Embed Size (px)
DESCRIPTION
“Program” and “Utopia” have for well over a century now sat in uneasy tension within the politics of the Left, in tension both with each other and with themselves. Political programs tend to be presented in the sober light of practicability — straightforward, realistic, matter-of-fact. Social utopias, by contrast, appear quite oppositely as the virtue of aspiring ambition — involved, unrealistic, exhilarating. Historically, then, the two would appear to be antithetical. In either case, one usually offers itself up as a corrective to the other: the programmatic as a harsh “reality check” to pipe-dream idealism; utopianism as an alternative to dreary, cynical Realpolitik.Today, however, it is unavoidable that both program and utopia are in profound crisis. For those Leftists who still hold out some hope for the possibility of extra-electoral politics, an impasse has arisen. Despite the effusive political outbursts of 2011-12 in the Arab Spring and #Occupy — with their emphasis on the identity of means and ends, anti-hierarchical modes of organization, and utopian prefiguration — the Left still seems to have run aground. Traces may remain in the form of various issue-based affinity groups, but the more ambitious projects of achieving sweeping social transformation have been quietly put to rest, consoled with the mere memory of possibility.Meanwhile, longstanding Left organizations, having temporarily reverted to the usual waiting game of patiently tailing popular discontents with the status quo, until the masses finally come around and decide to “get with the program” (i.e., their program), have experienced a crisis of their own: slowly disintegrating, with occasional spectacular implosions, many of their dedicated cadre call it quits amid demoralization and recriminations. What possibilities might remain for a Left whose goal is no longer utopian, and whose path toward it is no longer programmatically defined?
Citation preview
UTOPIA AND PROGRAM
Contents
Statement of Purpose
Convention Theme
SAIC Map
Speaker Biographies
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Acknowledgements
Itinerary
Convention Program
4
6
5
8
10
15
16
18
7
Fifth Annual International Convention
The Platypus Affiliated Societyplatypus1917.org
The Platypus Affiliated SocietyThe Platypus Affiliated Society, established in December 2006, organizes reading groups, public fora, research and journalism focused on problems and tasks inherited from the "Old " (1920s-30s), "New" (1960s-70s) and post-political (1980s-90s) Left for the possibilities of emancipatory politics today.
platypus1917.org
Statement of Purpose
Platypus is a project for the self-criticism, self-education, and, ultimately, the practical reconstitution of a Marxian Left. At present the Marxist Left appears as a historical ruin. The received wisdom of today dictates that past, failed attempts at emancipation stand not as moments full of potential yet to be redeemed, but rather as “what was” — utopianism that was bound to end in tragedy. As critical inheritors of a vanquished tradition, Platypus contends that — after the failure of the 1960s New Left, and the dismantlement of the welfare state and the destruction of the Soviet Union in the 1980s-90s — the present disorientation of the Left means we can hardly claim to know the tasks and goals of social emancipation better than the “utopians” of the past did.
Our task is critique and education towards the reconstitution of a Marxian Left. Platypus contends that the ruin of the Marxist Left as it stands today is of a tradition whose defeat was largely self-inflicted, hence at present the Marxist Left is historical, and in such a grave state of decomposition that it has become exceedingly difficult to draft coherently programmatic social-political demands. In the face of the catastrophic past and present, the first task for the reconstitution of a Marxian Left as an emancipatory force is to recognize the reasons for the historical failure of Marxism and to clarify the necessity of a Marxian Left for the present and future. — If the Left is to change the world, it must first transform itself!
The improbable — but not impossible — reconstitution of an emancipatory Left is an urgent task; we believe that the future of humanity depends on it. While the devastating forces unleashed by modern society — capitalism — remain, the unfulfilled promise of social emancipation still calls for redemption. To abdicate this or to obscure the gravity of past defeats and failures by looking to “resistance” from “outside” the dynamics of modern society is to affirm its present and guarantee its future destructive reality.
Platypus asks the questions: How is the thought of critical theorists of modern society such as Marx, Lukács, Benjamin and Adorno relevant for the struggle for social emancipation today? How can we make sense of the long history of impoverished politics on the Left leading to the present — after the international Marxist Left of Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky, to the barrenness of today — without being terrorized or discouraged by this history? — How might the answers to such questions help the urgent task of reconstituting the Left at its most fundamental levels of theory and practice? How might we help effect escape from the dead-end the Left has become?We hope to re-invigorate a conversation on the Left that has long since fallen into senility or silence, in order to help found anew an emancipatory political practice that is presently absent.
What has the Left been, and what can it yet become? — Platypus exists because the answer to such a question, even its basic formulation, has long ceased to be self-evident.
April 2007
4
Utopia and ProgramWhat possibilities might remain for a Left whose goal is no longer utopian, and whose path is no longer programmatically defined?
Theme
“Program” and “utopia” have for well over a century now sat in uneasy tension within the politics of the Left, in tension both with each other and with themselves. Political programs tend to be presented in the sober light of practicability — straightforward, realistic, matter-of-fact. Social utopias, by contrast, appear quite oppositely as the virtue of aspiring ambition — involved, unrealistic, exhilarating. Historically, then, the two would appear to be antithetical. In either case, one usually offers itself up as a corrective to the other: the programmatic as a harsh “reality check” to pipe-dream idealism; utopianism as an alternative to dreary, cynical Realpolitik.
Today, however, it is unavoidable that both program and utopia are in profound crisis. For those Leftists who still hold out some hope for the possibility of extra-electoral politics, an impasse has arisen. Despite the effusive political outbursts of 2011-12 in the Arab Spring and #Occupy — with their emphasis on the identity of means and ends, anti-hierarchical modes of organization, and utopian prefiguration — the Left still seems to have run aground. Traces may remain in the form of various issue-based affinity groups, but the more ambitious projects of achieving sweeping social transformation have been quietly put to rest, consoled with the mere memory of possibility.
Meanwhile, longstanding Left organizations, having temporarily reverted to the usual waiting game of patiently tailing popular discontents with the status quo, until the masses finally come around and decide to “get with the program” (i.e., their program), have experienced a crisis of their own: slowly disintegrating, with occasional spectacular implosions, many of their dedicated cadre call it quits amid demoralization and recriminations. What possibilities might remain for a Left whose goal is no longer utopian, and whose path is no longer programmatically defined?
5
LA KE
RA ND O LPH
W A SHING T O N
MA D ISO N
MO NRO E
A D A MS
JA C KSO N
DE
AR
BO
RN
CL
AR
K
ST
AT
E
WA
BA
SH
MIC
HIG
AN
AV
EN
UE
CO
LU
MB
US
LA
KE
SH
OR
ED
RIV
E
Gra
nt
Par
kN
ort
h>
Mill
enn
ium
Par
k
P P
P
P
A ll SA IC buildingentrances arewheelchair accessibleP
Building entrance
Parking
Metra stop
CTA stop
Adapted from http://www.saic.edu/
6
SAIC Map
1
2
3
1. 280 SOUTH COLUMBUS DRIVE2. 116 SOUTH MICHIGAN AVENUE3. NEIMAN CENTER (SHARP BUILDING), 37 SOUTH WABASH AVENUEEXCHEQUER - 226 S. WABASH AVENUE
<<
EX
CH
EQ
UE
R
P
Convention Program
PerspectivesQuébec solidaire (Canada)Party for Socialism and Liberation (US)EXIT (Germany)
<MC 13 Fl Lounge>
<MC 14 Fl Lounge>
<MC 14 Fl Lounge>
3:40-5:00
PerspectivesInternationalist Perspective(US)Green Party (US)New Compass and DemokratiskAlternativ (Norway)
<MC 13 Fl Lounge><MC 14 Fl Lounge>
<MC 14 Fl Lounge>
2:00-3:20
PerspectivesRevolutionary CommunistParty (US)International Marxist Tendency (Canada)Solidarity Halifax (Canada)
<MC908>
<MC919><MC920>
11:35-1:05
FRIDAY, APRIL 5 SUNDAY, APRIL 7SATURDAY, APRIL 6
<MC 1st Floor, Lobby>
PerspectivesSYRIZA (Greece)International Marxist-HumanistOrganization (US)Endnotes
<MC908>
<MC919><MC920>
10:00-11:2010
12
7:00-9:00Closing PlenaryProgram and UtopiaEndnotes collectiveStephen Eric Bronner (Rutgers)Sam Gindin (Socialist Project)Roger Rashi (Québec solidaire)Richard Rubin (Platypus)
<Ballroom, Columbus Drive Building>
9
11
1
2
3
5
6
7
8
4
9
9
10
11
12
1
2
3
5
6
7
8
4
9 9
9
10
11
12
1
2
3
5
6
7
8
4
Registration
11:00-12:30
PanelsWhat is Imperialism? (What Now?)
2:30-4:00
<MC908>
<MC920>
PanelsCapital, History and Environmental Politics
4:15-5:45
<MC908>
<MC920>
9:00
<MC 1st Floor, Lobby>
Registration 1:00
6:00-8:00Opening PlenaryThe Left in Power?
Eirik Eiglad (New Compass)Andreas Karitzis (SYRIZA)James Turley (CPGB)
<Neiman Center - 1st Floor>
<MC 1307>
<MC 1307>
<MC 1307>
Platypus Plenary
1:00-1:30President's Report
1:30-6:00Internal Meeting
The Labor Left After Politics and After Utopia
Marx and “Wertkritik”
am
pm
7
Friday, April 5
Registration
Different Perspectives on the Left
<Michigan Building 1st Floor, Lobby>
1:00pm
2:00pm – 3:20pm
Internationalist Perspective (US)
Alan Milchman<Michigan Building, 13th Floor Lounge>
Green Party (US)
Jack Ailey<Michigan Building, 14th Floor Lounge>
New Compass and Demokratisk Alternativ (Norway)
Erik Eiglad<Michigan Building, 14th Floor Lounge>
3:40pm – 5:00pm
Québec solidaire (Canada)
Roger Rashi<Michigan Building, 13th Floor Lounge>
Party for Socialism and Liberation (US)
John Beacham<Michigan Building, 14th Floor Lounge>
EXIT (Germany)
Elmar Flatschart<Michigan Building, 14th Floor Lounge>
The focus of these 80 minute discussions is to better understand how groups on the Left connect their activities to the political tasks of the the present. Given that the projects in this session often express divergent approaches, workshop leaders will explain how they distinguish their projects from others on the Left today. In doing so, they will address not only how their organization understands the world but the Left itself, particularly in light of convention theme of Utopia and Program. Seeking to make manifest the meaning of these two terms for the present and the future Left, we present the following different perspectives.
8
Friday, April 5
Recently Leo Panitch, characterized SYRIZA as "the most promising anti-neoliberal party on the European political stage." This statement reflects the mood of many in the Left, who have seen the huge electoral empowerment of this left Greek party as a spark for a possible global reconstitution of the radical Left. SYRIZA, for them, means shifting the process of radicalization from the periphery to the center, from South America to Europe, hoping to spread even further the development of progressive governments (of which most prominent examples are Venezuela, Bolivia, Equador, et al). For others, SYRIZA is doomed to fail within the limits of the established parliamentary politics, and they are certain that its leadership will betray all hopes, as actually they think inevitably happens when left political forces, no matter how radical, think that they can use the “bourgeois state” for their causes.
Opening Plenary 6:00pm – 8:00pm
The Left in Power?
Eirik Eiglad (New Compass)Andreas Karitzis (SYRIZA)James Turley (Communist Party of Great Britain)
<Neiman Center, 1st Floor>
DinnerExchequer Restaurant & Pub (226 S. Wabash Avenue)
If you plan to join us for dinner please contact the registration desk as soon as you can. The meal costs $25 and includes pizza and beer.
(cont'd)
8:30pm
9
Saturday, April 6
Registration<Michigan Building, 1st Floor Lobby>
9:00am
The focus of these 80 minute discussions is to better understand how groups on the Left connect their activities to the political tasks of the the present. Given that the projects in this session often express divergent approaches, workshop leaders will explain how they distinguish their projects from others on the Left today. In doing so, they will address not only how their organization understands the world but the Left itself, particularly in light of convention theme of Utopia and Program. Seeking to make manifest the meaning of these two terms for the present and the future Left, we present the following different perspectives.
Different Perspectives on the Left
10:00am – 11:20am
SYRIZA (Greece)
Andreas Karitzis<Michigan Building, Room 908>
International Marxist-HumanistOrganization (US)
Peter Hudis and Marilyn-Nissim Sabat<Michigan Building, Room 919>
Endnotes
The Collective<Michigan Building, Room 920>
11:35am – 1:05pm
Revolutionary Communist Party (US)
TBD<Michigan Building, Room 908>
International Marxist Tendency(Canada)
Noah Gataveckas<Michigan Building, Room 919>
Solidarity Halifax (Canada)
David Bush and Lesley Thompson
<Michigan Building, Room 920>
Light Lunch<Michigan Building, 14th Floor Lounge>
1:15pm - 2:30pm
10
Ten years on from the US invasion of Iraq, are we any closer to understanding what Imperialism is and why we are against it? The problem of Imperialism seems to be getting more difficult to clarify, in relation to our present moment. Since the euphoria around the Arab Spring has passed, the Left has had mixed responses to the interventionist foreign policy of the US, UK and France in the Middle East and North Africa.
It is difficult to disentangle and to clarify what relation the Left’s responses to current issues in Libya, Mali and Syria bear to the history of anti-Imperialism. Nevertheless, if we are to ever overcome Imperialism, we must also confront the history of the Left’s attempts to overcome it.
Just over thirty years ago, the Falklands war presented problems for the Left, in terms of being, on the one hand, against imperialism of British intervention, on the other hand, against a brutal military dictatorship in Argentina. Anti-fascism and anti-imperialism have not always been in ideological conflict on the Left. But, it could be argued, that they have increasingly become so. If this is the case, it might suggest a changing character of anti-Imperialism during the history of the 20th Century. Looking further back, to WWI, what did Marxists understand by the term Imperialism? Does being anti-Imperialist, today even mean to be anti-Capitalist? Does being anti-Capitalist, mean to be anti-Imperialist?
In asking "What is Imperialism and for what reasons are you against it?" this panel is also attempting to address "What does it mean to be Marxist, and what does it mean to be on the Left, today?" It is also to ask, what has become of the Left, and conversely, what could it become?
Panel 2:30pm – 4:00pm
What is Imperialism? (What Now?)
Larry Everest (Revolutionary Communist Party)Joseph Green (Communist Voice)James Turley (Communist Party of Great Britain)
<Michigan Building, Room 908>
(cont'd)
The emergence of modernity was accompanied by the emergence of labour, its discontents, and the expression of these discontents. From the late 18th century to the present, these expressions have assumed many and often opposing forms, and these in turn have been absorbed by many and often opposing interpretations. The transformations of these discontents and of labor conditions throughout this, from the Chartist movement of the early 19th century through the socialist movements under Owen, Proudhon, and Bellamy at the end of the same century, to the mass strikes of the early 20th century, the emergence of the formally recognised and contractualised unionism of the mid to late 20th century, and the later periods of deindustrialization and neoliberalism, have in turn produced manifold interpretations of the role of the working class in society, as well as of the destiny of the labour struggle among other...
Panel 2:30pm–4:00pm
The Labor Left After Politics and After Utopia <MC 920>
(concurrent with the above)
continued>>
Saturday, April 6
11
Saturday, April 6
Panel 2:30pm – 4:00pm
The Labor Left After Politics and After Utopia <MC 920>
(continued)
[...] struggles in history. These interpretations differ most critically in their consideration of the relation of the labour struggle to the struggle for an emancipatory politics, that is, the constitution of the Left, and to the struggle for emancipation ultimately, that is, the pursuit of Utopia.
This panel will consider the development of these interpretations throughout history by exploring interpretations of labour on the Left in the present. We seek to interrogate both the relation of labor to other struggles on the Left and its once-Utopian visions of a world fundamentally transformed. We ask our speakers to engage not just with the labor movement, its limitations and prospects as they are today, and with the experience they have of it, but with the labor movement as it once was and as it could be again.
Steven Ashby (University of Illinois Chicago)Sam Gindin (Socialist Project)Andreas Karitzis (SYRIZA)
Today, to perceive the link between human society and the natural environment does not require that we engage in an effort of great abstraction. Indeed, environmental issues and problems are all around us—e.g., in erratic weather patterns and resource depletion, on the one hand, and reflected in advertisements and political discourse, on the other. What remains paradoxical, however, is the fact that the intensity and scale of societally-induced environmental degradation, which rose to historically unprecedented levels during the latter half of the twentieth century, is synchronous with an equally impressive increase in public concern for and attention to the biophysical world. Intuitively, one would expect wide-spread attention and concern—not to mention the increasing amount of intellectual energy both natural scientists and social scientists have devoted to analyzing the environment-society problematic with an eye toward ameliorating human-induced environmental destruction—to at least lead to a decline in the rate of destruction increasing. Yet, this has not been the case.
Similarly, although societally-induced global ecological despoliation has spurred a felt need for urgent action expressed on behalf of those on the Marxian Left, effective collective mobilization is virtually absent. During the 1960s, the Left became increasingly involved in environmental politics. Some of those committed to Marxism have even refocused their efforts to consider a Marxian understanding of the relation between capitalism and biophysical destruction. Yet, capitalism’s destruction of the environment continues unabated.
Panel 4:15pm – 5:45pm
Capital, History and Environmental Politics <MC 908>
continued>>
(cont'd)
12
Saturday, April 6
Panel 4:15pm – 5:45pm
Capital, History and Environmental Politics <MC 908>
(continued)
[...] Environmental politics remain situated in an uneasy relation to the Marxian Left. On the one hand, the rise of the environmental movement in the 1980s, particularly in Europe, marked the sharp migration of people drawn to Marxism in the 1970s to Green politics. On the other hand, a common theme of environmentalism is to impose limits to growth, sometimes expressed in conservative sentiments against technology, urbanization and cosmopolitanism, things that the Marxian left historically took to be signals of progress. One gets a sense that environmentalism is not motivated by the utopianism that Marx sought to clarify in his own time, but a dystopia to which the Marxian Left hopes to mobilize in the service of Marxism. However, if the linkage between capital and ecological despoliation is itself historically specific, then by extension, the possibility of overcoming capital (and hence, the current nature-society antithesis) must be historically specific as well. This panel invites you to consider the relationship between a) the history of capital and the Marxian Left—and thus the issue of history and freedom; and b) the entwinement of capital and biophysical nature in history in ways that challenge us to scrutinize the present and the contemporary ecological crisis in particular.
(cont'd)
Eirik Eiglad (New Compass)Joseph Green (Communist Voice)Roger Rashi (Québec solidaire)
Perhaps one of the most influential developments in Marxist thought coming from Germany in the last decades has been the emergence of value critique. Building on Marx’s later economical works, value critics stress the importance of abolishing value (the abstract side of the commodity), pointing out problems in traditional Marxism’s emphasis on the “dictatorship of the proletariat”.
The German value critical journal Krisis has famously attacked what they believed was a social democratic fetishization of labor in their 1999 Manifesto Against Labor. Such notions have drawn criticism from more “orthodox” Marxists who miss the political dimensions of value critique and the possibility of imminent transformation through engaging the realities of capitalist societies.
Did the later Marx abandon his political convictions that he expressed in the “Manifesto”? What about his later political writings, such as his “Critique of the Gotha Program” in which he outlines the different phases of early communism? Is Marxism a scientific project as claims from value critics indicate? Was Marx trying to develop of a...
Panel 4:15pm- 5:45pm
Marx and <MC 920>
continued>>
"Wertkritik"
13
Saturday, April 6 (cont'd)
Panel 4:15pm – 5:45pm
<MC 920>
(continued)
[...] “science of value”in his later works? What can value critique teach us after the defeat of the Left in 20th century? Did traditional Marxism necessarily have to lead to the defeat of the Left?
Elmar Flatschart (EXIT)Jamie Merchant (Permanent Crisis)Alan Milchman (Internationalist Perspective)
Marx and "Wertkritik"
14
Light Snack<Michigan Building, 14th Floor Lounge>
6:00pm – 7:00pm
Closing Plenary 7:00pm – 9:00pm
<Ballroom, Columbus Drive Building>
Endnotes collectiveStephen Eric Bronner (Rutgers University)Sam Gindin (Socialist Project)Roger Rashi (Québec solidaire)Richard Rubin (Platypus)
Program and Utopia
Sunday, April 7
Platypus Plenary 11:00am – 12:30pm<MC 1307>
Platypus President's Report 1:00pm – 1:30pm<MC 1307>
Platypus Internal Meeting 1:30pm – 6:00pm<MC 1307>
15
Biographies
16
Jack Ailey (Green Party) is a co-chair of the Platform Committee of the Green Party of the U.S. ; a long time peace and labor rights activist, and works to organize for the Green Party in Chicago. After the steel mill closed in 2001 he worked as an electrician for the CTA until retiring in June of 2008, and is now an electrician's instructor at Prairie State College. Jack is a member of SOAR (Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees) and of the Illinois Education Association.
Steven Ashby (University of Illinois Chicago) is interested in labor’s new strategies to resist corporate union-busting such as corporate campaigns, contract campaigns, work-to-rule, solidarity committees, labor-community coalitions, and non-violent civil disobedience. His most recent book is The Staley Workers and the Fight for a New American Labor Movement.
John Beacham (Party for Socialism and Liberation) is the Chicago director of the ANSWER Coalition and a Midwest organizer for the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
Stephen Eric Bronner (Rutgers University) is a noted political philosopher and Professor of Political Science, Comparative Literature, and German Studies at Rutgers University and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. He is a prolific writer having published over 25 books and 200 journal articles. He is the author of Rosa Luxemburg: A Revolutionary for Our Times (1980), Socialism Unbound (1990), Of Critical Theory and Its Theorists (1994), and Reclaiming the Enlightenment: Toward a Politics of Radical Engagement (2004), among many others. His most recent book is Modernism at the Barricades: Aesthetics, Politics, and Utopia.
David Bush (Solidarity Halifax) is a Canadian activist and writer. He is a former union organizer and he is currently a sessional lecturer at McMaster University's School of Labour Studies.
Eirik Eiglad (New Compass) is a writer, translator, and editor, and, since the early 1990s, he has been involved in a range of left-libertarian projects and movements in Scandinavia. His main fields of interest are to explore ecological philosophy, develop a municipalist politics, and on exposing antizionism. He is a member of the New Compass Collective in Oslo.
Larry Everest (Revolutionary Communist Party) writes for Revolution newspaper (revcom.us), and has reported from Iran, Iraq, Palestine and India. He’s the author of Oil, Power & Empire: Iraq and the U.S. Global Agenda, and Behind the Poison Cloud: Union Carbide’s Bhopal Massacre. In 1991 Everest shot the award-winning video Iraq: War Against the People, and in 2005 testified before the World Tribunal on Iraq in Istanbul.
Elmar Flatschart (EXIT) is currently working on his PhD thesis on neo-Marxist and feminist state theory. He is a lecturer at the department of political science at the University of Innsbruck. His research interests include Critical Theory, theories of the State, materialist feminist approaches and philosophy of sciences. He is a member of the editorial board of the German journal “EXIT” and involved in various grassroots-political activities. Noah Gataveckas is a writer, educator, and organizer from Toronto. His writing has been featured in 3AM, Numero Cinq, and, of course, Fightback: The Marxist Voice of Youth and Labour. He is a supporter of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) and, in the past, was involved with Occupy Toronto. His other interests include ancient philosophy, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and culture industry.
17
Sam Gindin (Socialist Project) is the former Research Director of the Canadian Auto Workers Union (CAW) and co-author with Leo Panitch of The Making of Global Capitalism. After retirement from the CAW in 2000 he joined the faculty of York University in the Political Science department as Packer Visitor in Social Justice, where he taught until 2010. He is currently involved in organizing the Greater Toronto Workers Assembly as a model to link the working class across union and community organizations. Joseph Green (Communist Voice) has been an activist in the communist movement since 1969. Since 1995 he has been the editor of the journal 'Communist Voice', which opposes both Stalinism and Trotskyism, upholds Leninist views on anti-imperialism and party-building, and has put forward a program of environmental demands that are opposed to the market-based measures of establishment environmentalism.
Peter Hudis (International Marxist-Humanist Organization) is author of Marx's Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism. He edited The Marxist-Humanist Theory of State-Capitalism and co-edited The Power of Negativity: Selected Writings on the Dialectic in Hegel and Marx, by Raya Dunayevskaya and The Rosa Luxemburg Reader. His next book will be a study of the work of Frantz Fanon. He is also General Editor of the forthcoming 14-volume collection, The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg. He teaches philosophy at Oakton Community College.
Andreas Karitzis (ΣΥΡΙΖΑ) is a member of the central committee of Syriza and coordinator of its political planning committee.
Jamie Merchant (Permanent Crisis) is a doctoral student in Rhetoric at Northwestern and a member of the Chicago I.W.W. In the past he has worked closely with other graduate students at Northwestern to form the Northwestern Graduate Collective, a nascent organizing committee for graduate employees at the university. His writings are mainly to be found on Permanent Crisis. His political interests lie primarily in restoring the possibility for a viable Left politics in the U.S., for which he thinks a certain rapprochement between anarchism and Marxism may potentially play an important role.
Alan Milchman (Internationalist Perspective) has been active in Marxist theoretical and political work for over forty years. He has published in political journals, especially Internationalist Perspective, as well as, for example, Rethinking Marxism, and Historical Materialism. The focus of his theoretical interests have been the history of the communist left and anti-Stalinism, and especially developing the implications of the publication of the manuscripts for Marx's critique of political economy, Wertkritik, and the theoretical vistas opened up by communization theory.
Roger Rashi (Québec solidaire) is a founding member of the political party Québec solidaire and sits on the steering committee of the riding of Mercier which first elected Amir Khadir to the Quebec National Assembly in December 2008 and reelected him with a bigger majority In 2012. The party, which was formed in 2006, currently holds two seats in the Quebec legislature. Rashi was also a member of Québec solidaire's Working Commission on the Environment from 2007 to 2012 and recently helped found Le réseau écosocialiste, an ecosocialist network of Québec activists.
Richard Rubin (Platypus) is a founding member of Platypus.
Marilyn-Nissim Sabat (International Marxist-Humanist Organization) is a member of IMHO. She is emeritus professor of philosophy at Lewis University and is a practicing psychotherapist. She has authored Neither Victim nor Survivor: Thinking toward a New Humanity (2009) in addition to numerous articles and book chapters in philosophy, psychoanalysis, critical race theory, feminism.
Lesley Thompson (Solidarity Halifax) lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and is a political communications officer for the largest federal public sector union in Canada. In her spare time, she works with Solidarity Halifax.
James Turley (Communist Party of Great Britain) is a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain.
18
Acknowledgements
The Platypus Affiliated Society gratefully acknowledges the following individuals for their work planning and executing the convention. Convention organizers: Ben Blumberg, Andony Melathopoulos, Brian Hioe, Ashley Weger, Ed Remus, Miguel Rodriguez and Ross Wolfe; Panel committee chairs: Lucy Parker (Imperialism), Alex Stoner (Environment), Watson Ladd (Labor), Gregor Baszak (Value Critique), Teo Velissaris (Left in Power); Design: Douglas La Rocca and Laurie Rojas (poster and program), Alex Gonopolskiy (web).
In addition, the PAS would like to thank all panel committee members, moderators, registration coordinators, and all those who worked to coordinate the AV.
Generously Sponsored by SAIC Campus Life and Student Government.
Calling all liberals, anarchists,libertarians, socialists and MarxistsPlatypus is a project for political education and clarification,based on university campuses in North America, Europeand South Asia. We think that the Left can no longer affordto use the “Right” as a cover a cover for its own failures, andthat activism alone - however urgent and necessary - is notsufficient for real social change.
What has the Left been, and what can it yet become?Help us build a campus conversation around these ques-tions.C
hica
gopl
aytp
us
www.platypus1917.org
American Revolution Film Screening SeriesTuesdays 6-8 pm | Harper Memorial Library Room 135Jefferson in Paris (April 9th)Amistad (April 16th)Glory (April 23rd)Lincoln (April 30th)116 E. 59th St. | Chicago, IL 60637
Platypus 2012-2013 Upcoming ActivitiesHistory of Marxism Reading Group
Coffee Breaks
University of ChicagoSaturdays, 1-4PM (April 13th to June 8th)Reynolds Club, South Lounge,5706 S. University Ave. | Chicago, IL 60637
University of ChicagoEvery Tuesday 4:30-5:30pmHarper Cafe, 3rd Floor of Harper Memorial Library116 E. 59th St. | Chicago, IL 60637
Contact: [email protected]
SAICSaturdays 1-4PMSchool of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC)112 S. Michigan Ave. room 920
SAICWednesdays 4:30-5:45PMCaffe Baci, 20 N. Michigan Ave.
The Platypus Affiliated Societyorganizes reading groups, public fora, research and journalismfocused on problems and tasks inherited from the “Old”(1920s-30s), “New” (1960s-70s) and post-political (1980s-90s)Left for the possibilities of emancipatory politics today.
platypus1917.org
