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You are here: The Platypus Affiliated Society/Archive for category Loyola Upcoming Events

Platypus in Chicago will be giving a series of talks on The Relevance of Marxism Today at Occupy Chicago, look out for the banner, “The Left is Dead! Long Live the Left!”, and come join us for discussion.

Teach-in: Does Marxism Matter? 

In the mid-19th century, Marx and Engels famously observed in the Communist Manifesto that a ‘specter’ was haunting Europe—the specter of Communism. 160 years later, it is ‘Marxism’ itself that haunts us.
In the 21st century, it seems that the Left abandoned Marxism as a path to freedom. But Marx critically intervened in his own moment and emboldened leftists to challenge society; is the Left not tasked with this today? Has the Left resolved the problems posed by Marx, and thus moved on?

Does Marxism even matter?

Pamphlet: "Finance capital: Why financial capitalism is no more 'fictitious' than any other kind"

 

Panel organized by the Platypus Affiliated Society given at the 2011 annual conference of the Cultural Studies Association in Chicago, IL on Thursday, March 24th, 2011, at Columbia College, Chicago.

Panelists:
Benjamin Shepard - Independent Scholar (Los Angeles), Platypus Affiliated Society
Jacob Cayia - University of Illinois - Chicago
Omair Hussain - School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Lucy Parker - School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Greg Gabrellas (chair) - University of Chicago, Platypus Affiliated Society

Were the Bolsheviks the highest expression of Marxism? Did the Bolshevik project discredit other competing forms of Marxism? Or did the October Revolution change the meaning of Marxism itself? Is it necessary today to return to the writings of Rosa Luxemburg, Leon Trotsky, and Vladimir Lenin? Or would it be better to skip over the Second International and the October Revolution by simply returning to Marx's own writings? These as well as other questions relating to the legacy of the Second International and the October Revolution will be discussed and debated.

Presented by Ian Morrison


Saturday, December 4 at 7pm
Crown Center Room 530
Loyola University-Chicago
1001 W. Loyola Ave

"Before Marxism became 'bankrupt' in the form of Bolshevism it has already broken down in the form of social democracy, Does the slogan 'Back to Marxism' then mean a leap over the periods of the Second and Third Internationals -- to the First International? But it too broke down in its time. Thus in the last analysis it is a question of returning to the collected works of Marx and Engels. One can accomplish this historic leap without leaving one's study and even without taking off one's slippers. But how are we going to go from our classics (Marx died in 1883, Engels in 1895) to the tasks of a new epoch, omitting several decades of theoretical and political struggles, among them Bolshevism and the October revolution? None of those who propose to renounce Bolshevism as an historically bankrupt tendency has indicated any other course. So the question is reduced to the simple advice to study [Marx's] Capital. We can hardly object. But the Bolsheviks, too, studied Capital and not badly either. This did not however prevent the degeneration of the Soviet state and the staging of the Moscow trials. So what is to be done?" Leon Trotsky

Join us for an interview and discussion with Tim Wohlforth. This follow-up event to the "Rethinking the New Left" panel at the University of Chicago will allow for a broader and more intimate conversation with an important, former leader within American Trotskyism. Mr. Wohlforth began his political career during McCarthyism as a youth member of Max Shachtman's Independent Socialist League. In the 1960s, he went on to become a leader of the Socialist Worker's Party and then the Workers League during the student and anti-war movements. This discussion will seek to uncover the 'path not taken' by the New Left.

Wednesday, November 10 @ 6:30pm
Dumbach Hall 230
Loyola University of Chicago
1032 W. Sheridan Rd

Hosted by the Loyola Platypus Affiliated Society

RSVP on Facebook

Platypus presents:

Tuesday, May 18th 8:00 PM
5710 S. Woodlawn

Featuring a presentation by Chris Cutrone on Juliet Mitchell’s “Women: The longest revolution” (1966)

Join us for dinner and discussion

“Socialism will be a process of change, of becoming. A fixed image of the future is in the worst sense ahistorical. . . . As Marx wrote: ‘What is progress if not the absolute elaboration of humanity’s creative dispositions . . . unmeasured by any previously established yardstick[,] an end in itself . . . the absolute movement of becoming?’ . . . The liberation of women under socialism will [be] . . . a human achievement, in the long passage from Nature to Culture which is the definition of history and society.”

-- Juliet Mitchell

Juliet Mitchell’s groundbreaking essay, “Women: The longest revolution” (1966), brilliantly anticipated the feminist critique of Marxian socialism. But Mitchell found feminism, too to be lacking. Far from dismissing Marxism as a retrograde, patriarchal theory, Mitchell embarked on an effort to reconstruct Marxism as a philosophy of freedom that could orient political activists' efforts to overturn male dominance and establish the equality of the sexes. Unfortunately, feminism after Mitchell's essay failed to heed her call to attend critically to history to help get a better grasp and clarity about the pursuit of gender and sexual liberation, and abandoned the utopian possibilities of socialism in favor of the politics of established social identities. Join us to reconsider the paths not taken out of 1960s radicalism, and work towards reformulating a theory of sexual freedom that answers the needs of the present.

Reading:

Juliet Mitchell Women: The Longest Revolution (1966)