*Editorial Statement
The Platypus Review Editorial Board
"The Review seeks to be a forum among a variety of tendencies and approaches to these categories of thought and action—not out of a concern with inclusion for its own sake, but rather to provoke productive disagreement and to open shared goals as sites of contestation. In this way, the recriminations and accusations arising from political disputes of the past might be elevated to an ongoing critique that seeks to clarify its object."

Ba’athism and the history of the Left in Iraq: Violence and politics
Ian Morrison
Ian Morrison sheds light on the regressive character of the Iraqi Ba’athist party by looking into the use of violence as a means to legitimize politics based in religious bigotry and racism. The decline of the once prominent Iraqi Communist Party contributed to the general disintegration of Iraqi political and civil society that precipitated the rise of Ba’athism. Explicating a political history that confounds contemporary anti-war activists, Morrison offers an attempt to recover progressive alternatives present in Iraq today.

Introduction to the history of the Left:
Changes in the meaning of class struggles
The Platypus Historians Group
The Platypus Historian’s Group argues for the need for a critical stance toward contemporary politics to demystify both regressive and emancipatory alternatives. Such political alternatives are obscured by the traditional Marxist focus on class-antagonism as the source of emancipatory politics. In looking towards the future, Platypus looks to uncover threads of progressive political activity made possible by present day, capitalist society.

Marx After Marxism: An interview with Moishe Postone
Benjamin Blumberg, Pam C Nogales C
Conducted on January 23, 2008.

Moishe Postone is Professor of History at the University of Chicago, and his seminal book Time, Labor, and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx’s Critical Theory investigates Marx’s categories of commodity, labor, and capital, and the saliency of Marx’s critique of capital in the neoliberal context of the present. Rescuing Marx’s categories from intellectual and political obsolescence, Postone brings them to bear on the global transformations of the past three decades. In the following interview, Postone stresses the importance of an analysis of the history of capital for a progressive anti-capitalist Left today.

Review: Angela Davis "How does change happen?"
Chris Cutrone
Angela Davis, renowned former member of the Communist Party and the Black Panthers, recently delivered a speech entitled “How Does Change Happen?” to a large Chicago audience. Chris Cutrone reviews the speech, arguing that uncritical use of the category of "race" works to confound Davis’s account of the development of the political goals of her generation.

Review: Iran "Insights into its Religion, Politics, and Power"
Pam C Nogales C
Recent Iranian history raises the challenges of translating progressive social ideals into politics; the Iranian Revolution is exemplary: it illustrates how progressive demands can be used to mobilize support for authoritarianism and religious fundamentalism. Recounting the ambivalence toward the Revolution expressed at a recent panel discussion on Iranian politics, Pam Nogales explores the (im)possibility of a ‘pragmatic’ progressive politics.

The problem of nostalgia in Todd Haynes's "I'm Not There"
Ryan Hardy
In the film I’m Not There Todd Haynes assembles a discontinuous narrative in order to depict the political and cultural ferment of the last half-century. Focusing on the emblematic figure of Bob Dylan, the nuanced perspective achieved by the film relays a romantic attachment, however veiled, to certain historical moments. In his review, Ryan Hardy interprets Haynes’s nostalgia, suggesting that such depictions of the past might do more to reveal contemporary pessimism than to offer insight into an imagined past.