The movement as an end-in-itself?
An interview with David Graeber by Ross Wolfe
On December 16, 2011, Ross Wolfe interviewed David Graeber, Reader at Goldsmiths College in London, author of Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology (2004), and central figure in the early stages of the #Occupy Wall Street Movement. What follows is an edited transcript of the interview…

A destroyer of vulgar-Marxism
Book review: Karl Korsch, Marxism and Philosophy by Karl Kautsky
Karl Kautsky’s 1924 review of Karl Korsch’s Marxism and Philosophy appears below in English for the first time [1]. It is hoped that other reviews of Marxism and Philosophy will also be made available in the very near future, not least by leading German communists such as August Thalheimer. Given the highly disputed theoretical legacy of both Kautsky and Korsch, the publication of this review will doubtless add to the debate on the idea of a “coming of age” of Marxism in the late 1860s. For an earlier discussion of Korsch’s book, see Chris Cutrone’s review of the 2008 reprint of Marxism and Philosophy released by Monthly Review Press, in Platypus Review 15 (September 2009)…

“Thirty years of counter-revolution”
An interview with Clyde Young by Spencer A. Leonard
Last summer, Spencer A. Leonard interviewed Clyde Young, a veteran member of the Revolutionary Communist Party. The interview was broadcast on June 31, 2011 on the radio show Radical Minds on WHPK–FM Chicago. What follows is an edited transcript of their conversation. A shorter version of this interview ran in our broadsheet edition of Platypus Review 43…

New School University New York (New School)
Conference Room, 65 West 11th st. (Ground floor)

SUNDAYS, 1–4PM

New York University (NYU)
Puck Building
295 Lafayette St. 4th floor Memorial Room

I. What is the “Left?” — What is “Marxism?”

• required / + recommended reading

Week 12. Jan. 28–29, 2012

• Korsch, “Marxism and philosophy” (1923)
+ Marx, To make the world philosophical (from Marx’s dissertation, 1839–41), pp. 9–11
+ Marx, For the ruthless criticism of everything existing (letter to Arnold Ruge, September 1843), pp. 12–15

Winter–Spring 2012

II. Introduction to revolutionary Marxism

Week 13. Feb. 4–5, 2012

• Rosa Luxemburg, “The Crisis of German Social Democracy” Part 1 (1915)
• J. P. Nettl, “The German Social Democratic Party 1890–1914 as a Political Model” (1965)
• Cliff Slaughter, “What is Revolutionary Leadership?” (1960)

Week 14. Feb. 11–12, 2012

• Luxemburg, Reform or Revolution? (1900/08)

Week 15. Feb. 18–19, 2012

• V. I. Lenin, What is to be Done? (1902)
+ Richard Appignanesi and Oscar Zarate / A&Z, Introducing Lenin and the Russian Revolution / Lenin for Beginners (1977)

Week 16. Feb. 25–26, 2012

• Leon Trotsky, Results and Prospects (1906)
+ Tariq Ali and Phil Evans, Introducing Trotsky and Marxism / Trotsky for Beginners (1980)

Week 17. Mar. 3–4, 2012

• Lenin, The State and Revolution (1917)
+ Lenin, Socialism and War Ch. 1 The principles of socialism and the War of 1914–15 (1915)

Week 18. Mar. 10–11, 2012

• Luxemburg, “What does the Spartacus League Want?” (1918)
• Luxemburg, “On the Spartacus Programme” (1918)
+ Luxemburg, “German Bolshevism” (AKA “The Socialisation of Society”) (1918)
+ Luxemburg, “The Russian Tragedy” (1918)
+ Luxemburg, “Order Reigns in Berlin” (1919)
+ Sebastian Haffner, Failure of a Revolution: Germany 1918–19 (1968)

Week 19. Mar. 17–18, 2012 (Left Forum NYC)

Week 20. Mar. 24–25, 2012 (Spring break)

Week 21. Mar. 31 – Apr. 1, 2012 (Platypus international convention Chicago)

Week 22. Apr. 7–8, 2012

• Lenin, “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder (1920)
+ Lenin, “Notes of a Publicist” (1922)

Week 23. Apr. 14–15, 2012

• Lukács, “The Standpoint of the Proletariat” (Part III of “Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat,” 1923). Available in three sections from marxists.org: section 1 section 2 section 3

Week 24. Apr. 21–22, 2012

• Trotsky, The Lessons of October (1924) [PDF]

Week 25. April 28–29, 2012

• Walter Benjamin, “On the Concept of History” (AKA “Theses on the Philosophy of History”) (1940) [PDF]
• Benjamin, Paralipomena to “On the Concept of History” (1940)
+ Benjamin, Theologico-political fragment (1921/39?)
+ Benjamin, “To the planetarium” (from One-Way Street, 1928)
• Max Horkheimer, “The Authoritarian State” (1942)

Week 26. May 5–6, 2012

• Theodor Adorno, “Reflections on Class Theory” (1942)
• Adorno, “Imaginative Excesses” (1944–47)
+ Adorno, Dedication, Minima Moralia (1944–47)
+ Adorno, “Warning: Not to be Misused” and “Finale”, Minima Moralia (1944–47)
+ Horkheimer and Adorno, “Discussion about Theory and Praxis” (AKA “Towards a New Manifesto?”) [Deutsch] (1956)

Week 27. May 12–13, 2012

+ Adorno, “On Subject and Object” (1969)
• Adorno, “Marginalia to Theory and Praxis” (1969)
• Adorno, “Resignation” (1969)
+ Adorno and Herbert Marcuse, correspondence on the German New Left (1969)
+ Esther Leslie, Introduction to the 1969 Adorno-Marcuse correspondence (1999)
+ Adorno, “Late Capitalism or Industrial Society?” (AKA “Is Marx Obsolete?”) (1968)

Our weekly Coffee Breaks are a great way to meet Platypus members and fellow travelers, and to get to know the Platypus project. It’s an opportunity to discuss issues raised in the latest issue of the Platypus Review, consider the state of the Left, and just hang out with people who have similar political interests.

NYU:  Tuesdays | 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm | Think Coffee 248 Mercer St. between 3rd and 4th St.

Contact: Jeremy Cohan | newyork@platypus1917.org

New School: Wednesdays | 4:30pm – 6:00 pm | Lang Café 65 West 11th st.

Contact: Alex Gleason | newschool@platypus1917.org

Polish socialist and pacifist Rosa Luxemburg dreams about revolution during the era of German Wilhelminism. While Luxemburg campaigns relentlessly for her beliefs, getting repeatedly imprisoned in Germany as well as in Poland, lovers and comrades betray her until the ambitious leader is assassinated after World War I in 1919.

Please join Platypus for this film screening series, a lead-in to our reading group on the “Second International Radicals,” Lenin, Luxemburg, and Trotsky. At its highest peak in the early twentieth century, what were the problems and potentials of Marxism? What did the group of radicals represent in the face of the massive, international.  Marxist movement of the Second International? What did they seek to achieve and how? For they are not dead and buried, as both friends and enemies have claimed. They continue to insist on the question: Can capitalism be overcome?

Contact: newyork@platypus1917.org

(Discussion begins at ~14:00.)


Audio

 

Live broadcast: www.livestream.com/platypus1917

Saturday, December 17, 2011
9AM U.S./Canada PST / 10AM MST / 11AM CST / 12PM EST;
and 17:00 London / 18:00 Frankfurt and Berlin /
19:00 Thessaloniki / 22:30 Delhi / 02:00 Seoul

 
 
 
If you are in Chicago:
Saturday, 11am | 17 December 2011 |School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 112 S. Michigan Ave. room 919
 
Please join Platypus for a brief introduction to and discussion about the relevance of Lenin today, in anticipation of our Winter-Spring 2012 primary Marxist reading group, on the history of revolutionary Marxism, centered on the writings of Lenin, Luxemburg, Trotsky, and Adorno.

The Encyclopedia Britannica’s entry on Lenin states that,

“If the Bolshevik Revolution is — as some people have called it — the most significant political event of the 20th century, then Lenin must for good or ill be considered the century’s most significant political leader. Not only in the scholarly circles of the former Soviet Union, but even among many non-Communist scholars, he has been regarded as both the greatest revolutionary leader and revolutionary statesman in history, as well as the greatest revolutionary thinker since Marx.”

Tribune for a Leninist (1989) by Avvakumov Y., Kuzin Y., Podyomschikov S.

Lenin is the most controversial figure in the history of Marxism, and perhaps one of the most controversial figures in all of history. As such, he is an impossible figure for sober consideration, without polemic. Nevertheless, it has become impossible, also, after Lenin, to consider Marxism without reference to him. Broadly, Marxism is divided into avowedly “Leninist” and “anti-Leninist” tendencies. In what ways was Lenin either an advance or a calamity for Marxism? But there is another way of approaching Lenin, which is as an expression of the historical crisis of Marxism. In other words, Lenin as a historical figure is unavoidably significant as manifesting a crisis of Marxism. The question is how Lenin provided the basis for advancing that crisis, how the polarization around Lenin could provide the basis for advancing the potential transformation of Marxism, in terms of resolving certain problems.

The Frankfurt School Critical Theorist Theodor Adorno, in his 1966 book Negative Dialectics, wrote of the degeneration of Marxism due to “dogmatization and thought-taboos.” There is no other figure in the history of Marxism who has been subject to such “dogmatization and thought-taboos” as much as Lenin.

It is important to note as well that Adorno himself sought to remain, as he put it, “faithful to Marx, Engels and Lenin, while keeping up with culture at its most advanced,” to which his colleague Max Horkheimer replied, simply, “Who would not subscribe to that?”

Today, such a proposition seems especially implausible, in many ways. Yet perhaps the memory of Lenin haunts us still, however obscurely.

The discussion will be broadcast live on the web. Additionally, a recording will be made available after the event.

Recommended background readings:

“1917″
http://platypus1917.org/2009/11/18/the-decline-of-the-left-in-the-20th-century-1917/

“Lenin’s liberalism”
http://platypus1917.org/2011/06/01/lenin%E2%80%99s-liberalism/

“Lenin’s politics”
http://platypus1917.org/2011/09/25/lenins-politics/

The Occupy movement, a renascent Left, and Marxism today: An interview with Slavoj Žižek
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…

The elusive “threads of historical progress”
The early Chartists and the young Marx and Engels by David Black
The first ever reaction by the Victorian ruling class to “Marxism” is found in a London Times leader of September 2, 1851 on “Literature For The Poor,” “only now and then when some startling fact is bought before us do we entertain even the suspicion that there is a society close to our own, and with which we are in the habits of daily intercourse, of which we are as completely ignorant as if it dwelt in another land, of another language in which we never conversed, which in fact we never saw”…

A cry of protest before accommodation?
The dialectic of emancipation and domination by Chris Cutrone
How are we to regard the history of revolutions? Why do revolutions appear to fail to achieve their goals? What does this say about consciousness of social change?
One common misunderstanding of Marx (against which, however, many counter-arguments have been made) is with respect to the supposed “logic of history” in capital…

video of event:

What is the #Occupy Movement?: Part II Roundtable Discussion from Platypus Affiliated Society on Vimeo.

Friday 7pm | December 09, 2011
NYU Kimmel Center (Room 905/907)
60 Washington Square S., NYC

Speakers: Hannah Appel (OWS Think Tank Working Group), Brian Dominick (Z Media Institute), David Graeber (Author, Debt: The First 5000 Years), Erik Van Deventer (NYU), Nathan Schneider (Waging Nonviolence)

The recent #Occupy protests are driven by discontent with the present state of affairs: glaring economic inequality, dead-end Democratic Party politics, and, for some, the suspicion that capitalism could never produce an equitable society. These concerns are coupled with aspirations for social transformation at an international level. For many, the protests at Wall St. and elsewhere provide an avenue to raise questions the Left has long fallen silent on:

What would it mean to challenge capitalism on a global scale?
How could we begin to overcome social conditions that adversely affect every part of life?
And, how could a new international radical movement address these concerns in practice?

Although participants at Occupy Wall St. have managed thus far to organize resources for their own daily needs, legal services, health services, sleeping arrangements, food supplies, defense against police brutality, and a consistent media presence, these pragmatic concerns have taken precedent over long-term goals of the movement. Where can participants of this protest engage in formulating, debating, and questioning the ends of this movement? How can it affect the greater society beyond the occupied spaces?

We in the Platypus Affiliated Society ask participants and interested observers of the #Occupy movement to consider the possibility that political disagreement could lead to clarification, further development and direction. Only when we are able create an active culture of thinking and debating on the Left without it proving prematurely divisive can we begin to imagine a Leftist politics adequate to the historical possibilities of our moment. We may not know what these possibilities for transformation are. This is why we think it is imperative to create avenues of engagement that will support these efforts.

Towards this goal, Platypus will be hosting a series of roundtable discussions with organizers and participants of the #Occupy movement. These will start at campuses in New York and Chicago but will be moving to other North American cities, and to London, Germany, and Greece in the months to come. We welcome any and all who would like to be a part of this project of self-education and potential rebuilding of the Left to join us in advancing this critical moment.

The Platypus Affiliated Society
October 2011

The Platypus Affiliated Society, established in December 2006, organizes reading groups, public fora, research and journalism focused on problems and tasks inherited from the “Old” (1920s-30s), “New” (1960s-70s) and post-political (1980s-90s) Left for the possibilities of emancipatory politics today.

newyork.platypus1917.org | www.platypus1917.org

What is the #Occupy movement? PDF

 

PART 1:
Video:

Audio:

Poster for event (11 x 17)
Event program (8.5 x 11)

An international forum on the
CRISIS OF THE LEFT
Chicago | NYC | Philly | Boston | Thessaloniki

Crisis: Pathol. The point in the progress of a disease when an important development or change takes place which is decisive of recovery or death. “…Existing strategies and theories seem inadequate in a bewildering contemporary political scene. Disparate groups have begun to show an interest in rethinking the fundamentals of Left politics…”

@New York: Wednesday, Nov. 16th, 7:00 – 9:30pm
Silver Center, Room 207
31 Washington Place, New York, NY
NYU

Speakers:
Paul Berman (nyu), Carl Dix (rcp-usa), Bertell Ollman (nyu), Marco Roth and Nikil Saval (n+1)
[Doug Henwood (lbo) decided to pull out]

Many on the Left feel a sense of crisis.

Existing strategies and theories seem inadequate in a bewildering contemporary political scene. Disparate groups have begun to show an interest in rethinking the fundamentals of Left politics. The Platypus Affiliated Society seeks to make the conversation explicit, and to host a series of discussions about the crisis of the contemporary Left: its quality, causes, and significance for future reconstitution and transformation.

Across five cities worldwide, we’ve invited figures from across the Left–academics, political organizers, theorists–to answer and debate six fundamental questions. We also pose these questions to the Left as a whole and invite responses from all quarters. The questions below stem from confusion; taking nothing for granted, we hope that confronting this confusion might open up future possibilities for renewed consciousness and practice on the Left.

Black nationalism and the legacy of Malcolm X
An interview with Michael Dawson by Spencer A. Leonard. Last fall, editor Spencer A. Leonard interviewed Michael Dawson, Director of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture at the University of Chicago…

Whither Marxism?
Why the occupation movement recalls Seattle 1999 by Chris Cutrone
The present occupation expresses a return to the Left of the late 1990s, specifically the 1999 anti-World Trade Organization protests in Seattle…

Teach-in: Does Marxism Even Matter?

In the mid-19th century, Marx and Engels famously observed in the Communist Manifesto that a ‘specter’ was haunting Europe— the specter of Communism. 160 years later, it is ‘Marxism’ itself that haunts us.

In the 21st century, it seems that the Left abandoned Marxism as a path to freedom. But Marx critically intervened in his own moment and emboldened leftists to challenge society; is the Left not tasked with this today? Has the Left resolved the problems posed by Marx, and thus moved on?