'The American Revolution, The Project of Liberty & the Left' - Teach-in (October 8th 2025) London

On October 8th, our member Olivia led a teach-in for the Platypus Affiliated Society at University College London on the bourgeois origins of the American Revolution.

The discussion examined how the Revolution’s historical legacy has shaped — and haunted — the Left in the United States: how successive generations have understood, misrecognised, or disavowed the bourgeois tasks inaugurated by the founding of the republic, and what it might mean today to reckon with that unfinished revolutionary inheritance.

Teach-in Description

What was the relationship between the American Revolution and the American Civil War, and what can we learn from it? What does a free society really look like? Ultimately, Karl Marx wrote to the newly elected President Abraham Lincoln for a reason-- He saw great potential in the newly formed country, the first of its kind to codify explicitly into its Constitution: "All men are created equal." What did Fredrick Douglass, Thomas Jefferson, and Karl Marx have to say as they reflected on the bloody and brutal wars that shaped the new nation? Join us as we take a journey back to 1776 to revisit the Revolution, the Civil War, and try to understand the project of freedom through a historical and philosophical point of view. Finally, we will think through the question: Why does the American Revolution matter to the history of the Left?

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The Platypus Affiliated Society, established in 2006, organises 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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