Democracy, the Party, and Self-Emancipation

The Party is once again the subject of sustained discussion among academics and popular movements. Jodi Dean’s most recent book, Crowds and Party, is an attempt to re-think the party form for contemporary politics after the experiences and lessons of Occupy. Crowds and Party is engaging and interesting, but falls short when it attempts to intervene in important strategic debates about organisational structure and seizing capitalist state power. In her attempts to defend the party form, she explicitly rejects three central emancipatory components of Marxism: the commitment to a future society collectively ruled by the associated producers; the commitment to a future society which does away with the hierarchical division of labour; and the commitment to working class self-emancipation.