The Platypus Affiliated Society

Can there be a working class culture and experience?

(October 20, 2014)

Bruce Barber (Media Arts Faculty at NSCAD University),

Sebastien Labelle (SEIU, Halifax Mayworks Festival Organizer),

Chris Mansour (Platypus Member and independent writer)

NSCAD University Fountain Campus, 5163 Duke Street, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

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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¿Más allá de la izquierda y la derecha? (Beyond left and right?)

David Mountain, Eduardo Maura, Lucy Parker, Nikos Manousakis

Campaigning strongly against austerity and for greater democracy in Spain, the political party Podemos (“We Can”) gained popularity immediately upon its formation in early 2014.

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Postscript on party politics

Chris Cutrone

Coda to “What is political party for Marxism? Democratic revolution and the contradiction of capital: On Mike Macnair’s Revolutionary Strategy (2008),” Platypus Review 71 (November 2014). Originally published in abridged form as a letter in Weekly Worker 1035 (November 20, 2014).

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Hiding behind the specter of Marx

Philip Cunliffe

There is a fair ammout one could take issue with in James Heartfield’s review of Andrew Kliman’s The Failure of Capitalist Production—not least the redundant polemical sideswipes that generate heat but do not shed light. But rather than arbitrating between Kliman and Heartfield,

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WS 14/15 Einführender Lesekreis Darmstadt

Dienstags 20:00 - 22:00 UhrRaum S1|03-12 (Altes Hauptgebäude, Hochschulstr.1)

Kontakt: Nicolas.Schliessler(ät)web.de

Mit Ausnahme der ersten und vierten Sitzung und des englischen Transkripts der "Reform, Revolution, Resistance"-Podiusmdiskussion in der dritten Sitzung, sind alle Texte im Platypus-Reader zu finden. Es gibt genügend Druckexemplare des Readers für alle TeilnehmerInnen, dieser ist jedoch auch online als PDF- Version hier zu finden:

1.Sitzung: Dienstag, 02. Dezember

Leszek Kolakowski, “Der Sinn des Begriffes ‘Linke’” (1968)
Marx, Brief von Marx an Arnold Ruge (September 1843)

2.Sitzung: Dienstag, 09. Dezember

Mission, Was ist ein Schnabeltier?, Eine kurze Geschichte der Linken, Mission der Platypus Review
Cutrone, Chris: Das Kapital in der Geschichte

3.Sitzung: Dienstag, 16. Dezember

Podiumsdiskussion: Reform, Revolution, Widerstand (Frankfurt, 2012)
Reform, Revolution, Resistance (Chicago, 2007)

Weihnachtspause

4.Sitzung: Dienstag, 13. Januar

Theodor W. Adorno, Auszug aus der Vorlesung zur Negativen Dialektik (5. Vorlesung) (1965)
Theodor W. Adorno, Resignation (1969)

5.Sitzung: Dienstag, 20. Januar

Der Niedergang der Linken im 20. Jahrhundert

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