The Platypus Affiliated Society

Egypt, or, history’s invidious comparisons: 1979, 1789, and 1848

THE UPRISING IN EGYPT, which followed soon after the toppling of the old regime in Tunisia, succeeded in bringing down Hosni Mubarak on February 11, the 32nd anniversary to the day of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. Already, before this timely coincidence, comparisons between the Iranian Revolution and the revolts gripping the Arab world had started to be made. But other historical similarities offered themselves: the various “color revolutions” in Eastern Europe and former Soviet Central Asian states and Lebanon in recent years, and the collapse of Communism in the Soviet bloc and beyond (the former Yugoslavia) starting with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Behind these revolutions on the pattern of 1989 stood the event of which 1989 itself had been the bicentennial, the great French Revolution of 1789. The Bastille is to be stormed again, anew. Who would not welcome this?

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Praxis, theory, and the unmakeable: An interview with Robert Hullot-Kentor

Chris Mansour, Robert Hullot-Kentor

On February 19, 2011, Chris Mansour of Platypus interviewed Robert Hullot-Kentor, noted Adorno translator and author of Things Beyond Resemblance: Collected Essays on Theodor W. Adorno. What follows is an edited transcript of the interview.

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German psycho: A reply to the Initiative Sozialistisches Forum

Felix Baum

MOISHE POSTONE ONCE REMARKED about the German left: “No western Left was as philo-Semitic and pro-Zionist prior to 1967. Probably none subsequently identified so strongly with the Palestinian cause. What was termed ‘anti-Zionism’ was in fact so emotionally and psychically charged that it went far beyond the bounds of a political and social critique of Zionism.” Postone’s diagnosis, that the Israeli-Arab conflict served as a projection-screen for the psychological needs of the German left, is just as valid for the new political current which, since the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in autumn 2000, has come to identify itself completely with the state of Israel.

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Film Screening: Rosa Luxemburg (1986)

Join the Platypus Affiliated Society for a special screening of Margarethe Von Trotta's 1986 Rosa Luxemburg. The screening will be onTuesday,22 February 2011, from 5:30- 8:00 pm, at MIT 4-415. A discussion will follow the film (very possibly at the Muddy Charles.)

"The leadership has failed. Even so, the leadership can and must be recreated from the masses and out of the masses. The masses are the decisive element, they are the rock on which the final victory of the revolution will be built. The masses were on the heights; they have developed this 'defeat' into one of the historical defeats which are the pride and strength of international socialism. And that is why the future victory will bloom from this 'defeat'.
'Order reigns in Berlin!' You stupid henchmen! Your 'order' is built on sand. Tomorrow the revolution will already 'raise itself with a rattle' and announce with fanfare, to your terror:
I was, I am, I shall be!"

Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) was a Marxist radical at the turn ofthe 20th Century. Luxemburg was active in the German Social Democratic Party, the most powerful Marxist party in the world at the time of WWI (1914-19).

During WWI the German socialists abandoned revolutionary Marxism and supported the nationalist war effort. Luxemburg was killed by the Right during the suppression of the revolution that began in 1917 in Russia and spread to Germany in 1918-19.

Luxemburg wrote a scathing critique of this betrayal of the international socialist movement -- whose aftermath led to Nazism and Stalinism, and from which the Left has still not yet recovered to this day.

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Does Marxism Really Matter? A Teach-in on the Communist Manifesto, 2.17.11

The 20th century has made the question of Marxism an obscure one. The absence of an International Left suggests the irrelevancy of Marxism to the present. Yet historically, Marxism mattered to society at large. It was understood to be relevant, not simply as an anti-capitalist politics, but as a framework for addressing the potentials raised by modern society. Can this history say anything about our own present moment? Does Marxism matter today? This event will explore the question.

A teach-in on the Communist Manifesto led by Platypus Affiliated Society member Jeremy Cohan, PhD candidate in Sociology at NYU, at the New School in NYC on February 17, 2011.

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