IF TODAY’S ATOMIZED Marxist Left agrees on anything, it is the disastrous consequences of the Second International’s failure to mobilize against war in 1914. Instead of banding together against militarism, socialists rushed to defend bourgeois states they had previously pledged to destroy. They all had their reasons.
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The following is a translation, by Lukas Hedderich and Ethan Linehan, of Walter Held’s “Kritische Theorie ohne politische Praxis? Eine Auseinandersetzung mit der Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung” (1939).
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WHAT IS THE ROLE of the intellectual in a revolutionary working-class movement? How does the separation of theory from practice affect the development and utility of Marxism? And how did the twin phenomena of the Frankfurt School and Trotskyism succeed — or fail — in addressing the tasks of their historical moment? These are the questions that lie at the heart of Walter Held’s 1939 essay “Critical theory without political practice?”
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On March 11, 2024, at New York University, the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted a panel regarding Left perspectives on the Israel–Palestine conflict. The speakers were Norman Finkelstein (author of The Holocaust Industry (2000) and Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom (2018)), Daniel Lazare (writer at the Weekly Worker, author of The Frozen Republic (1997)), Eva Porter (New School, Students for Justice in Palestine), and Joe Whitcomb (Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), former member of its youth section’s Organizational Committee). The panel was moderated by Oliver Chasan. An edited transcript follows
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I AM A FOUNDING member of Platypus and one of the authors of our Statement of Purpose and the Platypus Review’s Editorial Statement. I bear some responsibility for starting our now 18-year-old organization, which is currently active in universities across three continents. I am also a historian of intellectual history, social reform, and the crisis of liberalism in the 19th century, and I teach undergraduates at the University of Chicago. Platypus is a Millennial Left organization, among the last which have survived the tumultuous decade and a half.
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