Organization

Revolutionary politics and thought

September 5, 2014 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

No coarser insult, no baser defamation, can be thrown against the workers than the remark, ‘Theoretical controversies are for the intellectuals’ —Rosa Luxemburg, Reform or Revolution (1900) Since there can be no talk of an independent ideology formulated by the working masses themselves in the process of their movement the only choice is – either bourgeois or socialist ideology… This does not mean, of course, that the workers have no part in creating such an ideology. [Read More]

C. Wright Mills Democracy Environmentalism French Revolution Hannah Arendt Ideology Jacobin Karl Marx Vladimir Lenin Leon Trotsky Organization Political party Praxis Revolution Rosa Luxemburg Theory and practice Thomas jefferson

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

note on recent readings: Slaughter, Nettl, Luxemburg

February 10, 2009 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

After the recent discussion of Luxemburg’s pamphlet on Reform or Revolution? (1900/08), there might be some confusion regarding the relationship between Luxemburg’s formulations and the raison d’etre of Platypus as an organized project today.—What is the point of reading Luxemburg today? Whereas Luxemburg was critiquing Eduard Bernstein and other “revisionists’” arguments that the development of capitalism had made proletarian social revolution superfluous or even harmful, Luxemburg was arguing that such historical “development” must be seen as symptomatic of the growing and deepening crisis of capitalism, and that the organized Marxist social-democratic labor and political movement must be seen as part of that history, part of that crisis. [Read More]

capitalism Discussion emancipation History Marxism organization Politics Revolution Rosa Luxemburg Socialism society the Left

Jan 25 Discussion, Cliff Slaughter, "What is Revolutionary Leadership"

January 26, 2009 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

Yesterday, with everyone all back in Boston for the first time since December (Laura literally got in from India an hour before the start of the meeting), we spent a good deal of our time doing organizational planning for the spring session. We were able, however, to spend some time with the Slaughter reading. Our discussion covered several aspects of the piece, but focused mainly on the relationship of politics and organization. [Read More]

Cliff Slaughter Discussion leadership organization

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

Red-baiting and ideology

The new SDS

December 1, 2008 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

TO THE EDITORS OF THE PLATYPUS REVIEW: I am not now, nor have I ever been, either a Maoist or sympathetic to Maoism. I am also not a member of SDS. I was outraged however, by the blatant red-baiting of Rachel Haut in a recent Platypus Review Interview and disturbed that it seems to have gone unchallenged by PR. Rachel Haut was quoted as saying: “To say that the Maoists can be part of the ideological debate would mean to condone them being in this organization, which is something I don’t do. [Read More]

Anarchism Anti-intellectualism Democracy Exchanges Ideology Laurie Rojas Maoism Marxism New SDS Organization Politics Protest Red-baiting Revolution Richard Rubin Stalinism The Left Student Left

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

Finance capital

Why financial capitalism is no more "fictitious" than any other kind

October 1, 2008 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

WITH THE PRESENT FINANCIAL MELT-DOWN in the U.S. throwing the global economy into question, many on the “Left” are wondering again about the nature of capitalism. While many will be tempted to jump on the bandwagon of the “bailout” being floated by the Bush administration and the Congressional Democrats (including Obama), others will protest the “bailing out” of Wall Street. The rhetoric of “Wall Street vs. Main Street,” between “hardworking America” and the “financial fat cats,” however, belies a more fundamental truth: the two are indissolubly linked and are in fact two sides of the same coin of capitalism. [Read More]

Authoritarianism Bailout Bill Clinton Capitalism Crisis Economics Financial Freedom Friedrich Hayek Humanity Ideology Industrial John Kenneth Galbraith Karl Polanyi Karl Marx Marxism Milton Friedman Modern Neo-liberalism Organization Production Reforms Reification Socialism Society The Left The Platypus Historians Group

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

Organization, political action, history, and consciousness

On anarchism and Marxism

February 1, 2008 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

Socialism is the first popular movement in world history that has set itself the goal of bringing human consciousness, and thereby free will, into play in the social actions of mankind… to try to take its history into its own hands; instead of remaining a will-less football, it will take the tiller of social life and become the pilot to the goal of its own history. —Rosa Luxemburg, The Crisis of German Social Democracy (1915) [Read More]

Anarchism Consciousness Exchanges History History of the Left Marxism Organization Political action