Horkheimer in 1943 on party and class

 January 12, 2016  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

Without a socialist party, there is no class struggle, only rackets HORKHEIMER’S REMARKABLE ESSAY “On the sociology of class relations” (1943)1 is continuous with Adorno’s contemporaneous “Reflections on class theory” (1942) as well as his own “The authoritarian state” (1940/42), which similarly mark the transformation of Marx and Engels’s famous injunction in the Communist Manifesto that “history is the history of class struggles.” All of these writings were inspired by Walter Benjamin’s “On the concept of history” (AKA “Theses on the philosophy of history,” 1940), which registered history’s fundamental crisis. [Read More]
/20th Century  Capitalism  Communist party  Critical theory  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel  History  Vladimir Lenin  Liberalism  Karl Marx  Marxism  Max Horkheimer  Political party  Socialism  Socialist  Socioeconomic  SYRIZA  Theodor W. Adorno  Walter Benjamin 

Back to Herbert Spencer!

Industrial vs. militant society

Back to Herbert Spencer!

 January 12, 2016  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

HERBERT SPENCER’S GRAVE faces Marx’s at Highgate Cemetery in London. At his memorial, Spencer was honored for his anti-imperialism by Indian national liberation advocate and anti-colonialist Shyamji Krishnavarma, who funded a lectureship at Oxford in Spencer’s name. Marx and Spencer's facing graves.Photograph by Christian Fuchs, http://fuchs.uti.at/ What would the 19th century liberal, Utilitarian and Social Darwinist, Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), who was perhaps the most prominent, widely read and popular philosopher in the world during his lifetime – that is, in Marx’s lifetime – have to say to Marxists or more generally to the left, when such liberalism earned not only Marx’s own scorn but also Nietzsche’s criticism? [Read More]
Anti-imperialism  Anti-war  Benjamin Constant  Capitalism  Carl Schmitt  Freedom  Martin Heidegger  Imperialism  Karl Marx  Liberalism  Libertarian  Max Weber  Friedrich Nietzsche  Paul Lafargue  Socialism  Theodor W. Adorno  Herbert Spencer  Featured Articles 

La contra Adorno

The sex-economic problem of Platypus

 June 1, 2013  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

Think of us like the psychoanalysts of the Left. THIS WAS ONE of the descriptions that a member of the Platypus Affiliated Society offered after I had made some probing, perhaps doubtful, remarks about the intentions of their organization. As someone who identified with the radical Left and psychoanalysis, I found this statement to be rather instructive and, really, born out of a genuine insight into the current state of the Left. [Read More]
Theodor W. Adorno 

Book review: John Holloway, Fernando Matamoros & Sergio Tischler eds. *Negativity & Revolution: Adorno and Political Activism*

Book review: John Holloway, Fernando Matamoros & Sergio Tischler eds. *Negativity & Revolution: Adorno and Political Activism*

 October 1, 2012  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

London: Pluto Press, 2009 [N]egative dialectics seeks the self-reflection of thinking, the tangible implication is that if thinking is to be true – today, in any case – it must also think against itself. If thinking fails to measure itself by the extremeness that eludes the concept, it is from the outset like the accompanying music with which the SS liked to drown out the screams of its victims. —Theodor W. [Read More]
Activism  Book Review  Theodor W. Adorno 

1873--1973: The century of Marxism

The death of Marxism and the emergence of neo-liberalism and neo-anarchism

 June 7, 2012  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

AT THE 2012 PLATYPUS AFFILIATED SOCIETY’S (PAS) annual International Convention, held at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago March 30–April 1, Chris Cutrone, President of the PAS, delivered the following presentation, which has been edited for clarity. A full audio recording is available online by clicking the above link. IN THE TRADITION we established just two years ago, there is a Platypus President’s report, speaking to the historical moment. [Read More]
Anarchism  History  History of the Left  Vladimir Lenin  Karl Marx  Marxism  Stalinism  The Left  Theodor W. Adorno  Trotskyism 

The Occupy movement, a renascent Left, and Marxism today

The Occupy movement, a renascent Left, and Marxism today

 December 1, 2011  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

ON NOVEMBER 5, 2011, using questions formulated together with Chris Cutrone, Haseeb Ahmed interviewed Slavoj Žižek at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, the Netherlands. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation. Haseeb Ahmed: Are we currently – after Tahrir Square and the eruption of the Occupy movement – living through a renaissance of the Left? If so, what is the historical legacy that stands in need of reconsideration? [Read More]
Egypt  Vladimir Lenin  Maoism  Max Horkheimer  Moishe Postone  RCP (USA)  Slavoj Žižek  Theodor W. Adorno  Occupy  Occupy Wall Street 

The politics of Critical Theory

Third Annual Platypus International Convention: Opening plenary

 July 9, 2011  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

THE OPENING PLENARY of the third annual Platypus Affiliated Society international convention, held April 29–May 1, 2011 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, was a panel discussion between Nicholas Brown of the University of Illinois at Chicago, Chris Cutrone of Platypus, Andrew Feenberg of Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, and Richard Westerman of the University of Chicago. The panelists were asked to address the following: “Recently, the New Left Review published a translated conversation between the critical theorists Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer causing more than a few murmurs and gasps. [Read More]
1960s  György Lukács  Herbert Marcuse  Karl Korsch  Vladimir Lenin  Max Horkheimer  Platypus Convention  Rosa Luxemburg  Theodor W. Adorno  Critical Theory  Frankfurt School 

Trotsky's theory of art

 July 1, 2011  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society  • Other languages: Deutsch

At its Third Annual Convention, held at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago between April 29-May 1, Platypus hosted a conversation on “Art, Culture, and Politics: Marxist Approaches.” Platypus members Omair Hussain, Lucy Parker, Pac Pobric, and Bret Schneider sought to address “What might the problems of aesthetics and culture have to do with the political project of the self-education of the Left?” A full audio recording of the event is available by clicking the above link. [Read More]
Art  Art and culture  Theodor W. Adorno  Leon Trotsky 

Subject, class, and the Hegelian legacy in critical social theory

 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 “Lukács’s Marxism.” Panelists Timothy Bewes (Brown University), Jeremy Cohan (Platypus), Timothy Hall (University of East London, U.K.), and M. A. Torres (Platypus) were asked to address, “Who was Lukács? Critic of reification, founder of Hegelian Marxism, Critical Theory, Western Marxism? Or: philosopher of Bolshevism, apologist for Leninism, romantic socialist, voluntarist idealist, terrorist revolutionary? [Read More]
György Lukács  Moishe Postone  Theodor W. Adorno  Critical Theory 

After Hegel

After Hegel

 June 1, 2011  |  The Platypus Affiliated Society

ON MARCH 14, 2011, Omair Hussain publicly interviewed Robert Pippin, on behalf of Platypus, at an event titled On the Possibility of What Isn’t at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Robert Pippin is a professor on the Committee on Social Thought and in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago, and the author of numerous works on Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche. What follows is an edited transcript of the interview. [Read More]
Art  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel  Immanuel Kant  Karl Marx  Marxism  Robert Pippin  Enlightenment  Theodor W. Adorno