Platypus in Chicago will be giving a series of talks on The Relevance of Marxism Today at Occupy Chicago, look out for the banner, âThe Left is Dead! Long Live the Left!â, and come join us for discussion.
Teach-in: Does Marxism Matter?Â
In the mid-19th century, Marx and Engels famously observed in the Communist Manifesto that a âspecterâ was haunting Europeâthe specter of Communism. 160 years later, it is âMarxismâ 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"
The Communist Manifesto: A Teach-In
Wednesday, September 28 · 5:00pm 701 S Morgan St. UIC Stevenson Hall, Room 304
In the mid-19th century, Marx and Engels famously observed in the Communist Manifesto that a 'specter' was haunting Europeâ 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?Hosted by the Platypus Affiliated Society.For more information, please contact Joseph Estes: ghettogothic@gmail.com
|
Panel held at the Marxist Literary Group Summer 2011 Institute on Culture and Society at the Institute for the Humanities, University of Illinois at Chicago on June 22, 2011
The legacy of revolution 1917-19 in Russia, Germany, Hungary and Italy is concentrated above all in the historical figures Vladimir Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg and Leon Trotsky, leaders of the Left in the Second International (1889-1914) â what they called ârevolutionary social democracyâ â in the period preceding the crisis of war, revolution, counterrevolution and civil war in World War I and its aftermath. In 1920, Georg LukĂĄcs summed up this experience as follows: â[T]he crisis [of capital] remains permanent, it goes back to its starting-point, repeats the cycle until after infinite sufferings and terrible detours the school of history completes the education of the proletariat and confers upon it the leadership of mankind. . . . Of course this uncertainty and lack of clarity are themselves the symptoms of the crisis in bourgeois society. As the product of capitalism the proletariat must necessarily be subject to the modes of existence of its creator. . . . inhumanity and reification.â Nonetheless, these Marxists understood their politics as being âon the basis of capitalismâ itself (Lenin). How were the 2nd Intl. radicals, importantly, critics, and not merely advocates, of their own political movement? What is the legacy of these figures today, after the 20th century â as Walter Benjamin said in his 1940 âTheses on the Philosophy of History,â âagainst the grainâ of their time, reaching beyond it? How did Lenin, Luxemburg, and Trotsky contribute to the potential advancement and transformation of Marxism, in and through the crisis of Marxism in the early 20th century? How can we return to these figures productively, today, to learn the lessons of their history?
Panelists:
Chris Cutrone, Lenin
Greg Gabrellas, Luxemburg
Ian Morrison, Trotsky
Moderator:
Spencer Leonard
Panel held at the Marxist Literary Group Summer 2011 Institute on Culture and Society at the Institute for the Humanities, University of Illinois at Chicago on June 20, 2011
The âbourgeois revolutionsâ from the 16th through the 19th centuries â extending into the 20th â conformed humanity to modern city life, ending traditional, pastoral, religious custom in favor of social relations of the exchange of labor. AbbĂ© SieyĂšs wrote in 1789 that, in contradistinction to the clerical 1st Estate who âprayedâ and the aristocratic 2nd Estate who âfought,â the commoner 3rd Estate âworked:â âWhat has the 3rd Estate been? Nothing.â âWhat is it? Everything.â Kant warned that universal bourgeois society would be the mere midpoint in humanityâs achievement of freedom. After the last bourgeois revolutions in Europe of 1848 failed, Marx wrote of the âconstitution of capital,â the ambivalent, indeed self-contradictory character of âfree wage labor.â In the late 20th century, the majority of humanity abandoned agriculture in favor of urban life â however in âslum cities.â How does the bourgeois revolution appear from a Marxian point of view? How did what Marx called the âproletarianizationâ of society circa 1848 signal not only the crisis and supersession, but the need to fulfill and âcompleteâ the bourgeois revolution, whose task now fell to the politics of âproletarianâ socialism, expressed by the workersâ call for âsocial democracy?â How did this express the attempt, as Lenin put it, to overcome bourgeois society âon the basis of capitalismâ itself? How did subsequent Marxism lose sight of Marx on this, and how might Marxâs perspective on the crisis of the bourgeois revolution in the 19th century still resonate today?
Panelists;
Spencer Leonard, âMarxâs critique of political economy: Proletarian socialism continuing the bourgeois revolution?â
Pamela Nogales, âMarx on the U.S. Civil War as the 2nd American Revolutionâ
Jeremy Cohan, âLukĂĄcs on Marxâs Hegelianism and the dialectic of Marxismâ
Moderator:
Chris Cutrone
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