Finance capital

Why financial capitalism is no more "fictitious" than any other kind

 October 1, 2008  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

WITH THE PRESENT FINANCIAL MELT-DOWN in the U.S. throwing the global economy into question, many on the “Left” are wondering again about the nature of capitalism. While many will be tempted to jump on the bandwagon of the “bailout” being floated by the Bush administration and the Congressional Democrats (including Obama), others will protest the “bailing out” of Wall Street. The rhetoric of “Wall Street vs. Main Street,” between “hardworking America” and the “financial fat cats,” however, belies a more fundamental truth: the two are indissolubly linked and are in fact two sides of the same coin of capitalism. [Read More]
Authoritarianism  Bailout  Bill Clinton  Capitalism  Crisis  Economics  Financial  Freedom  Friedrich Hayek  Humanity  Ideology  Industrial  John Kenneth Galbraith  Karl Polanyi  Karl Marx  Marxism  Milton Friedman  Modern  Neo-liberalism  Organization  Production  Reforms  Reification  Socialism  Society  The Left  The Platypus Historians Group 

The Hundred Days campaign: the present and future of SDS

 September 1, 2008  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

FROM JULY 24 UNTIL JULY 28 2008, the new Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) had its third annual national convention in College Park, Maryland. At the convention, national campaigns were presented and voted on by the attendees. A major campaign introduced at the convention was the Hundred Days campaign, which seeks to organize and engage newly politicized Americans in politics beyond the campaign season. During the first one hundred days of the next administration the campaign will organize two nationwide weeks of action to ensure that the people remain involved in politics after the election cycle. [Read More]
Anarchism  Anti-capitalism  Ben Shepard  Capitalism  Chicago  Dave Shukla  Democracy  Democratic society  FRSO  Hope  Hundred Days campaign  Ideology  Left Forum  Liberalism  Maoism  Marxism  Movement  New SDS  New York  Barack Obama  Organization  Power  Process  Protest  Sectarianism  Socialism  Split  Structure  Students  The Left 

Who Needs the Left?

Reflections on Joining the Industrial Workers of the World

 February 1, 2008  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

IN THE SPRING OF 2006, after years of activity on the Left, I joined the IWW. I joined because it cared little for Leftism. And because it began every meeting with a song. After years of dodging the crossfire of competing claims to revolutionary truth, I breathed happily at last in meetings where no one tested my position on Cuba or the Green Party or state capitalism vs. deformed workers states. [Read More]
/20th Century  Capitalism  Copernican Revolution  German Revolution  IWW  Movements  Organization  People  Socialism  Soviet Revolution  The Left  Transformation  Workers 

The Left is dead! Long live the Left!

Vicissitudes of historical consciousness and possibilities for emancipatory social politics today

 November 1, 2007  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society  • Other languages: Ελληνικά

The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. —Karl Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852) The theorist who intervenes in practical controversies nowadays discovers on a regular basis and to his shame that whatever ideas he might contribute were expressed long ago – and usually better the first time around. —Theodor W. Adorno, “Sexual Taboos and the Law Today” (1963) [Read More]
19th Century  /20th Century  capitalism  consciousness  counterrevolution  crisis  Vladimir Lenin  Critical Theory  defeat  depoliticization  emancipation  György Lukács  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel  History  History of the Left  humanity  ideology  Imperialism  Industrial Revolution  Iraq  Karl Korsch  liberalism  Marxism  Karl Marx  Moishe Postone  Negative Dialectics  New Left  Friedrich Nietzsche  opportunism  Philosophy  Political economy  Politics postmodernism  Revolution  Robert Pippin  Rosa Luxemburg  Social Democracy  Social Democratic Party of Germany  SPD  Socialism  society  Stalinism  Theodor W. Adorno  utopianism  Walter Benjamin  war