Chris Cutrone
A rejoinder to Peter Hudis on “Capital in History”
Historical consciousness articulates the problem of what “ought” to be with what “is.” The question is how the necessities of emancipatory struggles in the present relate to those of the past. The tasks revealed by historical Marxism have not been superseded but only obscured and [...]
All Posts Tagged With: "Issue #8"
Remember the future! A rejoinder to Peter Hudis on “Capital in History”
Re-thinking the Crisis of Capital in Light of the Crisis of the Left
Peter Hudis
“Far from expressing a sequence of never-ending progression, the Hegelian dialectic lets retrogression appear as translucent as progression and indeed makes it very nearly inevitable if one ever tries to escape regression by mere faith.”—Raya Dunayevskaya (1)
It may seem ironic that a moment so typified by the crisis of capital calls for a serious [...]
Obama: three comparisons: MLK, JFK, FDR
The coming sharp turn to the Right
Chris Cutrone
In previous articles I have addressed the Presidential campaign of Barack Obama in terms of the historical precedents of MLK, Jr. (the end of “black politics”) and JFK (Iraq and the election). Now I wish to address the final and perhaps most important but problematic comparison that might [...]
Friedrich Hayek and the legacy of Milton Friedman: Neo-liberalism and the question of freedom
(In part, a response to Naomi Klein)
The Platypus Historians Group
The following was prepared for presentation at the University of Chicago teach-in on “Who was Milton Friedman and what is his legacy?” Tuesday, October 14, 2008.
A good approach to the topic of Milton Friedman and his legacy today can be made indirectly, by reference to Friedman’s [...]
Capital, Spectacle, and Modernity: An Interview with Retort
Soren Whited
A prefatory statement from Retort: Having talked over your questions at length, we find that they can be answered best by grouping together several of them and trying to spell out the key issues and assumptions we see underlying them. That way, we hope, the common ground between Retort and Platypus will be clear [...]
Beyond the Politics of Anti-Gentrification: A Response to Laura Schmidt
Mark Hopwood
Dessie lives in the neighbourhood of Woodlawn, three blocks south of the University of Chicago, with her father and four cats. Her apartment is part of Grove Parc Plaza, a Section 8 development project built in the late 1960s, but like many public housing residents across Chicago, Dessie doesn’t know how much longer she [...]
