On March 30, 2023, at its 15th annual International Convention in Chicago, the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted a panel discussion on Second International Marxism in America. The panel was made up of Platypus members who addressed the origins and crisis of the Socialist Party of America (SPA): Spencer A. Leonard (prehistory and origin of the First International), Pamela C. Nogales C. (First International and prehistory of the Second International in America), Ed Remus (crisis of the Debsian-era SPA), and Chris Cutrone (legacy of the SPA). Platypus member D. M. Faes moderated the panel. An edited transcript follows.
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THE GLOBAL POLITICAL CLIMATE of the 2020s is marked by the apparent resurgence of far-Right populism, particularly in the United States with the consolidation of the MAGA movement under Donald Trump. Yet beneath the surface, there are signs of a renewed interest in leftist traditions. Marxism, Leninism, and Trotskyism — ideologies long pronounced “dead” after 1989 — are finding new resonance among young people, especially as systemic crises of capitalism deepen and political polarization accelerates.
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THIS BOOK IS ABOUT failure and defeat.” It seems whether writer, activist, and podcast host Amber A’Lee Frost’s new memoir, Dirtbag, will stir lively curiosity or morbid fascination will depend on the reader. Those prone to wisecracks will revel in the deluges of “shade” dripping from each page; it has Chapo Trap House, the irreverent Left podcast the author co-hosts, written all over it. Like Chapo — Patreon’s most popular podcast until 2020 and which remains in the platform’s top 10 — Frost’s rise to prominence coincided with the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign, with Frost endorsing Sanders on the podcast and in the pages of Jacobin.
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On September 10, 2024, the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted a panel discussion on democracy and the Left at New York University. The panelists were Sebastian (Revolutionary Communists of America), George Shulman (professor emeritus at NYU, whose work focuses on the relationship of race, political culture, and literature in post-war American life), Grayson Walker (co-founder of the Infrared Collective and the American Communist Party), and Andy Gittlitz (author of I Want to Believe: Posadism, UFOs and Apocalypse Communism (2020) and co-host of the Antifada podcast). An edited transcript follows.
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BENJAMIN STUDEBAKER ATTRIBUTES modern social and political thought to Stoicism, which he understands to be at heart Neo-Platonist — by contrast with Plato’s own Platonism. In his view, it comes down to us from late Hellenism — Alexandrianism? But is capitalism Epicurean, as Studebaker avers, and socialism Stoic? Studebaker rejects the vision of socialism as society going beyond politics, which he interprets as the impossible or undesirable state without “disturbance”: an inhuman dystopia.
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