(I think there may have been some misapprehension because we did an interview with Terry Glavin, a Canadian pro-Afghan war Leftist. But we didn't do this because we were sympathetic to his position, but because we thought we could push him and make a good interview, raising whatever interesting issues are available via his position.)
But really, this is the wrong question to ask of us. Because Platypus isn't about taking positions but about asking questions: What is a Left basis for opposing the war? (What is a Left basis for supporting it? -- We take not only Christopher Hitchens but more significantly Kanan Makiya supporting the Iraq war quite seriously.)
There was some talk of Platypus being "ultra-subsumptionist" or "Hegelian." This is not only a misunderstanding of Hegel, but of our project as well. We try to take a broad, encompassing, and historical view. But not to "subsume" everything, but to not leave anything out. Of course we don't see the U.S. govt. as in any way "fulfilling the tasks of history." Capital is not equatable to U.S. (or any) govt. policy. The wars have not been "in the interest of" capital, but capital has been their condition of possibility. That's what we're interested in interrogating. Is the Taliban/al-Qaeda opposition to the U.S. "anticapitalist" (or "anti-imperialist," in the sense of Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky's anti-imperialism)? We think not. But this doesn't mean that the U.S. govt. is progressive! Our point would be to demonstrate the complicity of both in the wretched world we live in. But our real point, as an organized project, is to open discussion and debate on
such matters, to allow, if not clarification, then at least real questioning of these issues to take place.
-- Chris
> > Date: Tue, 06 Apr 2010 23:49:35 -0400
> > To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> > From: Joanne Landy <joanne.landy at igc.org>
> >
> > I've been told that Platypus people support the U.S.
> war in Afghanistan. Is that true?
> > --Joanne Landy