Latest Issue: #97
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 [ . . . ]
Submission Guidelines
Articles in the Platypus Review will typically range in length from 750–4,500 words, but longer pieces will also be considered. Please send article submissions and inquiries about the project to: review_editor@platypus1917.org. All submissions should conform to the Chicago Manual of Style.
Platypus Review Staff
Editor-In-Chief
Laurie Rojas
Production Editor
Spencer A. Leonard
Editors
Nate Smith
Josh Rome
Sunit Singh
James Vaughn
Nunzia Faes
Edward Remus
Chris Mansour
Copy Editors
Jacob Cayia
Atiya Khan
Houston Small
Sophia Freeman
Proof Editor
Thomas Willis
Designer
Daniel Rudin
Web Editor
Evan Odell
For more than 30 years the radical academic Ralph Miliband wrestled with the question of how the Left should confront the problem of the Labour Party. In the 1960s, he insisted that the Left should work within the party to win it over to the cause of socialism. In the 1970s, he accepted that it was futile to attempt to transform Labour and argued that the Left should organize an independent socialist party. In the 1980s, he collaborated with left-wing initiatives inside and outside the Labour Party. In his final, posthumously-published, response to the emergence of New Labour in the 1990s he signaled the Left’s abandonment of any hope of an existence independent of Labour.
[. . .]
Since Jeremy Corbyn took leadership of the Labour Party in 2015, he and his party have been the North Star for many on the Left. This reorientation has raised old questions about the Left's relationship to the Labour Party. At the Oxford Radical Forum in March the description for a panel on “Corbyn, Labour and the Radical Left” put forward a number of symptomatic propositions. It registered the fact that “several socialist tendencies which had previously campaigned against the party now committed to supporting it under Corbyn’s leadership” and that Corbyn’s election to leader “was largely viewed as a moment of triumph for the far left.” But what is the Left? And what would mean for it to triumph?
[. . .]
On March 23, 2017, the Platypus Affiliated Society organized a panel discussion, “What is Socialism? International Social Democracy,” at the London School of Economics. Moderated by Nunzia Faes of Platypus, the event brought together the following speakers: Jack Conrad of the Communist Party of Great Britain and the Weekly Worker; Adam Buick of the Socialist Party of Great Britain; and Robin Halpin, translator of works by the Exit! group. What follows is an edited transcript of their discussion.
[. . .]
Featured subjects and exchanges
Art and culture
- The relevance of critical theory to art today
- Petrified unrest: a review of the Creative Time summit
- I can’t go on, I’ll go on: a response to “Questionnaire on ‘The Contemporary’” in October and “What is Contemporary Art?” in e-flux
- Is the funeral for the wrong corpse? An interview with Hal Foster
- Trotsky’s theory of art
- The antinomy of art and politics: A critique of art as “cultural resistance”
- Aging in the afterlife: The many deaths of art
- Changes in art and society: A view from the present
- The occupation of art’s labor: An interview with Julia Bryan-Wilson
Iran
- Remember our real Iranian friends
- Review: Iran: “Insights into its religion, politics and power”
- Film review: Persepolis and the personal consequences of failure
- 30 years of the Islamic Revolution in Iran: an interview with Ervand Abrahamian
- The failure of the Islamic Revolution: the nature of the present crisis in Iran
- Against the status quo: an interview with Homayoun Pourzad of the Network of Iranian Labor Unions
- Forum: 30 years of the Islamic Revolution in Iran: the tragedy of the Left
- To know the worst: Anti-Semitism and the failure of the Left on Iran
- A reply to Stephan Grigat: On anti-Semitism and the Left on Iran
#Occupy
The student "Left"
- The Hundred Days Campaign: the present and future of SDS: an interview with Rachel Haut
- Five questions to the student Left
- Violence at the RNC
- Exchange: Red-baiting and ideology: the new SDS
- The New School occupation and the direction of student politics: an interview with Atlee McFellin
- Forum: Politics of the contemporary student Left
- Why is it that nobody understands me, yet everybody likes me? The ambivalence of the current German student movement
- Forum: Ideology and the student Left
- The coming insurrection? A reflection on resistance at the G20
Lenin
- The relevance of Lenin today
- Lenin the liberal? A reply to Chris Cutrone
- Lenin’s politics: A rejoinder to David Adam on Lenin’s liberalism
- Lenin’s legacy today
- October 1921: Lenin looks back
- Lenin’s liberalism
- Lenin’s Marxism
- Nikolai Bukharin on the life of A. A. Bogdanov
- Lenin and the Marxist Left after #Occupy
Issue Archive:
2017
January
February (#93)
March (#94)
April (#95)
May (#96)
June (#97)
