Moshé Machover was a founder of the Israeli Socialist Organisation in 1962, better known by the title of its journal, Matzpen (meaning “Compass” in Hebrew). The journal became known for its anti-Zionism and anti-nationalism from a Marxist perspective. Machover was interviewed on 17 September 2015 by Platypus members Thomas Willis and Richard Rubin. What follows is an edited transcript of their discussion, focussing on its potential lessons learned for the present.
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LOOKING THROUGH THE REGISTER of names in the writings and letters of the circle of friends around Max Horkheimer we find only rare references to Leon Trotsky. Theodor Adorno, for instance, who claims in his Aesthetic Theory (1969) that the ambitious art has been bourgeois art, remarks approvingly that Trotsky also had said in his book...
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SYRIZA MAY JUST HAVE BEEN SUFFERING FROM AN EARLY BIRTH: Everywhere, it seems, anti-austerity policies and politicians are on the rise. With Jeremy Corbyn, British Labour has decided upon a course radically dissimilar to its previous “me too” endorsement of austerity. Spain's Podemos, despite insistence that the country's situation is not Greece's, cannot escape...
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Gregor Baszak of the Platypus Affiliated Society conducted an interview with Cedric Johnson, author of From Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of African American Politics (2007). What follows is an edited transcript of their conversation.
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A SPECTER IS HAUNTING THE LEFT lately: the specter of national sovereignty. If the ghosts of dominant powers in the past were expressing existing social trends—such as the “ghost of communism” over Europe—the ghosts of the Left, instead, seem to ignore these trends. The specter of communism was a real historical force, whereas the specter of national sovereignty appears irrelevant and obsolete.
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