Introducing Platypus

Ian Morrison

WHAT IS PLATYPUS? Platypus was set up as an attack on thought-taboos. From the start, we’ve rejected the usual Left culture, which preaches the struggle against the common enemy and focuses all of its energy on demonizing this or that Right-wing clique. In quite the opposite way, we have chosen instead to elucidate the conservative character of our time, and the obvious weakness of the Left, perhaps even its total disappearance, not as a question of bodies on the ground, but as the logical by-product of the Left’s ideological murkiness, as an utter lack of clarity about the world we live in, and moreover as an all-pervasive stigmatization of debate and critique. In the past it may have seemed as if philosophers had hitherto only interpreted the world, but today it seems that people seeking to change the world have stopped interpreting it. The Platypus synthesis Given our philosophy, it should come as no surprise History, theory, and practice that our project started as a reading group, hoping to decode the overlapping social imaginations that cover the present with a thick fog. Our initial point of Plenary presentations and discussion departure was an exploration of the disconnection at the first annual between the Old and New Left, as well as a study of how this confusion plays out in our time. And, Platypus Affiliated Society pessimistically, we've come to believe that it is entirely international convention possible that the Marxist tradition will be eclipsed during our lifetimes — that is if it hasn't already been eclipsed Chicago — unless the ban on debate and critique about the Left’s June 12-14, 2009 history is lifted. The difficulty in addressing the history of the Left is complex, of course, and our world has produced a plethora of shields against this, not least of contents page which is the dogmatism of the pseudo-“Left.” Today, we can neither read the classics of revolutionary Marxism as a road map, nor can we necessarily reject their Introducing Platypus insights. Because part of the problem is that it is simply

not possible to know more about revolutionary change Ian Morrison 1 than those did in times past who actually struggled to bring their thoughts to the light of day. So, as an Four types of ambiguity estimation of our time, we are interested in exploring the fetters and taboos that impinge on exploring the Richard Rubin 3 highest aspirations for human freedom, which we believe are located in the Marxist tradition. History, theory In late 2006 we began to move outside of our reading group model and started hosting events. As you all Chris Cutrone 8 know, this was during the Iraq war, in which our project was inevitably bound up. At our first public event we sparked a much-needed conversation about What is to be done? “imperialism,” perhaps the least-understood topic of our time, not least because it serves as mask for a great Ian Morrison 12 deal of confusion by acting as a superficial point of shared agreement. We feel that our project has been vindicated by that fact that almost no other group sought Discussion 14 to bring out this debate, even though the concept,

platypus1917.org Platypus synthesis “imperialism,” found its way on to almost every placard I should say, in order to make myself clear, that we and banner during this time. And yet it is not at all self- find all these questions deeply ambiguous. In all these evident how one would overcome this problem of conversations we have avoided making the typical misunderstanding “imperialism” while continuing to predictions and reciting the usual clichés. We refuse to dress up every social movement as revolutionary for our own psychological satisfaction, or see every catastrophe, be it economic or militaristic, as an opportunity, if only for protest. We have decided instead to set up a space for people to take a backwards glance: to work through ideas in an open manner; to finally take a sober look at reality; and, hopefully, transcend the misplaced pessimism and optimism, in favor of a critical approach to our time. This has also inspired us to publish the Platypus Review. Like our public events it is not a venue simply for Platypus members or other people close to our project. We are hoping to create a clearinghouse for reflections on the Left, for anyone willing to break out of the typical conformity and the blind obliviousness of protest culture. Platypus has been forging a conversation about the denounce it. If it were, we would have long since Left that we believe would otherwise not happen. The overcome it. For this reason, we believe that one needs groups which fall under the banner of the “Left” today, to trace the historical changes, especially of ideas like are nothing if not professionals at ignoring each other. “imperialism,” and not paper-over the problems in the They use a vast array of techniques to serve this end, typical anti-intellectual manner of the “Left.” Yet, so whether it is overtly ignoring each other, or the endless profoundly deep-rooted is the hatred for change, the platitudes on shared ground carefully calculated to avoid hatred for a thoroughgoing critique, that our project was any real debate. Platypus emphatically rejects the idea mistaken to be pro-war, as if to raise a single question that the struggle simply goes on. would blow over the Left’s house of cards. And perhaps this single question mark will bring the house of cards For Platypus, the movement is nothing if the goal down. So much the better, in our opinion, for the appears as a farce. This is why we say: “The Left is inability to understand a phenomenon like “imperialism” dead! — Long live the Left!” | P is as much a part of conserving it as anything else. Perhaps the inability to understand, in fact, is the most important part in perpetuating imperialism. Our project would like to raise that possibility. Recently, we've also attempted to start a public conversation about how people are mobilized: for what ends, and under what psychology? We have addressed this through an interrogation of some of the other key buzz words the Left likes to throw around, namely Resistance, Reform and Revolution. And we have found that in the virtual world the Left lives in it is not at all easy to articulate these supposedly strict delineations. Following this discussion, we tried to interrogate the rather abstract notion of “movements” — another mysterious, almost occultist thing we are all supposedly clear about. In our brief history, we have covered a large range of topics including: the conflict in Israel/Palestine; the catastrophe in South Asia; changes in the character of racism; and most recently, in reaction to the recently dubbed economic crisis, we asked working class organizers how their work has been affected. And we’re going to cover a range of other topics at our convention this weekend.

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Platypus synthesis creature: part eagle, part lion, part horse and part Four types of ambiguity snake.

Richard Rubin The creator of this political monster is supposedly a nefarious character named Chris Cutrone, a charismatic THE TITLE OF THIS TALK, “Four Types of Ambiguity,” is, of teacher and corrupter of impressionable youth. Before I course, a take-off on William Empson’s classic 1930 book Seven Types of Ambiguity, which is heralded with launching the New Criticism. The thesis of it is that Platypus as a project can best be understood by considering the plausible misreadings of Platypus and how Platypus both is and is not like the ways it might be misunderstood. Hence, the emphasis on our ambiguity. But perhaps that is exactly what one would expect from a project named after an egg-laying mammal that looks like a cross between a duck and a beaver! The notion of ambiguity is itself ambiguous, however. To quote Empson, An ambiguity in ordinary speech means something pronounced and as a rule witty or deceitful. I propose to use the word in an extended sense, and I shall think relevant to my subject of verbal nuance, however, slight, which gives room to alternative reactions to the same begin an examination of the intellectual content of piece of language. Sometimes . . . the word may Platypus, some remarks about the personal and be stretched absurdly far, but it is descriptive pedagogical aspects of the project are in order. As because it suggests the analytical method, and someone who knew Chris before he became a Cutronist, with that I am concerned. I have a somewhat different take on the issue of At the end of this talk I hope you feel that I have been “Cutronism.” Unlike many of you, for whom the ideas of witty and you may very well feel that I have been Platypus, and indeed the existence of Platypus, came as deceitful, and like Empson I will at times stretch the a unified package, I came to them at the same time Chris word “ambiguity” absurdly far. Unlike him, I will be did, not as a student of his, but simply as someone concerned with ambiguities of thought and ideology following a common ideological trajectory. Because rather than language. Chris’s pedagogy has been so central to the development of Platypus, my long, non-pedagogical I will consider four types of ambiguity relating to relationship to Chris gives me a better perspective from Platypus, or, should I say, four questions. The first three which to discuss Platypus. While Chris has been central types of ambiguity are rather straightforward and involve to the development of Platypus, and Platypus would political misreadings. The fourth, however, is more certainly not exist without him, he is not the sole source complicated and involves epistemological problems. of its ideas, even though this may seem to be the case The first three involve accusations and come from because he has been our main spokesman. Does without. The fourth, however, is a problem coming from Platypus then have an “ideology?” Where did it come within. It involves not how outsiders are likely to from? The answer to these questions cannot be as misunderstand the project, but rather how we ourselves straightforward as one would hope. I will use phrases are likely to misunderstand the problems we pose. We like “we” and “Platypus,” but these are meant to suggest will leave consideration of it for last. an idealized collective consciousness not the decisions The three political accusations that we will consider of a specific body or even particular individuals. It are that we are Spartacists, that we are represents what I estimate is the basic common neoconservatives, and that we are liberals. Like understanding of those members of Platypus who have classical anti-Semitic theories about Jews, that combine the best understanding of the intellectual foundations of contradictory notions of Jews as plutocrats and Jews as the project. It is certainly not, as I have indicated, an communists, the hostility to and anxiety generated by exegesis of “Chris Cutrone thought.” I, for one, have Platypus seems to take in contradictory notions, so that significant disagreements with many of Chris’s some of our enemies seem to feel that we are some sort formulations. On the other hand, it is not a of monstrous Spartacist neo-Con Liberals all at once! I democratically agreed-upon programme, either. As a am reminded by this of the Hippogriff, a mythological political organization, Platypus seeks to be run by a democratically elected leadership, but as an ideological

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Platypus synthesis enterprise the pedagogical model predominates. This is and “sectarian” in a secondary sense, that is, they have a somewhat contradictory and undesirable state of been driven into a posture which necessarily seems affairs, but is also at present a necessary one even if it “crazy” and “sectarian,” and the need to maintain that gives rise to the notion of Platypus as a Cutronist cult. position does ultimately end up making them “crazy” and “sectarian” in reality. But they are certainly not Platypus is not a political party and does not have a “ultra-Leftist,” and that they are perceived as such by “line.” Yet it clearly stakes out certain ideological nearly everyone on the Left is a sign of how far to the positions. Explaining the tension between these two Right most of the “Left” has gone. The tragedy of the statements can become as complicated as explaining Spartacists is that they are hated, not for their actual the particle-wave duality in physics. Precision in certain pathologies, but rather for their non-pathological areas is achieved at the expense of precision in others. aspects. It is not their shrillness that is the real reason Platypus is still a work-in-progress. The questions it they are despised, but rather their genuine insights into seeks to pose are extremely difficult ones that have no the nature of political reality. The Sparts understand easy answers. Some of them may be unanswerable, and that the vast majority of the so-called “Left” is really a Platypus as a project may be a delusion. But we do not “fake Left” and that this fact is a fundamental reason want to pretend that Platypus is merely an open-ended why the world is such a miserable place. What the search for truth. Platypus embodies a distinct sensibility Spartacist league does not account for, however, is why and set of ideas that make it unique on the Left, or millions and tens of millions of people do not share their rather among the ruins of the historic Left. Like our views. But like the Red Queen in Alice through the namesake, we are a peculiar creature. Looking Glass, the Sparts run as fast as they can, but Here I will now try to explore our peculiarities in a only to stay in the same place. This is our fundamental somewhat peculiar way. Instead of merely indignantly difference with them. Our emphasis is on historical rejecting the accusations, I will try to seek a limited truth regression. Although they inevitably assume our in each of them, and show that in each case a fragment differences are based on some set of political has been mistaken for the totality. We will look at each differences — such as the Iraq war — our actual part of the Hippogriff in turn, and ask what it says about differences are meta-historical and involve the nature of us that we are understood this way. Marxism, indeed the nature of history itself. It is impossible to express these in the language available to The first accusation we will consider is that Platypus the Spartacists. A mathematical analogy may be useful. is a form of Spartacism and that we are crypto- The Riemannian notion of curved space can not be Spartacists. As most of you here will know, the expressed in the language of Euclidean geometry. relationship of Platypus to the actual Spartacist League Things can be curved in space but space itself can not be is quite asymmetrical. The Spartacist League has curved. Curved space to a Euclidean geometer is simply nothing but vitriolic contempt for us. To them, we are gibberish. On the other hand, from a Riemannian “pro-imperialist,” a “talk shop,” et cetera. Certainly, the standpoint Euclidean geometry is easy to understand. It actual Spartacists do not see us as in any way similar to is simply the special case where the curvature of space them. We, though, have considerable respect for the is zero. However, accepting the logical coherence of Spartacist League, or at least their historic role. We non-Euclidean geometries still leaves open the question encourage people to read many of their pamphlets, for of whether or not they are true. For many decades after example, and treat them as qualitatively different from non-Euclidean geometries had been accepted by other sectarian Left groups. How is this asymmetry to mathematicians, it remained an open question as to be understood? There is a certain type of glass that on whether or not real physical space was Euclidean or not. one side looks like an ordinary mirror but on the other Eventually, it was determined by physicists that it is not side is like looking through a transparent but dark- Euclidean, but that is an empirical fact. Kant was wrong colored window, rather like a gigantic set of sunglasses. to believe on a priori grounds that space was necessarily It is often used in nursery schools, so that parents can Euclidean, but equally clearly there is no logical reason come and observe their children playing and interacting for space not to be Euclidean, as it seemed to be for with the other children, but the children do not know thousands of years. Similarly, although, to the Sparts, a they are being observed. The Spartacists are on the Platypus position is necessarily gibberish, the opposite mirror-side of the glass, and they cannot see us, is not the case, and from our meta-historical standpoint because they can only see reflections of themselves, and one could raise the question seriously of whether, after we can only be understood as a distorted reflection, all, the Sparts might not be right. I obviously do not people who, as they put it, “use our texts to eviscerate think that is so, since if I did I would not be here, but that them of revolutionary content.” We, on the other hand, is no reason to rejoice. Indeed, if the Spartacists were can “see” the Sparts, as through a glass darkly. right, and Platypus were wrong, that would be reason to If one mentions the Sparts to most Leftists, the rejoice, since ours is undoubtedly a darker view than response is likely to be that they are “crazy” or “ultra- theirs. However, perhaps that last sentence is not quite Leftist sectarians.” In fact, the Sparts are only “crazy” right. Ours is a darker view than the Sparts to the extent

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Platypus synthesis that we believe what we say and they believe what they conservatism represents an unconscious alienation say. But often the Sparts remind one of soldiers bravely from the conservatism and cynicism of the “Left” we are doing their duty, willing to fight to the death even though interested in it. In so far as the response to this they know the war is lost. The willingness to express alienation is an open embrace of the Right it is pessimism is not necessarily the best measure of it. uninteresting. We do not need to “support” the neocons Only at their height could the Greeks write great — whose policies, of course, are being continued by tragedies; in their decadence they could at best produce Obama — or U.S. imperialism, because they and it need the pleasant farces of the New Comedy. the support of Platypus as little as the North Korean “deformed workers’ state” needs the Spartacist League If Platypus is not a form of Spartacism, then perhaps to defend it. we are form of neo-conservatism? Just as no actual Spartacist is going to see us bearing a resemblance to For us, the problem of neo-conservatism is Spartacism, no actual neo-conservative is going to fundamentally about understanding the “Left,” or, in the mistake us for neo-conservatives. But the impulse to case of the neocons, “the ex-Left,” as a collection of see us as neocons is highly symptomatic. Like the symptoms. Etymologically, the word “symptom” is hatred of the Sparts, the hysteria about the neocons related to the word “asymptote.” One might say that reveals a great deal about the bad faith of the “Left.” Platypus is the study of the asymptotic symptoms of the Left — the recognition of a meeting point, “at infinity,” of The sense that we are neo-conservatives is not symptoms of an historical condition that is poorly really the sense that we are like Irving Kristol or Paul represented by the categories of “Left” and “Right.” Wolfowitz but rather that we are like Christopher Hitchens. The anger directed at a Hitchens is the anger Finally, we come to the third part of the political directed at an ex-Leftist who insists that it was the Left Hippogriff. Perhaps we in Platypus are simply liberals, that betrayed him, rather than he the Left. Just as the in the end? Certainly, for the most part we are primarily Stalinophobia of the late Shachtman, causing him to talking to them. It is unlikely we can win people over support Nixon, was at least subjectively a distorted from, say, the Spartacist League, and it is unlikely we extension of his earlier Trotskyist anti-Stalinism, can win over neo-conservatives, whatever hidden similarly the impulse that pushes a Hitchens toward affinities we may have with either or both. Instead, we supporting U.S. imperialism is revulsion at Leftist talk to a mostly soft Left-liberal, rad-lib, anarchoid support for Islamist reactionaries. The notion that the milieu. Most of these people do not like being called neocons are “Trotskyists” who have pinned their faith on “liberals.” Anarchists think of themselves as U.S. imperialism instead of world revolution is, of revolutionary, as more radical than “conservative” course, ridiculous, but it contains a germ of truth. It Marxists. To such people, we say that anarchism needs, however, to be stood on its head. It is the failure nowadays is just a dishonest liberalism, a liberalism in of Trotskyism — that is, revolutionary Marxism — that denial about its own liberalism. Indeed, we prefer the has made neo-conservatism possible. The neo- honest liberals, the open Obama supporters to the conservatives are a distorted reflection of the Left, just anarchists and ISO supporters, et al. Ideally, for as classical conservatism is a response to the rise of the Platypus — although it will never happen — all the Left. It was the French Revolution that made possible anarchists, anarchoids, ISO-ers, RCP-ers, et cetera Edmund Burke, but it was the 1960s that paved the way would suddenly vanish in the Rapture, leaving only for neo-conservatism. Obama supporters, the Sparts, and us. In such a context, Platypus would have the least noise to compete If the hatred directed at the Spartacists is because with. they remind the “Left” of its abandonment of revolutionary Marxism, the hysteria about the neocons is Thus, in SDS, an organization in which several because they remind the Left that all political change in Platypus members participated, the role of Platypus was the world now happens from the Right. What is most essentially to try to push SDS into a recognition of its striking about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is that own incoherent liberalism. The goal was not to push military might of U.S. imperialism is not aimed at Leftist SDS “to the Left,” but rather into a self-recognition of its insurgents, as it would have been in the past, but own incoherent politics. To imagine one could push SDS Islamist reactionaries. Merely saying that makes many “to the Left” would have been to give too much credit to on the Left very uncomfortable, though. To us, the the incoherent liberalism that motivated it. This attitude apostasy of a Hitchens is a less clear, less provocative, by Platypus naturally can make us seem to the Right of and — let us say it — less hopeful version of Platypus SDS, as a recent critique of Platypus’s participation in declaring “The Left is Dead!” the Naomi Klein/Milton Friedman Institute debate said, in the Spartacist League’s newspaper Workers What is interesting to Platypus about the neocons is Vanguard, that “Platypus does not even want the crumbs not their ideas. After all, supporting U.S. imperialism is they do.” hardly a strikingly original idea. Rather it is what they illuminate, in a negative sense. It is in so far as neo-

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Platypus synthesis But this preference for honest liberalism, over the people outside this room including both Postone and the manifold dishonest varieties, contains yet another Sparts would dismiss this idea as hogwash or lunacy. danger. Thus, while Platypus certainly wanted (and The second question is internal to Platypus and expected) Obama to win, it did so for the peculiar reason concerns the relative weight of these two elements. that it saw an Obama victory disorienting to the “bad There are two ways that Platypus members tend to think Left,” and thus politically clarifying. But if Obama’s of the Platypus project ideologically. One group tends to victory was disorienting to the bad Left, it was equally think of it as “Left-Postone-ism,” and the other as “neo- disorienting to us, since there was an ever-present Trotskyism,” and there is considerable tension between temptation to read Obama-ism in a traditional these two views, so it is not only a question of whether progressive-ist way rather than as further regress. The one accepts the possibility of the synthesis but also the problem posed by liberalism is that what constitutes relative weight one assigns to the components. “revolutionary politics” in the present is not clear. On Of course, this attempt to “marry” Postone and the one hand, a group like the ISO simply dresses up Spartacism may remind some people of the anecdote rad-lib movement-ism as “revolutionary politics,” and, about George Bernard Shaw. When a famous beauty on the other, the Sparts simply understand suggested they marry, saying, “With my beauty and your “revolutionary politics” as the maintenance of correct brains, think what wonderful children we would have,” positions. For us, however, it is not clear that there is Shaw replied, “Yes, but what if they had my beauty and any possibility of “revolutionary politics” at all in the your brains.” present. Thus, we are in the paradoxical position of defending the necessity of “revolutionary politics” while Lastly, I will raise the epistemological problem. I simultaneously bracketing the possibility of will state it in its strongest form. Is it possible that we in “revolutionary politics.” Clearly, a very thin line Platypus will be the greatest misunderstanders of separates intellectual honesty from self-delusion, here! Platypus? Is it possible that we in Platypus cannot Precisely, because the default political background understand Platypus? That Platypus is, in essence, a against which we operate is an academic liberalism, our project based on a deep misunderstanding of itself? Yes, bracketing the possibility of revolutionary politics, it is possible. If we see in the present degenerate state despite our insistence on its necessity, as the lodestar of of Leftist politics a collection of symptoms, we must add our ideological orientation, nevertheless leaves open that we too are an acute symptom. If the Left is a constantly the possibility of our simply becoming a corpse, we too are part of the stench! We must, though, “smarter” version of academic liberalism. Despite the like Alyosha Karamazov faced with the stench of the high levels anxiety generated by our willingness to rotting Holy Father Zossima, not surrender to our initial entertain “Spartacist” or “neo-conservative” positions, impulse of despair with this realization. Thinking the real ideological danger is, in fact, that we will simply through the limitation of our own ability to understand become a smart, slightly eccentric version of academic Platypus may, paradoxically, be the best way of Leftism, a more serious version of Slavoj Zizek, perhaps. understanding Platypus. The collegiality of the academic environment we The ideological core of our project is based on predominantly operate in also acts as an obvious recognition of past defeats and their cumulative effects, inhibiting force. Fundamentally, academic Leftism, and and, as such, we are in constant danger of embracing by default we are a variety of academic Leftism at this the necessity of defeat even as we formally deny it. This point, is deeply apolitical. is a fairly obvious danger. But the deeper problem is The complement of our ambivalent relationship to what, for lack of a better term, must be called the Spartacism is our relationship to the work of Moishe “opacity” of the present. With each passing generation, Postone. As much as the Platypus synthesis can be the Marxist project becomes more tenuous. Its described as an attempt to synthesize Trotsky and language becomes more esoteric. It becomes both Adorno, it can also be described as an attempt to unite more elusive and allusive, more akin to religious what is of value in the superficially wildly divergent mysticism than scientific materialism. It is not merely insights of the Spartacist League and Moishe Postone. bourgeois ideology that obscures social reality, as for To do this, particularly since both the Sparts and our high-Marxist predecessors, rather, the nature of Postone are still alive, unlike Trotsky and Adorno, we social reality itself seems to become increasingly must, of course, maintain the conceit that we opaque, and the decline of Marxism is accompanied by a understand both the Sparts and Postone better than they simultaneous disintegration of bourgeois culture itself, do themselves. This poses two questions. The first is the ground out of which Marxism emerged, as an whether the Platypus thesis that both Postone and the immanent critique. Post-modernism is the reactionary Sparts can be understood as wildly divergent symptoms manifestation of this, the celebration, as emancipatory, of a common crisis on the Left — indeed, as the most of an incoherence that is the product of contingent interesting symptoms, as opposed to the myriad historical defeats. Against post-modernism, we are uninteresting symptoms — is in fact correct. Most hyper-modernists. It is not “modernism” that failed, but

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Platypus synthesis rather our condition is the expression of the inability — contrary, the impulse to produce and consume ultimately political — to complete modernity by pornography and to repress it are aspects of the same abolishing capitalism. problem. Pornography and puritanism are twins, not opposites. Pornography is ultimately only about sex in Platypus is clearly marked by its moment. Mostly the same way music is about sound. Sex is merely the Platypus is a group of quite young people. The oldest medium through which a condition of unfreedom is contingent in Platypus consists of those of us who were mirrored. As such pornography is inherently a rightwing in college in 1989. The youngest, of people born or in phenomenon. Can one imagine a pornmovie trying to utero then. None of us directly experienced the politics express revolutionary sentiments? Only as parody. By of the 1960s. We are a product of late-Bush-ism and contrast, pornography created deliberately as fascist early Obama-ism. Culturally, we share in the general propaganda is extremely easy to imagine. Yet exhaustion with baby-boomer-ism and the endless pornography is at the same time ambiguous. One might recycling of the 1960s, a decade towards which we have say that it is a frozen utopian longing, and the denial of a rather jaundiced and certainly not nostalgic attitude. that longing, simultaneously. And just as sado- The youth of Platypus also enables it to historicize the masochistic role playing is not equivalent to the desire to 20th century. This has many advantages since it enables be an actual master or an actual slave, so one should one to sidestep many problems. Nowadays, historians of not expect that a fantasy of unlimited freedom is a the 16th and 17th centuries do not feel compelled to take genuine desire for it. a side in the religious wars between Protestants and Catholics. A modern historian would not generally be About a month ago, on a wall in Neve Tzedek, a interested, as was still the case in the 19th century, hipster neighborhood in south Tel Aviv, I read a graffito whether, say, Wallenstein or Richelieu should be praised that said, “If you are bored, you are already resisting the or condemned for their actions, but rather would want to system.” The image that came to mind was of someone understand the context in which their actions occurred. watching a pornmovie and being utterly, unbearably In a similar way, the struggle between Cannon and bored by it, but unable, for some reason, to turn it off Shachtman in 1939-40 has achieved a certain distance and do something else. Perhaps this person would for Platypus that it certainly has not for a group like the continue to hope that the movie would become titillating. Spartacist League. We do not study the history of the Perhaps a nostalgia for a time when pornography was Left to know where we would have been on the still arousing would continue to sustain viewing. Or, barricades, but rather to find the ruptures and perhaps the excruciating boredom would simply be subterranean linkages in a problematic history. But, accepted, masochistically, as suitable punishment for while this attitude has advantages, it poses certain the guilt of craving pornography in the first place? Or problems, too. I have been speaking so far of the perhaps viewing would be sustained by the thought that resistance to Platypus, the anxiety generated by the everything else was equally boring and obscene, and project. But what of the opposite? Often, I have found that the whole world is just bad pornography, anyway. myself wondering at the ease with which Platypus was Like pornography, the Left is most honest when it is being accepted. It seemed to be going down too easily bored with itself. with many people. I am made uncomfortable often by Unlike pornography, psychoanalysis offers a scarier the absence of resistance to Platypus, just as I am version of freedom. We in Platypus have taken on a role constantly frustrated by the manifest resistance to the of psychoanalysts of the “Left.” We seek to dig up and project. I have often suspected that if the Platypus understand repressed memories in order to overcome notion of the “death of the Left” were to become their debilitating effect. Platypus is, like psychoanalysis, widespread, it would signal the failure of Platypus, not a “talking cure.” We are, as we are accused of being, a its success, since it would mean only that the notion the “talk shop.” Such an approach runs the risk of seeming “Left is dead” had lost its provocative quality, and thus — and perhaps becoming — nothing but talk. Certainly, been naturalized as fact. it seems at odds with the heroic traditions of the Trying to understand this paradox, I have been led to classical Left we admire, which sought to radically a curious and rather provocative analogy. Radical transform the world. Is Platypus, then, a reversion to political theory in our time reminds me of pornography. those philosophers who “sought merely to interpret the If Marcuse in the 1960s offered the notion of “repressive world?” No. tolerance,” we might offer, by contrast, a notion of Capitalism is unique in human history, as the only “repressive transgression.” Radical political thought social system to produce the “Left.” For us, both the nowadays is constantly stressing its naughtiness, but future of humanity and the key to understanding its past such naughtiness, like pornography, only ends up lie in the now-uncertain fate of this small fragment of reinforcing what it supposedly resists. It would clearly capitalist modernity. Like our predecessors on the be a mistake to imagine that societies that tolerate, classical Left, we see no future for humanity in a produce, and consume pornography are more sexually decaying capitalism. Unlike them, we see our main liberated than societies that try to repress it. On the

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Platypus synthesis immediate task as a critique of the Left. Our response is historically contingent. If we were living in 1909 instead History, theory of 2009, this would not have been our diagnosis. Chris Cutrone As I have indicated, such an approach is fraught with ambiguity, and, as I have shown, the more one examines I WANT TO BEGIN, straightaway, with something Richard these ambiguities, the more complicated their ambiguity raised, on which I would like to try to elaborate, by way becomes. Our Marxism is a bridge between highly of properly motivating the more “positive” aspect of “orthodox” and intensely “revisionist” readings, and we Platypus’s theory. Not how we are misrecognized, as are suspended above a deep, fog-shrouded abyss whose either neoconservatives, crypto-Spartacists or academic bottom we cannot see. Left-liberals, and what this says “negatively” about our But probably the deepest and most perplexing of all project, as if in a photonegative, as Richard has our ambiguities, both to ourselves and others, is that, discussed, but rather how we positively think about the although Platypus is itself a response to generations of intellectual content of our project. defeats, and, as such, suffused with despair, it is also a Let me begin with a thought experiment: What if the project based on profound hopefulness. | P Spartacist critique of the 1960s New Left and Moishe Postone’s critique of the New Left, as disparate and antithetical as they might appear, were both correct? In other words, what if, paradoxically, the problem of the 1960s New Left was that it was simultaneously “too traditional” and “not traditional enough” in its Marxism? What if the Spartacists were right that Stalinism and Trotskyism (and Bolshevism more generally) were not to be conflated, as they were in both Stalinophilic New Leftism, of Maoism and Che Guevarism, etc., and Stalinophobic neo-anarchism, Situationism, etc.? And what if Postone was correct, that Trotskyism, as part of “traditional Marxism,” was unable to deal with the problem of mid-20th Century capitalism’s differences from earlier forms, and not able to address why revolutionary proletarian class consciousness, as it had previously manifested, did not continue, but seemed to become either irrelevant or, worse, affirmative of the status quo of the “administered society” of “organized” capitalism in the mid-20th Century? What both the Spartacists and Postone are unable to address, however, is why neither of their perspectives, which purported to grasp the problem of capital more deeply and in broader historical context than others in the post-1960s New Left, found virtually no adherents. If we in Platypus say that both the Spartacists and Postone are correct, but both fail to adequately account for their own forms of consciousness, this raises an interesting paradox that points back to issues of historical interpretation for the Spartacists and Postone’s points of departure, namely, Bolshevism as revolutionary Marxism, and Marx’s own Marxism. We could say that the problem of the Spartacists and Postone point to two different aspects of temporality in the history of the Left, that the Spartacists act as if no historical time intervenes between themselves and 1917, and Postone acts as if the progression of historical transformation leaves the Marxist tradition permanently superseded. Both the Spartacists and Postone acknowledge, in however a limited fashion, the problem of regression; in

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Platypus synthesis the case of the Spartacists, the regression is post-1917, ruling class gives the commands. The same and for Postone it is post-1968, but both consider leap in the open air of history is the dialectical regression in only a linear and static manner, as if the one, which is how Marx understood the emancipatory moments of 1917 and 1968 wait to be revolution.

In attempting to read the history of the accelerated demise and self-liquidation of the Left after the 1960s, reading it, as Benjamin put it, “against the grain,” we in Platypus face a problem discussed by Nietzsche in his 1873 essay “On the Use and Abuse of History for Life:” A person must have the power and from time to time use it to break a past and to dissolve it, in order to be able to live. . . . People or ages serving life in this way, by judging and destroying a past, are always dangerous and in danger. . . . It is an attempt to give oneself, as it were, a past after the fact, out of which we may be descended in opposition to the one from which we are descended. resumed at some time in a future that never comes. — However, as Karl Korsch wrote, in his 1923 essay on And, behind both of these, lies 1848, which also “Marxism and Philosophy:” continues to haunt our world, as taken up by the [Marx wrote (in his 1859 Preface to A Situationists, “Left-” and “council” or “libertarian” Contribution to the Critique of Political communists and “anarchists.” What if all three are Economy) that] “[Humanity] always sets itself correct, that we are indeed haunted by 1848, 1917 and only such problems as it can solve; since, 1968, that these moments actually circumscribe present looking at the matter more closely it will always possibilities? Then the question would be: How so? be found that the problem itself arises only The point would be, contra both the Spartacists and when the material conditions for its solution are Postone, to grasp how and why the pertinence of history already present or are at least understood to be changes and fluctuates, over time, and as a function of in the process of emergence.” [But] this dictum the present. The point would be to be able to grasp a is not affected by the fact that a problem which non-linear conception of historical progression — and supersedes present relations may have been regression. If, according to the Spartacists, the moment formulated in an anterior epoch. of the Bolshevik Revolution remains permanently As Adorno wrote, in his 1966 book Negative Dialectics: relevant, and, for Postone, Marx remains permanently relevant, this side of overcoming capital, then we ought The liquidation of theory by dogmatization and to be able to explain how this is so, and in ways the thought taboos contributed to the bad practice. . Spartacists and Postone themselves have been unable . . The interrelation of both moments [of theory to do. This is precisely what Platypus sets out to do. and practice] is not settled once and for all but fluctuates historically. . . . Those who chide Please let me begin again, with 4 quotations, to be theory [for being] anachronistic obey the topos considered in constellation. The first is from Walter of dismissing, as obsolete, what remains painful Benjamin’s 1940 “Theses on the Philosophy of History:” [because it was] thwarted. . . . The fact that Karl Kraus said that “Origin is the goal.” History history has rolled over certain positions will be is the subject of a structure whose site is not respected as a verdict on their truth content only homogenous, empty time, but time filled by the by those who agree with Schiller that ‘world presence of the now. Thus, to Robespierre history is the world tribunal’. What has been ancient Rome was a past charged with the time cast aside but not absorbed theoretically will of the now which he blasted out of the often yield its truth content only later. It festers continuum of history. The French Revolution as a sore on the prevailing health; this will lead viewed itself as Rome incarnate. It evoked back to it in changed situations. ancient Rome the way fashion evokes costumes We in Platypus consider ourselves, quite self- of the past. Fashion has a flair for the topical, consciously, to be a function of such a return, under no matter where it stirs in the thickets of long changed circumstances, to what was “cast aside but not ago; it is a tiger’s leap into the past. This jump, absorbed theoretically.” We think that such an approach however, takes place in an arena where the as ours is only possible by virtue of the ways history, in

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Platypus synthesis failing to be transcended, continues to “fester,” “yielding Here it is not righteousness which sits in the its truth content,” but “only later.” Our approach is judgment seat or, even less, mercy which informed by prior models for such an endeavor, namely, announces judgment, but life alone, that dark, Trotsky and Adorno, and those who succeeded them, driving, insatiable self-desiring force. namely, the Spartacists and Moishe Postone. So the question becomes, how, if at all, does memory of We think that figures of historical thought and action historical Marxism serve the needs of the present? We such as Marx, Lenin and Luxemburg, Trotsky, Lukács, in Platypus recognize both the obscurity of the heritage Korsch, Benjamin and Adorno have an apparently of revolutionary Marxism and the ways the alternative, fluctuating pertinence, but we consider them to remain non-revolutionary lineage of the “Left” in its decline has in constellation with the present, however distantly, been naturalized and so is no longer recognized as such. precisely because these historical figures “remain Our point of departure is the hypothesis that the history painful [because they were] thwarted,” and because of the Left, however obscure, is the actual history of the “history rolled over [their] positions” without their present, or, more accurately, in Hegelian terms, how the having been actually transcended and superseded, but history of the Left is the history of the present in its only mistakenly “dismissed as obsolete.” As Adorno put “actuality,” in its potential for change and it, in one of his last essays, “Late Capitalism or transformation, and in its constraint of such potential. Industrial Society?,” or “Is Marx Obsolete?,” if Marx has We are bound by the history of the Left, whether we become obsolete, this obsolescence will only be capable recognize this or not. of being overcome on the basis of Marx’s own thought For example, we follow Trotsky’s caveat about the and model of historical action. We in Platypus think the danger of being Stalinist in “method” if not in avowed same goes for Luxemburg, Lenin and Trotsky, and “politics,” and judge the “Left” today to be beholden to Adorno himself. Stalinism in importantly unacknowledged ways. Ian If these historical figures are obsolete but still wrote an article in the May issue of The Platypus Review remain capable of holding our attention and imagination, (#12), on “Resurrecting the ’30s,” in which he cited C. then we are tasked with explaining any continued Wright Mills on how the “nationalization” of the Left in pertinence they have by reference to their own models of the 1930s-40s was “catastrophic.” We recognize this historical thought and action, and thus, in a sense, “nationalization,” the narrowing of horizons for Leftist “transcending” them, but only through “remembering” politics that has been taken for granted by the Left, them, and on the basis that they themselves provide for especially after WWII, to be the very essence of Stalinism our understanding them. We want to transform the and its historical legacy in the present. More ways these figures haunt us in the present into a matter importantly, we recognize that such “nationalization” of of actual gratitude as opposed to guilt (as Horkheimer Left politics was utterly foreign to the perspectives of and Adorno put it, in The Dialectic of Enlightenment, Marx and the 2nd International radical Marxists, Lenin, following Freudian psychoanalysis, about “The Theory of Luxemburg and Trotsky. Hence, we find in their example Ghosts”). a potential critical vantage-point regarding the subsequent historical trajectory of the Left. We recognize that Marx and the best Marxists, such as Luxemburg, Lenin and Trotsky, will be transcended Furthermore, Nietzsche described the danger of only by being fulfilled. We want to actually make them [the] attempt to give oneself, as it were, a past obsolete, whereas we find their (pseudo- after the fact, out of which we may be descended )“obsolescence” declared by the “Left” today to be a in opposition to the one from which we are function of trying to repress or ward them off instead. descended. It is always a dangerous attempt, We begin with the discomfort of their memory, as an because it is so difficult to find a borderline to important symptom of history in the present. the denial of the past and because the second But this involves a rather complicated historical nature usually is weaker than the first. approach, one that goes on in Platypus under the rubrics Richard, in his comments at our panel on “The Decline of “regression” and “critical” history, or history “against of the Left in the 20th Century” Friday night, spoke of the grain” of events, which I would like to explicate now. how Trotsky and Benjamin provide the “hidden” or Nietzsche described what he called “critical history,” esoteric history of the 20th Century, by contrast with its or an approach to history that is critical of that history “real” history, exemplified by FDR and Hitler. Our from the standpoint of the needs of the present. Let me present world is more obviously descended from the cite further from the passage of Nietzsche’s “Use and history of Hitler and FDR, who in this sense made the Abuse of History for Life” I’ve already quoted to illustrate world what it is today, as the effect of their actions. But this point. how might we (come to) be descended also from Benjamin and Trotsky? Can we claim their history as Nietzsche said that, ours, or are we condemned to being only the products of

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Platypus synthesis the history of Hitler, FDR and Stalin (and those who vanguard in the period 1919-23 in the followed them)? International stood atop a mountain. But since that time, from the period of the Trotskyist Left Does the historical possibility represented by Opposition until his death and afterward, the Trotsky and Benjamin have any meaning to us today? proletariat has mainly witnessed defeats and the Clearly their historical legacy of opposition is weaker revolutionary vanguard has either been than the other, dominant and victorious one. But was shrunken or its continuity in many countries Trotsky and Benjamin’s opposition to Stalin, FDR and broken. One cannot separate the ability to know Hitler so fruitless that we cannot make use of them in the world from the ability to change it, and our fighting against the continued effects of, and perhaps capacity to change the world is on a very small one day overcoming entirely, the legacy of the latter? It scale compared to the heroic days of the is in this sense that we can discuss the critique of the Communist International. present available in history. Robertson pointed out how deeply mistaken, and indeed Benjamin contrasted such “critical history,” of the “arrogant,” it was for us to assume that we know better “vanquished,” which is related to but the converse of than revolutionaries historically did. Our point is not to Nietzsche’s, a critique of the present from the idolize the past but rather to instill an appropriate sense standpoint of history, as opposed to Nietzsche’s critique of humility towards it. Furthermore, the point is to be of history from the standpoint of the present, to the able to think in light of the past, how the past might help affirmative history of the “victors,” the affirmation of us think in the present. For, not only might we not know history as it happened. — But, first, we need to be very their past moments better than they did, but we might clear about what Benjamin meant by the “vanquished,” not know our present moment better than they might be who were not merely history’s victims, but the defeated, able to prompt us to think about it. As Adorno wrote, in those who actually struggled and lost: Benjamin’s 1963, example was Rosa Luxemburg’s Spartacus League in the German Revolution and Civil War of 1918-19. It was The theorist who intervenes in practical on behalf of such historically “vanquished” that controversies nowadays discovers on a regular Benjamin wrote that history needed to be read “against basis and to his shame that whatever ideas he the grain” of the victories of the status quo that might contribute were expressed long ago — comprise the present. It is in memory of their sacrifices, and usually better the first time around. the “anger and hatred” that emanates from the image of But repetition is regression. The second time around “enslaved ancestors,” that Benjamin thought the may not be better, but it might yet be productive in struggle for emancipation in the present could be certain ways. motivated by history, that history could serve the present, contrary to the way it otherwise oppresses it, in For it is not a matter of how these historical thinkers its affirmation of the status quo. and actors we find important can be emulated in the present, practically, so much as it is a question of how It is in this sense that we in Platypus do not claim so far their perspective might see into the present. Not much that Marx, Luxemburg, Lenin and Trotsky, et al. what would they do in the present, but what might they were right, but rather we seek to make them right, say to our present and its historical trajectory? So, retroactively. We do not claim their relevance, but seek initially, it is a matter of theory more than practice. to make them relevant. For they did not seek merely to Engaging the historical thought and action of our find the crisis of capital, but to bring it about. Our revolutionary Marxist forebears is not a matter of critique of the present, initially, is what is available applying a ready-made theory, but rather tasks our own historically: how the present can be critiqued from the interpretative abilities. It demands that we think — not a vantage-point of history. simple matter. As Trotsky wrote to his followers in the The founder of the Spartacist League, James 1930s, we must “learn to think,” again. This is what Robertson, once put it very well, in 1973 — in the distinguishes us from other supposedly “Marxist” aftermat of the ’60s — that, organizations. And this is what informs our practice, what we actually make happen in the world, as Ian will “The truth is historically conditioned; that is, the discuss. outlook of the Communist movement of the first four congresses of the Communist International Approaching history this way allows us to pose rested upon a historic and successful upheaval certain questions. It does not provide answers. The of the revolutionary proletariat [in 1917]. A positive content of historical ideas is in their ambiguity: comparable theoretical breakthrough and this is what makes them live for us today, by contrast generalization accompanied this massive with the dead positivity of the pseudo-ideas — really, the revolutionary achievement. . . . It is as though suppression of thinking — that we find on the fake “Left” the theoretical outlook of the proletarian today. For there is not merely the question of what we

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Platypus synthesis think about the past; but, also, and, perhaps most importantly, in our regressive moment today, the What is to be done? reciprocal one: what the past might think of us. Ian Morrison As Benjamin put it, history needs to be approached from the standpoint of its potential redemption. We J. P. CANNON SAID that, think that the historical thought and action of Marxism demands to be redeemed, and that our world, dominated If the group misunderstands the task set for it by by capital, will continue to suffer so long as this task conditions of the day, if it does not know how to remains undone. We think that the constitutive horizon answer the most important of all questions in of our world was already charted, however preliminarily, politics — that is, the question of what to do next by the revolutionary politics of historical Marxism, but — then the group, no matter what its merits may that this horizon has become only blurred and forgotten otherwise be, can wear itself out in misdirected since then. We in Platypus set ourselves the task of efforts and futile activities and come to grief. initiating thought about this problem, from deep within Our project has often been subjected to two the fog of our present. We look back and see the historical fantasies. The first draws a parallel with the revolutionary Marxists looking towards us from that Partisan Review and the second with the Frankfurt faraway mountaintop. In their fleeting gaze we find an School. Our “death of the Left” thesis and the historical unfulfilled hope — and a haunting accusation. | P gulf between us and the ’30s make the practical orientation of these two projects completely anachronistic, and confuses the needs of our time. The Partisan Review sought to make a specific intervention in American socialism, and the early Frankfurt School was set up to provide an intellectual atmosphere which would transcend the sectarian divisions caused by the failure of the German Revolution. There is no such comparable milieu in our time, to either intersect or transcend. And the problem is much more thoroughgoing than simply the realization that Leftist third parties are defunct or that organized labor is fractured and weak. The groups, which talk about the Left, justify their existence on dubious grounds and do more to muddle the issues than to clarify them — this much is certainly obvious. Many of these groups are of an extremely conservative nature; they are often the manifestation of a new Right. Because the Left really is dead, we must first and foremost build intellectual milieus from scratch. As we have often said, we must “host the conversation” that would otherwise not happen, and we must demonstrate to others that the Platypus conversation can even happen at all. We have an extremely strong track record of events, providing a space in which intellectuals are able to sound stronger than they would otherwise have the opportunity to. Our main point of intersection, for better or worse, is at universities and the campus culture more broadly conceived. There is simply no other institution we could realistically intersect today. This is not a blessing. But it can raise a great deal opportunity. Universities are international phenomena. Public events. — We need to modulate between different styles of events: Large fora, public interviews, teach-ins. Our shift to a chapter model, I believe, is forcing us to change our organizational culture. In the past we have emphasized the build-up towards the event. And I am not proposing that we dramatically

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Platypus synthesis change how we plan events; creating a reading list to attending our pedagogical activities. If there is one work up to the event is extremely helpful. But what we especially surprising aspect of our project it is the way in need to focus on more than anything is regularity and which our ideas, once adequately grasped, seem to follow-through. I strongly believe that this will not be to make a permanent impression. Our ideas have not been met with indifference. What are our members going to become? Intellectuals and cultural workers. The notion of the free intellectual, like liberalism, is dead. There is much more at play than simply good ideas in the making of public intellectuals. We cannot let the topics we have been trying so hard to unearth become taboo to us in our public dealings. There really are people who have made a concerted effort to squash our project. The sectarian Left would like us to disappear. They are set in their ways and they would prefer it if their ideas never met the light of day. The need to go to Left events. — Our attendance in itself will be corrosive on the existing fake “Left.” We go and ask questions that they cannot answer. What could be easier? This we really need to do. the detriment of our content. On the contrary, I think So, we should have no illusions. Our project is time- that we will only learn to improve the quality of our sensitive. We live at a crossroads. Though it may seem events though regularity. Our inability to have regular like we have an overabundance of esoteric ideas forcibly events has been our greatest shortcoming. This cannot bundled together, which are ridiculously challenging to continue if we have any pretension of growing the impress upon others — this is our estimation of our organization. period. | P Draining-the-swamp thesis. — We believe we can impact and prevent the recruitment to sectarian “Left” groups on campuses and thus stop the demoralization and depoliticization that results from their activities. We have already begun to do so, and we need to continue this. The Platypus Review. — We have not fully taken advantage of our paper. Our paper is of an extremely high quality but we have been failing on two scores. The first and most obvious problem is our inability to acquire more content from outside Platypus. To make this possible we need to marshal the whole organization to the task. The interview has been a successful genre for us. We lack reportage. We need to act as a historical record of our time. The review can travel to new places before we will be able to provide an organizational structure — the paper should follow ahead of us. Membership. — The reading group is not optional. The texts we read are not road maps. But, if our project has any line at all, it would perhaps be that nothing that has been passed down to us from the historic Left can be used as an adequate guide. It is not possible to understand the group outside of attending the reading group. The reading group must focus on “what it is that we are doing.” We often said that we don’t have a line. But, it is true that we have a set of concerns and they are very specific. The concerns we are working through are not self-evident and we should be suspicious of anyone who claims to understand the project while infrequently

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Platypus synthesis Discussion CC . . . Right! There are two elements to the pedagogy. One, that’s more direct, meaning, the vulgarization of ideas. The other, though, is more indirect, which, we Audience Q & A would also like to participate in, although our politics in this respect would be “liberal.” Meaning, that we give, Question 1 (Laurie Rojas) Ian just spoke about what we’re trying to offer, and not just to our members, membership, and I wanted to expand on that, but, mostly or even through membership in the organization, but to Chris and Richard, who have given very different, less really, what we’re trying to do through things like the concrete, presentations, now that Ian has raised the paper and the fora, our events, the conversation we’re issue of membership, how is the membership to trying to host, is give a pedagogy not only of ideas, but of understand what the two of you just presented? political practice. We’re thrown back onto an Enlightenment model of “philosophical debate.” Richard Rubin I think that they are rather separate Meaning, we’re back to the realm of teaching people that issues. There are a lot of different models we could ideas matter, and that, in a sense, the polity can be have for membership, or organizational models. I don’t constituted at the level of ideas. think that that’s particularly necessarily connected to our ideological project. We don’t really know clearly So in that sense the bad pedagogy is both ways. what Platypus is. We don’t think of Platypus as a There’s the purveying of bad ideology, but there’s also political party, but it is some kind of an organization. We the purveying of a bad model of politics. have a newspaper, which is in some ways an organ for our organization, but it is not intended to be a “party” IM Sometimes I think we might get a bad rap, which is newspaper. In fact, the biggest problem we’ve had, is difficult, about, we have an attack on activist culture. that we want more “external” content, representing One thing about “theory,” and the “what is to be done?” non-Platypus views, against which Platypus can question, is that we very much want to hit the brakes, we rebound. want to stop people, before they act, to think. And that is damaging to activism, on one level. If you think of I think that the membership question is a separate activism as not intimately bound with theory, if you take practical, instrumental question, and I don’t have clear activism as an ideology of, that people only learn to views on what should be done on that. On this I’m understand the world in a way that is “born of struggle,” probably of a minority in the organization, but it’s in a way that is not linked to reflecting on that struggle, unclear to me that membership, while it’s a practical that you can only struggle, and then reflect, or so forth, necessity for Platypus, is so central to the project. Since this idea is very problematic. we’re interested in creating a milieu, we don’t necessarily need a large membership. Members are RR I want to make two practical points. One is that the really the people who do the work. And while that is fact that Platypus Review exists is to some extent an obviously a very important practical necessity, what we accident. Because the original goal of Platypus, before it really want is a broad milieu, of people who will listen to really became a group, was to set up some kind of an and think about these ideas. Not necessarily those who academic journal. So we never, paradoxically, were able agree, but pay attention to the ideas. to that, but we were able to produce a newspaper, of a certain kind of academic tone. Ian Morrison I was looking back at certain historical contexts for some kind of precedent, organizationally. The other is that, the fact that Platypus focuses on There is an interesting example that, at one point, the certain things and not other things is not necessarily an group around Shachtman wanted very much to orient indication of our goal. I mean, there are a lot more towards youth, to help sap out Stalinism in America. things that, if we had a broader membership, we could That failed. But we’re in a similar situation. We want to do. A lot of people have interest in certain areas that, if sap out bad pedagogy on the Left, and we can only do we were a bigger organization, we would focus on doing. that starting in the university culture. There are people in Platypus who do things like labor organizing, and so forth. So it’s not that we’re opposed Chris Cutrone I’d like to elaborate on that, the phrase to any type of concrete political activity. And there were “bad pedagogy.” We don’t consider the sectarian Left to people, and it’s a very mixed and complex question, be truly political. In other words, we don’t consider there were a lot of people in Platypus who were active in groups like the Spartacists, or the ISO, or the RCP, et al., SDS. to be really political organizations. Rather, we consider them to be bad pedagogues. . . . CC I want to put a finer point on Ian’s point about “activism.” I think that what’s being referred to there is IM The idea that they’re “political” is bad pedagogy! protest culture, which is different. What Christian Parenti, Doug Henwood and Liza Featherstone called “activistism,” or what Adorno called “actionism.” From

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Platypus synthesis the 1960s to the present, a lot of political “activism” is, classical texts in Marxism, what is the general impetus actually, (a) not political, and (b) not really an “action,” behind these writers, and not these “classic” disputes, not really actual action. Going to a protest, going to a like the “Lenin-Luxemburg dispute” or so forth, that are demonstration, is not organizing workers. Those are sometimes very obscuring of what it is they actually two completely different actions. The fact that we can agreed about. think of both of them as “actions” is itself a problem. So, So, in a way, anyone who’s interested in making a it’s not that we are trying to interrupt “action,” it’s that “decoder” for this world is a writer for our paper. It’s we’re trying to interrupt “activistism,” which is a about reflecting on that kind of experience, that is very different kind of thing. We’re trying to interrupt the common for people in their university life, if they go to protest culture. protests. I think that part of the origins of Platypus comes from, both among the younger and older generation in CC There are two things about that that are important. the group, the feeling that, we would go to One is that the sectarian Left is there, and there is this demonstrations, we would go to protests, we would go to kind of museumified Marxism that gets trotted out. As anti-war protests, and we would feel like we were well as there’s academic Leftism. Meaning, you read suspending disbelief while attending the demonstration. Foucault, and you’re supposed to understand what We wanted to be there, we wanted our feet on the Foucault is in dialogue with. It’s just this tacit ground, register our protest, our heart was in the right understanding that there’s this critique of Marxism place. But we felt like we had to suspend our own going on here. But it’s all underspecified. What we’re thinking in order to participate. Because the slogans, trying to do is essentially reconstitute the debate that’s because the conventionality of the event, what people taken for granted, and that doesn’t occur. Meaning, you seemed to tacitly agree upon, was something that we go to a protest and you get several different groups’ had, in a sense, to suspend disbelief about, because we sectarian newspapers. You make sense of them found it inadequate. And what we found was that, and yourself. And, really, these groups don’t speak to each this was a strange phenomenon, probably most people other. The reason that they don’t speak to each other is at these demonstrations feel the same way. In which that they really don’t “speak,” to begin with, right? case, that begs the question. The point is that we are trying, in a sense, to make So, in that respect, it should not be seen as theory as the “dead” speak, by putting them in dialogue with one opposed to practice. Rather, we have our own theory- another. And our own contribution to that is, simply, why practice problem. And we relate that to the typical bad we think that needs to happen. All of these groups Left’s botching of the theory-practice problem. They basically pretend these other groups don’t exist, and have their way of dealing with the theory-practice wish the other groups would just go away. But in so problem, and we have our way of dealing with the doing they’ve abdicated on politics. They’ve abdicated on theory-practice problem, and they’re not antithetically the actual controversies, in favor of some kind of brute opposed. What they are is related. We’re trying to make sectarian schisms. I think that, again, our model is the up for a deficit. We don’t expect “activist-ism” to go something like, the kind of conversation on the Left that away, but we do want to interrupt it. We do want to add supposedly is always “going on,” but somehow never something that’s a missing element at this point. takes place. We’re actually trying to make that happen.

IM Actually, our paper is very much inspired by the Q2 (Gabe Gaster) I could sort of formulate my response problem of protest culture. I’m sure everyone has had as a question. In response to what Ian was saying, about the experience who went to protests of getting a squashing the “bad pedagogy” at universities . . . plethora of crazy newspapers that one couldn’t make any sense of, really, with all different variations on CC “Draining the swamp.” workerism, really. And that’s a very odd sort of experience, that young people have no way of even GG . . . “Draining the swamp,” right. I would say that’s decoding, this kind of strange language that’s been almost like ceding too much ground, maybe. Aren’t we passed down. That was at least my experience, during challenging them to be better, to articulate, challenging the Iraq war, going to protests, and taking all these them to speak to one another? That’s a point that you different sorts of views, and I couldn’t make heads or arrived at. But I would say that we are maybe ceding too tails of any of them, really. And I think that’s most much ground to this idea that we are just “squashing people’s experience. What’s sad about that is that I them.” The point is that we are challenging them to be think people are actually very interested in those ideas, better activists, to articulate their thoughts, so that one but have no real access to where such positions come can make head or tail of their political context that they from, what the motivation is, because it is a position- exist in. And, also, what happened to the “journal of taking that’s very incoherent in our time. That’s one of letters?” the reasons why we emphasize more, when we read the

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Platypus synthesis CC I want to say something about the journal, because it they had all these esoteric polemics against bizarre was raised. The journal project is still in the offing. It’s other little groups. I found that very attractive, because not that the Platypus Review has replaced the journal it meant that they were the only group on the Left paying project. Also, the journal project is not meant to be an attention to other groups on the Left. And that was very academic journal. It’s meant to replace the New Left interesting to me. The other thing that attracted me was Review. And destroy that milieu. The whole apparatus. that you get their bound back issues, all their bound And related publications. There are other versions of issues, which I now own, though they are in storage, this, such as Historical Materialism. Especially in the from the ’60s to the early ’90s. Reading them was a Anglophone world, where we aim to, in a sense, provide great education in the history of the sectarian Left. It a different context. It would not be either an academic gave you, despite whatever problems one might have journal, nor would it be “Platypus.” But, rather, a place with the specific criticisms or positions, there wasn’t where existing Left intellectuals would be prompted to anything comparable where one could get such write, think, in ways that they are not now prompted to information. It was very hard to get that type of do. And that project continues. It just takes a while to information. start such a journal, and it also involves establishing The other point I wanted to go to was this metaphor relationships with people, which we are also doing, of “draining the swamp.” And here I’m going to be a bit through our public fora, and whatnot. Inviting people to of a devil’s advocate. The first thing that came up to speak on panels, to engage these debates, to fertilize mind with that image, was that there’s a place in the their thinking in such events, is a way of demonstrating Galilee, Northern Israel, or Palestine, if you prefer, that an audience for the kind of journal we want to start where there are the Hula Swamps. It was one of the could exist. Because, right now, the existing intellectual early heroic stories of Zionist pioneers, that they drained Left essentially assumes that such an audience can’t these swamps. They were very successful in draining exist, and that’s why you get the antics of a Zizek. the swamps. But it ended up causing huge ecological There’s a notion that there’s no audience for this, disaster. So what is the point of this metaphor? anyway. Because they did drain the swamps and build

agriculture, but it turned out the swamps were very IM Let me clarify something. The “draining the swamp” important for the ecology of the region, and so forth. idea is different than “smashing” the dead Left, as if with And they hadn’t realized that when they did that. So the a hammer. It’s more the idea that there are people point of this is that we actually have a parasitic trapped in this swamp, who are going to be fossilized relationship to both the sectarian Left and the academic very soon, as they’re falling down, waving to each other. Left. (IM And activism!) While I am constantly filled (I We want to drain that morass, so that people could talk put that image of the Rapture in there, which is obviously to each other. So that when we have our public events, not going to happen) with annoyance at the sectarian we always invite, usually, someone from a “sectarian Left, the prospect of it literally disappearing is actually Left group,” if that’s the term to be used, a student who frightening to me. And I think it is questionable whether does some kind activism, one of us, and maybe a Left we in Platypus could actually carry on in a world where academic. That’s usually the format, every time. And certain symptoms of the dead Left completely our experience has been that in the context we create disappeared. I mean, that may seem like a contradictory these people are able to be much better than they are in message, but it’s something we have to think about. And their books, or in the New Left Review, or so forth, by the I think that there’s a way in which the content of very context of conversation we’re making, and that they academic Leftism has itself deteriorated as external, very much feel is impossible. So that’s the idea. I think, sectarian Leftism has started to dry up. And that’s not a it’s not about smashing other groups, or anything like problem that in the long run we would be immune to. that, at all. It’s about people who give each other the silent treatment. In What is to be done?, of course, there IM There’s also the idea of the “revolving door,” sort of a is a discussion about “freedom of criticism,” the way different image. My feeling, usually, is that a lot of people will use the idea of “freedom of criticism” to stifle people who get involved in the sorts of groups that we’re criticism, this kind of psychology. Because that book is talking about, it’s very much a two- or three-year project all about opening up a conversation that Lenin didn’t for them. And their experience is, extremely, one of think would happen in the 2nd International, basically. disillusionment. We want to make a conversation that, even though they carry on, don’t think is possible at all. I was talking to somebody at a party not that long ago about their experience in one of these front groups. RR I wanted to respond to two points. One is the point And they were extremely fascinated by Marxism, and had about people not talking, and pretending nobody else read everything that they could get their hands on. But existed. The first thing that actually attracted me to the they were kind of shocked by the way that, they thought, Spartacist League was not their manifest politics, some that, because they were not addressed up-front, with all of which repelled me, initially, but rather the fact that the theory of Marxism, when they got involved in this

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Platypus synthesis group, that they really had the sense that, even though FRSO [Freedom Road Socialist Organization]. So I just the group was “Marxist” in some sense, that they didn’t wanted to point that out. believe that they could appeal to people with the content of their own ideas. And that was a very depressing way RR I’ll respond briefly. The ISO and the Spartacist to come to Marxism and the Left. And so they’ll wander League. The Spartacist League publish all kinds of off, and do this or that activist thing, until it peters out, attacks and polemics against the ISO, which I would when there’s no war going on, and so forth. probably be largely in agreement with, but I’ve never read any polemics by the ISO against the Spartacist Q3 (Troy Pasulka) I wanted to divide it into two parts. I League in the paper. There is an asymmetry in the way think the first one is that, as Platypus is a “talking shop,” the two organizations conceive of their roles as more than that, also, and it wants to be more than that. revolutionary Marxist parties. I think the Spartacist How to improve the “talking shop?” I just want to bring League is clearly the exception, and the ISO, in that up two things on how to improve the “talking shop.” respect, is the norm on the Left. That is not to One, I think a focus on destroying the New Left Review necessarily make the Spartacist League a model, but it and critiquing all these Left groups, as someone said on certainly makes them more interesting to me than the Friday, should be situated within a broader aim of norm. We obviously are of a different sensibility. transforming capitalism, socialism, learning from the With regard to American imperialism, really, the history of the Left in order to fix the problems. Second, I question isn’t understanding American imperialism, think a better understanding of US imperialism should because that’s not the issue. The question is: what does be fostered within this “talking shop.” It was said in the it say about the world that the greatest challenge to panel, “American imperialism is no longer fighting American imperialism is not coming from Leftist Leftists, it’s fighting reactionary Islam . . .” insurgents? It’s coming from Islamist reactionaries.

That says something about historical regression. To get CC Predominately. to the fundamental issue, which is the absence of the

Left in that constellation. You mentioned the Arab world TP Okay, predominately, right. Certainly not solely. If — look at Palestine today, which is a case I know fairly you look at many places around the world, it’s certainly well. If you look at Palestinian politics in the ‘70s, you not fighting reactionary Islam. Even in the Arabic world, would have seen a lot of Leftist nationalist groups, many it’s not fighting solely reactionary Islam, it’s fighting claiming to be Marxist. Now, whatever one’s critique of Baathists, who are secular, it’s fighting Communists, it’s them, clearly those groups have disappeared. The fighting the oil workers’ union, it’s fighting a lot of dominant political force in opposing Israel is Islamist, is people. The second thing I wanted to say, in addition to Hamas. There is no way of getting around that. That’s the talking shop, what I think we need to change the true throughout the Middle East, that’s true throughout world. I think we need to build a revolutionary the world. Even in the cases where there are Leftist organization that’s going to put into practice all of this political movements, like in Latin America, they are theory. And what type? The type like the Spartacists, tame versions compared to the ‘70s or ‘80s. Not that the who focus on attacking other Left groups? I don’t think ‘70s or ‘80s were any better, I’m not trying to foster that, that’s the type. I think we need the type that’s going to but it’s obvious there’s been a massive transformation in the people who are open to propaganda, and getting the world, and it’s a transformation toward the Right. involved in stuff. Ian, you were saying there’s no one It’s the non-acknowledgement of that fact that is open to propagandize to, and that’s simply not true. I significant, not the “understanding of American talk to people all the time who are interested. Like you imperialism.” It’s not American imperialism that has said, there’s all kinds of people who are into these ideas, changed, it’s the Left, it is the collapse of an opposition very interested in moving forward, and not at all to it from a Leftist direction. There are people who are interested in focusing on the New Left Review, and how opposing American imperialism for all sorts of reasons, they suck, and how all these other Left groups suck. No, but they are reactionary reasons. If you want to talk they want to progress. For example, I agree Obamaism about American imperialism fostering reaction, one of isn’t great, but labeling everyone who is for Obama the things few people on the Left would say is that if the “reactionary,” no. There’s some progress, there’s some Soviet Union had won in Afghanistan, 9/11 would not open people there. I agree, going to a protest is not all have happened. People on the Left won’t say it, people that’s political to do, but it’s not not organizing workers, on the right won’t say it, and it’s clear. It’s clear that one because workers go to protests. You can go to a protest, of the ultimate causes of 9/11 was the policy of the and you can critique it, or you can go to a protest, and United States government that directly funneled money you can organize. And just one more clarification, I’m in to the Islamist reactionaries who were fighting the Red the ISO (International Socialist Organization), so it’s Army. That’s a context where the Left doesn’t wrong to say that nobody on the Left talks to anyone acknowledge its own history. Overwhelmingly, the else. I’m here. I’ve been talking to a guy who is in the American Left, including the supposed far Left, were

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Platypus synthesis supporting the Mujahideen. I think the model of building So then, what do you do? What happens to people the Left in the way you are talking about it already when their initial experience with Marxism is one of entails a concession to a bad history. crude ideas and futile activity? The reason we say we are not trying to do propaganda is precisely because the IM I was recently at an event where a representative model of propaganda refers to a historical period in from the trade unions in Iraq was at, and they were which people were more active politically, in which talking about a conference they had in Arbil, and there society was more politicized, in which the working class were almost no Left groups there, for reasons one could was more organized, in which the Left was more self- explore. But something I found almost shocking was consciously and principally more organized. Ian talked that their conference, which was an attempt to unite the about going to a protest and getting all sorts of various unions in their country, which do non-violent newspapers. Well, that’s one thing. In the 1930s, people work, which are anti-religious, which are anti-sectarian, would have been literally yelling at each other. You which have women’s rights groups and so forth, all sorts would have gone to Greenwich Village or Washington of interesting demands, their conference would not have Square Park, and people would have been literally happened without a group called U.S. Labor Against the haranguing each other, respectfully, maybe sometimes War. Even though the labor movement is extremely beating each other but not always. But there was a small in America, the Left in other countries is sense of politics through ideas in a way that is severely dependent on. Lenin used the word tailism in supporting lacking now. So it’s not that propaganda is sort of a bad another group in this or that part of the world — you model, it’s misplaced right now in comparison to what it should be more conscious in the absence of a Left in used to be. Our attitudes towards groups on the America is extremely detrimental to Left groups abroad. sectarian Left is that they are doing what they have It’s a burden we have, and I think the typical anti- always done outside of the context where that ever made imperialist rhetoric really confuses this burden that we sense. In other words, doing it in the ‘60s wasn’t also have. And so it is a question of theory, it’s a question of doing it in the ‘30s; doing it in the ‘30s didn’t work, first a certain kind of conversation that would have to start of all. Carrying it out in the ‘60s and continuing it today for anyone to begin to think of the sort of complicated is a surreal, what we call “zombie” practice, no matter practical issues that would be involved, and that we what it appears to be. So why don’t we do propaganda? might not have answers to. Because the propaganda is bad, and because that model of activity is without a context. I would say in terms of CC Let me say something about propagandism. The “draining the swamp” and stopping the revolving door, Spartacist League call themselves a “fighting we would like to prevent people in college from having propaganda group.” I’m not sure what the history of that their first experience with Marxist ideas to be with the term is, I think it might have a deeper history. The self sectarian Left or with the bad faith, ex-New Left understanding of a group like the ISO might be academic Leftists. We desire to put a stop to that, something like that: it’s not a political party, it’s a absolutely. Now what Richard is saying is true too, propaganda group, trying to get ideas out there, meaning you can’t bring that to an absolute halt, but you intersecting people in their political activities, at the can transform it. In other words, what Richard is saying level of ideas. That’s where we get back to the bad is, okay, if they all disappeared in the rapture, it would pedagogy. Getting back to “draining the swamp” and be a terrible context. We’re for nudging things along, for “the revolving door syndrome,” my experience now that I clearing out the cobwebs, and for waking up the am faculty and not a student, and I spent a number of zombies, whatever metaphor you want to use. As Ian years tuning out the Left, although Richard kept me said earlier, about the house of cards character, informed. The experience was that not only do you get a meaning that one of the reasons groups don’t like to bad education of Marxism by groups like the ISO, the deal with us is that they detect if they engage in this kind Spartacist League, the RCP idea that you brawl with the of conversation, their whole thing might fall apart. And it police and that’s how you make people revolutionary, will fall apart. and others, that’s depoliticizing in another way. In other words, not only do you get a bad education of what Q4 (Ashley Weger) I want to thank you for this panel. Marxism is about, you get a bad education of what Chris, you kind of talked about, not in these terms, about politics is about. You spend a few years — young people relearning and redefining our relationship to the past, who are idealistic in these organizations — and you quit. and I think that requires a certain amount of unlearning, They quit and become politically cynical. They quit and particularly, I can say, from personal experience. This is hold their nose and vote for Democrats. That’s what at the core of my incapacity to answer a question posed happens, in 99% of cases. It’s only the true nutjobs that to me by Richard about my relationship to history, say in those groups. In other words, it self-selects for because it is requiring so much unlearning on my part, bad human material. to be able to engage in that kind of conversation. From a very practical level, how do you see Platypus facilitating this starting over process for folks, or when you are

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Platypus synthesis starting from scratch? Because to be quite honest, and I unlearning, and is still a process of unlearning, and is think this is an appropriate critique of Platypus, you something I have deep resistance to. There are many seem esoteric to a lot of people, because they either A. aspects of Platypus I inwardly resist, and I’m constantly haven’t had experience with your perspective on Marxist challenging myself. I have gone through several stages ideas, or B. they have been affiliated with folks from in my political thinking which involved considerable whom they need to do a lot of unlearning. So how do you unlearning. Before I went to college, I had sort of a New see this being facilitated? Because, although I think the Left, Chomskyite perspective, unspecified, which had reading group is a good way to do that, if you are coming kind of grown organically out of the default liberalism of to Marxism late, that is a hard conversation to start my family. Then I encountered the Spartacist League, having. How do you bring in a crowd of people like adopted not literally, but essentially, the Spartacist myself, who are maybe a bit politically immature, but perspective, which then in turn, was again, to a certain craving this sort of conversation? extent, unlearned to adopt a Platypus perspective. I’m not really sure, at the end, what that has left me with. CC Ian was talking about the importance of the reading I’m saying that, because it’s important to understand group of people who are participants as members in the that’s what’s at the core of the project, particularly organization. But reading group is not the be all, end all among the people who started the project. To the extent of the group by any means. Really, the best initial that some people may be able to start with Platypus and exposure we can provide to people doesn’t come see the Left from Platypus’ lenses, I have much more through reading groups or even something like this talk difficulty understanding those people than the people we are giving today, or the talk we gave Friday night. who resist Platypus. I mean, I’m glad that they exist, but What we are really trying to do at the level of relearning, I find it difficult to see how anybody could see the world, rethinking, changing the relationship to the past is what or the Left, rather, starting out with Platypus. It’s kind of we are trying to do through the fora and the newspaper. astonishing to me. That’s where the majority of voices will not be from this organization. In other words, on the forum panel, there Q5 I was wondering if you could speak to how important will be four persons, and maybe one person from it is for your project to have a viable, Marxist Platypus, but the person from Platypus will be there understanding of the present in general. To look at mostly to piss people off, to shake people out of their consciousness within the working class, and different complacency. That has sort of been my role, and that’s trends and tendencies among workers. If you think what I have been doing. So the initial exposure is not to that’s important, how would you propose reading that, or our ideas, but to the conversation, which is also meant to writing about that? Because obviously, groups on the be productive for us — we have no theory. We are about Left might not represent that the best. So what milieus remembering theory, we don’t have a theory, it’s not that could people use? kind of pedagogy. It’s more the pedagogy of the conversation, making that happen. That’s how we hope IM I’ll try to answer that question in a couple of different people will re-find a relationship to the past, not through ways. One think I would point to is a certain ‘60s view of what we have to say, but through what we try to get the world, of the idea of students as a class, is one thing other people to say. I think we unconsciously keep. People who go to school for higher education is a much, much broader group of RR My response to the question of us seeming esoteric people than it was in the past. But also, we’ve done — the problem is not that we seem esoteric, the events with labor organizers. We’re very interested in problem is that we are more esoteric than we even exploring those sorts of politics, and the ways seem. That’s the real problem. The problem of us universities can recept them. It came up last night — seeming esoteric, I think, is more a problem of people’s students serve as cannon fodder for a lot of these labor anxieties about the parts that are not that esoteric. A lot groups, do a lot of organizing with them without thinking. of people avoid us not to the extent that they don’t The university and its kind of culture intersect a much understand us, but to the extent that they do. But the wider purvey of society than I think people think. There real problem is, we are much more esoteric than we really is something confusing about politics when people seem, and that’s the problem at the deepest level. raise this abstract of the working class, and it’s a part of the ‘30s propaganda politics. I think our real CC There’s a flip side to that though. disagreement is with not wanting to be a propaganda organization, because we want to foster a certain kind of RR Yes, there’s a flip side to that. With regard to the conversation. I mean, obviously, anyone can come to our question of unlearning, which is a problem I have reading groups, anyone can come to our public events: thought about a lot, because, as I said, I did not come to they are open to the public, we publicize them in all sorts Platypus as some 18 year-old or 19 year-old in a class of places, they are not exclusive to any kind of group or with Chris Cutrone. On the contrary, coming to Platypus person or so forth, so I guess I would just question the essentially alongside Chris, was a process of massive

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Platypus synthesis sort of stereotypes of this abstract working class that is provocation. When we go to protests and we have that often referred to. slogan, it’s not like a declaration.

CC At the same time, I would modulate that a little bit. I CC It’s supposed to make people think. think that, first of all, because we do do these events, we have established relationships with people, from our IM That’s the idea. It’s supposed to almost be Dada- fields, from the sectarian Left, as well as further fields esque: What is that? What do you mean? I don’t get it. of the academic Left. And those relationships are vital. It’s not supposed to be, like, “Oh, yeah! The Left is dead.” Meaning, the labor organizers we deal with and those milieus we intersect both inform our own thinking about RR I am going to respond in two parts. One is that it’s things as well as provide different kind of audiences. not just that bourgeois ideology is so pervasive, because The newspaper is not only distributed on campuses but bourgeois ideology has always been so pervasive, the also at union halls, where we have existing relationships problem is that the bourgeois ideology is so crass. In a with people. It’s a little bit of a shot in the dark to sense, the bourgeois ideology is corrosive to itself, expose unionists and “regular” working class people to corrosive on both sides. And, as you’ve said, that also the kind of esoteric conversation going on on the Left. effects the Left. As for the question of resisting But frankly, it’s only a variation of the discourse you find bourgeois ideology, I wouldn’t put it that way. Chris and in places like The Nation, which of course, working class I come from radically different class backgrounds — people read those kinds of publications. It’s not extrinsic Chris comes from a working class background, I come to it or foreign to it. It does matter to us, but I think we from a bourgeois background. I don’t think that have accepted, more or less, that we can only have an obviously different personal background had much indirect relationship to it. impact on our political development. The curious thing, and it’s something I have in common with Chris that I IM I think if we could have a stronger pedagogical have never quite been able to explain, is that the most relationship to a larger sect of society, we would. I think radicalizing moment for me politically is what is usually now we are interested practically in what the fetters are seen as a huge defeat, a catastrophe of the Left, namely on such a practice, and don’t think the propaganda the collapse of Stalinism, 1989–92. Its collapse in the model (hanging outside the factory with your paper) is an sense of the capitalist restoration of Eastern Europe especially effective one. Unions in the past — the Port after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The reason Huron Statement, as an example, Port Huron is a sort of it was radicalizing, in the intellectual sense, was that it retreat for the UAW. They sponsored that conference. actually confirmed for me the validity of Trotsky’s basic Now, unions are much smaller, so they use their analysis, which previously I had been strongly resistant budgets differently. to and doubted. I think people get confused about the Left, because The irony is that a profoundly negative event in the it’s so small today, that one group is supposed to be the analysis pushed me to a sense of its truth and value, Jack-of-all-Trades for this new Left we don’t have. which was a paradoxical relationship: to be pushed to There really is a division of labor. We’re not going to the Left intellectually by an event that was pushing, preach the tactics of union politics — that would be fundamentally, the whole world to the right. It was ridiculous of us. But if there was a real medium where partially that dual consciousness that made it one could make ideas more broadly accessible, we’d be impossible to quite literally accept Spartacism. I interested in that. remember talking to an older comrade, who had been part of the original Trotskyist movement, who had been Q6 I haven’t been thoroughly convinced that the Left is part of the Communist League of America, a founding totally dead, but I think the argument has been member of the Socialist Worker’s Party, a member of established that if it isn’t dead, it’s pretty close to it. I’ve that ‘30s generation, an organic, working-class been around for a while. For whatever reason the Left intellectual, who remained faithful to those ideas until has become what it is, it’s a fact. The other side of that his death in the mid-90s. He was very puzzled by this — is that bourgeois ideology is not only pervasive, but it’s his radicalization was in the context of a massive corrosive. I think that’s part of the reason you see part working class movement, came from a Communist of the Left moving right. My question is — I have been family background, it was the upsurge of the ‘30s. It is a very pleasantly surprised by this convention — but how paradoxical situation, and one that has left a not do you account, objectively and somewhat concisely, how necessarily desirable intellectual mark on me. I you have resisted this extremely corrosive bourgeois remember thinking at the time, why is it that so few ideology? people made the intellectual connection that I have? Because I would have expected more people to be like IM Maybe. First off, our whole slogan “The Left is dead! me, but it turned out that people like me were few and — Long live the Left!” is not propaganda: it’s a

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Platypus synthesis far between. I don’t really know how to account for that wrong” moment in it, except, maybe, in the natural — not completely unique, but rare. sciences. But any place else, “This is why Marx is wrong.” Although, even in the natural sciences, they CC There is a metaphor that Richard and I have used in might bring something up, like, “See? Darwin’s our prior conversation — that we are the mutants of understanding of evolution is non-teleological! 1989. Meaning in terms of Darwinian evolution, we’re Therefore, Marx is wrong!” If that’s the case, if Marx has the mutation rather than the predominate mode of life, to be constantly exorcised, if Marxism has to be but we find our niche nevertheless. Now I wouldn’t want constantly exorcised, if Bolshevism is still this dirty to answer the question that way, though — I’d answer word, what does that mean? Does that mean anything? the question a little differently. What Richard’s raising is What can we do with that? So ideology is a fairly the idea of “via negativa” In other words, how can complicated matter, and history has a place in its consciousness on the Left, born of defeat, can come dynamic. That’s, in a sense, how we understand negatively. In a sense, what Platypus shares is this kind ourselves. That’s how we account for our ability to of negative lesson, the negative lesson of the Left. The “resist,” even though it’s not really resistance at all, and negative lesson of 1989, the negative lesson of the ‘90s Richard has already raised the danger that we might be Left, the negative lesson of the anti-war movement as just as symptomological as anything we take issue with. ineffectual, with the Iraq War, this kind of “via negativa” It’s a danger that we court, openly. In other words, we has been important for us. And how we would explain are weary of all the ways the Left usually denies that. resisting the degradation of consciousness that goes on Rather, we embrace that. on the Left, and effects all of society, because that’s what we think, the reason I think Richard wouldn’t say RR There are weird symptoms in popular culture at it’s about resisting bourgeois consciousness is that, in a a vulgar level that (extend to the quality of Marx). We sense, bourgeois consciousness is dialectical. Meaning, see them in the economic crisis. There was a discussion we conceive the Left to be a species of bourgeois on television and Paul Krugman was the Left voice. The consciousness. The difference is, that it is aware of question was something like, was capitalism finished? itself in this way. And he said something like, “I don’t think we have to become Red Guards.” It was this odd moment, because, RR Marxism is the highest form of bourgeois of course, nobody was talking about capitalism being consciousness. finished, that is so far from the agenda of the mainstream, but even raising the question, and raising CC Not in a class sense, but in a historical sense. That the image of Marx entails it as central to dialogue. raises the issue of historical consciousness, of why we Because at the same time that the Left is dead, that frame our own self-understanding for why a certain kind doesn’t mean, oddly, that the image of Marx becomes of conversation has to occur on the Left, why we find dead. The image of Marx continues to haunt, whatever history to be indicting of the present or critical of the the actual Left or actual Marxists do. | P present. We think that consciousness and social reality can be out of sync with themselves. In other words, there can be a non-synchronous relationship between ideology and social reality, and that, therefore, we can say, how come when we started this project, the first thing we were immediately subjected to was the Lenin/Luxemburg debate. Not by people who had been alive in 1917, not by people who had been alive in the 1960s, but by young people! So these ideas obviously have some kind of strange purchase on people — the question is what do we do with that? Because in the present way these ideas have purchase on people, we might just wish them to go away. But they do have some kind of purchase for people — the question is, can that be a starting point? In other words, people are still attracted to Marxism, young people still join the ISO. These little left sectarian groups still attract people, and the ‘60s generation in the academic Left continues to whip the dead horse of Marx. Every single class is, like, “This is why Marx is wrong,” and “Oh, by the way, this is why Marx is wrong.” Every class at University of Chicago has a “This is why Marx is

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