Politics

Radical Ideology Today

Marxism and Anarchism

January 17, 2014 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

A panel event that took place in Aristotle University of Thessaloniki at 17 of December 2013, organized by the Thessaloniki chapter of the Platypus Affiliated Society. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Panelists Nikos Nikisianis: member of Network for Social and Political rights (participates in Syriza) Lia Gioka: activist and translator Tasos Sapounas: member of the communist marxist-leninist party of Greece Description It seems that there are still only two radical ideologies: Anarchism and Marxism. [Read More]

Anarchism Ideology Marxism Political theory Politics Radical SYRIZA

Lenin and the Marxist Left after #Occupy

June 7, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

ON MARCH 31ST, 2012, the Platypus Affiliated Society invited Ben Lewis of the Communist Party of Great Britain and Tom Riley of the International Bolshevik Tendency to speak on the theme of “Lenin and the Marxist Left after #Occupy” at the 2012 Platypus International Convention held at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The original description of the event reads as follows: “The occasion for this panel is, in part, Pham Binh’s recent critique of Tony Cliff’s biography of Lenin, which was circulated on the web and published in the Communist Party of Great Britain’s Weekly Worker, and the responses in on-going debate by Paul LeBlanc and Paul D’Amato. [Read More]

/20th Century CPGB Vladimir Lenin Marxism Politics Leon Trotsky PR Occupy PR Lenin

Changes in Art and Society

A View From the Present

March 31, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

Panel held on March 31st, 2012 at the Fourth Annual Platypus International Convention, School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Video Recording Transcript in Platypus Review #46 Panelists Mary Jane Jacob (School of the Art Institute) Walter Benn Michaels (University of Illinois Chicago) Robert Pippin (University of Chicago) Description Hegel famously remarked that the task of philosophy was to “comprehend its own time in thought.” In a sense, we can extend this as the raison d’etre for artistic production, albeit in a modified way: art’s task is to “comprehend its own time in form. [Read More]

Platypus International Convention 2012 Aesthetics Art Culture Politics Society

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

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

Is Marx back?

May 9, 2010 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

IN LIGHT OF the recent economic crisis, Marxist theory has enjoyed a resurgence of interest. This most recent is the last of many returns to Marx’s work throughout the 20th century. Still, the question poses itself: Why return to Marx, yet again? What does this move tell us about our contemporary situation? Most important, what do previous returns to Marx tell us about capitalism and those who have self-consciously struggled against it? [Read More]

Leo Panitch Karl Marx Politics Vietnam 1968 Imperialism

The poverty of Pakistan's politics (PPP)

December 6, 2009 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

LIFE IN CONTEMPORARY PAKISTAN is marked by a sense of despair and helplessness. A report commissioned by the British Council based on research conducted by the Nielsen Company recently found that only a third of the Pakistanis surveyed thought democracy was the best system for the country, a ratio roughly equal to that preferring sharia. The findings amounted to what David Martin, director of the British Council in Pakistan, called “an indictment of the failures of democracy over many years. [Read More]

Pakistan Islam Politics Democracy

notes on Lenin, "Left-Wing" Communism an Infantile Disorder (1920)

April 13, 2009 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

From Lenin’s “Left-Wing” Communism – An Infantile Disorder (1920): http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ “[E.g.,] Parliamentarianism has become “historically obsolete”. That is true in the propaganda sense. However, everybody knows that this is still a far cry from overcoming it in practice. Capitalism could have been declared – and with full justice – to be “historically obsolete” many decades ago, but that does not at all remove the need for a very long and very persistent struggle on the basis of capitalism. [Read More]

/20th Century Chris Cutrone Discussion History Vladimir Lenin Politics Rosa Luxemburg the Left Leon Trotsky

my letter to The Nation on "Re-Imagining Socialism"

April 1, 2009 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

The following letter that I wrote will be published in The Nation. I wrote in response to the article “Rising to the Occasion” (published elsewhere as “The ’S’ Word”) by Barbara Ehrenreich (author of Nickel and Dimed) and Bill Fletcher, Jr. (spokesperson for the Maoist Freedom Road Socialist Organization and co-founder of Progressives for Obama), and forum of articles in reply, under the title “Re-Imagining Socialism,” by Robert Pollin, Tariq Ali, Immanuel Wallerstein, Rebecca Solnit, Christian Parenti, Doug Henwood, Mike Davis, Michael Albert, et al. [Read More]

/20th Century Discussion ideology Marxism Politics Revolution Socialism

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