is a long-standing and vexing problem, for their developments have been inextricably intertwined. [Read More]

Anarchism Karl Marx Marxism Cindy Milstein

Gillian Rose's 'Hegelian' critique of Marxism

Book review: Gillian Rose, 'Hegel Contra Sociology.' London: Verso, 2009.

March 15, 2010 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

GILLIAN ROSE’S MAGNUM OPUS was her second book, Hegel Contra Sociology (1981).1 Preceding this was The Melancholy Science: An Introduction to the Thought of Theodor W. Adorno (1978), a work which charted Rose’s approach to the relation of Marxism to Hegel in Hegel Contra Sociology.2 Alongside her monograph on Adorno, Rose published two incisively critical reviews of the reception of Adorno’s work.3 Rose thus established herself early on as an important interrogator of Adorno’s thought and Frankfurt School Critical Theory more generally, and of their problematic reception. [Read More]

György Lukács Karl Korsch Vladimir Lenin Karl Marx Marxism Rosa Luxemburg Theodor W. Adorno Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Sociology Gillian Rose

Rejoinder to David Black

On Karl Korsch's Marxism and Philosophy

February 26, 2010 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

DAVID BLACK’S VALUABLE COMMENTS and further historical exposition (in Platypus Review 18, December 2009) of my review of Karl Korsch’s Marxism and Philosophy (Platypus Review 15, September 2009) have at their core an issue with Korsch’s account of the different historical phases of the question of “philosophy” for Marx and Marxism. Black questions Korsch’s differentiation of Marx’s relationship to philosophy into three distinct periods: pre-1848, circa 1848, and post-1848. But attempting to defeat Korsch’s historical account of such changes in Marx’s approaches to relating theory and practice means avoiding Korsch’s principal point. [Read More]

David Black György Lukács History of the Left Karl Korsch Vladimir Lenin Karl Marx Marxism Max Horkheimer Rosa Luxemburg The Left Theodor W. Adorno Leon Trotsky