Overview of all pages with the tags #Vladimir Lenin

Adorno's Leninism

April 21, 2010 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

A talk given by Platypus member Chris Cutrone at Loyola University, on April 21st, 2010. Cosponsored by Pi Sigma Tau, STAND, and SAF. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Transcript in Platypus Review #37 Description The German Marxist critical theorist Theodor W. Adorno (1903-69) is known, along with his friend and mentor Walter Benjamin, for the critique of mid-20th century art and culture. What is less well understood is the specific character of Adorno’s Marxism, how his political perspective related to his philosophical concerns. [Read More]

1920s 1930s 1940s 1960s Vladimir Lenin New Left Old Left

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 legacy

A reply to Jerzy Sobotta

February 18, 2010 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

THE ASSUMPTION THAT ROSA LUXEMBURG’S CORPSE has significance for the state of the German Left, though perhaps not her body, is tempting. Luxemburg was a Polish socialist involved in a European socialist movement during a time when there was no sovereign Polish state. She was successively a member of the Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), and the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany. [Read More]

Anti-Deutsche Baader-Meinhof Group Communist Party of Germany Die Linke Fascism German National Bolshevik Movement Germany Henry Ford Jerzy Sobotta Karl Liebknecht Karl Radek Vladimir Lenin Marxism Nationalism Nazism New Economic Policy Proletariat RAF Rosa Luxemburg Schlageter Line Social democratic party Social Democratic party of Germany Spartakusbund Joseph Stalin Leon Trotsky

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 Trotsky and Luxemburg on 1917--19

May 4, 2009 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

I am writing with some notes on our readings from Luxemburg and Trotsky on the Bolshevik Revolution and the greater revolutionary crisis of 1917-19. I will discuss the relation of Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky in the revolutionary period under consideration. Our recent discussions of 1917-19 has taken 2 parts, Luxemburg’s Spartacus writings from the German Revolution of 1918, and now Trotsky on The Lessons of October (1924) and Luxemburg’s writing on the Bolshevik Revolution and its trajectory, “The Russian Tragedy” (1918) and her final writing before being murdered by counterrevolutionaries, “Order Reigns in Berlin” (1919). [Read More]

1917 Chris Cutrone Discussion Vladimir Lenin Revolution Rosa Luxemburg Leon Trotsky Notes

notes on Lenin, "Left-Wing" Communism an Infantile Disorder (1920)

April 13, 2009 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

From Lenin’s “Left-Wing” Communism – An Infantile Disorder (1920): http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ “[E.g.,] Parliamentarianism has become “historically obsolete”. That is true in the propaganda sense. However, everybody knows that this is still a far cry from overcoming it in practice. Capitalism could have been declared – and with full justice – to be “historically obsolete” many decades ago, but that does not at all remove the need for a very long and very persistent struggle on the basis of capitalism. [Read More]

/20th Century Chris Cutrone Discussion History Vladimir Lenin Politics Rosa Luxemburg the Left Leon Trotsky

notes on Lenin, The State and Revolution (1917)

March 30, 2009 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

I am writing with some notes towards discussion of Lenin’s The State and Revolution (1917). The first point to make is that this is least controversial of the three texts by Lenin we read in the group, the other two being What is to be done? (1902) and “Left-Wing” Communism: an infantile disorder (1920). (Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism (1916) is also somewhat controversial.) There are potentially 3 Lenins: vanguardist; utopian; and conservative. [Read More]

Chris Cutrone Discussion Vladimir Lenin Karl Marx Marxism Rosa Luxemburg Leon Trotsky

Notes on Luxemburg's The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions (1906)

March 23, 2009 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

I am writing with some notes on Rosa Luxemburg’s Mass, Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions (1906), which we read as our second text from the period of the 1905 Revolution in Russia. First, on the 1905 Revolution, it needs to be emphasized that this was not only a prelude to and “rehearsal” for the 1917 Russian Revolution, but was itself a world-historic event that was galvanizing for the international Left and workers movement, as well as giving shape to 20th Century political trends more generally. [Read More]

Anarchism Chris Cutrone Discussion Vladimir Lenin Marxism Rosa Luxemburg Leon Trotsky