The Fake Marxism of Platypus 1917

Marx, in his Theses on Feuerbach wrote: The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it. Someone should have shared this with the contributors to The Platypus Affiliated Society, which claims it is "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."


Been keeping an eye on this shady, odd group for a while. I've never been a fan of their Albert Speer-like posters, friendly relations with imperialist cheerleaders who compare the imperialist invasion of Afghanistan to the Popular Front in the Spanish Civil War (check out the link, I'm not making that up...!) and creepy support for Israel (creepy in as much the way it supports Israel by attacking everyone in conflict with it as it is for actually supporting that bastion of reaction). To give you an example, in this article they not only equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, but they state bluntly that 'The Left’s invocation of concepts like “society,” “class,” and “interest” seems positively pathetic.'


I took a look at their very pedestrian article on Egypt and was not the least bit impressed.



For starters, there was no class analysis at all. And without examining the class conflict going on there, Egypt(which the author continually refers to in this manner, as an abstraction, not a class society with dynamic and shifting class struggle) and the ongoing revolts make about as much sense as a car without a motor. Under the hood is the part that makes the wheels turn.


There is also no mention of imperialism; this makes their dense wall of text comparing the Egyptian revolt to the bourgeois democratic revolutions in 1848 and 1789 so empty.


I found a bit that I think is odd too, coming from a group based in the United States:

1848 was both the last of the classical bourgeois revolutions and the first of the socialist revolutions that have marked the modern, bourgeois era.

I don't know if it was "classical" enough for them, but the US Civil War was one of the last bourgeois democratic revolutions, in many ways more profound than the French one, as it helped spread gains for workers around the world, including full enfranchisement for British workers. Hell, even Germany retained an aristocratic Junker class who filled their officer corps until the Red Army removed them from history and replaced their warmongering rule with a republican state...but that's probably not the kind of democratic revolution these liberals would like to touch.


Their post ends with a paragraph that is a mix of pretentious jibberish and truisms which neatly demonstrates how empty the Platypus 1917 project is:

“What now?,” Egypt asks us. We do not ask it. This question should be posed, not as it is wont, as a hope or a fear, but as a task, however exclaimed or whispered. It is not to be answered with exuberance or resignation, but determination: the resolution that not only are we, inevitably, history, but the future will be.

Oh, the future will one day be history! Well, thanks for that!