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You are here: The Platypus Affiliated Society/Archive for tag russian revolution

Aufgrund der aktuellen Corona-Epidemie finden die Filmscreenings bis auf weiteres via watch2gether und Discord statt - bitte kontaktiert uns via Facebook oder E-Mail (unter platypus.frankfurt@gmail.com), wenn ihr teilnehmen möchtet

Die vorgeführten Filme sollen einen Rahmen schaffen für den zweiten Teil des Lesekreises der Platypus Affiliated Society, „Was ist revolutionärer Marxismus?“.
Sie beschäftigen sich mit der historischen Periode des ausgehenden 19. und beginnenden 20. Jahrhunderts, eine Zeit des Umbruchs sowohl welthistorisch wie auch in der Geschichte des Marxismus und der Linken.
Es werden die folgenden Filme gemeinsam geschaut und anschließend in einer gelassenen Atmosphäre diskutiert.

Zeit: Immer donnerstags 18-21 Uhr
Ort: Bitte kontaktiert uns via Facebook oder E-Mail (unter platypus.frankfurt@gmail.com), wenn ihr teilnehmen möchtet.

26.03.2020 - Fall of Eagles Episode #5 "The Last Tsar" und #6 "Absolute Beginners" über die Ursprünge der Bolschewiki.

02.04.2020 - 37 Days Episode #3 "One Long Weekend" über den Beginn des 1.WK; und Fall of Eagles Episode #12 "The Secret War" über den ersten Weltkrieg und die Russische Revolution.

09.04.2020 - Fall of Eagles Episode #13 "End Game" über die deutsche Revolution 1918-19; und Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United
States Prequel Episode A. 1900-20
, über Imperialismus, den ersten Weltkrieg und die Russische Revolution.

16.04.2020 - Rosa Luxemburg Film.

From the financial crisis and the bank bail-outs to the question of “sovereign debt”; from the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street; from the struggle for a unified European-wide policy to the elections in Greece and Egypt that seem to have threatened so much and promised so little—the need to go beyond mere “protest” has asserted itself: political revolution is in the air, again.

[archiveorg TheRelevanceOfLeninTodayPresentationDiscussion width=640 height=480 frameborder=0 webkitallowfullscreen=true mozallowfullscreen=true]

Transcript in Platypus Review #48 (Click below):

The Encyclopedia Britannica’s entry on Lenin states that,

“If the Bolshevik Revolution is — as some people have called it — the most significant political event of the 20th century, then Lenin must for good or ill be considered the century’s most significant political leader. Not only in the scholarly circles of the former Soviet Union, but even among many non-Communist scholars, he has been regarded as both the greatest revolutionary leader and revolutionary statesman in history, as well as the greatest revolutionary thinker since Marx.”

Lenin is the most controversial figure in the history of Marxism, and perhaps one of the most controversial figures in all of history. As such, he is an impossible figure for sober consideration, without polemic. Nevertheless, it has become impossible, also, after Lenin, to consider Marxism without reference to him. Broadly, Marxism is divided into avowedly “Leninist” and “anti-Leninist” tendencies. In what ways was Lenin either an advance or a calamity for Marxism? But there is another way of approaching Lenin, which is as an expression of the historical crisis of Marxism. In other words, Lenin as a historical figure is unavoidably significant as manifesting a crisis of Marxism. The question is how Lenin provided the basis for advancing that crisis, how the polarization around Lenin could provide the basis for advancing the potential transformation of Marxism, in terms of resolving certain problems.

The Frankfurt School Critical Theorist Theodor Adorno, in his 1966 book Negative Dialectics, wrote of the degeneration of Marxism due to “dogmatization and thought-taboos.” There is no other figure in the history of Marxism who has been subject to such “dogmatization and thought-taboos” as much as Lenin.

It is important to note as well that Adorno himself sought to remain, as he put it, “faithful to Marx, Engels and Lenin, while keeping up with culture at its most advanced,” to which his colleague Max Horkheimer replied, simply, “Who would not subscribe to that?”

Today, such a proposition seems especially implausible, in many ways. Yet perhaps the memory of Lenin haunts us still, however obscurely.