MY PRINCIPAL TEACHERS IN MARXISM were the Spartacist League, Adolph Reed and Moishe Postone — Theodor Adorno was also a crucial teacher, through his writings, which Reed had pointed me towards when we met up in Chicago after I graduated from college. The title of this essay is an homage to Adolph’s own “Paths to Critical Theory,” which narrates his political and theoretical coming to consciousness.
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I REMEMBER TALKING TO AN ANARCHIST in 2016 about Platypus; they were irate that we had published an anti-Deutsch communist in 2010. He claimed that Platypus was like CNN, in that we would host people with different views on a panel in order to suggest that the middle position is the best. I said, no, we host the conversation among the Left, and the Left itself takes contradictory stances on an issue as a result of their shared history.
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THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT is the most controversial proposition by Marxism — and is indeed how Marxism distinguishes itself politically, ideologically and theoretically, and intellectually as well as practically and organizationally.
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DISASTERS REVEAL THE TRUE NATURE OF CAPITALISM, and there is no greater disaster than the state of capitalism today, from the climate, austerity programs, migration, and the pandemics of COVID and HIV. While corona is a virus that kills millions of people, capitalism imperils the entire working class.
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PLATYPUS CONSIDERS ITSELF SOCIALIST. Why does it then print pro-imperialist rhetoric and dismiss “New” and “Old” Lefts? It is one thing to say, “Today there are nothing but idiots.” Far more disturbing is the following: “The Left [...] under the shadow of the Cold War and Vietnam, cannot acknowledge let alone recognize properly that the U.S. is not the source but only the central — and indispensable — actor in the politics of global capitalism. Anti-Americanism is a sham;”
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