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What is the Platypus Review?
Taking stock of the universe of positions and goals that constitutes leftist politics today, we are left with the disquieting suspicion that a deep commonality underlies the apparent variety: What exists today is built upon the desiccated remains of what was once possible.
In order to make sense of the present, we find it necessary to disentangle the vast accumulation of positions on the Left and to evaluate their saliency for the possible reconstitution of emancipatory politics in the present. Doing this implies a reconsideration of what is meant by the Left.
Our task begins from what we see as the general disenchantment with the present state of progressive politics. We feel that this disenchantment cannot be cast off by sheer will, by simply “carrying on the fight,” but must be addressed and itself made an object of critique. Thus we begin with what immediately confronts us.
The Platypus Review is motivated by its sense that the Left is disoriented. We seek to be a forum among a variety of tendencies and approaches on the Left—not out of a concern with inclusion for its own sake, but rather to provoke disagreement and to open shared goals as sites of contestation. In this way, the recriminations and accusations arising from political disputes of the past may be harnessed to the project of clarifying the object of leftist critique.
The Platypus Review hopes to create and sustain a space for interrogating and clarifying positions and orientations currently represented on the Left, a space in which questions may be raised and discussions pursued that would not otherwise take place. As long as submissions exhibit a genuine commitment to this project, all kinds of content will be considered for publication.
Issue 160, October 2023
Issue 160, October 2023
An interview with Lars T. Lih on Kautsky, Lenin, and Trotsky
On July 22, 2023, Platypus Affiliated Society members Efraim Carlebach and D. L. Jacobs interviewed Lars T. Lih, the author of Bread and Authority in Russia: 1914–1921 (1990), Lenin Rediscovered: What is to be Done? in Context (2006), Lenin (2011), and the forthcoming What was Bolshevism?. An edited transcript follows.
The birth of the Weimar Republic: A review of Eduard Bernstein on the German Revolution
The renewed interest in “socialism” has stimulated plenty of debate about what this term means in a 21st-century context, and that discussion, of course, requires knowledge of socialist history about which most people in the United States know little. That is why Marius Ostrowski’s able translation of Eduard Bernstein’s works on the German Revolution of 1918–19 is so important.
Issue 159, September 2023
Issue 159, September 2023
Searching for a common language in the post-feudal age: An interview with Vlad
Kathrin D.
On May 30, 2022, Platypus Affiliated Society member Kathrin D. interviewed Vlad (27), a member of the Marxist group KyrgSoc (КыргСоц) in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, about the legacy of the Soviet Union in Central Asia and resulting challenges for the Kyrgyz Left. Vlad is dedicated to the rebuilding of a living Left tradition in the former Central Asian Soviet Republic.
“To correct the inegalitarian bias inherent in capitalism”: An interview with Wolfgang Streeck
Will Stratford
On March 9, 2023, Platypus Affiliated Society member Will Stratford interviewed German public intellectual and labor activist Wolfgang Streeck, former professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Cologne, author of several books on the political economy of capitalism, and current emeritus director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne. They discussed a variety of issues confronting the German Left, including neoliberalism, the Aufstehen (“Stand Up”) movement, the German Left’s alienation of AfD voters, the war in Ukraine, and both the degeneration and prospects of Leftist politics today. An edited transcript follows.
Issue 158, July-August 2023
Issue 158, July-August 2023
Historical roots of the sixties New Left: A review of Terence Renaud’s New Lefts
TERENCE RENAUD IS A LECTURER in Humanities and History at Yale, and his book New Lefts is an excellent intellectual and political history that is both universalistic yet grounded in its universalism in a deep and careful study of a particular political milieu, that of the New Beginnings socialist group in Germany from the 1920s to the emergence of the European New Left that culminated in the French student uprising of 1968.
Roswitha Scholz, Sara Rukaj, Stefan Hain
On April 29, 2022, the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted a panel titled “Gender and the Left.” The speakers were Sara Rukaj (author of Jungle World), Roswitha Scholz (Gruppe EXIT!) and Stefan Hain (Platypus Affiliated Society). A video of the discussion can be found at , and the original German transcript can be found at . It was translated into English by Julia Keller, Lisa Müller, and Tamas Vilaghy. An edited transcript follows.
ABOUT FOUR YEARS AGO, I made some statements on a panel about environmentalism. The tone, and content of those remarks was utterly flippant, promethean, and apathetic towards ecology. I am not so much revising my position that ecology is a human construct, nor that the apocalypticism of the modern ecology movement, and enslavement to the Democratic Party, are justified.
Issue 157, June 2023
Issue 157, June 2023
Praxis, lacking: On The Communist Manifesto and its historical context
THE COMMENTARY ON THE Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848) must exceed the word count of that little pamphlet by a factor of thousands, if not more. To this grand number is added another, A Spectre, Haunting: On The Communist Manifesto by British Marxist fantasy writer China Miéville.
Adi Dasgupta, Jessica Sales, Leo Niehorster-Cook
On December 8, 2022, the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted this panel at the University of California, Merced with panelists Adi Dasgupta (UC Merced), Leo Niehorster-Cook (Democratic Socialists of America), Jessica Sales (Party of Socialism and Liberalism), and Mark Woodall (United Auto Workers 2865).
A review of Karl Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Program
Lars Lih reviews the new translation of Marx's Critique of the Gotha Program, by Kevin B. Anderson and Karel Ludenhoff.
Trotsky in Tijuana: An interview with Dan La Botz
On January 21, 2023, Platypus Affiliated Society members C. D. Hardy and Desmund Hui interviewed Dan La Botz regarding his counter-historical novel Trotsky in Tijuana (2020), in which Leon Trotsky survives the assassination attempt in August 1940. An edited transcript follows.
Issue 156, May 2023
Issue 156, May 2023
Andy Thayer, CJ Meike, Naomi Crane, Timmy Chau
On November 3, 2022, the Northwestern University chapter of the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted this panel. The panelists were Timmy Chau (director of the Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project, co-founder of Dissenters), Naomi Crane (Socialist Workers Party (U.S.)), CJ Meike (Chicago Workers’ School, Center for Political Innovation), and Andy Thayer (Gay Liberation Network). D. M. Mathis of Platypus moderated the panel.
“Enough is Enough” and the Left
Daniel Randall, Kevin Bean, Richard Brenner
On November 10, 2022, the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted a panel discussion at the Mayday Rooms in London, regarding the “Enough is Enough” campaign and the cost-of-living crisis. This panel was hosted in tandem with panels on the same issue in Germany and Austria. The speakers were Kevin Bean (Labour Party Marxists), Richard Brenner (Socialist Labour Network), and Daniel Randall (member of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), but speaking as an individual).
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