What has the Left been, and what can it yet become?
Today is Sunday, March 14th, 2010
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 [...]
February 26th, 2010 | PR web editor | 0 comments | Continued
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 [...]
February 18th, 2010 | PR web editor | 2 comments | Continued
David Black
[Philosophy] is the scientific expression of a certain fundamental human attitude… toward being and beings in general, and through which a historical-social situation often can express itself more clearly and deeply than in the reified, practical spheres of life.
— Herbert Marcuse[1]
CHRIS CUTRONE WRITES, “What the usual interpretive emphasis on Lukács occludes is that the [...]
The Decline of the Left in the 20th Century
Toward a Theory of Historical Regression
Chris Cutrone
THE YEAR 1917 is the most enigmatic and hence controversial date in the history of the Left. It is therefore necessarily the focal point for the Platypus philosophy of history of the Left, which seeks to grasp problems in the present as those that had already manifested in the past, but have not yet been overcome. Until we make historical sense of the problems associated with the events and self-conscious actors of 1917, we will be haunted by their legacy. Therefore, whether we are aware of this or not, we are tasked with grappling with 1917, a year marked by the most profound attempt to change the world that has ever taken place.
November 18th, 2009 | PR web editor | 1 comment | Continued
The Decline of the Left in the 20th Century
Toward a Theory of Historical Regression
On April 18, 2009, the Platypus Affiliated Society conducted the following panel discussion at the Left Forum Conference at Pace University in New York City. The panel was organized around four significant moments in the progressive diremption of theory and practice over [...]
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.
September 3rd, 2009 | admin | 5 comments | Continued
The nature of the present crisis in Iran
Chris Cutrone
Confusion on the Left around the 2009 electoral crisis in Iran has been expressed both in defense of President Ahmadinejad’s claim to victory as well as by support of Iranian dissidents and protesters. Slavoj Žižek has weighed in, questioning prevailing understandings of the nature of the Iranian regime and its Islamist character. Responses to the current crisis have recapitulated problems on the Left in understanding the Islamic Revolution since 1979. All share in attributing to Iran an autonomous historical rhythm or logic of its own, rather than as a symptomatic effect of a greater history. Žižek has come closest to addressing this issue of greater context, but even he has failed to address the history of the Left.
August 24th, 2009 | Platypus Review editor | 1 comment | Continued
I am writing with some very brief notes on the first week of readings from Kant, his essays on “What is Enlightenment?” and “The Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View,” and Benjamin Constant’s essay on “The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns.”
http://platypus1917.org/2009/06/21/platypus-chicago-summer-2009-radical-bourgeois-philosophy/
We are moving somewhat non-chronologically, [...]
The reading group schedule with links to the readings for the summer has been posted at:
http://platypus1917.org/2009/06/21/platypus-chicago-summer-2009-radical-bourgeois-philosophy/
Platypus Marxist reading group summer 2009, June 28 – August 16
Radical bourgeois philosophy: Kant-Hegel-Nietzsche
We will address the greater context for Marx and Marxism through the issue of bourgeois radicalism in philosophy in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Discussion [...]
[Andrew Kliman wrote:]
Reply to Chicago Political Workshop, Chris Cutrone, and Principia Dialectica
Posted: May 27th, 2009 | Author: Andrew Kliman | Filed under: Organization, Philosophy | Tags: concreteness, plagiarism, Postone |
On plagiarism, Postone, and “the” present
May 27, 2009
Dear Comrades,
1. First, I want to respond to the charge that I plagiarize Moishe Postone, by categorically denying it. [...]
