Our monthly Coffee Breaks are a great way to meet Platypus members and fellow travelers, and to get to know the Platypus project. It’s an opportunity to discuss issues raised in the latest issue of the Platypus Review, consider the state of the Left, and just hang out with people who have similar political interests.
Monthly 2014 Coffee Breaks
March 4th | 5:00 pm
Coburg Coffee 6085 Coburg Road, Halifax, Nova Scotia
Contact: Quentin Cyr | halifax@platypus1917.org
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Platypus primary Marxist reading group (the continuation of What is the Left? What is Marxism?)
Room 318 Student Union Building, Dalhousie University
Tuesdays 6–8:30PM
contact: dalhousie@platypus1917.org
 Week 13. Revolutionary leadership | Jan. 27
- Rosa Luxemburg, Junius pamphlet Part 1 (1915)
- J. P. Nettl, “The German Social Democratic Party 1890–1914 as a Political Model” (1965)
- Cliff Slaughter, “What is Revolutionary Leadership?” (1960)
Week 14. Reform or revolution? | Feb. 3
- Luxemburg, Reform or Revolution? (1900/08)
Week 15. Lenin and the vanguard party | Feb. 10
- Spartacist League, Lenin and the Vanguard Party (1978)
Week 16. What is to be done? | Feb. 17
- V. I. Lenin, What is to be Done? (1902)
Week 17. Mass strike and social democracy | Feb. 24
- Luxemburg, The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions (1906)
Week 18. Permanent revolution | Mar. 3
- Leon Trotsky, Results and Prospects (1906)
Week 19. State and revolution | Mar. 10
- Lenin, The State and Revolution (1917)
Week 20. Imperialism | Mar. 17
- Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916)
Week 21. Failure of the revolution | Mar. 24
- Luxemburg, “What does the Spartacus League Want?” (1918)
-  Luxemburg, “On the Spartacus Programme” (1918)
Week 22. Retreat after revolution | Mar. 31
- Lenin, “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder (1920)
Weeks 23–25. Apr. 7–Apr. 21 (exam break)
Week 26. Dialectic of reification | Apr. 28
- Lukács, “The Standpoint of the Proletariat” (1923)
Week 27. Lessons of October | May 5
- Trotsky, The Lessons of October (1924)
Week 28. Trotskyism | May 12
Week 29. The authoritarian state | May 19
- Friedrich Pollock, “State Capitalism” (1941)
- Max Horkheimer, “The Authoritarian State” (1942)
Week 30. On the concept of history | May 26
- Walter Benjamin, “On the Concept of History” (AKA “Theses on the Philosophy of History”) (1940)
Week 31. Reflections on Marxism | Jun. 2
- Theodor Adorno, “Reflections on Class Theory” (1942)
- Adorno, “Imaginative Excesses” (1944–47)
- Horkheimer and Adorno, “Discussion about Theory and Praxis” (AKA “Towards a New Manifesto?”) (1956)
Week 32. Theory and practice | Jun. 9
- Adorno, “Marginalia to Theory and Praxis” (1969)
- Adorno, “Resignation” (1969)
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In spite of many different political currents and tendencies, perhaps the most significant question informing the "Left" today is the issue of "political party.”
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Tuesday, October 14Â at 6:30pm
Shatford Room, University of King’s College
co-sponsored by NSPIRGDal/King's Platypus presents a workshop on the German Marxist group GegenStandpunkt by a visiting member of the group to Halifax.
http://www.gegenstandpunkt.com/The Platypus “Differing Perspectives on the Left” workshop series asks speakers from various perspectives are to bring their experience of the Left’s recent history to bear on today’s political possibilities and challenges. For recordings of other events in this series visit:
http://platypus1917.org/differing-perspectives-on-the-left/
co-sponsored by NSPIRGDal/King's Platypus presents a workshop on the German Marxist group GegenStandpunkt by a visiting member of the group to Halifax.
http://www.gegenstandpunkt.com/The Platypus “Differing Perspectives on the Left” workshop series asks speakers from various perspectives are to bring their experience of the Left’s recent history to bear on today’s political possibilities and challenges. For recordings of other events in this series visit:
http://platypus1917.org/differing-perspectives-on-the-left/
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Presented by the Dalhousie/King's Platypus Affiliated Society
Co-sponsored by Carbon Arc Independent Cinema, NSCAD University, the King's Student Union and the Dalhousie Student Union Sustainability OfficeÂ
Co-sponsored by Carbon Arc Independent Cinema, NSCAD University, the King's Student Union and the Dalhousie Student Union Sustainability OfficeÂ
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Please join us for two events that explore the concept of working-class culture, its history and what it might mean today.
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 //OCT 17 (fri) @ 7pm - Leviathan (2012, 87 min, Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel), Film Screening and Discussion
Carbon Arc Independent Cinema, 1747 Summer Street, Halifax
An experimental documentary on the North American commercial fishing industry. Leviathan captures the collaborative clash of people, nature and machine. Shot on a dozen cameras - tossed and tethered, passed from fisherman to filmmaker - it is an stunning and unusual portrait of contemporary work.
“visually ravishing. leviathan is in every way sensational.” – j. hoberman, artinfotrailer link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2wNiJt-I6U
//OCT 20 (mon) @ 6:30pm - Can there be a working class culture and experience? Panel discussion
panelists:
Room D500, NSCAD University Fountain Campus, 5163 Duke Street, Halifax
Bruce Barber (Media Arts Faculty at NSCAD University),
Sebastien Labelle (SEIU, Mayworks Festival Organizer), and
Chris Mansour (Platypus Member and independent writer).
Description: Throughout the 20th century, there was a powerful idea that there could be a homogeneous experience which would culminate into a revolutionary 'working class culture.' Whether represented through the USSR's Prolekult during the 1920s, the Mexican muralists and American Artist Union in the 1930s, or by the artists associated with the Art Workers Coalition in the 1960s-70s, each movement sought to create artworks which would transcend the decadent forms characteristic of bourgeois culture. However, since the variety of revolutionary aspirations of all these groups ultimately failed to transform society in an emancipatory direction, the merits and potentiality of a coherent working-class culture have been thrown into question. This panel seeks to explore the concept of working-class culture, its history, and what it might mean today.
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