{"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":125,"pdf_page":124,"physical_index":124,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"454c0ed07626ebecbf8af8b3247910fcd9ba2f4883f5bc3d5685f8ce72ec9c27"},"chapter":"CROWDS AND PARTY","content":"The focus on the revolutionary goal does not distance the party from everyday practice, as Holloway implies. On the contrary, revolution is an effect of shared purpose. The goal is an instrument of its realization: a collective that has a goal and works to achieve it exerts power over itself. The production of the collective space of the party as a knot of transferential effects is the way people are changed through struggle, the way they induce a gap in capitalism where another perspective becomes possible. Members look at themselves and their interactions from the perspective of the association they create through their association, the party. The goal of revolution lets us see the reflective dimension of the instrument of revolution in terms of its effects back on those out of whom it arises. The party affects members, fellow travelers, opponents, and the general setting insofar as its knotting together of elements of the Other consolidates the space of a politics, establishing a place from which a collective can look at itself.\n\nThe Party Opening\n\nHolloway claims that the party “is historically closed to us now.” He writes,\n\nWhether or not it ever made sense to think of revolutionary change in terms of the “Party,” it is no longer even open to us to pose the questions in those terms. To say now that the Party is the bearer of the class consciousness of the proletariat no longer makes any sense at all. What Party? There no longer exists even the social basis for creating such a “Party.”<sup>84</sup>\n\nSome on the Left have become convinced of this point. They repeat it as if it were an obvious truth. It’s not.\n\nWhat does it even mean to say that there is no social basis for the party? Some argue that changes in the social composition of labor and the capitalist mode of production have eliminated the industrial workforce necessary for a politics of the proletariat in the North and/or the West. Rather than acknowledging the historical importance of the peasantry in communist revolutions and parties, they presume a seemingly organic link between industrial worker and party as if factory organization automatically generated party organization or as if workers were naturally solidaristic. Part of the oddity of the claim that there is no social basis for the party is the way it inverts previous explanations for party identification. These explanations held that people join together in parties not because they already feel connected to others but because they don’t. Individualism, isolation, and the need to belong motivate people to join together.<sup>85</sup> The same effect—party belonging—is thus attributed to connectedness and isolation, a prior solidarity and a prior individualism. When critics of the party use socioeconomic factors to support their claims for the obsolescence of the party form they treat isolation, fragmentation, and individualism as explanations for their own continuation. Previous analyses, however, understood these as problems party belonging redressed.\n\nNevertheless, something about Holloway’s claim rings true. After all, if the party form were compelling now, wouldn’t we see something like a party exerting a force on the contemporary Left? His point that the idea of the party as the bearer of working-class consciousness no longer makes any sense at all has an element of truth. But what is this element?\n\n125","previous_page":124,"next_page":126}