On July 22, 2023, Platypus Affiliated Society members Efraim Carlebach and D. L. Jacobs interviewed Lars T. Lih, the author of Bread and Authority in Russia: 1914–1921 (1990), Lenin Rediscovered: What is to be Done? in Context (2006), Lenin (2011), and the forthcoming What was Bolshevism?. An edited transcript follows.
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THE LAUNCH OF Sublation Magazine is a response to the current moment of disorientation and depoliticization on the Left. Amid the support from “progressive” legislators such as “the squad” for the sclerotic Biden administration, the Left has nothing left to say on the latter’s catalogue of disasters.
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Change is difficult to understand for several reasons. But those who have even a cursory knowledge of Marxism will know of Marx’s eleventh thesis on Feuerbach: “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.”
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IN THE BUBBLE OF ELITE UNIVERSITIES and among circles of urban young professionals, where Leftists dedicated many hours to door-knocking for Labour, a false optimism about Labour’s chances was betrayed by the insistence that anyone who did not join in it was morally suspect.
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On Wednesday, August 28th, 2019, Efraim Carlebach interviewed John Rees, historian, activist and lead organizer of Counterfire, about his book The Leveller Revolution and the memory of the English revolution today. The questions were prepared with Richard Rubin. What follows is an edited transcript of the interview. During the interview, Boris Johnson announced the prorogation of the British Parliament, provoking comparisons to the English civil war. A postscript on the Brexit political crisis is appended.
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