(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 [...]
All Posts Tagged With: "The Platypus Historians Group"
Friedrich Hayek and the legacy of Milton Friedman: Neo-liberalism and the question of freedom
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), others [...]
The dead Left: Trotskyism
The Platypus Historians Group
“One cannot separate the ability to know the world from the ability to change it, and our capacity to change the world is on a very small scale compared to the heroic days of the Communist International.”
—James Robertson, founder of the Spartacist League (U.S.), “In Defense of Democratic Centralism” [...]
Requiem for the ’60s: Response to a boycott of discussion of “40 years of 1968”
The Platypus Historians Group
The Platypus Affiliated Society in Chicago, in coordination with several chapters of the new Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in Chicago (at the University of Chicago, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Columbia College, Chicago) organized a public forum on “40 years of 1968: the problematic drama of [...]
Catastrophe, historical memory and the Left: 60 years of Israel-Palestine
The Platypus Historians Group
The contours of the present day Middle East have been shaped by a mid -20th century triptych of genocide and ethnic cleansing. The first panel in this triptych is the “Holocaust” (“Shoah” in Hebrew, “Khurbn” in Yiddish) the systematic murder of approximately two-thirds of European Jewry by the Nazis in 1941–1945. The [...]
Introduction to the history of the Left: Changes in the meaning of class struggles
The Platypus Historians Group
Why do we need a “history of the Left?”—
Platypus differs from other tendencies and organizations on the Left to the extent that we find it necessary and desirable to reexamine the history of the Left to help understand problems on the Left in the present. For focusing on the history of the [...]
The Failure of Pakistan: A Concise History of the Left
The Platypus Historians Group
The present-day crisis in Pakistan resists adequate historicisation in pithy news headlines. Yet its concrete expressions include the autocratic state-of-emergency imposed by General Musharraf; the violent rise of Islamic fundamentalism, first in the anarchic north-west, but increasingly also in the cities; the over-dependence on economic as well as military assistance from the [...]
A Prelude to the History of the Left
In subsequent issues Platypus will serialize a “History of the Left”. The phrase has a strange ring to it! A human being has a history, a nation, a people have a history. One is not the “same person” one was twenty years ago perhaps, yet one can not make sense of who one is now without a sense of who one “was” even if that person has come to seem as alien as a stranger. A people too may “remember” its past, its becoming, its suffering, its ancient glories and yet no living member of that people may have experienced any of these. Such remembering and rethinking what has been whether personal and collective is obvious to us. But “the Left”?
November 1st, 2007 | Platypus Review editor | 0 comments | Continued