The Platypus Affiliated Society

Zur Rekonstruktion revolutionärer Theorie bei Hans-Jürgen Krahl

Hans-Jürgen Krahl gilt heute neben Rudi Dutschke als zweiter Kopf des SDS, als der intellektuelle Kopf der Studentenbewegung, als marxistischer Robespierre von Frankfurt Bockenheim und als der Quälgeist Theodor W. Adornos. Krahls Marxismus, der sich allen voran in posthumer Niederschrift mündlicher Aussagen nachvollziehen lässt, behandelt weitgehend die Aktionen der Studentenbewegung und hat in einem sehr strikten Sinne seine Grenzen an den Themen seiner Zeit, die sich in gegebener Kürze nur reduziert und in eklektischer Auswahl vorstellen lassen.

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Trotsky and Trotskyism, Lecture 6, 7.21.12

Richard Rubin
Lecture 6
1940-1953

Part of the Summer 2012 Platypus Affiliated Society Primary Reading Group Lecture Series: Trotsky and Trotskyism

• recommended / + supplemental reading

Week Six Readings:
+ James Cannon, “The coming American revolution” (1946)
+ C.L.R. James, Raya Dunayevskaya, et al., “Program of the minority tendency of the Workers Party/U.S.” (1946)
+ C.L.R. James, “Dialectical materialism and the fate of humanity” (1947)
+ Herbert Marcuse, “33 Theses” (1947)
+ Earl Browder and Max Shachtman with C. Wright Mills, “Is Russia a socialist community?” (1950)
+ Ernest Mandel, “The theory of ‘state capitalism’” (1951)
+ Michel Pablo, “On the duration and the nature of the period of transition from capitalism to socialism” (1951)
+ Pablo, “Where are we going?” (1953)

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The politics of Critical Theory

Chris Cutrone

The opening plenary of the third annual Platypus Affiliated Society international convention, held April 29–May 1, 2011 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, was a panel discussion between Nicholas Brown of the University of Illinois at Chicago, Chris Cutrone of Platypus, Andrew Feenberg of Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, and Richard Westerman of the University of Chicago. The panelists were asked to address the following: “How did the practice and theory of Marxism, from Marx to Lenin, make possible and necessary the politics of Critical Theory?”

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Capitalism and the Invention of Sexuality

A workshop held on May 29th, 2010 at the 2010 Platypus International Convention at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Led by Pablo Ben.

An analysis of how sexuality as a sphere of modern life was formed due to the emergence of capitalism. Sexuality did not exist before the 18th century and it has emerged since then in several parts of the world following the expansion of global capitalism. The analyze follows through a new reading of Foucault from the point of view of Marcuseâs Eros and Civilization. This theoretical framework helps understand some new developments in the historiography of sexuality worldwide,specifically the world history of masturbation, prostitution, homosexuality, and romantic love.

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Comments on Chris Cutrone’s review of Marxism and Philosophy by Karl Korsch

David Black

CHRIS CUTRONE WRITES, “What the usual interpretive emphasis on Lukács occludes is that the Frankfurt School writers grappled not only with the problem of Stalinism but with that of ‘anti-Stalinism’ as well.” This statement is well founded, considering how Korsch’s troubled relationship with Adorno and Horkheimer was paralleled by Sohn-Rethel’s with those two during the same period; not to mention the later dialogues Dunayevskaya had with Marcuse and Fromm.

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