On May 26, 2020, the Northwestern chapter of the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted a forum titled Imperialism and the Left. Panelists were asked to address: What exactly is imperialism? What constitutes (if at all) effective resistance to it? How has the Left historically understood imperialism? Has that understanding been lost? Printed here are the opening remarks made by Sunit Singh.

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FOUR MONTHS AGO, THE PLATYPUS AFFILIATED SOCIETY PUBLISHED “Why Not Trump Again,” following their tradition of contrarian Marxism. Previously, Chris Cutrone has poked fun at the liberal and leftist tendency to prognosticate the end of the world.

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I QUIT THE “LEFT” in 1993, after the LA riots, the quint-centenary of Columbus’s Discovery and Bill Clinton’s election in 1992 — in that order. These events told me that there would be no struggle for proletarian socialism, no Marxism, but only Republicans, riots — and Democrats.

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David Walters is a co-editor, with Tim Davenport, of The Selected Works of Eugene V. Debs, a six-volume set currently in publication through Haymarket Books. On February 22, 2020, Edward Remus and William Lushbough interviewed Walters with a focus on Debs’s path to founding and leading the Socialist Party of America (SPA).

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