The Platypus Review

[ Die deutschsprachige Platypus Review ]

Latest Issue: #171

Why I want Kamala to win

Presented on October 30, 2024, for the panel discussion “The Left and the 2024 election” with Eddie Liger Smith (American Communist Party) and Jorge Mujica, hosted by the Platypus Affiliated Society at the University of Chicago.

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Left perspectives on the Israel–Palestine conflict

Daniel Lazare, Eva Porter, Joe Whitcomb, Norman Finkelstein

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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1914 redux: Why the Left gets Hamas wrong . . . and U.S. imperialism too

Daniel Lazare

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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Messages in a bottle: An introduction to the Walter Held – Max Horkheimer exchange

Ethan Linehan, Lukas Hedderich

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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Critical theory without political practice? An evaluation of the Journal for Social Research

Walter Held

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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Staff

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Louis Sterrett

COPY EDITORS

Gabriel Almeida
Mike Bartlett
Austin Carder
Rory Hannigan
Thom Hutchinson
Stanley Sharpey
Patrick Unwin

DESIGNERS

Mike Atkinson
Chris Mansour

WEB EDITOR

Evan Odell

SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR

Gabe Gottfried

DISTRIBUTION

Erica Gamble

Editorial Statement

Taking stock of the universe of positions and goals that constitutes leftist politics today, we are left with the disquieting suspicion that a deep commonality underlies the apparent variety: What exists today is built upon the desiccated remains of what was once possible.
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Submission Guidelines

Articles will typically range in length from 750–4,500 words, but longer pieces will be considered. Please send article submissions and inquiries about this project to editor.platypusreview@gmail.com. All submissions should conform to the Chicago Manual of Style.

The Platypus Review is funded by:

The University of Chicago Student Government
Dalhousie Student Union
Loyola University of Chicago
School of the Art Institute of Chicago Student Government
The New School
New York University
The University of Illinois at Chicago
The Platypus Affiliated Society