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| Established | December 2006; 18 years ago (2006-12)[1] |
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| Founder | Chris Cutrone |
| Founded at | |
Publication | |
| Website | platypus1917 |
ThePlatypus Affiliated Society (alternativelyPlatypus orPAS) is an international educational organization focused onleft-wing andMarxist history and thought.[2] It was founded by Chris Cutrone and his students at theSchool of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2006.
Platypus organizes reading groups,forums, and research and journalism, focused on the inherited problems of what it terms theOld,New, andpost-political left.[3] It describes itself as "hosting the conversation on the left" in order to "dissolve ideological obstacles to the reestablishment of socialism."[4][5] As of 2025[update] it reports around 50 chapters, principally inNorth America,Europe, andOceania and usually based onuniversity campuses.[6]
The Platypus Affiliated Society describes its interpretation of Marxism as a "synthesis" oforthodox Trotskyism andFrankfurt-Schoolcritical theory, though it does not claim to be either aTrotskyist organization or a modern incarnation of the Frankfurt School. Genealogically, it identifies with these traditions as objects of historical preservation, respectively by theSpartacist League andMoishe Postone's recovery of Marxian critical theory.[7] Platypus argues that, even though these two traditions failed in their respective projects, they still by different means sought to preserve key elements ofLeninism following its disintegration intoStalinism and so serve as the foremost negativeobject lessons for any contemporary attempt to recover Marxism.[8]
In reading groups organized by PAS, Marx is situated as a critical interlocutor with "radical bourgeois philosophy," principally in conversation with thinkers such asJean-Jacques Rousseau,Adam Smith,Immanuel Kant, andGeorg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.[9][10] Marx and Marxism are read not as breaking with the Enlightenment tradition, butdialectically critiquing its project as self-contradictory inindustrial capitalism. Platypus identifies in the radical Marxists of theSecond International—namelyVladimir Lenin,Rosa Luxemburg, andLeon Trotsky—a shared commitment to this original approach of Marxism.[11] This historiography of Marxism is received primarily throughKarl Korsch'sMarxism and Philosophy (1923) andGyörgy Lukács'sHistory and Class Consciousness (1923), both being foundational texts for the critical theory of the Frankfurt School which was founded soon after.
Platypus identifies key thinkers in the milieu of the Frankfurt School, such asTheodor Adorno,Max Horkheimer, andWalter Benjamin, as preserving Marxian theory after the liquidation of theMarxist political party.[12] Analogously, Trotsky's characterization of the crisis of Marxism in the 1930s as acrisis of leadership represented for Platypus the attempt to preserve the radical, critical character of Marxist political practice.[13]
Dr. Shtefan Alexander has characterized Platypus's ideological approach to Marxism as "via negativa," challenging the left with what it lacks or has abandoned and raising the history of Marxism as "a question to our contemporary society about the possibility of radically transforming our social relations."[14]
Platypus maintains that the history of thetwentieth century was a history of regression inconsciousness, wherein the left repeatedly missed opportunities for ideological clarification by inverting failures and defeats into victories. Platypus takes this historical regression as the occasion for its project.[15] Platypus identifies four key periods around which it argues the left has regressed by abandoning the radical horizons of Marxism:[16]
The organization's name alludes toFriedrich Engels's disbelief at the existence of theplatypus, which the organization likens to the current state of theleft. They argue that, similarly to how precedingextinction events made the platypus difficult totaxonomize, the contemporary left may only be properly justified as a left on the basis of a presently-buried history.[17] PAS's slogan, "The Left is dead! Long live the Left!", similarly expresses this prognosis, that "the Platypus symbolizes the need for intellectual flexibility, humility, and openness to new ideas in the left’s ideological framework."[18]
Platypus was initially conceived in December 2004 as ajournal project, organized by a group of students at theUniversity of Chicago studying underNeo-Marxist historian and social theoristMoishe Postone.[19] In 2006, Platypus organized a reading group on the history of Marxistcritical theory, and in January 2007 hosted its first public forum. These activities, in addition tocoffee breaks, came to comprise the "tripod" of Platypus.[20] PAS has hosted public panel discussions since 2007. These discussions have featured panelists such asNorman Finkelstein,Adolph Reed Jr. andBhaskar Sunkara,[21][22] and have covered topics such as thepolitical party,[23] thelabor movement,[24] theIranian Revolution,[25]free speech,[26] andanti-racism,[27] as well as the legacy of theAnti-Germans in Germany.[28] Platypus has hosted a yearly international convention inChicago since 2009.
ThePlatypus Review is a monthly, open-submission journal first published by the organization in November 2007. TheReview is self-described as "a forum among a variety of tendencies and approaches on the Left […] [intending] to provoke disagreement and to open shared goals as sites of contestation."[29] It has published notable thinkers on the left includingAngela Davis,Grover Furr,David Harvey,Gerald Horne,[30]Axel Honneth,Domenico Losurdo,[31]Nina Power,Mark Rudd, andSlavoj Zizek. TheReview also publishes articles written by students.[32]
AGerman-languagesister publication,Die Platypus Review, began serialization in April 2016.
The Platypus Affiliated Society has been criticized for a variety of alleged political positions, while Platypus maintains that it is a "pre-political" organization with nopolitical line.[33] TheWeekly Worker has criticized Platypus as inadequate to its own theoretical project of a critique of the left, alleging that Platypus critiquesStalinism andMaoism, yet uncritically upholdsorthodox Marxism, theSecond International, and Trotskyism.[34]
A number of organizations have accused Platypus of ideologically supportingimperialism orUnited States military intervention, including as theWorld Socialist Web Site and theSpartacist League.[35][36] Platypus has denied alleged support for U.S. intervention in theIraq War.[37] Its founder, Chris Cutrone, was similarly criticized after publishing an article challenging the left's opposition toPresident Donald Trump'sproposed acquisition of Greenland.[38][10]Jonathan Chait has characterized Cutrone as a "horseshoe-theory Marxist".[39]
Platypus has describedanti-Trumpism on the left as "nervous hyperventilation of the complacent status quo under threat."[40] Critics have correspondingly accused PAS and its membership of supportingTrumpism.[10][41]
In late 2013, a number of the Platypus Affiliated Society's internal communications were leaked, including reports from then-president Chris Cutrone characterizing Platypus as "a combat organization waging war on the 'Left'" and, separately, comments remarking on the prospects forPalestinians in theIsrael-Palestine conflict. Following these leaks, former Platypus member Ben Campbell wrote an open letter calling for aboycott of all participation on events and activities hosted by the organization; the letter was subsequently published by left-wing commentatorRichard Seymour.[42] The letter had eighteen additional signatories, including Sebastian Budgen, editor ofHistorical Materialism; political theoristJodi Dean;Doug Henwood ofLeft Business Observer; and philosopherNina Power. Power no longer supports the boycott, stating she had "no idea why I signed it in the first place."[43]
