"Lenin, Luxemburg, & Trotsky: Marxism of the 2nd International" (6/22/11 panel)

On June 22nd, 2011 the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted a public forum on "The Marxism of Second International Radicalism: Lenin, Luxemburg, and Trotsky."

Marxist Literary Group summer 2011 Institute on Culture and Society
Institute for the Humanities, University of Illinois at Chicago.

SPEAKERS:
Chris Cutrone (on Lenin)
Greg Gabrellas (on Luxemburg)
Ian Morrison (on Trotsky)

Moderated by Spencer Leonard

DESCRIPTION:
The legacy of revolution 1917-19 in Russia, Germany, Hungary and Italy is concentrated above all in the historical figures Vladimir Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg and Leon Trotsky, leaders of the Left in the Second International (1889-1914) -- what they called "revolutionary social democracy" -- in the period preceding the crisis of war, revolution, counterrevolution and civil war in World War I and its aftermath. In 1920, Georg Lukacs summed up this experience as follows: "[T]he crisis [of capital] remains permanent, it goes back to its starting-point, repeats the cycle until after infinite sufferings and terrible detours the school of history completes the education of the proletariat and confers upon it the leadership of mankind. . . . Of course this uncertainty and lack of clarity are themselves the symptoms of the crisis in bourgeois society. As the product of capitalism the proletariat must necessarily be subject to the modes of existence of its creator. . . . inhumanity and reification." Nonetheless, these Marxists understood their politics as being "on the basis of capitalism" itself (Lenin). How were the 2nd Intl. radicals, importantly, critics, and not merely advocates, of their own political movement? What is the legacy of these figures today, after the 20th century -- as Walter Benjamin said in his 1940 "Theses on the Philosophy of History," "against the grain" of their time, reaching beyond it? How did Lenin, Luxemburg, and Trotsky contribute to the potential advancement and transformation of Marxism, in and through the crisis of Marxism in the early 20th century? How can we return to these figures productively, today, to learn the lessons of their history?

Gabrellas's opening remarks can be read in Platypus Review #38 here:
(https://platypus1917.org/2011/08/05/o...)
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The Platypus Affiliated Society organizes reading groups, public fora, research, and journalism focused on 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.

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