Marx and Liberalism: An interview with Domenico Losurdo
Pam C. Nogales C. and Ross Wolfe
On March 17, 2012, Ross Wolfe and Pam Nogales of the Platypus Affiliated Society interviewed Domenico Losurdo, the author, most recently, of Liberalism: A Counter-History (2011). What follows is an edited transcript of their conversation…

Changes in art and society: A view from the present
Mary Jane Jacob, Robert Pippin, and Walter Benn Michaels
On 31 March 2012, the Platypus Affiliated Society invited Mary Jane Jacob (School of the Art Institute of Chicago), Robert Pippin (University of Chicago), and Walter Benn Michaels (University of Illinois at Chicago) to speak on the theme of “Changes in Art and Society: A View from the Present” at the 2012 Platypus International Convention held at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago… The panelists were asked several questions in order to flesh out the uneven and at times obscure relationship that art has with a society that is constantly in flux… What follows is an edited transcript of the event…

Splits, regroupments, war, and revolution in Germany, 1914–1920: A conversation with Ben Lewis
Spencer A. Leonard and Watson Ladd
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 June 12, 2011. What follows is an edited transcript of their conversation…

 

 

 

Andy Melathopoulos. Photo by Calum Agnew

What do the American anti-war movement, Occupy Wall Street, the sexual liberation movement, unions and an endangered semi-aquatic mammal from Australia all have in common?

The Platypus Affiliated Society at Dalhousie has been organizing events for the past six months, discussing the history of the political left and answering that question.

Motivated by a sense that the left is disoriented, the Platypus Society draws out the connections and points of disagreement between the various movements on the left-wing today and their historical predecessors, in the hopes of dispelling “ideological murkiness,” according to the website.

Andony Melathopoulos, Canadian coordinator of the Platypus Society and president of the Dal affiliate, hopes their work will prompt more thoughtful consideration about what it means to be on the left today.

On March 1, the group held a public interview between Herb Gamberg, a professor of sociology at Dal, and Tony Thomson from Acadia University, on the history of the New Communist movement in Halifax in the 1970s.

The society has organized six events this year with support from a variety of on-campus groups, such as the Contemporary Studies Society at the University of King’s College, the Dal Women’s Studies department and NSPIRG.  Some topics have included “Does Marxism Even Matter?,” “What is the #Occupy Movement?” and a film screening mini-series featuring Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.

The group also meets twice weekly: once as a reading group, discussing the history of Marxist theory, and once to talk politics. The readings, which include texts from Hegel, Rousseau, Adorno and Horkheimer, are available online at the Platypus website.

The Platypus Society at Dal has been “trying to create the space where you can think critically. A space in which you don’t have to simply defend your positions but take them out and have a look at them,” says Melathopoulos.

“This isn’t your uncle’s turkey dinner,” he says. “You don’t have to worry and you don’t have to take your position for granted.”

It’s a place where students can hear a conversation that’s very different from what they’re used to, and where they can ask questions they’re not used to asking, says Melathopoulos.

For some, “it’s unclear why you would even need the category of the left at the moment,” he says. “I remember when we did our first event at Dal in September, we asked the question ‘What is the left?’ and the answer we got was, ‘Well, you support the CBC, healthcare and the unions.’”

Recently, movements such as Occupy Wall Street have rejected an association with the “traditional left.” But people have been announcing the death of the left for a long time, says Melathopoulos.

“If you understand the present in its historical context, you could recognize a left today,” says Melathopoulos.

In the case of Occupy, both the problem identified – macro-scale inequality – and the methodological debates in the movement itself, such as the problem of hierarchy, are not new, says Melathopoulos.

The Platypus Society believes that “if we understand the problem of the left as a historical one, that might help us in the present,” he says.

Melathopoulos doesn’t have a background in sociology or history. He’s a PhD student working with wild honeybees. He says the texts are “not that complicated if you just start reading them with an open mind.”

Founded in Chicago in 2006, the Platypus Society has chapters across the globe, including France, Korea, Greece and Toronto. The group publishes a monthly journal, *The Platypus Review*, which can be found in the atrium of the Killam and at cafés around Halifax. It has featured Noam Chomsky and Slavoj Žižek in the past.

The March issue contains an essay by former Dal student David Bush, writing on the Occupy movement.

As to the name, Marx’s friend and collaborator, Friedrich Engels, thought the platypus was a scheme cooked up by taxidermists in an attempt to discredit Darwin’s theory of evolution; such an animal was ridiculous and patently impossible in the light of natural history. The same is said of ‘the left’ today, says the Platypus Society.

And then Engels saw one.

School of the Art Institute of Chicago, March 30 – April 1, 2012 

The two decades of the 1990s 2000s form a cycle containing certain common as well as differing concerns. The second decade of the 21st century has begun under the mixed legacy of recent history, presenting important problems needing to be worked through, moving forward.

For Platypus’ 2012 international convention our panels asked speakers from various perspectives to bring their experience of the Left’s recent history to bear on today’s political possibilities and challenges. 

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AUDIO FILES

Workshops: Differing Perspectives on the Left

Inclusive Democracy (John Sargis)  
First of May Anarchist Alliance (Peter Staudenmaier)
League of Revolutionaries For A New America (Nelson Peery)
News and Letters (Franklin Dmitryev)
Revolutionary Communist Party (Canada) – Parti communiste révolutionnaire
The Communist Party of Great Britain (Ben Lewis)
The International Marxist Tendency (John Peterson)
Phase 2 (Germany)
Occupy Chicago
International Bolshevik Tendency

Panel discussions: Lessons from the recent history of the Left 

Whence Anarchism? The historical conjuncture of #Occupy
Lenin and the Marxist Left after #Occupy
Defining Democracy: The Labor Movement and #Occupy 
G8 and NATO: Rulers, Domination, and Emancipation 
The 90s and 00s Left Today 
Changes in Art and Society: A view from the present

Session 1 W402 Finance Capital and Occupy: Marxist Perspectives Sat 10:00am

Session 3 W623 Impossible Occupations: Marxism and Psychoanalysis Sat 03:00pm

Session 3 W605 The Significance of Art in the Occupy Movement Sat 03:00pm

Session 3 W617 Arab Spring into Winter? Challenges to the Left one year on Sat 03:00pm

Session 5 E308 2011, 1999, 1968 — and 2012? The history of the Left and #Occupy Sun 10:00am

Session 5 E329 Technology, Un/Employment, and the Left: From Future Shock to OWS Sun 10:00am

Session 5 E326 The Environmentalism of Occupy Sun 10:00am

Session 7 E320 Third Parties and the Left: Problems and Prospects Sun 03:00pm

Drop by the Platypus table!

What is the #Occupy movement?
A roundtable discussion
Late in 2011, the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted a series of roundtable debates on the #Occupy Wall Street Movement. Speakers at the event held on December 9, 2011 at New York University included Hannah Appel (OWS Think Tank Working Group), Erik Van Deventer (NYU), Nathan Schneider (Waging Nonviolence), and Brian Dominick (Z Media Institute), with Jeremy Cohan (Platypus Affiliated Society) moderating…

Marx at the margins
An interview with Kevin Anderson
Last summer, Spencer A. Leonard interviewed Kevin Anderson, author of Lenin, Hegel, and Western Marxism (1995) and Marx at the Margins (2010). The interview was broadcast on August 2, 2011 on the radio show Radical Minds on WHPK–FM Chicago. What follows is an edited transcript of their conversation…

Occupy everything… and?
Reflections on the problems and possibilities of a movement by David Bush
My initial reaction to the occupation of Wall Street was generally positive. But soon that feeling gave way to doubt and unease. I still find much hope in so many people taking to the streets, but I’ve become less certain of what, exactly, is going on. From Naomi Klein and Michael Moore to Chris Hedges, Slavoj Žižek—and even Kanye West—every lefty public intellectual and several celebrities have come out in support of Occupy Wall Street and its progenitors. There seems to be a left cheerleading section that has developed around Occupy, which makes me wonder why I still have doubts. Am I some sort of political dinosaur who simply doesn’t get it? Can I not see revolution when it is thrust into my face(book)? Or is the Occupy Everywhere movement (OE, henceforth) itself ambiguous in ways that raise legitimate doubts?…

Audio link (click here)

Thursday 1 March 2012, Room 1020 Rowe Building, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Hosted by the Platypus Affiliated Society at Dalhousie

co-sponsored by NSPIRG and the Halifax Media Co-op

The 1970s are usually passed over as the decade in which the social and political upheavals of the 1960s New Left were overwhelmed by a conservative tide. What is forgotten is that the 1970s were also a time of tremendous growth on the Left, most notably in the New Communist Movement. In Quebec thousands of members joined groups intent on forming a new national Communist party. In cities like Halifax and Vancouver activists formed smaller collectives in an effort to “get serious” about their Leftism. The period marked a reconsideration of Marxism and working class politics on a scale that has not been seen since. 

What is the legacy of this movement today? Why did it emerge and what lead to its stunning decline in the early 1980s? As activist prepare for the next phase of Occupy is there anything to learn from this experience?

RSVP on Facebook (click here)

Background Reading:

New Infantilism: The "New Communist Movement" in Halifax (Halifax Study Group, 1978)

The Marxist turn: The New Left in the 1970s (Platypus Review)

Up in the air: The legacy of the New Communist Movement (Platypus Review)

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…

Rm 224 Student Union Building
Dalhousie University
Part of the Dalhousie Introducing Platypus Reading Group Series.

Cannes Palme D’Or nominee and Best Actress winner (for Barbara Sukowa’s luminous performance), this is a sweeping biopic of radical socialist Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919).

“Socialism is the first popular movement in world history that has set itself the goal of bringing  human consciousness, and thereby free will, into play in the social actions of mankind”.
- The Crisis of Social Democracy (1915)

The Platypus Affiliated Society at Dalhousie presents a public forum on:

The 3 Rs: Reform, Revolution, and “Resistance”: The problematic forms of “anticapitalism” today.

Click link to download recording

Thursday, 19 Jan, 7 PM
Room 224, Student Union Building, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS

A moderated panel discussion and audience Q&A on problems of strategies and tactics on the Left today. Panelists: Eric Anatolik (Occupy NS), Jacques Beaudoin (Parti communiste révolutionnaire – Revolutionary Communist Party (Canada)) Howard Epstein (New Democratic Party MLA Halifax Chebucto), Max Haiven (Edu-Factory, Historical and Critical Studies NSCAD) and Andony Melathopoulos (Platypus) .

Part of the Occupy NS New Year’s Revolution Series (occupyns.org). Co-sponsored by NSPIRG, International Development Education and Awareness Society (IDEAS) and the Halifax Radical Imagination Project.

“After the failure of the 1960s New Left, the underlying despair with regard to the real efficacy of political will, of political agency, in a historical situation of heightened helplessness, became a self-constitution as outsider, as other, rather than an instrument of transformation. Focused on the bureaucratic stasis of the Fordist, late 20th Century world, the Left echoed the destruction of that world by the dynamics of capital: neoliberalism and globalization.

The idea of a fundamental transformation became bracketed and, instead, was replaced by the more ambiguous notion of ‘resistance.’ The notion of resistance, however, says little about the nature of that which is being resisted, or of the politics of the resistance involved.

‘Resistance’ is rarely based on a reflexive analysis of possibilities for fundamental change that are both generated and suppressed by the dynamic heteronomous order of capital. ‘Resistance’ is an undialectical category that does not grasp its own conditions of possibility; it fails to grasp the dynamic historical context of capital and its reconstitution of possibilities for both domination and emancipation, of which the ‘resisters’ do not recognize that that they are a part.”

— Moishe Postone, “History and Helplessness: Mass mobilization and contemporary forms of anticapitalism” (2006)

First roundtable discussion, (fb invite)

Audio files (click here)

7:30pm | November 16, 2011
Room 224, DSU
Dalhousie University

Speakers: Anna Bishop (King’s University), Miles Howe (Halifax Media Co-op), Jd Hutton (Dalhousie), Asaf Rashid (From the Margins host, CKDU), Hamish Russell (Dalhousie)

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.

dalhousie.platypus1917.org | www.platypus1917.org

What is the #Occupy movement? PDF