{"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":161,"pdf_page":160,"physical_index":160,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"5ac9e2dbfc33deaecf9bc76ab5002c814f847336218a4e92369b6b5793cec27b"},"chapter":"CROWDS AND PARTY","content":"The need for the party stems from the fact that the people are split between the ways we are given, positioned, within capitalism. We are situated within a field that tells us who we are and what we can be, that establishes the matrix of our desire (Žižek’s definition of ideology), but that represses the truth of this field in class struggle. Capitalism strives to separate and individuate us, to instill in us the conviction that selfinterest matters above all else, that freedom results from individual choices made for individual goals. It blocks from view the systemic determination of choices and outcomes, not to mention the power of collectives in rupturing these systems. When leftists assume the individualism of the dominant ideology, reiterating its emphases on uniqueness and trying to cultivate a politics out of individuated decisions, we undermine our own best impulses to collectivity and egalitarianism. The party asserts the truth of our division. It speaks from the position of this truth and offers another field of possibilities.<sup>7</sup> In opposition to capitalist desire, it opens up a terrain for the desire of a collective political subject. The party doesn’t know everything. It provides a form for the knowledge we gain through experience and analyze with our eyes on the communist horizon. Such a party works to extend the collective desire for collectivity after the crowds go home. When it enables the crowd to endure as a rupture with capitalism (rather than a continuation of or contribution to it) and when it directs the crowd-feeling toward its own constitutive equality, the communist party can hold open the gap for the people as the collective subject of politics.\n\nAt different points over the past hundred years, the party has attempted to abolish capitalism and usher in communism in various ways—revolutionary seizure of the state, participation in parliamentary processes, training of cadres and education of masses in order to be prepared when the time comes, support and development of people’s cultures and capacities. The communist party has never been simply an organization aimed at achieving a set of economic reforms aimed at restraining capitalism’s extremes and providing workers with welfare guarantees. That this is the case is clear when we note the justified sense of betrayal voiced by communists when their parties compromise and retreat. They feel betrayed because the party gave way on communist desire, the very desire its wide array of organizations hold open, the desire underpinning solidarity and comradeship.\n\nThe array of classic party organizations—newspapers, literary magazines, clubs, trade associations, sports teams, schools, theater troupes, women’s groups, industryfocused councils, to mention but a few—reminds us that communist parties have always exceeded the binary of state and factory, actively engaging on multiple social, cultural, and economic fronts as elements of one struggle. As a red thread throughout the movements of the oppressed, communists connected divergent issues and experiences, enlarging them into a common world and mobilizing the collective desire for collectivity. Unlike standard parliamentary parties claiming representative authority, the work of the communist party involves substantialization, concentration, extension, and transference. Hence communist values of comradeship, solidarity, enthusiasm, and courage support the building of a political organization capable of responding in a revolutionary situation and enduring in less propitious times. Through the party, members push each other into modes of being and acting that appeared impossible before, when they were alone against capital and its state.\n\n161","previous_page":160,"next_page":162}