Book Review: Michael Rudolph West. *The Education of Booker T. Washington: American Democracy and the Idea of Race Relations*

Book Review: Michael Rudolph West. *The Education of Booker T. Washington: American Democracy and the Idea of Race Relations*

 September 30, 2009  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. IF THE COLOR LINE WAS THE PROBLEM of the American 20th century, then the 20th century did not manage to solve it. De jure segregation ended some forty years ago, and American social norms mostly bar the public expression of racist sentiment or stereotype. Yet by any measure – access to quality healthcare and education, rate of incarceration, etc.—black Americans remain proportionally worse off than their white peers. [Read More]
Booker T. Washington  Michael Rudolph West  Profiles  Racism  Reconstruction 

The sport of protest

Resistance to the Olympics coming to Chicago

 September 20, 2009  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

NO GAMES CHICAGO WAS FOUNDED in the summer of 2008 when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that Chicago was among the bid cities for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. The group’s aim is to prevent Chicago from hosting the games – nothing more, nothing less. The reason for this opposition is No Games Chicago’s claim that, if Chicago wins the bid to host the Olympics, the city’s working class would bear the bulk of the costs. [Read More]
Chicago  Profiles  Protest  Reflections 

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 

Friedrich Hayek and the legacy of Milton Friedman: Neo-liberalism and the question of freedom

In part, a response to Naomi Klein

Friedrich Hayek and the legacy of Milton Friedman: Neo-liberalism and the question of freedom

 November 1, 2008  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

The following was prepared for presentation at the University of Chicago teach-in on “Who was Milton Friedman and what is his legacy?” Tuesday, October 14th, 2008. A GOOD APPROACH TO THE TOPIC of Milton Friedman and his legacy today can be made indirectly, by reference to Friedman’s intellectual predecessor and mentor, Friedrich Hayek. It has been our point of departure in Platypus to regard the present as being conditioned by the undigested, and therefore problematic, legacies of at least two generations of failure on the “Left”: the 1960s-70s “New” Left, and the “Old” Left of the 1920s-30s. [Read More]
Friedrich Hayek  Milton Friedman  Naomi Klein  Neo-liberalism  Profiles 

Obama: Progress in regress

The end of "black politics"

 September 1, 2008  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

THE ELECTION OF BARACK OBAMA will be an event. But it has proven confusing for most on the “Left,” who claim to want to overcome anti-black racism and achieve social justice. Rejection of Obama on this basis has been as significant as the embrace of his candidacy. There is as much anxiety as hope stirred by Obama, especially regarding the significance of his blackness. For instance, the usually discerning and astute black political scientist and critical intellectual commentator Adolph L. [Read More]
1960s  Barack Obama  Profiles  Race 

Walter Benjamin

 May 1, 2008  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

WALTER BENJAMIN OCCUPIES a unique place in the history of modern revolutionary thought: he is the first Marxist to break radically with the ideology of progress. His thinking has therefore a distinct critical quality, which sets him apart from the dominant and “official” forms of historical materialism, and gives him a formidable methodological superiority. This peculiarity has to do with his ability to incorporate into the body of Marxist revolutionary theory insights from the Romantic critique of civilization and from the Jewish messianic tradition. [Read More]
Anarchism  Bolshevism  Critical theory  Frankfurt School  French Revolution  György Lukács  Historical materialism  History  Ideology  Karl Marx  Marxism  Profiles  Progress  Theology  Theory  Violence  Walter Benjamin