- V. PLATYPUS EUROPEAN CONFERENCE 2022The Crisis of Society and the Left The V. European Conference of the Platypus Affiliated Society will take place from September 8-10, 2022 at the University of Vienna, Austria.
Platypus International Convention 2022
Marxism in the Age of Trump book!Trump’s victory is the beginning not the end of a process of transforming the Republican Party as well as mainstream politics more generally that is his avowed goal. So the question is the transformation of democracy—of how liberal democratic politics is conducted. This was bound to change, with or without Trump. Now, with Trump, the issue is posed point-blank. There’s no avoiding the crisis of neoliberalism.
Do you want to get involved in Platypus? We host reading groups, coffee breaks and panel events in cities and university towns around the world, as well as online. To get involved just email platypusvirtual@gmail.com and we’ll direct you to your nearest chapter or online events in your time zone.
The Platypus Review
Die Platypus Review
THE BOOK VERSION OF the 1619 Project was published on November 16, 2021, and the same period also witnessed the birth of a new genre of critical essay, written while The 1619 Project was in press but responding not to the book but to the August 18, 2019 special issue of the New York Times Magazine that it supersedes
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SINCE PLATYPUS IS A PROJECT primarily concerned with the question of Marxism and the Left, other questions lay close at hand: what is psychoanalysis? Why should the Left take interest in it? What is the historical relationship between psychoanalysis and Marxism?
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On November 14, 2021, the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted a panel discussion, “The ALP and the Left,” at the New International Bookshop in Melbourne, Australia. An edited transcript follow.
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PROFESSOR HOLTON appears to believe that my entire critique of the 1619 project boiled down to a “demand that it make the Black History Month compromise of showcasing black heroes instead of white oppressors”
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KARL KAUTSKY WAS RIGHT. The general term “imperialism” describes a set of policies and practices which facilitate the domination of one political entity over another.
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I HAVE ARGUED THAT the 1619 Project failed to acknowledge the decades of scholarship that has made all U.S. historians acutely aware of the significance of slavery and racism. I have expressed particular concern that the Project misconstrues the nature of the slave economy, of cotton production, and the relationship between capitalism and slavery.
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WHAT IS THE HISTORY of the anti-war movement for the Left? In the last 108 years there are five wars that show regression and stagnation through anti-war politics from the First World War, the Second World War, the Vietnam War, the wars in the Middle East in the early 00s, and the present war in Ukraine.
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Für Luxemburg lag das Wesen des Sozialismus in der Verbindung von „revolutionärer Tatkraft und weitherzigster Menschlichkeit“.1 Sie hat der Linken für das 20. Jahrhundert eine Aufgabe hinterlassen gehabt, an der diese scheiterte: die Einheit von Sozialismus und Demokratie. Dafür gibt es viele Ursachen. Ich will nur auf eine einzige Ursache eingehen – es ist das Verständnis von Sozialismus und von Demokratie, mit dem die marxistische Linke in das 20. Jahrhundert gegangen ist.
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Am 10. April 2021 organisierte die Platypus Affiliated Society eine virtuelle Podiumsdiskussion mit Frigga Haug (feministische Marxistin), Sascha Stanicic (Sozialistische Organisation Solidarität), Gert Meyer (Historiker) und Stefan Hain (Platypus Affiliated Society), um über den Marxismus der Rosa Luxemburg zu diskutieren.
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Die Ohnmacht der Linken lässt sich nachverfolgen bis in die 30er-Jahre, zu den sozialistischen und kommunistischen Massenparteien in Europa im Angesicht des Faschismus. Auf das Wachstum faschistischer Bewegungen antworteten sie mit Panik und Kapitulation, ihre Politik resultierte in ihrer Selbstaufgabe als unabhängige politische und soziale Vertretungsorgane des Proletariats. Revolutionäre Parteien verwandelten sich in Stützen des bürgerlich-demokratischen Regimes.
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