authors
[articles]
Adorno, Theodor W.
“The proletariat . . . is itself a product of bourgeois society. . . . [T]he actual consciousness of actual
workers . . . [has] absolutely no advantage over the bourgeois except . . . interest in the revolution, but
otherwise bear[s] all the marks of mutilation of the typical ...
Albert, Michael
"The future is not certain. The Bolivarian revolution could still stall in social democracy. Co-management and not self management could lead that way. It could still stumble or even rush into typical old style "socialist" channels. Its market strategies and ...
Ali, Tariq
"Looking down on the world from the imperial grandeur
of the Oval Office in the fall of 2001, the Cheney–Bush team
was confident of its ability to utilize the September events to
remodel the world. The Pentagon’s Vice ...
Althusser, Louis
"For, after all, are we not always in exceptional situations? The failure of the [1848 revolution in France and the] 1849 revolution in Germany [were] exception[s], the failure in Paris in 1871 was an exception, the German Social-Democratic failure ...
Anderson, Perry
Few political notions are at once so normative and so
equivocal as internationalism. Today, the official discourse of
the West resounds with appeals to a term that was long a
trademark of the Left. Whatever sense is given it, the ...
Bell, Daniel
“… [W]hat ultimately provides direction for the economy is the value system of the culture in which the economy is embedded. Economic policy can be efficacious as a means; but it can only be as just as the cultural value ...
Berman, Paul
"The photographer has evidently been circling around the skirmish, snapping his camera in what must have been a frenzy of adrenaline, each picture taken from a different angle.
Those were brutal photographs. One glance at them and you were back ...
Castoriadis, Cornelius
"We have said for some years in this journal that revolutionary activity is caught in a crucial contradiction: It participates in the society it is trying to abolish. This is the same sort of contradictory position the proletariat itself is ...
Clark, T. J.
"Benjamin’s Marxism was a period phenomenon, it tells
us: a serious phenomenon, to an extent, and certainly not simply to be
condescended to, but never a set of commitments and dreamed-of procedures
that Benjamin properly reconciled with his deeper ...
Cohn-Bendit, Daniel and Gabriel
"Stay awhile in the street. Look at the passers-by and say to yourself: the last word has not yet been said. Then act. Act with others, not for them. Make the revolution here and now. It is yours. "
(1968)
Communist Party, Iraqi
"We are fully aware that democracy is a historical process of multisided dimensions: political, social, economic and cultural. No doubt, all the institutional prerequisites for democracy have not matured or fully developed within Iraqi society. However, instituting democracy, in all ...
Cutrone, Chris
The “functional context which [we] cannot know” is capital, which generates not only
(critical) subjectivity, but the theory-practice problem itself, as a non-identity of subject and
object of practice. For Marx, “alienation” is not empirical but social-contextual. By comparison,
the ...
Duncombe, Stephen
"This is my story, a story of cultural resistance whose contours are shaped by my scholarly strengths and weaknesses, and my political passions and prejudices, all of which, with no doubt, will become clear as you read on." (Cultural Resistance ...
Dutschke, Rudi
"The decisive precondition for the revolutionizing of the masses is the revolutionizing of revolutionaries."
(1968)
Eagleton, Terry
"Cultural theory as we have it promises to grapple with some fundamental problems, but on the whole fails to deliver. It has been shamefaced about morality and metaphysics, embarrassed about love, biology, religion and revolution, largely silent about evil, reticent ...
Editorial Board, The Platypus Review
In order to make sense of the present, we find it necessary to disentangle the vast accumulation of positions on the Left, and to evaluate their saliency for an emancipatory politics of the present. Doing this work implies a reconsideration ...
Engels, Friedrich
“what is known as ‘Marxism’ in France is, indeed, an altogether peculiar product — so much so that Marx once said to Lafargue: ‘Ce qu'il y a de certain c'est que moi, je ne suis pas Marxiste.’ [If anything ...
Featherstone, Liza
"We're not calling for leadership by intellectuals. On the contrary, we challenge left activist culture to live up to its anti-hierarchical claims: activists should themselves become intellectuals. Why reproduce the larger society's division between mental and physical labor ...
Foster, Hal
"Perhaps we should say it explicitly: it may or may not be the case that a particular
image-event can in itself alter the balance of world-political forces, surging out
of the blue of international disorder and remaking the terms of ...
Fraser, Dick
"During the ensuing Reconstruction in the South, the capitalists permitted a short and inconclusive struggle of the Negroes for equality. These were the glorious days when a white and black peasantry ruled the South. It was then that the Negroes ...
Gorz, André
"Certainly one can speculate that automation will bring all the capitalist societies to the point of crisis; it will destroy the quantitive criteria of efficiency on which these societies are based; automation will make it clear that the rational utilization ...
Habermas/Derrida, Jürgen/ Jacques
Halliday, Fred
"My view is that the kind of position which the New Left Review and Tariq have adopted in terms of the conflict in the Middle East is an extremely reactionary, right-wing one. It starts with Afghanistan. To my mind, Afghanistan ...
Hegel, G. W. F.
The question of how Reason is determined in itself and what its relation is to the world coincides with the question, What is the ultimate purpose of the world? This question implies that the purpose is to be actualized and ...
Hoare, Quintin
Juliet Mitchell’s refusal to connect women as a social group historically
with the family leads her to odd conclusions both on the past and on
the future. Her discussion of the experience of post revolutionary
Russia is an example ...
Holmes, Marisa
"Conversations ran late and sleepless nights ensued, yet I had never felt so awake. These were not apathetic individuals, but a group of committed revolutionaries. By the end of the weekend we were working together on proposals, debating, and making ...
Horkheimer, Max
"In socialism, freedom is to become a reality. But because the present system is called 'free' and considered liberal, it is not terribly clear what this might mean. . . . Not only [the Little Man's] lack of freedom but that of ...
Kautsky, Karl
Then a new era would dawn upon mankind. Its advent depends chiefly on the Communists of Russia. But today it is the duty of Socialists, in all parleys and discussions with Communists, to point out this fact to them, and ...
Kolakowski, Leszek
The concept of the Left remains unclear to this day."
(1968)
Korsch, Karl
"As scientific socialism, the Marxism of Marx and Engels remains the inclusive whole of a theory of social revolution . . . a materialism whose theory comprehended the totality of society and history, and whose practice overthrew it. . . . The difference [now] is that ...
Lenin, Vladimir
One of the leaders of the Bolshevik party since its formation in 1903. Led the Soviets to Revolution on October, 1917. Elected to the head of the Soviet government until 1922, when he retired due to ill health.
Leslie, Esther
On 12 January 1969, Herbert Marcuse wrote to Theodor Adorno
announcing a June visit to Frankfurt. He wanted to give a lecture. He
requested that the meeting be small and intimate, and solicited an
official invitation, so that he could ...
Lukács, György
Orthodox Marxism, therefore, does not imply the uncritical acceptance of the results of Marx’s investigations. It is not the ‘belief’ in this or that thesis, nor the exegesis of a ‘sacred’ book. On the contrary, orthodoxy refers exclusively to ...
Luxemburg, Rosa
Socialism is the first popular movement in world history that has set itself the goal of bringing human consciousness, and thereby free will, into play in the social actions of mankind. For this reason, Friedrich Engels designated the final victory ...
Löwy, Michael
Michael Löwy lives and works in Paris. He is a member of the reunified Fourth International and is a co-author, with Joel Kovel, of the "Ecosocialist Manifesto." Among his published books is Fire Alarm, an in-depth analysis of Benjamin’s ...
Marcuse, Herbert
The advancing one-dimensional society alters the relation between the rational and the irrational. Contrasted with the fantastic and insane aspects of its rationality, the realm of the irrational becomes the home of the really rational — of the ideas which may ...
Marx, Karl
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. — (The Communist Manifesto, Chapter 1)
Mills, C. Wright
"That’s why we’ve got to study these new generations of intellectuals around the world as real live agencies of historic change. Forget Victorian Marxism, except whenever you need it; and read Lenin again (be careful) — Rosa Luxemburg, too ...
Mitchell, Juliet
Until there is a revolution in production, the labour situation will prescribe women’s situation within the world of men. But women are offered a universe of their own: the family. Like woman herself, the family appears as a natural ...
Nettl, J. P.
"The relationship of conflict and organization is recognized by
modern sociology. So is the relationship between a "class" or
group and "society" or all other groups. In a political context our
problem could be restated with sociological definitions as the ...
Newton, Huey P.
Thereupon the FBI added captions advocating violence, printed thousands of copies bearing the Party's name, and circulated them throughout the country, particularly to merchants and businesses who contributed to the breakfast program. Those who received these so-called Panther "comics ...
Nicolaus, Martin
Drink milk.
Nogales C, Pam C
"...In the face of Dr. Menashri’s formulation, “Whenever
there has been a clash between ideology and interest, in
almost all cases interest won over ideology,” one finds it
difficult to conceive of what an effective politics may consist
of ...
Oglesby, Carl
Capitalism and socialism, as defined by their practice, are different means, corresponding to different material and political situations, for pursuing the common and general aim of industrialization. (1969)
Platypus, Marxist Reading Group
We are motivated, after failed and betrayed attempts at emancipation, and in light of their inadequate self-understanding, to re-appropriate this history in service of possibilities for emancipatory struggle in the present — and the future.
Platypus Historians Group, The
The Platypus Historians Group is a collective of members of Platypus who are researchers into the history of the Left. We will be publishing this series on the History of the Left under this collective authorship to indicate the collaborative ...
Postel, Danny
Danny Postel is a Senior Editor at openDemocracy and is contributing editor for Dædalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He is the author of Reading "Legitimation Crisis" in Tehran: Iran and the Future of Liberalism (Prickly ...
Postone, Moishe
"However difficult the task of grasping and confronting global capital might be, it is crucially important that a global internationalism be recovered and reformulated. . . . None of the massive demonstrations against the war featured oppositional progressive Iraqis who could provide a ...
Reich, Wilhelm
I had read somewhere that lovers get rid of any intruder, so with wild fantasies in my brain I slipped back to my bed, my joy of life shattered, torn apart in my inmost being for my whole life!
Retort Collective, The
We are rehearsing a logic, not endorsing it. But we believe that only
by recognizing what was truly ‘modern’ in the martyr-pilots’ strategy—
truly the opposite of a desperate, powerless, atavistic pinprick; truly the
instigator of the state’s present ...
Rojas, Laurie
Contemporary art photography practices have yet to work through the medium-specific possibilities of photography as art, i.e., as an end in itself. It has yet to properly ask the question, what makes a photograph art? What makes a photograph ...
Schmidt, Laura
"Locating the politics of gentrification is difficult precisely because to want something to happen with respect to gentrification is to desire reform as the end goal. In order to transform the inevitability of gentrification, capital must be overcome. However, failing ...
Segal, Lynne
Juliet Mitchell would appear to be the ideal authority to turn to if one wants to discuss the fraught issue of psychoanalysis and feminism. (2000)
Slaughter, Cliff
Reformism and opportunism are tied to the existing structure of power: a confused mixture of notions of fair play and expediency is the nearest they ever get to theory. Their political actions are based on an adjustment of the partial ...
Smith, Adam
The word VALUE, it is to be observed, has two different meanings, and sometimes expresses the utility of some particular object, and sometimes the power of purchasing other goods which the possession of that object conveys. The one may be ...
Spartacist League, The
Spartacist League web site
The International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) is a proletarian, revolutionary and internationalist tendency which is committed to the task of building Leninist parties as national sections of a democratic-centralist international whose purpose is to lead the ...
Torres, Marco
"In the writings of the 1960s meant to repudiate his work of the 20s, Lukács summoned up all his rhetorical brilliance to engage in precisely the kind of thinking that, decades before, he had criticized. These writings are an affirmation ...
Trotsky, Leon
"The formless talk about proletarian culture, in antithesis to bourgeois culture, feeds on the extremely uncritical identification of the historic destinies of the proletariat with those of the bourgeoisie. A shallow and purely liberal method of making analogies of historic ...
Whited, Soren
Why make a film about “La Commune?” And why now? It becomes evident early in the film that Watkins revisits this failed but highly charged revolutionary moment because the present is completely lacking in even the potential for such a ...
X, Malcom
"I realized racism isn't just a black and white problem. It's brought bloodbaths to about every nation on earth at one time or another. Brother, remember the time that white college girl came into the restaurant — the one ...
Žižek, Slavoj
the core of my entire work is the endeavour to use Lacan as a privileged intellectual tool to reactualize German idealism