{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc","title":"Crowds and Party","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781781686942","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc","id":"e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc","uuid":"e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc","title":"Crowds and Party","normalized_title":"crowdsandparty","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781781686942","isbns":["9781781686942","9781781686720","9781781687666"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":183,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Crowds%20and%20Party","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/e781d2aa-cf12-457c-961d-b44b33fd41fc/search"},"page":{"printed_page":117,"pdf_page":116,"physical_index":116,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"564b94b9d0657c76bf7073ccc7b11f7717b2126fb8117c528c8648b812f7d8bc"},"chapter":"CROWDS AND PARTY","content":"The ideal ego in communist parties is typically imagined in terms of the good comrade. The good comrade may be a brave militant, skilled organizer, accomplished orator, or loyal functionary. In contrast, the ego ideal is the point from which comradeship is assessed: how and to what end is bravery, skill, accomplishment, and loyalty counted? The party superego incessantly charges us for failing on all fronts, we never do enough, even as it taunts us with the sacrifices we make for the sake of the party, we have always done too much. Each of these positions can be varyingly open and closed, coherent or contradictory. Insofar as the party is situated in an antagonistic field, insofar as it is not the state but is a part, other ideals and injunctions enter the mix: this is class struggle within the party, the challenge presented by capitalist consciousness. At the same time, the situatedness of the party means that the space it provides necessarily exerts effects beyond party members, providing images and reference points for those who might join, for allies and fellow travelers, as well as for former members or enemies.\n\nThe ideas of subject supposed to believe and know are particularly useful for thinking about these effects beyond party members. Critics of the communist party chastise the party for claiming to know, for functioning as a location of scientific or revolutionary knowledge. This ostensible expertise has been derided not only as monopolistic but also as false: the knowledge of living with, responding to, and fighting against oppressive power belongs to the people and cannot be confined into a set of iron laws of historical development. Given this critique, which came to be widely shared on the Left in the wake of ’68, it’s surprising that the collapse of the Soviet Union dealt such a mortal blow to communist and socialist organizing in the US, UK, and Europe. By 1989, only a tiny few defended the Soviet Union anymore. Most agreed that its bureaucracy was moribund and that it needed to institute market reforms. Why, then, did its collapse have such an effect? The “subject supposed to believe” helps make sense of this strange reaction. What was lost when the USSR fell apart was the subject onto whom belief was transposed, the subject through whom others believed. Once this believing subject was gone, it really appeared that communism was ideologically defeated. As a further example, we might consider the prototypical accounts of Communist Party officials with their dachas and privileges. These functioned less as factual exposes than as attacks on the subject supposed to believe: not even the Party believes in Communism. Where the attacks failed, however, is in the fact that they were waged at all. Insofar as they had a target, they affirmed its ongoing function as the subject supposed to believe. The flawed, dessicated Party could still believe for us.\n\n117","previous_page":116,"next_page":118}