Jacob Cayia reflektiert in der aktuellen Ausgabe der Phase 2 (Nr. 41) über einen Platypus Ausflug nach Berlin, an dem Mitglieder aus den USA und Deutschland teilgenommen haben.

A Wind Blows from the East (Coast): The 1970s "New Communist Movement" in Halifax. A Public Interview with Herb Gamberg and Tony Thomson 

Audio link (click here)

Thursday 1 March 2012, Room 1020 Rowe Building, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Hosted by the Platypus Affiliated Society at Dalhousie

co-sponsored by NSPIRG and the Halifax Media Co-op

The 1970s are usually passed over as the decade in which the social and political upheavals of the 1960s New Left were overwhelmed by a conservative tide. What is forgotten is that the 1970s were also a time of tremendous growth on the Left, most notably in the New Communist Movement. In Quebec thousands of members joined groups intent on forming a new national Communist party. In cities like Halifax and Vancouver activists formed smaller collectives in an effort to “get serious” about their Leftism. The period marked a reconsideration of Marxism and working class politics on a scale that has not been seen since. 

What is the legacy of this movement today? Why did it emerge and what lead to its stunning decline in the early 1980s? As activist prepare for the next phase of Occupy is there anything to learn from this experience?

RSVP on Facebook (click here)

Background Reading:

New Infantilism: The "New Communist Movement" in Halifax (Halifax Study Group, 1978)

The Marxist turn: The New Left in the 1970s (Platypus Review)

Up in the air: The legacy of the New Communist Movement (Platypus Review)

In the mid-19th century, Marx and Engels famously observed in the Communist Manifesto that a specter was haunting Europe: the specter of Communism. 160 years later, it is Marxism itself that haunts us.

In the 21st century, it seems that the Left abandoned Marxism as a path to freedom. But Marx critically intervened in his own moment and emboldened leftists to challenge society; is the Left not tasked with this today? Has the Left resolved the problems posed by Marx, and thus moved on?

With Platypus Affiliated Society member Chris Mansour.

Rosa Luxemburg
Dir. Margarethe von Trotta, Germany, 1986
Screening and Discussion
7PM Wednesday
8 February 2012

Rm 224 Student Union Building
Dalhousie University
Part of the Dalhousie Introducing Platypus Reading Group Series.

Cannes Palme D'Or nominee and Best Actress winner (for Barbara Sukowa's luminous performance), this is a sweeping biopic of radical socialist Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919).

“Socialism is the first popular movement in world history that has set itself the goal of bringing  human consciousness, and thereby free will, into play in the social actions of mankind”.
- The Crisis of Social Democracy (1915)

Week 1

• Max Horkheimer, “The little man and the philosophy of freedom” (pp. 50–52 from selections from Dämmerung,1926–31)
• Louis Menand, on Marx and Engels as philosophes of a Second Enlightenment
• Karl Marx, on “becoming” (from the Grundrisse, 1857–58)
+ Being and becoming (freedom in transformation) chart of terms

Week 2

• Chris Cutrone, “Capital in history” (2008)
+ Capital in history timeline and chart of terms
+ video of Communist University 2011 London presentation
+ Capitalist contradiction chart of terms
• Cutrone, “Class consciousness (from a Marxist perspective) today” (2012)

Week 3

• Leszek Kolakowski, “The concept of the Left” (1958)
• Marx, For the ruthless criticism of everything existing (letter to Arnold Ruge, September 1843)

Week 4

+ Capitalist contradiction chart of terms
• Cutrone, “The Marxist hypothesis” (2010)