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 

Trotsky on "degeneration" and "entire generations passing into discard" (1933)

 February 7, 2009  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

It is not a question of counterposing abstract principles… [W]ith the degeneration of organizations, with the passing of entire generations into discard… the necessity… arises of mobilizing fresh forces on a new historical stage… With inevitable halts and partial retreats it is necessary to move forward on a road crisscrossed by countless obstacles and covered with the debris of the past. Those who are frightened by this had better step aside. [Read More]
Chris Cutrone  crisis  Discussion  History  Marxism  Politics  the Left  Leon Trotsky  Trotskyism 

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 

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 

Iraq and the election

The fog of "anti-war" politics

 October 1, 2008  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

BARACK OBAMA HAD, UNTIL RECENTLY, made his campaign for President of the United States a referendum on the invasion and occupation of Iraq. In the Democratic Party primaries, Obama attacked Hillary Clinton for her vote in favor of the invasion. Among Republican contenders, John McCain went out of his way to appear as the candidate most supportive of the Bush administration’s policy in Iraq. Looking towards the general election, it is over Iraq that the candidates have been most clearly opposed: Obama has sought to distinguish himself most sharply from McCain on Iraq, emphasizing their differences in judgment. [Read More]
Adolph Reed  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad  ANSWER  Anti-imperialism  Anti-war  Ba'athism  Bill Clinton  Bush administration  Democracy  Democrats  Election  History  History of the Left  Imperialism  Iran  Iraq  ISO  Joe Biden  Kurds  Liberalism  NATO  Barack Obama  Occupation  Politics  RCP (USA)  Republicans  Saddam Hussein  Saudi Arabia  Shia  Sunni  The Left  The Right  U.N  Vietnam  World Can't Wait 

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 

Capital in history

The need for a Marxian philosophy of history of the Left

 October 1, 2008  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society  • Other languages: Deutsch, Español, Ελληνικά

The following is a talk given at the Marxist-Humanist Committee public forum on The Crisis in Marxist Thought, hosted by the Platypus Affiliated Society in Chicago on Friday, July 25th, 2008. I want to speak about the meaning of history for any purportedly Marxian Left. We in Platypus focus on the history of the Left because we think that the narrative one tells about this history is in fact one’s theory of the present. [Read More]
1789  1930s  1960s  19th Century  Bourgeois  Capital  Capitalism  Class consciousness  Crisis  Degeneration  Domination  Friedrich Engels  Freedom  French Revolution  György Lukács  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel  History  History of the Left  Industrial Revolution  Karl Korsch  Vladimir Lenin  Marxism  Marxist-Hummanist Committee  Modern  Moishe Postone  Politics  Proletariat  Regression  Revolt of the Third Estate  Rosa Luxemburg  The Left  Theodor W. Adorno  Leon Trotsky  Walter Benjamin 

Ba'athism and the history of the Left in Iraq

Violence and politics

 March 1, 2008  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

SINCE THE 1960s the saturation of brutality and violence in Iraq has caused considerable confusion among Leftists in regards to both its political meaning and causes. One cannot fully understand the character of Saddam Hussein’s Arab Ba’ath Socialist Party without taking into account that it achieved political power by systematically killing off the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) and quelling other political dissent with acts of extreme cruelty. The eight year battle of attrition instigated by Hussein, known as the Iran-Iraq War, caused over half a million Iraqi deaths, and the ethnic cleansing campaigns directed against the Kurds resulted in countless more. [Read More]
ANSWER  Anti-Americanism  Anti-war  Ba'athism  Hadi Saleh  Hanna Batatu  History of the Left  Ian Morrison  Ideology  Imperialism  Iraq  Iraqi Communist Party  Kanan Makiya  Vladimir Lenin  Nationalism  Politics  Racism  Ramsey Clark  Reactionary  Regression  Republic of Fear  Saddam Hussein  Unions  US Labor Against the War  Violence  War 

Interview: Ernesto Laclau

 December 1, 2007  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

CONFRONTING THE CONFUSION and fragmentation that wrought progressive politics in recent decades, Ernesto Laclau’s work attempts to theorize the path to the construction of a radical democratic politics. Drawing on Gramsci’s concept of hegemony to devise his own theory by that name, Laclau describes the processes of social articulation that creates popular political identities. By redefining democratic politics as the construction of hegemony, Laclau reminds political actors of the work necessary to construct the plurality of democratic structures vital to any emancipatory political project. [Read More]
1930s  Anti-globalization  Capitalism  Co-optation  Commodity form  Communist party  Culture  De-radicalization  Democratic  Economics  Emancipation  Emancipatory  Equivalential  Ernesto Laclau  Feminism  Freedom  Hegemony  History  Identity  Industrial  Institutionalization  Italy  Labor  Vladimir Lenin  Karl Marx  Marxism  Movements  Participation  Particularity  Plurality  Politics  Popular  Production  Progressive  Proletarian  Radical  Reification  Revolution  Surplus value  Theory  Union  Universality  Workers  Working class  WWII 

Review: "La Commune"

 November 1, 2007  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

IN 1871 THE PARIS COMMUNE, a revolutionary body formed during the deep unrest following France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian war, rose against the post-war provisional government of Adolphe Thiers and briefly held power in France. Two months after it took power, the Commune was brutally suppressed by the French army. In his film “La Commune,” released in 2002, director Peter Watkins orchestrated and documented a theatrical re-enactment of the Commune. At nearly six hours, the film explores the events of the Commune as well as its relevance for the present, and in so doing it is compelled to negotiate the myriad ways in which history bears on the present. [Read More]
1871  Film  France  Franco-Prussian war  History  La Commune  Organization  Paris  Peter Watkins  Politics  Re-enactment