RSS FeedRSS FeedYouTubeYouTubeTwitterTwitterFacebook GroupFacebook Group
You are here: The Platypus Affiliated Society/Archive for category 2017

The fatal embrace of the Left and the Labour Party: Ralph Miliband’s changing positions on Labour

Michael Fitzpatrick
For more than 30 years the radical academic Ralph Miliband wrestled with the question of how the Left should confront the problem of the Labour Party. In the 1960s, he insisted that the Left should work within the party to win it over to the cause of socialism. In the 1970s, he accepted that it was futile to attempt to transform Labour and argued that the Left should organize an independent socialist party. In the 1980s, he collaborated with left-wing initiatives inside and outside the Labour Party. In his final, posthumously-published, response to the emergence of New Labour in the 1990s he signaled the Left’s abandonment of any hope of an existence independent of Labour.
[. . .]

What is socialism? International social democracy

On March 23, 2017, the Platypus Affiliated Society organized a panel discussion, “What is Socialism? International Social Democracy,” at the London School of Economics. Moderated by Nunzia Faes of Platypus, the event brought together the following speakers: Jack Conrad of the Communist Party of Great Britain and the Weekly Worker; Adam Buick of the Socialist Party of Great Britain; and Robin Halpin, translator of works by the Exit! group. What follows is an edited transcript of their discussion.
[. . .]

SAIC Summer 2017 Readings: Russian Revolution 1917

School of the Art Institute at Chicago
Wednesdays from 6-9 PM
Lakeview Building
116 S Michigan Ave, Room 202

• required / + recommended reading

Lenin readings available in Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Lenin Anthology (Norton, 1977), except (*) on marxists.org

Recommended background readings

+ Richard Appignanesi and Oscar Zarate / A&Z, Introducing Lenin and the Russian Revolution / Lenin for Beginners (1977)
+ John Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World (1919)

Week 1 | June 14

• Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution (1905), pp. 120-147
• Lenin, On the Two Lines in the Revolution (1915) *

Week 2 | June 21

• Lenin, Lecture on the 1905 Revolution (1917), pp. 278-292
• Lenin, Letters from Afar (1917) *
• Lenin, April Theses (1917), pp. 295-300

Week 3 | June 28

• Lenin, The Dual Power (1917), pp. 301-304
• Lenin, The Enemies of the People (1917), pp. 305-306
• Lenin, The Beginning of Bonapartism (1917), pp. 307-310

Week 4 | July 5

• Lenin, The State and Revolution (1917), pp. 311-398

Week 5 | July 12

• Lenin, Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power? (1917), pp. 399-406
• Lenin, Marxism and Insurrection (1917), pp. 407-412
• Lenin, Advice of an Onlooker (1917), pp. 413-414

Week 6 | July 19

• Lenin, To the Citizens of Russia! (1917), p. 417
• Lenin, Theses on the Constituent Assembly (1917), pp. 418-422
• Lenin, The Chief Task of Our Day (1918), pp. 433-437
• Lenin, The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government (1918), pp. 438-460

Week 7 | July 26

• Lenin, The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky (1918), pp. 461-476

[. . .]

Zero Squared interview with Chris Cutrone: Reframing Trump

Chris Cutrone, founder and President of the Platypus Affiliated Society, interviewed by Douglas Lain of Zero Books, on the crisis of neoliberalism and the election of Donald Trump.

Cutrone's writings referenced in the interview can be found at:

https://platypus1917.org/category/platypus-review-authors/chris-cutrone/

Chris Cutrone is the last Marxist. Cutrone is a college educator, writer, and media artist, committed to critical thinking and artistic practice and the politics of social emancipation. Born in 1970 and raised in Valley Stream on Long Island near New York City, Cutrone is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Departments of Art History, Theory and Criticism and Visual and Critical Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and is a lecturer in the Social Sciences Collegiate Division at the University of Chicago, where he completed the PhD in the Committee on the History of Culture and MA in Art History. He received the MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the BA from Hampshire College. His doctoral dissertation is on Adorno’s Marxism.

Cutrone is the original lead organizer of the Platypus Affiliated Society (its reading group in Chicago was established in 2006). From 1989–92, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Gulf War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, to the Los Angeles Riots and the election of Bill Clinton, Cutrone was a youth member of the Spartacist League, U.S. section of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist), upholding the revolutionary socialist tradition of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Luxemburg, Trotsky and the October Revolution of 1917.

[. . .]

Teach-in: Die russische Revolution von 1917 (Frankfurt)

Einweisung in die russische Revolution von 1917, die am 24. Mai 2017 in Frankfurt stattfand.

[. . .]
12...141516171819202122...2627
Sitemap
The Platypus Affiliated Society
The Platypus Affiliated Society, established in December 2006, organizes reading groups, public fora, research and journalism focused on problems and tasks inherited from the “Old” (1920s-30s), “New” (1960s-70s) and post-political (1980s-90s) Left for the possibilities of emancipatory politics today.
Founding Documents
Platypus Affiliated Society 2006–2023