The Platypus Affiliated Society

Imperialism: What is it, why should we be against it?

Adam Turl, Chris Cutrone, Danny Postel, Kevin Anderson, Nick Kreitman

On January 30th, 2007, Platypus hosted its first public forum, “Imperialism: What is it—Why should we be Against it?” The panel consisted of Adam Turl of the International Socialist Organization (ISO), Kevin Anderson of the Marxist-Humanist group News and Letters, Nick Kreitman of the new Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Danny Postel of Open Democracy, and Chris Cutrone of Platypus. What follows is an edited transcript of this event. The question of imperialism remains obscure on the Left. In light of the continued failure of the anti-war movement to end the U.S. presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with the decline of anti-war protest in the wake of Barack Obama’s election, it seems that the critique of imperialism has not been clarified, but only become more impotent in its opacity. Consequently, the Platypus Review believes that this panel retains its salience.

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Workers in a Time of War: Pakistan and the Crisis of the International Labor Movement

Panel held on December 6th, 2009, at the University of Chicago.

A moderated panel discussion and audience Q&A bringing together three leading figures of the Pakistani labor movement to talk about workers rights, women’s rights, the struggle to organize in the shadow of the Taliban, and the impact of the ongoing war in Afghanistan on the workers of Pakistan. These topics will be explored in light of the increasingly pressing need to reconstitute an international Left.

Panelists:
Rubina Jamil
President, Working Women Organization; and Chair, All Pakistan Trade Union Federation

Atiya Khan
Platypus Affiliated Society; and PhD candidate in History at the University of Chicago

Introduced and moderated by Spencer Leonard, Platypus Affiliated Society; Editor-in-Chief, The Platypus Review; and Collegiate Assistant Professor in the Social Sciences, University of Chicago

Background reading:
The Failure of Pakistan: A Concise History of the Left
The Poverty of Pakistan’s Politics

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2001

Spencer A. Leonard

The Decline of the Left in the 20th Century Toward a Theory of Historical Regression THE ABANDONMENT OF EMANCIPATORY POLITICS in our time has not been, as past revolutionary thinkers may have feared, an abandonment of revolution in favor of reformism. Rather, because the revolutionary overcoming of capital is no longer imagined, reformism too is dead. As the task of achieving human society beyond capital has been abandoned, nothing worthy of the name of politics takes its place, nor could it. The project of freedom has now altogether receded from view. For, while bourgeois thinkers like Hegel were no doubt mistaken in their identification of capital with freedom, they nevertheless grasped that the question of freedom only poses itself with reference to the capital problematic.

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Nothing Left to say: a critique of the Guardian’s coverage of the 2008 Mumbai attacks

Spencer A. Leonard

However sincere its backers or belligerent its enemies, the “War on Terror” is not and cannot become anti-Islamist. This is not because, as some think, there is no Islamist or Taliban-style fascism on the receiving end of America’s War on Terror. Far from it. The reason is that the prosecutors of the war are only half committed to the selective elimination of certain religious reactionaries.

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Afghanistan, internationalism and the Left: an interview with Terry Glavin

Andony Melathopoulos, Terry Glavin

The following interview was conducted as an email exchange between Andony Melathopoulos and Terry Glavin in December 2008. Terry Glavin is a Canadian journalist, an outspoken critic of the anti-war movement's call to withdrawal foreign troops from Afghanistan and a founder of the Afghanistan Canada Solidarity Committee (afghanistan-canada-solidarity.org).

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