Ross Wolfe Platypus Review 43 | February 2012 [PDF] 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. Ross Wolfe: [...]

http://www.archive.org/details/RethinkingTheNewLeftchicago11910 Public forum of the Platypus Affiliated Society TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 9TH 6:00 PM UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO INTERNATIONAL HOUSE ASSEMBLY HALL 1414 EAST 59TH STREET SPEAKERS: Mark Rudd Alan Spector Osha Neumann Tim Wohlforth MODERATOR: Spencer A. Leonard The memory of the 1960s, which has long kindled contestation and debate on the means and ends of [...]

Chris Cutrone

KARL KORSCH’S SEMINAL ESSAY on “Marxism and Philosophy” (1923) is a historical treatment of the problem from Marx and Engels’s time through the 2nd International to the crisis of Marxism and the revolutions of 1917–19 in Russia, Germany and beyond. More specifically, Korsch took up the development and vicissitudes of the relation between theory and practice in the history of Marxism, which he considered the “philosophical” problem of Marxism. Korsch, like Georg Lukács and the thinkers in Frankfurt School critical theory, was inspired by the “subjective” aspect of Marxism exemplified by Lenin’s irreducible role in the October Revolution. Korsch was subsequently denounced as a “professor” in the Communist International and quit the movement, embracing council communism and shunning Marxian theory, writing an “Anti-Critique” in 1930 that critiqued Marxism as such, and by 1950 actively seeking to liquidate the difference between Marxian and anarchist approaches. In so doing, Korsch succumbed to what Adorno termed “identity thinking.” By assuming the identity of theory and practice, or of social being and consciousness in the workers’ movement, Korsch abandoned his prior discernment and critical grasp of their persistent antagonism in any purported politics of emancipation.

To the editors of the Platypus Review: I am not now, nor have I ever been, either a Maoist or sympathetic to Maoism. I am also not a member of SDS. I was outraged however, by the blatant red-baiting of Rachel Haut in a recent Platypus Review Interview and disturbed that it seems to have [...]

Laurie Rojas From July 24th until July 28th 2008, the new Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) had its third annual national convention in College Park, Maryland. At the convention, national campaigns were presented and voted on by the attendees. A major campaign introduced at the convention was the Hundred Days campaign, which seeks to [...]