The 3 Rs: Reform, Revolution, and “Resistance”

— the problematic forms of “anticapitalism” today —

Monday 16 April 2012, 6:30-8:30PM
Encuentro 5, 33 Harrison Ave, 5th floor, Boston, MA 02111 (map)

“Reform, Revolution, Resistance”:  what kind of weight do these categories hold for the Left today? How are they used, to where do they point, and what is their history? The discussion concerns a question that has renewed immediacy in light of the Occupy movement.

Location – Encuentro 5,  33 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA 02111. (map)
Time – Monday, April 16, 2012 | 6:30pm until 8:30pm
http://www.facebook.com/events/423855730963519/

Speakers:

Gayge (Common Struggle Libertarian Communist Federation)
Joe Ramsey (Kasama Project)
Laura Lee Schmidt (Platypus)
J. Phil Thompson (MIT)
Jeff Booth (Socialist Alternative)

For more details, contact at boston@platypus1917.org. Latest updates can be found on our Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/groups/146774129298/

RSVP for the event here: http://www.facebook.com/events/423855730963519/

“[After the 1960s, the] underlying despair with regard to the real efficacy of political will, of political agency [. . .] in a historical situation of heightened helplessness [. . .] became a self-constitution as outsider, as other [. . .] focused on the bureaucratic stasis of the [Fordist/late 20th Century] world: it echoed the destruction of that world by the dynamics of capital [with the neo-liberal turn after 1973, and especially after 1989].
The idea of a fundamental transformation became bracketed and, instead, was replaced by the more ambiguous notion of ‘resistance.’  The notion of resistance, however, says little about the nature of that which is being resisted or of the politics of the resistance involved — that is, the character of determinate forms of critique, opposition, rebellion, and ‘revolution.’  The notion of ‘resistance’ frequently expresses a deeply dualistic worldview that tends to reify both the system of domination and the idea of agency.
‘Resistance’ is rarely based on a reflexive analysis of possibilities for fundamental change that are both generated and suppressed by [the] dynamic heteronomous order [of capital].  ['Resistance'] is an undialectical category that does not grasp its own conditions of possibility; that is, it fails to grasp the dynamic historical context of which it is a part.”
— Moishe Postone, “History and Helplessness:  Mass Mobilization and Contemporary Forms of Anticapitalism” (Public Culture 18:1, 2006)

The Spring 2012 schedules for Harvard and MassArt are now online. For details, see:

Coffee Breaks | Reading Group

What is the Occupy movement?

SPEAKERS:

Jason Giannetti (Lawyer)
Doug Enaa Greene (Kasama Project)
Nick Ford (ALL-oNE)
Evan Sarmiento (FRSO)
Stephen Squibb (Occupy Harvard, n+1)

Date: 15th December 2011
Time: 6:00 PM
Place: Room K354
CGIS Knafel Building
Harvard University
Next to Harvard GSD
Cambridge St., Cambridge MA
Map: http://g.co/maps/jbzz6
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/events/267223019993579/ 

The recent Occupy protests are driven by discontent with the present state of affairs: glaring economic inequality, dead-end Democratic Party politics, and, for some, the suspicion that capitalism could never produce an equitable society. These concerns are coupled with aspirations for social transformation at an international level. For many, the protests at Wall St. and elsewhere provide an avenue to raise questions the Left has long fallen silent on:

• And, how could a new international radical movement address these concerns in practice?

Although participants at Occupy Wall St. and elsewhere have managed thus far to organize resources for their own daily needs, legal services, health services, sleeping arrangements, food supplies, defense against police brutality, and a consistent media presence, these pragmatic concerns have taken precedent over long-term goals of the movement. Where can participants of this protest engage in formulating, debating, and questioningthe ends of this movement? How can it affect the greater society beyond the occupied spaces?

We in the Platypus Affiliated Society ask participants and interested observers of the Occupy movement to consider the possibility that political disagreement could lead to clarification, further development and direction. Only when we are able create an active culture of thinking and debating on the Left without it proving prematurely divisive can we begin to imagine a Leftist politics adequate to the historical possibilities of our moment. We may not know what these possibilities for transformation are. This is why we think it is imperative to create avenues of engagement that will support these efforts.

Towards this goal, Platypus will be hosting a series of roundtable discussions with organizers and participants ofthe Occupy movement. These will start at campuses in New York and Chicago but will be moving to other North American cities, and to London, Germany, and Greece in the months to come. We welcome any and all who would like to be a part of this project of self-education and potential rebuilding of the Left to join us in advancing this critical moment.

Boston Platypus interviews Noam Chomsky. Click image for interview transcript.

UPDATE: Noam Chomsky’s talk has been moved to Saturday Oct. 22 due to the rain. Platypus will still be in attendance. The time hasn’t been determined.  Time: 6:00 PM. Dewey Square, Boston, MA.

Please make sure to coordinate with us at boston@platypus1917.org or use the contact tab.

This week, on 19th Oct 2011, the MassArt Coffee Break will meet at Dewey Square to attend a talk by Noam Chomsky.

Saturday, Oct 22| 6:00 PM
Noam Chomsky at OccupyBoston
FSU Soapbox, Dewey Square occupation.

Time: Thursday, October 13 · 6:00pm - 9:00pm
Place: CGIS South Building, Room, S050 Harvard University (Map: http://goo.gl/UoiC1)
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=244226975629516
Contact: boston [at] platypus1917 [dot] org

Battle on Wall Street? 

Part 1 of 2-part film screening series: Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010) 

“Want to know what the mother of all bubbles was? Came out of nowhere, by chance. They called it the Cambrian Explosion. It happened around 530 million years ago. And, over the next 70-80 million years, the rate of evolution accelerated so fast that we came along, the human race. They still can’t explain how that happened, except that it happened. Some people say it was by chance. Others, design. But who really knows?”

The recent #occupy protests depart significantly from the anti-war politics that has defined activism on the Left for the past decade. Slogans decrying corporate greed now dominate the picket signs that until recently were used to condemn U.S. imperialism. However, does this spreading protest movement signal a new era of activism in the U.S.? Or, are these recent demonstrations expressing old and familiar discontents? Perhaps, as the role of Adbusters suggests, something of the 1990s has come back into vogue, bringing back to the fore the age-old hatred of the bankers and impersonal financial institutions, and opposition to neoliberal globalization, now in crisis. The spirit of the 1999 Seattle protest against the World Trade Organization seems to have returned, with a vengeance. Please join Platypus in considering the historical sources of the ongoing anti-Wall Street protests through the lens of two recent films that highlight the popular imagination of contemporary capitalism and its discontents.

© baroquen comics

Week 1 {Sept. 19-23}

• Cutrone, “Symptomology: Historical transformations in social-political context”
• Cutrone, “Capital in history: The need for a Marxian philosophy of history of the Left”

Week 2 {Sept. 26-30}

• Kolakowski, “The concept of the Left”
• Adorno, “Imaginative excesses”

Week 3 {Oct. 3- 7}

• Blumberg, Cutrone, Khan, Leonard, and Rubin, Forum: The decline of the Left in the 20th century

Week 4 {Oct. 10-14}

• Anderson, Cutrone, Kreitman, Postel, and Turl, Forum: Imperialism: What is it, why should we be against it?
• Albert, Cutrone, Duncombe, and Holmes, Forum: The 3 Rs: reform, revolution and “resistance:” The problematic forms of “anti-capitalism” today

Week 5 {Oct. 17-21}

• Brennan, Davis, Hendricks, Mujica, and Rubin, Forum: What is a movement?
• Hendricks, Hughes, Mwaura, and Thindwa, Forum: Left behind: The working class in the crisis

Week 6 {Oct. 24-28}

• Platypus Historians Group, Catastrophe, historical memory, and the Left: 60 years of Israel-Palestine
• Ibish, Kovel, and Rubin, Forum: Which way forward for Palestinian liberation?
• Goodman and Rubin, Forum: Marxism and Israel

Week 7 {Oct. 31- Nov.4}

• Farrow, Gabrellas, Mucciaroni, and Wolf, Forum: Which way forward for sexual liberation?
• Nogales, Pereira Di Salvo, and Rojas, Forum: Politics of the contemporary student Left
• Brennan, Klatt, Petcoff, and Weger, Forum: Ideology and the student Left

Week 8 {Nov. 7-11}

• Bernstein, Cutrone, Goehr, and Horowitz, Forum: The relevance of Critical Theory to art today
• Cutrone, Feenberg, Westerman, and Brown, Platypus convention plenary: The politics of Critical Theory

Week 9 {Nov. 14-18}

• Horkheimer, selections from Dämmerung
• Adorno, “Resignation”
• Cutrone, “The Marxist hypothesis”
• Cutrone, “The Left is dead! — Long live the Left!” Vicissitudes of historical consciousness and the possibilities for emancipatory social politics today

(Break for Thanksgiving, Nov. 21-25)

Week 10 {Nov. 28-Dec.1}

• Cutrone, Morrison, and Rubin, Platypus convention plenary: The Platypus synthesis: History, theory, and practice

Rousseau | Kant | Hegel | Nietzsche | Smith | Marx
Reading group and History of Humanity Film Screenings & Lectures

______________________________________
June 26 – August 21

Venue:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Room 5-232 [Building #5, Room #232] http://whereis.mit.edu/?go=5

Time:
1:00 PM, SUNDAYS
______________________________________

We will address the greater context for Marx and Marxism through the issue of bourgeois radicalism in philosophy in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Discussion will emerge by working through the development from Kant and Hegel to Nietzsche, but also by reference to the Rousseauian aftermath, and the emergence of the modern society of capital, as registered by liberals such as Adam Smith and Benjamin Constant.

“The principle of freedom and its corollary, “perfectibility,” . . . suggest that the possi- bilities for being human are both multiple and, literally, endless. . . . Contemporaries like Kant well understood the novelty and radical implications of Rousseau’s new principle of freedom [and] appreciated his unusual stress on history as the site where the true nature of our species is simultaneously realized and perverted, revealed and distorted. A new way of thinking about the human condition had appeared. . . . As Hegel put it, “The principle of freedom dawned on the world in Rousseau, and gave infinite strength to man, who thus apprehended himself as infinite.” – James Miller (author of The Passion of Michel Foucault, 2000), Introduction to Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (Hackett, 1992)

SCHEDULE:

June 26 | 1:00PM _____________________

Chris Cutrone, “Capital in History”
Robert Pippin, “On Critical Theory” [HTML Critical Inquiry 2003]
Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality or PDFs of preferred translation (5 parts): [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Film screening | 4:30PM | Marie Antoinette (2006)

June 30 | 6:30PM _____________________

Thursday evening lecture: History of humanity pre-1750

July 03 | 1:00PM _____________________

Rousseau, selection from The Social Contract

Film screening | 4:30PM | Jefferson in Paris (1995)

July 10 | 1:00PM _____________________

Adam Smith, selections from The Wealth of Nations
Volume I
Introduction and Plan of the Work
Book I: Of the Causes of Improvement…
I.1. Of the Division of Labor
I.2. Of the Principle which gives Occasion to the Division of Labour
I.3. That the Division of Labour is Limited by the Extent of the Market
I.4. Of the Origin and Use of Money
I.6. Of the Component Parts of the Price of Commodities
I.7. Of the Natural and Market Price of Commodities
I.8. Of the Wages of Labour
I.9. Of the Profits of Stock
Book III: Of the different Progress of Opulence in different Nations
III.1. Of the Natural Progress of Opulence
III.2. Of the Discouragement of Agriculture in the Ancient State of Europe after the Fall of the Roman Empire
III.3. Of the Rise and Progress of Cities and Towns, after the Fall of the Roman Empire
III.4. How the Commerce of the Towns Contributed to the Improvement of the Country
Volume II
IV.7. Of Colonies
Book V: Of the Revenue of the Sovereign or Commonwealth
V.1. Of the Expences of the Sovereign or Commonwealth

Film screening | 4:30PM | Danton (1983)

July 14 | 6:30PM _____________________

Thursday evening lecture

History of humanity 1750–1815

July 17 | 1:00PM _____________________

Benjamin Constant, “The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns”
Kant, “What is Enlightenment? ,” and “Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View”

Film screening | 4:30PM | Amistad (1997)

July 24 | 1:00PM _____________________

Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, [German-English annotated edition, alternate translation]
Kant, “On the Common Saying: That May be Correct in Theory, But it is of No Use in Practice” [parts 2-3 in Kant,Toward Perpetual Peace, 44-66]

July 31 | 1:00PM _____________________

Hegel, Introduction to the Philosophy of History [HTML] [PDF pp. 14-128]

Film screening | 4:30PM | Gettysburg (1993) (selected scenes), “No Divine Spark” Glory (1989)

August 04 | 6:30PM _____________________

Thursday evening lecture

History of humanity 1815–48

August 07 | 1:00 PM _____________________

Richard Strauss, “Der Held” ["The Hero"], Ein Heldenleben [A Hero's Life] (1898)

Nietzsche, The Use and Abuse of History for Life [translator's introduction by Peter Preuss]
Nietzsche, selection from On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense.

Film screening | 4:30PM | Nietzsche: Human, All Too Human (1999)

August 14 | 1:00PM _____________________

Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals: A Polemic

Film screening | 4:30PM | Reds (1981)

August 21: Coda | 1:00PM _____________________

Marx, To make the world philosophical, Robert Tucker, ed., Marx-Engels Reader (Norton 2nd ed., 1978) pp. 9–11
Marx, For the ruthless criticism of everything existing, Marx-Engels Reader pp. 12–15
Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, Marx-Engels Reader pp. 143–145
Marx, On [Bruno Bauer's] The Jewish Question, Marx-Engels Reader pp. 26–52
Marx, The coming upheaval [see bottom of section, beginning with "Economic conditions had first transformed the mass"] (from The Poverty of Philosophy, 1847), Marx-Engels Reader pp. 218–219
Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, Marx-Engels Reader pp. 469–500