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 

1914 in the history of Marxism

1914 in the history of Marxism

 May 6, 2014  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

At the Platypus Affiliated Society’s annual International Convention, held at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago April 4–6, 2014, Chris Cutrone delivered the following President’s Report. An edited transcript of the presentation and subsequent discussion appears below. A full audio recording is available online at <sixth-annual-platypus-international-convention>. Cover of the Vorwärts, the SPD's party organ in 1914; the headline reads, 'Social Democracy and the War!' The SPD voted for war credits to the First World War almost 100 years ago on August 4 1914. [Read More]
1914  /2nd International  August 4  Bebel  Imperialism  Karl Kautsky  Karl Liebknecht  Vladimir Lenin  Marxism  Nationalism  Pacifism  Rosa Luxemburg  RSDLP  SPD  War  Woodrow Wilson  WWI 

Splits, regroupments, war, and revolution in Germany, 1914--1920

A conversation with Ben Lewis

Splits, regroupments, war, and revolution in Germany, 1914--1920

 May 1, 2012  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

_LAST WINTER, on their radio show Radical Minds on WHPK-FM Chicago, Spencer A. Leonard and Watson Ladd interviewed Ben Lewis, a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and co-author and translator, together with Lars T. Lih, of Zinoviev and Martov: Head to Head in Halle (2011). The interview originally was broadcast on December 6, 2011. What follows is an edited transcript of their conversation._ Spencer A. Leonard: Please give a brief overview of Zinoviev and Martov: Head to Head in Halle. [Read More]
Ben Lewis  CPGB  Eduard Bernstein  Lars T. Lih  Rosa Luxemburg  SPD  German Revolution 

Rosa Luxemburg's corpse

The stench of decay on the German Left, 1932--2009

 October 10, 2009  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

IN MAY OF 2009 SCIENTISTS IN BERLIN claimed to have unearthed the corpse of the martyred revolutionary leader Rosa Luxemburg. Stored in the cellar of a hospital, the corpse had neither a head, nor feet, nor hands. The stump of a corpse of Rosa Luxemburg lay rotting in a basement, subjected to the un-tender mercies of modern forensic science. Less than fourteen years after the death of one of its greatest leaders, the German Left died. [Read More]
1968  Anti-Americanism  Anti-Deutsche  Anti-imperialism  Anti-semitism  Germany  Herbert Marcuse  Nazi  New Left  Palestine  Theodor W. Adorno  Rosa Luxemburg  SPD 

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