A lecture by Platypus member James Vaughn upon the history of humanity up to 1750, given as part of the Platypus summer 2011 radical bourgeois philosophy reading group. Held on June 30st, 2011 at New York University.

Platypus Summer Reading Group 2011: Radical Bourgeois Philosophy

Rousseau-Smith-Kant-Hegel-Nietzsche

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 possibilities 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)

Panel held at the Marxist Literary Group Summer 2011 Institute on Culture and Society at the Institute for the Humanities, University of Illinois at Chicago on June 22, 2011

The legacy of revolution 1917-19 in Russia, Germany, Hungary and Italy is concentrated above all in the historical figures Vladimir Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg and Leon Trotsky, leaders of the Left in the Second International (1889-1914) — what they called “revolutionary social democracy” — in the period preceding the crisis of war, revolution, counterrevolution and civil war in World War I and its aftermath. In 1920, Georg Lukács summed up this experience as follows: “[T]he crisis [of capital] remains permanent, it goes back to its starting-point, repeats the cycle until after infinite sufferings and terrible detours the school of history completes the education of the proletariat and confers upon it the leadership of mankind. . . . Of course this uncertainty and lack of clarity are themselves the symptoms of the crisis in bourgeois society. As the product of capitalism the proletariat must necessarily be subject to the modes of existence of its creator. . . . inhumanity and reification.” Nonetheless, these Marxists understood their politics as being “on the basis of capitalism” itself (Lenin). How were the 2nd Intl. radicals, importantly, critics, and not merely advocates, of their own political movement? What is the legacy of these figures today, after the 20th century — as Walter Benjamin said in his 1940 “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” “against the grain” of their time, reaching beyond it? How did Lenin, Luxemburg, and Trotsky contribute to the potential advancement and transformation of Marxism, in and through the crisis of Marxism in the early 20th century? How can we return to these figures productively, today, to learn the lessons of their history?

Panelists:
Chris Cutrone, Lenin
Greg Gabrellas, Luxemburg
Ian Morrison, Trotsky

Moderator:
Spencer Leonard

Panel held at the Marxist Literary Group Summer 2011 Institute on Culture and Society at the Institute for the Humanities, University of Illinois at Chicago on June 20, 2011

The “bourgeois revolutions” from the 16th through the 19th centuries — extending into the 20th — conformed humanity to modern city life, ending traditional, pastoral, religious custom in favor of social relations of the exchange of labor. Abbé Sieyès wrote in 1789 that, in contradistinction to the clerical 1st Estate who “prayed” and the aristocratic 2nd Estate who “fought,” the commoner 3rd Estate “worked:” “What has the 3rd Estate been? Nothing.” “What is it? Everything.” Kant warned that universal bourgeois society would be the mere midpoint in humanity’s achievement of freedom. After the last bourgeois revolutions in Europe of 1848 failed, Marx wrote of the “constitution of capital,” the ambivalent, indeed self-contradictory character of “free wage labor.” In the late 20th century, the majority of humanity abandoned agriculture in favor of urban life — however in “slum cities.” How does the bourgeois revolution appear from a Marxian point of view? How did what Marx called the “proletarianization” of society circa 1848 signal not only the crisis and supersession, but the need to fulfill and “complete” the bourgeois revolution, whose task now fell to the politics of “proletarian” socialism, expressed by the workers’ call for “social democracy?” How did this express the attempt, as Lenin put it, to overcome bourgeois society “on the basis of capitalism” itself? How did subsequent Marxism lose sight of Marx on this, and how might Marx’s perspective on the crisis of the bourgeois revolution in the 19th century still resonate today?

Panelists;
Spencer Leonard, “Marx’s critique of political economy: Proletarian socialism continuing the bourgeois revolution?”
Pamela Nogales, “Marx on the U.S. Civil War as the 2nd American Revolution”
Jeremy Cohan, “Lukács on Marx’s Hegelianism and the dialectic of Marxism”

Moderator:
Chris Cutrone

June 4, 2011 discussion of Mike Macnair's critique of Platypus for the Communist Party of Great Britain in The Weekly Worker (see links below to articles under discussion, especially the May 19 article by Macnair, "Theoretical dead end").

"Platypus: Is it a sect? Is it an academic grouping? Is it a theoretical dead end?"

The Communist Party of Great Britain's Mike Macnair's critique of Platypus in their paper The Weekly Worker is based on a conception of Marxism as practical politics that we don't share.

Macnair's critique provides an opportunity for clarifying and further developing the self-understanding of our organized project in Platypus.

While Macnair shares our priority of learning from the history of Marxism in the era of the 2nd International 1889-1914, Macnair challenges our philosophy of history, following Lukacs, Korsch, Benjamin and Adorno, of the "crisis of Marxism" 1914-19 and subsequent "regression."

The question is not whether Platypus has a political "line" or program, but rather whether Platypus is, like other "Marxist" organizations, a "propaganda group."

Macnair, for instance, divides political activity into 2 broad categories: 1.) propaganda ("many ideas to few people"); and 2.) agitation ("few ideas to many people"). In such a characterization of this distinction, Platypus would be more propagandistic than agitational. In either sense, however, there is the assumption of our project being *political* at all. -- Are we, as many on the "Left" suspect, evading matters in insisting that our project is "pre-political?" Macnair thinks that we are thus evading responsibility. Or, "to not have a line is to have a line" (of tacitly supporting the status quo, i.e., "imperialism").

In what way *is* Platypus a political project? And, if political, how "propagandistic?" For in either case, it is not a matter of *whether* (we are political and propagandistic), but *how* are we so? And why would we be political and propagandistic in ways different from the CPGB, RCP, ISO, Marxist-Humanists, Spartacist League, et al.? -- Not simply by avoiding taking a "line" or not formulating a "program."

Marxism could be considered (today, and perhaps also in the past) as either:

1.) a guide to action; or

2.) a guide to history

We would pose the latter, Marxism as a guide to history, against the typical sectarian "Left" rationale for (or, e.g., anarchist or liberal, *rejection of*) Marxism as a guide to action, due to both the nature and character of our project in our own, present historical moment.

There is possible disagreement or at least tension *within* Platypus between:

1.) treating our project (of "hosting the conversation") as being necessitated by our historical moment in a largely *negative* sense, as the lack of possibility for doing otherwise (what else *could* we do, now?); or

2.) treating the necessity, possibility, and (importantly) *desirability* of our project in a more "positive" sense, according to our sense that what we are trying to do was not only possible and necessary but also would have been desirable in previous historical moments. -- In other words, the nature and character of our project is not (merely) unfortunate.

We would, indeed, maintain (controversially) that Marxism has *always* been primarily a "guide to history" rather than a "guide to action," or, more precisely, that it has only been a guide to action through being a guide to history.

There are to be considered 2 different conceptions of what we do, either: 1.) "hosting the conversation" is a *means* towards the end of promulgating our own ideas; or, alternatively, 2.) there is the idea of "provoking and organizing the pathology [symptomology] of the Left" through hosting the conversation. In either case, Platypus serves an educative function.

The question is whether Platypus is primarily about teaching or learning. Teaching would be about the former, an essentially propagandistic task; learning would be about the latter, meaning providing the possibility for *our own* as well as others' learning how to grasp the present through engaging it symptomatically. -- How can the conversation we host be critically transformative? How could our project be made to advance beyond itself?

Hence, Macnair's critique of Platypus is a good occasion for us to clarify and deepen our sense of the raison d'etre of Platypus as an organized project.

* * *

Macnair's articles and letters in response as a PDF.

Macnair's articles:

May 12: "No need for party?" by Mike Macnair

May 19: "Theoretical dead end" by Mike Macnair

June 2: "The study of history and the Left's decline" by Mike Macnair

Platypus letters and article in response:

May 19: "Platypus" by Chris Cutrone; and "De rigueur" by Watson Ladd

May 26: "Fish nor fowl" by Chris Cutrone

June 3: "The philosophy of history" by Chris Cutrone