Consider the famous passage from The German Ideology: “We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of affairs.” How should we understand this? Not as immediate insurrection or as prefiguration but rather as the expansion of voluntary cooperation. I say this because Marx explains that “the conditions of this movement [we call communism] result from premises now in existence.” The premises he is discussing involve the multiplication of productive force through the cooperation of different individuals as this cooperation is determined by the division of labor and not as an effect of people’s own united power. Abolishing determination by the division of labor is a matter of self-conscious collective action wherein cooperation isn’t forced, isn’t out of our control, but is instead willed commonly. Cooperation and concentration become self-conscious and willed rather than unconscious and determined. Collective desire for collectivity becomes stronger than the individual preferences determined by capitalism. As the movement which abolishes the present state of affairs, communism expands collective voluntary cooperation, the power of many exerted back upon itself. As an organization premised on solidarity, the party holds open a political space for the production of a common political will, a will irreducible to the capitalist conditions in which the majority of people find themselves forced to sell their labor power. Where work is obligatory, membership in the party (like participation in the movement) is voluntary, the willed formation of united power. Among its members, the party replaces competition with solidarity.
In a 2006 interview, Alain Badiou notes how, for Marx, “proletariat” is an identity that is a non-identity or an identity beyond all identities. In this sense, “proletariat” is “generic” rather than particular. Today, neither “proletariat” nor “working class” functions in the way that it did for Marx. “Proletariat” is less open to multiple particular contents. It doesn’t feel generic. Political struggles fought along raced and sexed axes of domination have made the liberation of the working class no longer appear as the liberation of humanity as such. Badiou concludes that the generic function of the working class is likely “saturated.” Moreover, he writes, “We cannot substitute a mere collection of identities for the saturated generic identity of the working class. I think we have to find the political determination that integrates the identities, the principles of which are beyond identity. The great difficulty is to do that without something like the working class.”<sup>3</sup>
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