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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jodi_Dean
"The problem of the Left hasn't been our adherence to a Marxist critique of capitalism. It's that we have lost sight of the communist horizon, a glimpse of which new political movements are starting to reveal.
Sometimes capitalists, conservatives, and liberal democrats use a rhetoric that treats communism as a lost hmizon. But usually they keep communism firmly within their sight. They see communism as a threat, twenty years after its ostensible demise. To them, communism is so threatening that they premise political discussion on the repression of the communist alternative. In response to left critiques of democracy for its failure to protect the interests of poor and working-class people, conservatives and liberals alike scold that "everybody knows" and "history shows" that commnnism doesn't work. Communism might be a nice ideal, they concede, but it always leads to violent, authoritrian excesses of power. They shift the discussion to communism, trying to establish the limits of reasonable debate. Their critique of communism establishes the political space and condition of democracy. Before the conversation even gets going, liberals, democrats, capitalists, and conservatives unite to block communism from consideration. It's off the table. Those who suspect that the inclusion of liberals and democrats in a set with capitalists and conservatives is illegitimate are probably democrats themselves.
To determine whether they belong in the set of those who fear communism, they should consider whether they think any evocation of communism should come with qualifications, apologies, and condemnations of past excesses. If the answer is "yes," then we have a clear indication that liberal democrats, and probably radical democrats as well, still consider communism a threat that must be suppressed-and so they belong in a set with capitalists and conservatives. All are anxious about the forces that communist desire risks unleashing.
There are good reasons for liberals, democrats, capitalists, and conservatives to be anxious. Over the last decade a retum to communism has re-energized the Left. Communism is again becoming a discourse and vocabulary for the expression of universal, egalitarian, and revolutionary ideals. In March 2009, the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities hosted a conference entitled "On the Idea of Communism." Initially planned for about 200 people, the conference ultimately attracted over 1,200, requiring a spillover room to accommodate those who couldn't fit in the primary auditorium. Since then, multiple conferences in Paris, Berlin, and New York and publications have followed, with contributions from such leading scholars as Alain Badiou, Etienne Balibar, Bruno Bosteels, Susan Buck-Morss, Costas Douzinas, Peter Hallward, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, Jacques Ranciere, Alberto Toscano, and Slavoj Zizek." (pp.6-8 )
"Some might object to my use of the second-person plural "we" and "us" -what do you mean "we" ? This objection is symptomatic of the fragmentation that has pervaded the Left in Europe, the U K, and North America. Reducing invocations of "we" and "us" to sociological statements requiting a concrete, delineable, empirical referent, it erases the division necessary for politics as if interest and will were only and automatically attributes of a fixed social position. We-skepticism displaces the performative component of the second-person plural as it treats collectivity with suspicion and privileges a fantasy of individual singularity and autonomy.
I write "we" hoping to enhance a partisan sense of collectivity. My break with conventions of writing that reinforce individualism by admonishing attempts to think and speak as part of a larger collective subject is deliberate." (pp.12-13)
"In the twenty-first century, Russia, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and other countries previously part of the Soviet bloc tend to be referred to as "post-Soviet" rather than as "new-capitalist." For a while, particularly during the early years of forced privatization, the term "Mafioso capitalism" was heard a lot. Since the tum of the millennium, it has dropped from use. "Mafioso capitalism" hits too close to home, more fitting as a designator of neoliberalism's brutal, extreme, winner-take-all version of capitalism than of the temporary shock treatment involved in the transition out of state socialism." (p.39)
"The division cutting across capitalist societies is more visible, more palpable in the US and UK now than it's been since at least the 1920s. We learn that more of our children live in povelty than at any time in recent history (20 percent of children in the US as of 2010), that the wealth of the very, very rich-the top 1 percent-has dramatically increased while income for the rest of us has remained stagnant or declined, that many of the foreclosures the banks force on homeowners are meaningless, illegal acts of expropriation (the banks can't document who owns what so they lack the paper necessary to justify foreclosure proceedings). We read of corporations sitting on piles of cash instead of hiring back their laid off workforce. Under neoliberalism, they lavishly enjoy their profits rather than put them back into production -what Gerard Dumenil and Dominique Levy call an explicit strategy of "disaccumulation."·
In fact, we read that the middle class is basically finished. Ad Age, the primary trade journal for the advertising industry, published a major report declaring the end of mass affluence. As if it were describing an emerging confrontation between two great hostile classes, the report notes the stagnation of working class income and the exponential growth of upper class income: most consumer spending comes from the top 10 percent of households. For advertisers, the only consumers worth reaching are the "small plutocracy of wealthy elites" with "outsize purchasing influence," an influence that creates "an increasingly concentrated market in luxury goods."." (pp.48-49)
"The contemporary Left claims not to exist. Whereas the Right sees left-wing threats everywhere, those on the Left eschew any use of the term "we," emphasizing issue politics, identity politics, and their own fragmentation into a multitude of singularities." (p.53)
"Some on the Left view the lack of a common political vision or program as a strength. They applaud what they construe as the freedom from the dictates of a palty line and the oppmtunity to make individual choices with potentially radical political effects. The 2011 occupations of public squares in Spain and Greece are prime examples. Opposing high unemployment and the imposition of austerity measures, hundreds of thousands took to the streets in a massive mobilization. Multiple voices-participants as well as commentators -emphasized that no common line, platform, or orientation united the protesters; they were not political. For many, the intense, festive atmosphere and break from the constraints of the usual politics incited a new confidence in social change. At the same time, the refusal of representation and reluctance to implement decision mechanisms hampered actual debate, enabling charismatic individual speakers to move the crowd and acquire quasi-leadership positions (no matter what position they took), and constraining the possibilities of working through political divergences toward a collective plan.
These same patterns reappeared in Occupy Wall Street." (pp.54-55)
"
(pp.60-66)
-Jodi Dean, The Communist Horizon, Verson, London / New York, 2012, 250 pages.
"The problem of the Left hasn't been our adherence to a Marxist critique of capitalism. It's that we have lost sight of the communist horizon, a glimpse of which new political movements are starting to reveal.
Sometimes capitalists, conservatives, and liberal democrats use a rhetoric that treats communism as a lost hmizon. But usually they keep communism firmly within their sight. They see communism as a threat, twenty years after its ostensible demise. To them, communism is so threatening that they premise political discussion on the repression of the communist alternative. In response to left critiques of democracy for its failure to protect the interests of poor and working-class people, conservatives and liberals alike scold that "everybody knows" and "history shows" that commnnism doesn't work. Communism might be a nice ideal, they concede, but it always leads to violent, authoritrian excesses of power. They shift the discussion to communism, trying to establish the limits of reasonable debate. Their critique of communism establishes the political space and condition of democracy. Before the conversation even gets going, liberals, democrats, capitalists, and conservatives unite to block communism from consideration. It's off the table. Those who suspect that the inclusion of liberals and democrats in a set with capitalists and conservatives is illegitimate are probably democrats themselves.
To determine whether they belong in the set of those who fear communism, they should consider whether they think any evocation of communism should come with qualifications, apologies, and condemnations of past excesses. If the answer is "yes," then we have a clear indication that liberal democrats, and probably radical democrats as well, still consider communism a threat that must be suppressed-and so they belong in a set with capitalists and conservatives. All are anxious about the forces that communist desire risks unleashing.
There are good reasons for liberals, democrats, capitalists, and conservatives to be anxious. Over the last decade a retum to communism has re-energized the Left. Communism is again becoming a discourse and vocabulary for the expression of universal, egalitarian, and revolutionary ideals. In March 2009, the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities hosted a conference entitled "On the Idea of Communism." Initially planned for about 200 people, the conference ultimately attracted over 1,200, requiring a spillover room to accommodate those who couldn't fit in the primary auditorium. Since then, multiple conferences in Paris, Berlin, and New York and publications have followed, with contributions from such leading scholars as Alain Badiou, Etienne Balibar, Bruno Bosteels, Susan Buck-Morss, Costas Douzinas, Peter Hallward, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, Jacques Ranciere, Alberto Toscano, and Slavoj Zizek." (pp.6-8 )
"Some might object to my use of the second-person plural "we" and "us" -what do you mean "we" ? This objection is symptomatic of the fragmentation that has pervaded the Left in Europe, the U K, and North America. Reducing invocations of "we" and "us" to sociological statements requiting a concrete, delineable, empirical referent, it erases the division necessary for politics as if interest and will were only and automatically attributes of a fixed social position. We-skepticism displaces the performative component of the second-person plural as it treats collectivity with suspicion and privileges a fantasy of individual singularity and autonomy.
I write "we" hoping to enhance a partisan sense of collectivity. My break with conventions of writing that reinforce individualism by admonishing attempts to think and speak as part of a larger collective subject is deliberate." (pp.12-13)
"In the twenty-first century, Russia, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and other countries previously part of the Soviet bloc tend to be referred to as "post-Soviet" rather than as "new-capitalist." For a while, particularly during the early years of forced privatization, the term "Mafioso capitalism" was heard a lot. Since the tum of the millennium, it has dropped from use. "Mafioso capitalism" hits too close to home, more fitting as a designator of neoliberalism's brutal, extreme, winner-take-all version of capitalism than of the temporary shock treatment involved in the transition out of state socialism." (p.39)
"The division cutting across capitalist societies is more visible, more palpable in the US and UK now than it's been since at least the 1920s. We learn that more of our children live in povelty than at any time in recent history (20 percent of children in the US as of 2010), that the wealth of the very, very rich-the top 1 percent-has dramatically increased while income for the rest of us has remained stagnant or declined, that many of the foreclosures the banks force on homeowners are meaningless, illegal acts of expropriation (the banks can't document who owns what so they lack the paper necessary to justify foreclosure proceedings). We read of corporations sitting on piles of cash instead of hiring back their laid off workforce. Under neoliberalism, they lavishly enjoy their profits rather than put them back into production -what Gerard Dumenil and Dominique Levy call an explicit strategy of "disaccumulation."·
In fact, we read that the middle class is basically finished. Ad Age, the primary trade journal for the advertising industry, published a major report declaring the end of mass affluence. As if it were describing an emerging confrontation between two great hostile classes, the report notes the stagnation of working class income and the exponential growth of upper class income: most consumer spending comes from the top 10 percent of households. For advertisers, the only consumers worth reaching are the "small plutocracy of wealthy elites" with "outsize purchasing influence," an influence that creates "an increasingly concentrated market in luxury goods."." (pp.48-49)
"The contemporary Left claims not to exist. Whereas the Right sees left-wing threats everywhere, those on the Left eschew any use of the term "we," emphasizing issue politics, identity politics, and their own fragmentation into a multitude of singularities." (p.53)
"Some on the Left view the lack of a common political vision or program as a strength. They applaud what they construe as the freedom from the dictates of a palty line and the oppmtunity to make individual choices with potentially radical political effects. The 2011 occupations of public squares in Spain and Greece are prime examples. Opposing high unemployment and the imposition of austerity measures, hundreds of thousands took to the streets in a massive mobilization. Multiple voices-participants as well as commentators -emphasized that no common line, platform, or orientation united the protesters; they were not political. For many, the intense, festive atmosphere and break from the constraints of the usual politics incited a new confidence in social change. At the same time, the refusal of representation and reluctance to implement decision mechanisms hampered actual debate, enabling charismatic individual speakers to move the crowd and acquire quasi-leadership positions (no matter what position they took), and constraining the possibilities of working through political divergences toward a collective plan.
These same patterns reappeared in Occupy Wall Street." (pp.54-55)
"
(pp.60-66)
-Jodi Dean, The Communist Horizon, Verson, London / New York, 2012, 250 pages.
