Issue #20 is replete with replies and rejoinders to previous articles.  There’s also an edited transcript of the recent panel on 30 years of the Islamic Revolution.

Uli vom Hagen replies to Jerzy Sabotta, on the legacy of Rosa Luxemburg and the German Left.

Manan Ahmed replies to Atiya Khan, on the poverty of Pakistan’s politics and the Taliban.

Chris Cutrone rejoins to David Black, on Karl Korsch’s Marxism and Philosophy.

Spencer Leonard talks with George Scialabba, on what intellectuals are good for.

Joshua Howard discusses totality and theory, Left cognition and social change, arguing that the Marxian theory of totality has had enervating effects on the ability of the radical Left to imagine alternatives to capitalism.

Finally, there is an edited transcript of a recent panel at the University of Chicago, 30 years of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, with Danny Postel, Kaveh Ehsani, Maziar Behrooz, and Chris Cutrone.

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The Platypus Affiliated Society, The International House Global Voices Lecture Series, and UChicago Students for Justice in Palestine present

Hussein Ibish is a senior fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine and is the executive director of the Hala Salaam Maksoud Foundation for Arab- American Leadership. From 1998-2004, he was Communications Director for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the largest Arab-American membership organization in the United States, with which he authored, along with Ali Abunimah, the issue-paper The Palestinian Right of Return. Ibish will discuss his recent book, What’s Wrong with the One State Agenda? Why Ending the Occupation and Peace with Israel is Still the Palestinian National Goal.

Joel Kovel is professor emeritus of social studies at Bard College, editor in chief of Capitalism, Nature, Socialism and the author of several books, including White Racism: A Psychohistory, A Complete Guide to Therapy, The Age of Desire: Case Histories of a Radical Psychoanalyst, The Radical Spirit, and The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or The End of the World. In 1998, he was the Green Party candidate for U.S. Senator from New York. He will be discussing his most recent book, Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine.

Hosted by the University of Chicago Platypus Affiliated Society. Cosponsored by UChicago Students for Justice in Palestine, the International House Global Voices Lecture Series, and the University of Chicago Student Government.

Free and Open to the Public.

RSVP online at the Facebook event.

Persons with disabilities that may need assistance should contact the Office of Programs & External Relations in advance of the program at 773-753-2274.

Background reading:
Ibish A Real Plan to Build Palestine.
Kovel Zionism’s Bad Conscience.

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Brother Outsider (2003): The Life of Bayard Rustin

A film screening and discussion on the legacy of identity politics, its buried history,
unmet challenges, and the lingering problems on the Left.

Wednesday, February 17 2010 | 6:30PM to 8:30PM
Community Lounge | 5710 S. Woodlawn Ave.

Since its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and its national broadcast on PBS’ P.O.V. series, Brother Outsider has introduced millions of viewers around the world to the life and work of Bayard Rustin—a visionary strategist and activist who has been called “the unknown hero” of the civil rights movement.

Suggested reading:

Bayard Rustin (1970), “The Failure of Black Separatism”

An unmet challenge: Race and the Left in America

Book review: Jeffrey B. Perry, Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1882-1918

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Fanon: On Interracial Utopia and Anti-Colonialism

A teach-in led by Sunit Singh

Where: Quinlan Life Science Center, Room 312, 1032 W. Sheridan Road.

When: February 1st, 7pm.

Free and open to the public.

Suggested Readings:

David Macey – Franz Fannon

Fanon – Wretched of the Earth – Conclusion

Fanon – Black Skin White Masks (Introduction) (Conclusion)

“The Negro, however sincere, is the slave of the past. None the less I am a man, and in this sense the Peloponnesian War is as much mine as the invention of the compass. Face to face with the white man, the Negro has a part to legitimate, a vengeance to exact; face to face with the Negro, the contemporary white man feels the need to recall the times of cannibalism… Some men want to fill the world with their presence. A German philosopher described this mechanism as the pathology of freedom… The problem considered here is one of time. Those Negroes and white men will be disalienated who refuse to let themselves be sealed away in the materialized Tower of the Past. For many other Negroes, in other ways, disalienation will come into being through their refusal to accept the present as definitive. I am a man, and what I have to recapture is the whole past of the world… In no way should I derive my basic purpose from the past of the peoples of color. In no way should I dedicate myself to the revival of an unjustly unrecognized Negro civilization. I will not make myself the man of any past. I do not want to exalt the past at the expense of my present and of my future.”

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Ian Morrison interviews Homayoun Pourzad, a representative for the Network of Iranian Labor Unions, on the current crisis and the effects of “anit-imperial” ideologies on understanding the character of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Ben Blumberg discusses the history of the American Left and the still unmet challenge of theorizing and abolishing race and racism.

Tim Barker reviews Jeffrey B. Perry’s biography of Hubert Harrison, whose interactions with the Socialist Party are an example of the way in which racial and class questions became fatally separated on the American Left.

Max Elliot Katz reviews David Renton’s Dissident Marxism, taking the author to task for neglecting the regression of the 20th century and the liquidation of adequate theory and action.

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Ian Morrison offers an answer to the question: Why was it that the revolutionary potential of the working class seemed to melt into air?

Atiya Khan recounts the impoverished politics of the Pakistiani People’s Party.

David Black comments on Chris Cutrone’s review of Karl Korsch’s Marxism and Philosophy.

Ryan Hardy reviews this past summer’s Public Enemies: Johnny Depp as the popular thief writ large and the problems with the politics therein.

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Check out the audio recording of the Workers in a Time of War event.

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A demonstration in Lahore, 2008, led by the Labour Party Pakistan.

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.

For background reading, see The Failure of Pakistan: A Concise History of the Left.
Also checkout the event on Facebook, and the flier.

Co-sponsored by the International House Global Voices Lecture Program and the Center for International Studies.
No Admission fee. Free and open to the public. Persons with disabilities that may need assistance should contact the Office of Programs & External Relations in advance of the program at 773-753-2274.

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The Decline of the Left in the 20th Century :

Platypus banner at anti-war demonstration, Chicago, March 19, 2008

Toward a Theory of Historical Regression

A Platypus Review Special Edition

(issue 17: November, 2009)

Based on a panel discussion held by Platypus at Pace University last year, The Platypus Review traces in this special issue the slow death of the Left in our time, precisely as a means of identifying the conditions necessary for its reconstitution. Centered around four crucial years—2001, 1968, 1933, and 1917—The Decline of the Left in the 20th Century is an important step in Platypus’s attempt to advance a coherent perspective on the Left’s incoherencies, past and present.

Introduction by Benjamin Blumberg
The origin of and impetus for Platypus, in summary.

2001 by Spencer A. Leonard
A pointed argument against the prevalence of romantic Third Worldism, the lack of internationalism, and the actionist character of protest culture in today’s “Left.”

1968 by Atiya Khan
The politically restless and disoriented 1960s analyzed, with respect to the diremption of theory and practice, through the lens of the Marcuse–Adorno correspondence.

1933 by Richard Rubin
An elegiac rumination on the lives of Leon Trotsky and Walter Benjamin, who provide the basis for a discussion of what the 1930s have come to mean for Left politics today.

1917 by Chris Cutrone
Examines the work of Georg Lukàcs and Karl Korsch, whose intellectual trajectories provide a key to understanding the “brilliant failure” of 1917, without taking its failure for granted.

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While New York City might be the most suitable point for observing the world’s panorama in every respect, Chicago’s not so bad, either.

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