Revolution

A cry of protest before accommodation?

The dialectic of emancipation and domination

December 1, 2011 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

HOW ARE WE TO REGARD the history of revolutions? Why do revolutions appear to fail to achieve their goals? What does this say about consciousness of social change? One common misunderstanding of Marx (against which, however, many counter-arguments have been made) is with respect to the supposed “logic of history” in capital. The notion of a “historical logic” is problematic, in that there may be assumed an underlying historical logic that Marx, as a social scientist, is supposed to have discovered. [Read More]

Egypt, or, history's invidious comparisons

1979, 1789, and 1848

March 1, 2011 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

THE UPRISING IN EGYPT, which followed soon after the toppling of the old regime in Tunisia, succeeded in bringing down Hosni Mubarak on February 11, the 32nd anniversary to the day of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. Already, before this timely coincidence, comparisons between the Iranian Revolution and the revolts gripping the Arab world had started to be made. But other historical similarities offered themselves: the various “color revolutions” in Eastern Europe and former Soviet Central Asian states and Lebanon in recent years, and the collapse of Communism in the Soviet bloc and beyond (the former Yugoslavia) starting with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. [Read More]

1789 1848 1917 Bonapartism Egypt Hosni Mubarak Iran Islamic Republic Karl Marx Marxism Revolution Walter Benjamin

Film Review: _Che_

July 6, 2009 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

THE STORY ITSELF IS WELL KNOWN: Originally trained as a physician, Ernesto “Che” Guevara was an Argentine revolutionary who played a significant part in the Cuban Revolution. Later, Che tried to help incite revolution in the modern day Democratic Republic of the Congo and in Bolivia, where he was eventually killed in 1967. In the more than four decades since his death, Che has been transformed from one among many icons of the revolutionary 1960s into the most recognizable political icon of the period. [Read More]

Che Guevara Revolution Film

Notes on Trotsky and Luxemburg on 1917--19

May 4, 2009 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

I am writing with some notes on our readings from Luxemburg and Trotsky on the Bolshevik Revolution and the greater revolutionary crisis of 1917-19. I will discuss the relation of Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky in the revolutionary period under consideration. Our recent discussions of 1917-19 has taken 2 parts, Luxemburg’s Spartacus writings from the German Revolution of 1918, and now Trotsky on The Lessons of October (1924) and Luxemburg’s writing on the Bolshevik Revolution and its trajectory, “The Russian Tragedy” (1918) and her final writing before being murdered by counterrevolutionaries, “Order Reigns in Berlin” (1919). [Read More]

1917 Chris Cutrone Discussion Vladimir Lenin Revolution Rosa Luxemburg Leon Trotsky Notes

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

excerpt from Trotsky

March 16, 2009 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

From Leon Trotsky (1879-1940), Results and Prospects (1906), VII. The Pre-Requisites of Socialism: http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/rp07.htm “Undoubtedly, the concentration of production, the development of technique and the growth of consciousness among the masses are essential pre-requisites for socialism. But these processes take place simultaneously, and not only give an impetus to each other, but also retard and limit each other. Each of these processes at a higher level demands a certain development of another process at a lower level. [Read More]

Chris Cutrone Discussion emancipation ideology Karl Marx Marxism Revolution Socialism Leon Trotsky

notes on Feb. 15 reading Korsch "Marxism and Philosophy" (1923)

February 15, 2009 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

‘[Humanity] always sets itself only such problems as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely it will always be found that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or are at least understood to be in the process of emergence’ [Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859)]. This dictum is not affected by the fact that a problem which supersedes present relations may have been formulated in an anterior epoch. [Read More]

/20th Century Chris Cutrone crisis critical theory Discussion History ideology Karl Korsch Vladimir Lenin Karl Marx Marxism Philosophy Platypus Revolution Rosa Luxemburg Socialism vulgar Marxism

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

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

A polemic on protest

Reflections on the RNC resistance

October 1, 2008 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

I DECIDED NOT TO PARTICIPATE in any illegal protests at the RNC. There’s a simple, material reason: Had I been arrested I would have been accountable for bail money (or unhappily relying on legal defense funds that I truly feel have more value elsewhere) and possibly a day’s worth of income. I have been and continue to be a member of the working class. I grew up with a single mother who worked two low-paying jobs, and for the past five years, living on my own, I have survived well below the poverty line. [Read More]

Anarchism Movements Participation Polarization Protests Reflections Resistance Revolution RNC The Left Utopia Violence