As editor of Communist Voice, I attended the meetings of the Platypus International Convention from Friday to Saturday, April 5-6, and spoke on two panels on April 6. The theme of the convention was "Program and Utopia"; and most of the speakers don't seem to have been members of Platypus.
The Platypus Affiliated Society is an odd
sort of organization — self-consciously so, as one can see by its name
"Platypus", which is a reference to a strange-looking animal that is
one of the few mammals that lays eggs. Their motto is "The left is
dead! Long live the left!"; which means that they are devoted to
dealing with the crisis of the left. Unfortunately, it isn't clear what
they mean by the "left", nor how they expect to overcome its crisis.
They mainly organize reading groups and forums on various subjects, and
publish the Platypus Review, which carries articles mostly from outside
Platypus. Their theory is a combination of Trotskyism with the
Frankfurt school, while we at Communist Voice regard Trotskyism and
postmodernism as symptoms of the crisis of the left, and hold that it
is crucial to continue the anti-revisionist struggle, which requires
opposing both revisionist ideologies, Trotskyism and Stalinism. But the
positive part of the work of Platypus is organizing an exchange of
views among activists of very different political trends.
I ended up speaking on two panels: One was the
anti-imperialism panel: the official subject was whether there was a
contradiction between anti-fascism and anti-imperialism, but the real
subject was the Arab Spring and the Syrian uprising. Of the three
panelists, I was the only one to defend the Syrian and Libyan
uprisings. I gave a realistic assessment of the disappointing type of
regimes that could be expected to arise from the struggles of the Arab
Spring, while nevertheless holding that the overthrow of the old
regimes was of tremendous importance for the revolutionary working
class and the future development of anti-imperialism. I opposed
non-class anti-imperialism, which judges struggles from their momentary
effect, real or imagined, on the maneuvers of rival imperialisms rather
than on their lasting effects on the situation of the working people.
My defense of the Syrian uprising met with the
bitter opposition of Larry Everest, the speaker from the Maoist
Revolutionary Communist Party of the USA. He is a zealous supporter of
non-class anti-imperialism; he spoke emotionally and at length of the
crimes of imperialism and of RCP's Program and its Constitution for the
future socialist republic, but overlooked an assessment of the current
stage of the mass struggle in the Middle East or its importance for the
future development of the revolutionary movement. He denounced me for
supposedly backing "humanitarian imperialism" for supporting the Libyan
uprising despite the NATO air intervention and for supporting the right
of the insurgents to make use of the intervention. I denounced him as a
liar, because he had heard me denounce Western imperialism, point out
its danger to the Arab Spring, and the need for us to always expose its
motives. At the same time I held that it was legitimate for uprisings
to make use of the differences among outside reactionary powers, and
that few revolutions in history had ever succeeded without doing so.
The irony, of course, is that the RCP supports movements and
governments that have also made use of such contradictions, and in
particular in the discussion Larry Everest emphasized the importance of
the Soviet Union’s struggle against the Nazis, and yet the Soviet
Union received massive military aid from Western imperialism in World
War II.
The other panel I spoke on was the environmental
panel, where the subject was why the left and the environmental
movement weren't doing that well. I was the only panelist who spoke of
the need to build a working-class environmental movement that would
openly oppose establishment environmentalism and its advocacy of failed
market measures such as cap and trade or new fiascoes in the making,
such as the carbon tax. The other two panelists would speak of opposing
the fundamental logic of capitalism and of changes they wanted to see
in society, but they wouldn't give an assessment of the nature of
establishment environmentalism (correct on the dangers of global
warming, but advocating harmful market measures).
Meanwhile the most notable figure at the convention
was probably Andreas Karitzis, the representative from the Greek
organization Syriza ("Coalition of the Radical Left - Unitary Social
Front"), which is the official opposition in the Greek parliament to
the servile parties of austerity. In fact, Syriza almost won the
national elections of June 2012. And unlike the sell-out Greek
Socialists, who are part of the pro-austerity coalition, Syriza is
fighting austerity. Their representative described the history of
Syriza, how it worked with the mass movements, and the brutal pressure
from the bourgeoisie against them. But from the several presentations
he gave, it also appears that Syriza isn't sure what it would or could
do if it does come to power. This uncertainty was a major point in the
discussion about Greece. This, it seems to me, shows one aspect of the
fact that, despite Karitzis' talk of overcoming capitalism, Syriza is a
reformist party. It would prefer to proceed by renegotiating the
austerity deal and getting better terms. It seems to know that this
isn't likely to be possible, yet it hasn't yet confronted the question
of what radical steps would be necessary to oppose the brutal
financial, economic and political pressure the European bourgeoisie
would put on a Greek government that rejects austerity.
For the text of my presentation on imperialism, see page 43.
For the text of my presentation on the environment, see page 27.
Videos of the entire discussion at these panels can
be found at http://platypus1917.org/2013/04/06/what-is-imperialism-what-now-media/ and http://platypus1917.org/2013/04/06/capital-history-and-environmental-politics/.
Other panels, including those with presentations by the representative
of Syriza, can be found at http://platypus1917.org/2013/04/06/differing-perspectives-on-the-left-syriza-greece/, http://platypus1917.org/2013/04/06/the-labor-left-after-politics-and-after-utopia/ and http://platypus1917.org/2013/04/06/feed/.
– Joseph Green <>
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