Overview of all pages with the tags #Theodor W. Adorno

Gillian Rose's 'Hegelian' critique of Marxism

Book review: Gillian Rose, 'Hegel Contra Sociology.' London: Verso, 2009.

March 15, 2010 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

GILLIAN ROSE’S MAGNUM OPUS was her second book, Hegel Contra Sociology (1981).1 Preceding this was The Melancholy Science: An Introduction to the Thought of Theodor W. Adorno (1978), a work which charted Rose’s approach to the relation of Marxism to Hegel in Hegel Contra Sociology.2 Alongside her monograph on Adorno, Rose published two incisively critical reviews of the reception of Adorno’s work.3 Rose thus established herself early on as an important interrogator of Adorno’s thought and Frankfurt School Critical Theory more generally, and of their problematic reception. [Read More]

György Lukács Karl Korsch Vladimir Lenin Karl Marx Marxism Rosa Luxemburg Theodor W. Adorno Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Sociology Gillian Rose

Rejoinder to David Black

On Karl Korsch's Marxism and Philosophy

February 26, 2010 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

DAVID BLACK’S VALUABLE COMMENTS and further historical exposition (in Platypus Review 18, December 2009) of my review of Karl Korsch’s Marxism and Philosophy (Platypus Review 15, September 2009) have at their core an issue with Korsch’s account of the different historical phases of the question of “philosophy” for Marx and Marxism. Black questions Korsch’s differentiation of Marx’s relationship to philosophy into three distinct periods: pre-1848, circa 1848, and post-1848. But attempting to defeat Korsch’s historical account of such changes in Marx’s approaches to relating theory and practice means avoiding Korsch’s principal point. [Read More]

David Black György Lukács History of the Left Karl Korsch Vladimir Lenin Karl Marx Marxism Max Horkheimer Rosa Luxemburg The Left Theodor W. Adorno Leon Trotsky

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

Book Review: Detlev Claussen. Theodor W. Adorno: One Last Genius

October 10, 2009 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008. FOR YEARS THEODOR ADORNO’S theoretical work has suffered from either neglect or semi-hostile “interpretation.” It is therefore refreshing to see Detlev Claussen, who studied under Adorno at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt from 1966 to 1971, take a more sympathetic approach to the study of Adorno’s philosophy and intellectual life. In Theodor W. Adorno: One Last Genius, Claussen attempts to track the historical and biographical factors that influenced Adorno’s critical theory and, in doing so, strives to carefully reconstruct both the changing context and the abiding problematic that Adorno was attempting to grasp in and through his work. [Read More]

Theodor W. Adorno Detlev Claussen

Book review: Karl Korsch, Marxism and Philosophy

September 3, 2009 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

[Marx wrote,] “[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.”1 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]

notes on Adorno in 1968-69

May 26, 2009 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

I am writing with some very brief notes on Adorno’s last writings from 1968-69, the “Marginalia to Theory and Praxis,” “Resignation,” “Late Capitalism or Industrial Society? (AKA “Is Marx Obsolete?”),” and the Adorno-Marcuse correspondence of 1969. The center of Adorno’s critique of the 1960s New Left was their romantic opposition to capitalism, found, for example, in their desideratum of the unity of theory and practice. Rather, Adorno asserted the progressive-emancipatory aspect of the separation of theory and practice. [Read More]

/20th Century Chris Cutrone crisis critical theory Discussion György Lukács Karl Korsch Vladimir Lenin Karl Marx Marxism Rosa Luxemburg the Left Theodor W. Adorno Leon Trotsky Walter Benjamin

notes on Adorno

May 18, 2009 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

I am writing with some brief notes on Adorno’s 1942 essay “Reflections on Class Theory.” Another writing by Adorno we read in the group, “Imaginative Excesses,” the final section of the aphorisms orphaned from Minima Moralia (1944-47), published in New Left Review as “Messages in a Bottle,” Adorno addresses the division and necessary unity of “workers and intellectuals.” One passage in particular should be emphasized, that “Those schooled in dialectical theory are reluctant to indulge in positive images of the proper society, of its members, even of those who would accomplish it. [Read More]

/20th Century Add new tag Chris Cutrone Discussion Karl Marx Marxism Theodor W. Adorno

notes on Lukács

March 9, 2009 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

I am writing with some brief, partial notes from our discussion at UChicago at yesterday’s (Sun. 3/8/09) reading group, on several essays from György Lukács’s 1923 book History and Class Consciousness. I want to emphasize and discuss in particular a couple of passages, from the (original, 1922) Preface, and the essay “What is Orthodox Marxism?” (1919). Specifically, I wish to discuss Lukács’s use of categories, “materialist dialectics,” and his meaning of Marxism as a “method,” which might otherwise prove confusing or tricky. [Read More]

Chris Cutrone Discussion György Lukács Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Hegelian Karl Korsch Vladimir Lenin Karl Marx Marxism Theodor W. Adorno Walter Benjamin

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

"Let the dead bury the dead!"

Response to Principia Dialectica (UK) on May 1968

May 1, 2008 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

THE NEW MAYDAY MAGAZINE (UK) and Platypus have been in dialogue on the issues of anarchism and Marxism and the state of the “Left” today in light of history. (Please see “Organization, political action, history and consciousness” by Chris Cutrone for Platypus, and “Half-time Team Talk” by Trevor Bark for Mayday, in issues #2, February 2008, and #4, April-May 2008, respectively.) Principia Dialectica, another new British journal, also has taken note of Platypus (see “Weird gonzo leftoid journal,” April 15, 2008), specifically with our interview of Moishe Postone on “Marx after Marxism” (in issue #3, March 2008). [Read More]

1968 Anarchism Exchanges György Lukács Marxism Mayday Moishe Postone Principia Dialectica Theodor W. Adorno Trevor Bark Walter Benjamin