The Platypus Affiliated Society

The revolution next time: Wiser and on firmer ground

The reversion to capitalism by the “socialist camp” was certainly an eye-opener. It laid bare the fact that society had not undergone a fundamental transformation in the relations of production and the social superstructure. There was nothing comparable to the way capitalism had made itself immune to a relapse into feudalism or something similar.

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The transgender issue

George Fish

I think we can all agree, for a start, that the weaponization of the transgender issue by Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and the minions of the Republican Right — and their outrageous claims — are reprehensible. But the “transgender-affirming” Left isn’t much better — they too have weaponized the issue, turning one’s subjective sense of gender identity (especially among minors, who are too young to even qualify for a learner’s permit for a driver’s license!) into an objective “alternative fact” — to invoke Kellyanne Conway’s infamous phrase.

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“A state of crisis and a century of revolutions”: The legacy of the French Revolution

Dominique Pagani

Nearly two and a half centuries after the storming of the Bastille, does our historical present still have something to learn from the French Revolution?

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Summer 2026 readings: the bourgeois revolution and America 250

Frontispiece of *Leviathan* by Abraham Bosse, with input from Hobbes

(• required readings / + supplemental readings)

Week 1 6/6/26: Hobbes and English Civil War

• Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan [PDF] (1651/68), Introduction, Chapters XIII-XV

Week 2 6/13/26: Hobbes (continued)

• Hobbes, Leviathan [PDF] (1651/68), Chapters XVI-XIX, XXI, Review and Conclusion

Week 3 6/20/26: Locke and Glorious Revolution

• John Locke, Second Treatise on Government (1689)

Week 4 6/27/26: Montesquieu and bourgeois right

• Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (1748), Preface, Books I, II, III, XI Chapters 1-6 ("Of the Constitution of England"), XIX-XXI, XV

Week 5 7/4/26: Jefferson and the American Revolution

• Thomas Jefferson, A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)
• Jefferson, Declaration of Independence (1776)
• Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virgina (1785), Queries XIV, XVII and XVIII
• Jefferson, First Inaugural Address (1801), Secret Message to Congress on Western Exploration (January 18, 1803), Third Annual Message (October 17, 1803), Second Inaugural Address (1805), Speech to a Delegation of Indian Chiefs (January 4, 1806)
• Jefferson, selected letters

Week 6 7/11/26: Kant and the bourgeois revolution

+ Kant's 3 Critiques [PNG] and philosophy [PNG] charts of terms
• Immanuel Kant, from "The contest of the faculties" (1798)
• Kant, "On the common saying: That may be correct in theory, but it is of no use in practice" (1793)

Week 7 7/18/26: Marxism?

• Arthur Rosenberg, The History of Bolshevism: From Marx to the First Five-Year Plan (1932), Preface and Chapter I: Marx to Lenin 1843–93

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Von Kautsky lernen heißt siegen lernen?

Eine Rezension zu Ingar Soltys Buch „Karl Kautsky zur Einführung. Sozialismus und Klassenpartei“ von Johann Richter

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