Historical transformations in social-political context
Chris Cutrone
We in Platypus have anticipated, since our inception in 2006, the possibility of a “return to Marx,” and have sought to inform the terms in which this might take place. We have sought the re-opening of historical issues on the Left with the intention of their fundamental reconsideration, taking nothing for granted, so that we could definitively close the books on stale “debates” in which the “Left” has remained stuck for more than a generation, since at least the 1960s. Given the confusion reigning on the “Left” today, the urgency for this is evident.
All Posts Tagged With: "neo-liberalism"
Symptomology
Resurrecting the ’30s
A response to David Harvey and James Heartfield
Ian Morrison
THE LAST FORTY YEARS have been conceptually bewildering for the Left. The withering of working class movements and the rise of the new social movements have coincided with a global shift away from national state-centric (or “Fordist”) modes of accumulation towards a more “global,” neo-liberal capitalism.
Can Neo-liberalism continue after the crisis?
Observations on the Ideological Recovery in France and the United States Ashleigh Campi It has been noted that the current economic crisis is of a scale unprecedented in the history of advanced capitalism. Today, three decades since the first stages of a transition of world markets through the expansion of finance capital, we face the [...]
Obama and Clinton: “Third Way” politics and the “Left”
Chris Cutrone For the “Left” that is critical of him, the most common comparison made of Obama is to Bill Clinton. This critique of Obama, as of Clinton, denounces his “Centrism,” the trajectory he appears to continue from the “new” Democratic Party of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) expressed by Clinton and Gore’s election in [...]
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 [...]
Finance capital: Why financial capitalism is no more “fictitious” than any other kind
The Platypus Historians Group WITH THE PRESENT FINANCIAL MELT-DOWN in the U.S. throwing the global economy into question, many on the “Left” are wondering again about the nature of capitalism. While many will be tempted to jump on the bandwagon of the “bailout” being floated by the Bush administration and the Congressional Democrats (including Obama), [...]
