The Platypus Review

[ Die deutschsprachige Platypus Review ]

Latest Issue: #165

We are all Friedmanites now! A review of Jennifer Burns’s Milton Friedman

MILTON FRIEDMAN FAMOUSLY DECLARED, on the threshold of the neoliberal revolution he helped usher in, “We are all Keynesians now!” Also around this time, Michel Foucault said that “We are all Marxists now.” The point was to thus thrust aside, by treating as safely past, something longstanding as a banality that could be ignored — as Marx said the Young Hegelians had done to Hegel. Friedman, like Hegel, might be wrongly overlooked by subsequent generations as a “dead dog.”

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A response to “The legacy of 1968”

Barry York

On June 24, 2023 at Trades Hall in Melbourne, Australia, the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted a panel on the legacy of 1968. The speakers included Andy Blunden, Alison Thorne, and Arthur Dent. Barry York provides his response to the panel.

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In defense of Palestinian populism: A response to Chris Cutrone

Fakhry Al-Serdawi

THREE DAYS BEFORE OCTOBER 7, my interview with Douglas Lain was released under the title “Are We All Terrorists Today?” In the interview, I said that the armed attacks against free speech at the Charlie Hebdo newspaper in 2015, which caused a mass protest movement inside and outside of France, the Republican marches, which have adopted puritanical politics of martyrdom, that robbed Marxists of their own capacity for free speech, of their ability for ruthless scientific criticism against Charlie Hebdo and even the French capitalist state. In that sense, I do understand Chris Cutrone’s frustration with Israeli state terrorism, and the puritanical reaction to it in the Palestine protest movement in the West, a thing that led to the confiscation of his capacity to criticize Hamas ruthlessly.

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The legacy of 1968

Alison Thorne, Andy Blunden, Arthur Dent

On June 24, 2023 at Trades Hall in Melbourne, Australia, the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted this panel on the legacy of 1968. The speakers included Andy Blunden, Alison Thorne, and Arthur Dent. Andy Blunden is a Hegel scholar, was the first draft-card burner in Melbourne in 1966, and later joined the Workers Revolutionary Party. Alison Thorne is a member of the Freedom Socialist Party and a founder of the Australian branch of Radical Women. Arthur Dent, also known as Albert Langer, is an orthodox Maoist, a former member of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Lenininst) (CPA (ML)), and leader of the Red Eureka Movement in the 1970s. An edited transcript follow.

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ICL versus LFI: Who won . . . what?

Daniel Lazare

FOR AN INTERNATIONAL MOVEMENT supposedly fading into irrelevance, the gathering on New York’s Upper West Side on Saturday, January 13, was remarkable: an auditorium overflowing with hundreds of people arguing passionately about where Trotskyism is going and how to get there. On one side were the Spartacists and the International Communist League (ICL), whose U.S. outlet, Workers Vanguard, has long been known for its wit, high intellectual tone, and pugilistic style.

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Critical race theory: Festival of unfreedom

Gabe Gottfried

LAW IS A PRODUCT of the people’s will — its calculus exacts the “is” versus the “ought” of society. The science of law from the judiciary’s perspective is jurisprudence, but the science of law from society’s perspective is politics. Society’s drive to bring about conditions that are not possible is called its utopianism. Utopia conditions the psychic direction of society’s politics, the law has merely followed these inclinations.

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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:

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