Spencer A. Leonard On Thursday November 19, 2009, Platypus Review Editor-in-Chief Spencer A. Leonard discussed with author George Scialabba a new volume of essays entitled What are Intellectuals Good For? (Boston: Pressed Wafer Press, 2009). Their discussion was conducted live on “Radical Minds,” a radio show Leonard conducts weekly with co-host Greg Gabrellas on WHPK [...]
February 27th, 2010 | PR web editor | 1 comment | ContinuedIssue #20
Rejoinder to David Black: On Karl Korsch’s Marxism and Philosophy
Chris Cutrone 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 [...]
February 26th, 2010 | PR web editor | 0 comments | Continued
30 years of the Islamic Revolution in Iran
Given the recent election crisis and continuing protests in Iran and in light of the 30th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, The Platypus Affiliated Society on November 5, 2009 hosted a panel discussion at the University of Chicago entitled 30 Years of the Islamic Revolution: The Tragedy of the Left. Panel participants included Danny Postel, [...]
February 18th, 2010 | PR web editor | 8 comments | Continued
Totality versus theory: Left cognition and social change
Joshua Howard GEORG LUKÁCS INTRODUCED the notion of totality as a major theme for Western Marxism in his work History and Class Consciousness, where he wrote, It is not the primacy of economic motives in historical explanation that constitutes the decisive difference between Marxism and bourgeois thought, but the point of view of totality. The [...]
February 18th, 2010 | PR web editor | 2 comments | Continued
Rosa Luxemburg’s legacy: A reply to Jerzy Sobotta
Uli vom Hagen 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 [...]
February 18th, 2010 | PR web editor | 1 comment | Continued
Strict interpretations: A reply to Atiya Khan
Manan Ahmed TO QUOTE ALDOUS HUXLEY and to paraphrase Atiya Khan in her Platypus Review article “The poverty of Pakistan’s politics,”[1] I represent “a sad symptom of the failure of the intellectual class in time of crisis.” In Khan’s telling, it is the intellectual Left which failed (in) Pakistan, and under its sad banner now [...]
February 18th, 2010 | PR web editor | 2 comments | Continued