[full issue]

History’s forgotten dreams and nightmares: Jeff Koons at Versailles
Laurie Rojas
In Jeff Koons at Versailles, the sculptures are conspicuously selected for display in Les appartements du Roi (King’s apartments) and Les appartements de la Reine (Queen’s apartments). As the sepulcher of the French monarchy’s works of art, Versailles, with its 2000 acres, is one of the worlds most visited historic monuments (nearly 5 million visitors a year). With an emphasis on the history of the French Revolution, visitors are reminded by Versailles tour guides of what Versailles once was: the headquarters of a now outdated form of political life that dominated Europe for over five centuries.

Living Marxism
James Heartfield
One of the stran ger sights in today’s banking crisis is the sudden popularity of Karl Marx. The Manifesto is flying off the shelves, and business execs are boning up on Marx’s crisis theory in much the same way that they used to lap up Sun Tzu’s Art of War, or parrot Heraclitus’ saying that there is nothing permanent but change.

Obama and Clinton: "Third Way" politics and the "Left"
Chris Cutrone
For the “Left” that is critical of him, the most common comparison made of Obama is to Bill Clinton. This critique of Obama, as of Clinton, denounces his “Centrism,” the trajectory he appears to continue from the “new” Democratic Party of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) expressed by Clinton and Gore’s election in 1992. Clinton’s election was seen as part of the triumph of “Third Way” politics that contemporaneously found expression in Tony Blair’s “New” Labour Party in Britain. The idea of such “Third Way” politics is that, compared to the prior political polarizations that developed around the Reagan and Thatcher neoliberal assault on the Keynesian-Fordist state and the resistance against this trend by traditional “social-democratic” politics, the “radical Center” expressed the possibility of a deeper and more effective political transformation. — What if the “Third Way” politicians were correct?

Red-baiting and ideology: the new SDS
Laurie Rojas, Richard Rubin
EXCHANGE between Richard Rubin and Laurie Rojas on the new SDS in response to Rachel Haut’s comments during an interview on Hundred Days Campaign printed in September 2008 issue of the Platypus Review.

The necessity of leadership
Richard Kidd
To change the world, we need a movement. This movement must be made up of millions of people and thousands of organizations. These organizations must build and push the movement forward. How do we get to this point? We have to start with leadership.