The Left is dead! Long live the Left!
Platypus Penn is a student-run chapter of the international Platypus Affiliated Society. We explore the failures and possibilities of the Marxist Left, asking what the Left has been — and what it could still become.
After the collapse of the New Left, the welfare state, and the Soviet Union, the Left today often appears broken or irrelevant. But we see this history not just as tragedy, but as unfinished potential.
Our mission is to foster critical discussion about the Left at Penn. Through film screenings, public panels, coffee breaks, reading groups, and student journalism, we question assumptions, confront taboos, and rethink the meaning of social and political freedom today.
Platypus exists to keep alive the urgent question: What has the Left been, and what can it yet become?