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 

2006 interview with Juliet Mitchell

 February 14, 2009  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

Juliet Mitchell: “I don’t think anti-psychiatrists such as Laing and Cooper saw the schizophrenic as the madman telling the truth. What we had were two sets of rigidity, we had the pathological dimension of psychosis in paranoia, schizophrenia: delusions – which are delusions, let’s face it. But then we had the normative delusions of an acceptable psychotic status quo, which is what our political world very often is. For me, the question is whether the person who is suffering from the extreme pathological dimension of psychosis can find sufficient freedom to not need that refuge, whether he or she is able to come with a critique of the normative psychosis of the political social world. [Read More]
1960s  /20th Century  academy  activism  Discussion  Feminism  Freud  Juliet Mitchell  movement  Psychoanalysis  Socialism 

The necessity of leadership

 December 1, 2008  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

TO CHANGE THE WORLD, we need a movement. This movement must be made up of millions of people and thousands of organizations. These organizations must build and push the movement forward. How do we get to this point? We have to start with leadership. From 12 to 155 As a union organizer, I train workers to lead their shop floor and industry wide struggles. In the case of my union, we call the leaders in the shops “committee members. [Read More]
Activism  Labor  Labor movement  Leadership  Movement  Organization  Power  Reflections  Unions  Workers 

Obama and Clinton

"Third Way" politics and the "Left"

 December 1, 2008  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

FOR THE “LEFT” that is critical of him, the most common comparison made of Obama is to Bill Clinton. This critique of Obama, as of Clinton, denounces his “Centrism,” the trajectory he appears to continue from the “new” Democratic Party of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) expressed by Clinton and Gore’s election in 1992. Clinton’s election was seen as part of the triumph of “Third Way” politics that contemporaneously found expression in Tony Blair’s “New” Labour Party in Britain. [Read More]
Bill Clinton  Consciousness  Critical theory  Depoliticization  Emancipation  Marxism  Movement  Neo-liberalism  Barack Obama  Politics  Profiles  Rosa Luxemburg  Socialism  The Left  Third Way  Workers 

What is a Movement?

A discussion on the Meaning and Direction of Left Political "Movements" Historically and Today

 October 16, 2008  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

On October 16, 2008, a panel discussion titled What is a Movement? A Discussion on the Meaning and Direction of Left Political “Movements” Historically and Today was held in Chicago. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Transcript in Platypus Review #14 Panelists Luis Brennan (new Students for a Democratic Society) Elena Davis (Pomegranate Health Collective) Chuck Hendricks (UNITE/HERE) Jorge Mujica (Movimiento 10 de Marzo) [Read More]
Leftism  Movement  Movimiento 10 de Marzo  SDS  Student movement  Students for a Democratic Society  Unite Here 

Five questions to the student Left

 October 1, 2008  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

AN INTERVIEW WITH SDS MEMBER Rachel Haut published in the September issue of this publication provoked widespread comment in radical circles.1 We welcome the discussion but worry that it remains ensconced within the sterile jargon and petty antinomies of the actually-existing-Left. More fundamental questions exist than, say, the position of sectarian groups within the SDS – questions that unsettle the comfortable assumptions of radical politics. There’s a temptation to think such of questioning as an irrelevant, academic obstruction to real action. [Read More]
Anti-war  Capitalism  Class  Identity  Ideology  Imperialism  Movement  New SDS  Organization  Politics  Racism  Radicals  Reflections  Society  Students  Transformation 

The Hundred Days campaign: the present and future of SDS

 September 1, 2008  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

FROM JULY 24 UNTIL JULY 28 2008, the new Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) had its third annual national convention in College Park, Maryland. At the convention, national campaigns were presented and voted on by the attendees. A major campaign introduced at the convention was the Hundred Days campaign, which seeks to organize and engage newly politicized Americans in politics beyond the campaign season. During the first one hundred days of the next administration the campaign will organize two nationwide weeks of action to ensure that the people remain involved in politics after the election cycle. [Read More]
Anarchism  Anti-capitalism  Ben Shepard  Capitalism  Chicago  Dave Shukla  Democracy  Democratic society  FRSO  Hope  Hundred Days campaign  Ideology  Left Forum  Liberalism  Maoism  Marxism  Movement  New SDS  New York  Barack Obama  Organization  Power  Process  Protest  Sectarianism  Socialism  Split  Structure  Students  The Left 

Yesterday, I was an anarchist

 April 1, 2008  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

We think too small, like the frog at the bottom of the well. He thinks the sky is only as big as the top of the well. If he surfaced, he would have an entirely different view. —Mao Tse-Tung I JUST TURNED THIRTY. Fifteen years on the Left – that’s half my lifetime now and what it means to me has changed consistently over the years: from punk rock kid with a mohawk and tattoos on my ribs and shoulders to a union leader with a mortgage and kid and the responsibility of thousands of workers on my shoulders. [Read More]
Anarchism  Labor  Labor movement  Leadership  Movement  Unions  Workers  Reflections