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The Platypus Affiliated Society, established in December 2006, organizes reading groups, public fora, research and journalism focused on the problems and tasks inherited from the "Old" (1920s–30s), "New" (1960s–70s) and post-political (1980s–90s) Left for the possibilities of emancipatory politics today.

The Latest from The Platypus Review:

  • The Frankfurt School wanted socialism: Contra Rockhill
    What is Stalinism? It is the liquidation of Marxism. More precisely, it is the liquidation of the Marxist self-consciousness and theory of the proletarian socialist party — it is also the practical liquidation of that party. What is most troubling about the history of “Marxism-Leninism” AKA Stalinism is, like with the Jacobins, not their ruthlessness towards avowed counterrevolutionaries, but rather the Revolution eating its own — the unjust and murderous turn against the loyal revolutionaries themselves. The problem with Stalinism is the lies it entails — the lies against the revolutionaries, and against the Revolution itself. And the lies never end.
  • On David Harvey’s The Condition of Postmodernity
    Behind society’s deeply damaged attempts to become aware of its own direction, the current, more or less deformed, intellectual instinct already indicates that the world has changed. What is the reality of the past in the present?
  • The revolution next time: Wiser and on firmer ground
    The reversion to capitalism by the “socialist camp” was certainly an eye-opener. It laid bare the fact that society had not undergone a fundamental transformation in the relations of production and the social superstructure. There was nothing comparable to the way capitalism had made itself immune to a relapse into feudalism or something similar.
  • “A state of crisis and a century of revolutions”: The legacy of the French Revolution
    Nearly two and a half centuries after the storming of the Bastille, does our historical present still have something to learn from the French Revolution?
  • The transgender issue
    I think we can all agree, for a start, that the weaponization of the transgender issue by Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and the minions of the Republican Right — and their outrageous claims — are reprehensible. But the “transgender-affirming” Left isn’t much better — they too have weaponized the issue, turning one’s subjective sense of gender identity (especially among minors, who are too young to even qualify for a learner’s permit for a driver’s license!) into an objective “alternative fact” — to invoke Kellyanne Conway’s infamous phrase.

Das Neueste aus Die Platypus Review:

  • Von Kautsky lernen heiĂźt siegen lernen?
    Eine Rezension zu Ingar Soltys Buch „Karl Kautsky zur Einführung. Sozialismus und Klassenpartei“ von Johann Richter
  • Mit HaustĂĽrwahlkämpfen in Richtung einer organisierenden Klassenpartei
    Kommentar zum Podium „Was ist DIE LINKE?“ in Berlin am 4. Juli  2025 von Jorrit
  • Was ist DIE LINKE?
    Am 4. Juli 2025 veranstaltete die Platypus Affiliated Society eine Podiumsdiskussion mit Dietmar Bartsch (DIE LINKE), Martin Suchanek (Gruppe ArbeiterInnen Macht), Charly Roffalski (DIE LINKE) und Jakob (Platypus) in Berlin zum Thema: Was ist DIE LINKE? Es folgt ein editiertes und gekürztes Transkript der Veranstaltung, die unter https://youtu.be/cbxbsZMQgJM?si=kBQueOdhVntk6WRB vollständig angehört werden kann.