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 

notes on Lenin, The State and Revolution (1917)

 March 30, 2009  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

I am writing with some notes towards discussion of Lenin’s The State and Revolution (1917). The first point to make is that this is least controversial of the three texts by Lenin we read in the group, the other two being What is to be done? (1902) and “Left-Wing” Communism: an infantile disorder (1920). (Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism (1916) is also somewhat controversial.) There are potentially 3 Lenins: vanguardist; utopian; and conservative. [Read More]
Chris Cutrone  Discussion  Vladimir Lenin  Karl Marx  Marxism  Rosa Luxemburg  Leon Trotsky 

Notes on Luxemburg's The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions (1906)

 March 23, 2009  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

I am writing with some notes on Rosa Luxemburg’s Mass, Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions (1906), which we read as our second text from the period of the 1905 Revolution in Russia. First, on the 1905 Revolution, it needs to be emphasized that this was not only a prelude to and “rehearsal” for the 1917 Russian Revolution, but was itself a world-historic event that was galvanizing for the international Left and workers movement, as well as giving shape to 20th Century political trends more generally. [Read More]
Anarchism  Chris Cutrone  Discussion  Vladimir Lenin  Marxism  Rosa Luxemburg  Leon Trotsky 

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 

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 

University of Chicago Marxist reading group Winter-Spring 2009

University of Chicago Marxist reading group Winter-Spring 2009

 January 11, 2009  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

Platypus chapter at University of Chicago[ meets Sundays at][ **] [ Reynolds Club 5706 S. University Ave.] [ **2nd floor South Lounge 2-5PM**] [For more information contact mtorre3@artic.edu] [ **] [PDF of 2008-2009 scheduled readings ### [[January 25, 2009]] [What is “revolutionary leadership?”] [· Cliff Slaughter, “What is Revolutionary Leadership?” (1960)] [· Rosa Luxemburg, “The Crisis of German Social Democracy” Part 1 (1915) [PDF]] [ ] [ ] [ []] [Read More]
Cliff Slaughter  J.P. Nettl  Karl Korsch  leadership  Vladimir Lenin  Marxism  Reading group  Rosa Luxemburg  Leon Trotsky  University of Chicago 

SAIC reading group Spring 2009

SAIC reading group Spring 2009

 January 11, 2009  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

Platypus chapter at SAIC[ meets Sundays at] 112 S. Michigan Ave. Room 707 @ 1-4pm [contact: ian.morrison.a@gmail.com if you are not SAIC affiliated] [PDF of 2008-2009 scheduled readings ### [[January 25, 2009]] [What is “revolutionary leadership?”] [· Cliff Slaughter, “What is Revolutionary Leadership?” (1960)] [· Rosa Luxemburg, “The Crisis of German Social Democracy” Part 1 (1915) [PDF]] [ ] [ ] [ []] [[[February 1, 2009]]] [ ] [[Revolutionary Marxism (1)]] [Read More]
J.P. Nettl  Vladimir Lenin  Marxism  Reading group  Rosa Luxemburg  SAIC 

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 

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