1917--2017

1917--2017

 March 8, 2018  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

ON NOVEMBER 6, 2017, the Platypus Affiliated Society held a panel discussion at the University of Illinois at Chicago on the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution. The speakers were Jonathan W. Daly (Professor of History at UIC and author of The Watchful State: Security Police and Opposition in Russia, 1906-1917), Franklin Dimitryev (News & Letters), Greg Lucero (Socialist Party USA), and Sam Brown (Black Rose/Rosa Negra). The speakers were asked to respond to the following questions: What were the aims of the 1917 Russian Revolution? [Read More]
russian revolution  1917  spusa  News & Letters  black rose  october revolution  leon trotsky  rsdlp  Bolsheviks  vladimir lenin 

Revolutions 1917: Recounts and Rehearsals

Book Review: China Mieville. *October: The Story of the Russian Revolution*; Tariq Ali. *The Dilemmas of Lenin: Terrorism, War, Empire, Love, Revolution*

Revolutions 1917: Recounts and Rehearsals

 December 2, 2017  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

China Mieville. October: The Story of the Russian Revolution. London: Verso, 2017; Tariq Ali. The Dilemmas of Lenin: Terrorism, War, Empire, Love, Revolution. London: Verso, 2017. IN AN INTERVIEW HE GAVE to discuss his new book, October, China Mieville observed that to his surprise, there has been comparatively little published on the centenary of the Russian Revolution. This means that public commentary and reflection on the revolution is inevitably poorer as a result, and that more expectation is piled onto those books that have come out. [Read More]
Tariq Ali  China Mieville  Russian Revolution 

Book Review: Philip Cunliffe, *Lenin Lives! Reimagining the Russian Revolution 1917-2017*

Book Review: Philip Cunliffe, *Lenin Lives! Reimagining the Russian Revolution 1917-2017*

 November 1, 2017  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

Alresford, UK: Zero Books, 2017 WHEN PRESIDENT TRUMP ANNOUNCED the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Climate Accord on June 1, 2017, for many liberals it meant that doom was upon us, that the earth was surely soon to be uninhabitable. Yet, if the Paris Accord was the best shot that our civilization had at survival, we were perhaps doomed from the start. NASA scientist James Hansen, at least, one of the earliest voices to raise the alarms about the effects of climate change, had deemed the Accord to be thoroughly inadequate to begin with. [Read More]
Philip Cunliffe  Vladimir Lenin  Russian Revolution 

1917--2017

 April 8, 2017  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

Audio recording of the closing plenary of the 9th annual Platypus Affiliated Society international convention. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Panelists Bryan Palmer Leo Panitch Chris Cutrone Description The First World War manifested an economic, social and political crisis of global capitalism, – “imperialism” – which sparked reflection in the mass parties of the Second International on the task of socialist politics. The revisionist dispute, the “crisis of Marxism” in which Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky first cut their teeth, shaped their understanding of the unfolding revolution as a necessary expression of self-contradiction within the movement for socialism. [Read More]
1917  Russian Revolution  Rosa Luxemburg 

Democracy and The Left

Democracy and The Left

 June 1, 2014  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

Honoré Daumier's (1808-1879) 'The Republic', 1848. After the Republic was proclaimed on 24 February 1848, the official image of the State had to be changed. A competition was launched to define the 'painted face of the republic'. The French caricaturist, painter, and sculptor submitted a mother nursing powerful toddlers while holding the tricolour flag in her hand. The child sitting at her feet, reading, was much admired. [Read More]
1776  1789  1848  1914  1917  1989  Arab Spring  Bonapartism  CIO  Critique  Cuban Missile Crisis  Democracy  Electoral politics  GDR  Immanent critique  John F. Kennedy  Koch brothers  Kshama Sawant  Vladimir Lenin  Karl Marx  Max Weber  New Deal  Occupy  Republic  Revolution  Rosa Luxemburg  Russian revolution  SFIO  Socialist Alternative  SPD  The Left  Ukraine  WWII 

Gender and the new man

Emancipation and the Russian Revolution?

Gender and the new man

 December 1, 2013  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

IN 1968 THE SOCIALIST GERMAN STUDENT LEAGUE (SDS) of Stuttgart printed a poster that said: “Everyone talks about the weather. Not us.” This slogan was originally used by Deutsche Bahn, the national railway. Instead of the depiction of an electric locomotive of the original poster, the SDS printed portraits of Marx, Engels, and Lenin below the caption. This alone should have raised some concern. To this day, Deutsche Bahn is incapable of not talking about the weather, which so often disrupts their stereotypically German concern with strict punctuality. [Read More]
Gender  Russian Revolution  Feminism 

The Relevance of Lenin Today

 December 17, 2011  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Video Recording Transcript in Platypus Review #48 Description The Encyclopedia Britannica’s entry on Lenin states that, If the Bolshevik Revolution is – as some people have called it – the most significant political event of the 20th century, then Lenin must for good or ill be considered the century’s most significant political leader. Not only in the scholarly circles of the former Soviet Union, but even among many non-Communist scholars, he has been regarded as both the greatest revolutionary leader and revolutionary statesman in history, as well as the greatest revolutionary thinker since Marx. [Read More]
Bolshevik Revolution  Vladimir Lenin  Leninism  Karl Marx  Marxism  Russian revolution 

October 1921: Lenin looks back

 July 1, 2011  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

At the 2011 Left Forum, held at Pace University in NYC between March 18–21, Platypus hosted a conversation on “Lenin’s Marxism.” Panelists Chris Cutrone of Platypus, Paul Le Blanc of the International Socialist Organization, and Lars T. Lih, the author of Lenin Reconsidered: “What is to be Done?” in Context, were asked to address, “What was distinctive about Vladimir Lenin’s Marxism? What was its relationship to the other forms of Marxism and Marxists of his era? [Read More]
Vladimir Lenin  Russian Revolution