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Browse > Philosophy > Political Philosophy > Theory & Event > Volume 20, Number 1, January 2017

Politics After Occupy: Theory &

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On Deans Communist Horizon and Crowds Volume 20, Number 1,
and Party January 2017

Devin Penner (bio)

Jodi Dean, The Communist Horizon. London: Verso, 2012. 256pp. $19.95 (hc). ISBN:
9781844679546; and Crowds and Party. London: Verso, 2016. 288pp. $26.95 (hc). ISBN:
9781781686942.

Leaderlessness and horizontalism have been in vogue for some time on the Left.
Well before Occupy Wall Street, new social movements adopted a decentred, affinity- Research Areas
based structure so that none of the diverse groups could tell others how they should act.
Philosophy > Political
As Naomi Klein explained, describing the alter-globalization movement that emerged in Philosophy
Seattle in 1999, what has developed is not a single movement with a unified vision but a Social Sciences >
movement of movements with the principles of self-determination and diversity at Political Science >
Political Theory
front and centre.1

In two books with refreshingly terse titles, Jodi Dean offers an important response to Recommend
these horizontalist tendencies. Published 4 years apart, The Communist Horizon (CH) Email a link to this page
and the more recent Crowds and Party (C&P) make roughly the same argument: Send
individualism dominates all aspects of life under communicative capitalism, including
left organization, and the only answer to it is a return to the collective power of
communism and its coordinator, the party. In other words, the demise of Occupy has
confirmed the need for more permanent and vertical structures through which collective
opposition can be articulated.

There is certainly some merit to this basic critique of horizontalism, and Dean draws Frequently
on an impressive range of sources to develop it. Its clear her argument takes its cue Downloaded
especially from Alain Badiou, Bruno Bosteels and Slavoj iek, who are at the forefront View Citation
of a return to communism that she claims has re-energized the Left over the past Save Citation
decade or so (CH, 9). Returning to communism means that Dean ultimately defends the
continued salience of classical Marxist ideas, with Marx, Engels, Lukcs and Lenin Related Content
factoring prominently into the argument. While this orthodoxy is the source of some
anti-political tensions (more on these later), what makes the books interesting is the way
they incorporate more contemporary developments, including the political-economic
shift to a networked form of communicative [End Page 231] capitalism, affect theory,
and Jacques Rancires agonistic democratic theory. To give a sense of how Dean fits
these various themes together, Ill start by unpacking the argument of Crowds and
Party, and then outline some points of criticism by engaging key themes from The
Communist Horizon.

Moving Beyond Crowds

Although both works end with the party, they take slightly different routes to get there.
The Communist Horizon is organized around six features (CH, 16) of communism
today, with the last of these being the party. The basic trajectory of Crowds and Party is Theory and Politics in
more linear, moving from isolated individuals to crowds to the party (to put it crudely). Karatani Kjins The
The point of departure for this argument is the concept of communicative capitalism, Structure of World
which Dean develops in Democracy and Other Neo-liberal Fantasies and elsewhere to History
critique the way network technologies reinforce capitalist individualism by encouraging
a peculiar and superficial form of sociality. In this regard, the early parts of Crowds and
Party scold contemporary new times leftism for being centred on uniqueness and
personalization, and also suggest that the prospect of becoming the next viral social
media sensation gives each person the impression that she, all by herself, can make a
difference (C&P, 55, original emphasis). Inverting Louis Althusser, she summarizes
these forces by claiming that capitalist ideology interpellat[es] the subject as an
individual (C&P, 88).

The constant and always incomplete effort to reduce the people to atomized
individuals forms the background for Deans subsequent discussion of crowds as a site
of resistance to communicative capitalism. Because humans are social beings,
communicative capitalisms ultra-individualized lifestyle is always found to be in some
way hollow and unsatisfying. She uses this idea to reinterpret Sherry Turkels argument The Communist
about the pathological addiction of individuals to superficial social media connections. Horizon by Jodi Dean
The constant need to connect is not, as Turkel argues, because new technologies prevent (review)
the development of reflective individuals who can be alone; rather, this addiction is an
embryonic expression of the desire for collectivity and the relief it brings from the
anxieties of the fast-paced world of capitalist competition (on the desire for collectivity,
see CH, chap. 5). Online crowds are a collective refuge, then, albeit one that remains
enmeshed in the circuits of communicative capitalism.

Dean opts not to make a distinction between virtual social media crowds and physical
crowds in chapter 1 of Crowds and Power, claiming it is repeatedly upset in practice.
But her focus is primarily on the physical variety, engaging classic works of crowd
theory by Gustave Le Bon, Sigmund Freud and Elias Canetti, and using the 1871 Paris
[End Page 232] Commune as a key example. What Dean seeks to develop is the idea
that crowds are more than the sum of their individuals, that the affective bonds formed
The Mirage of Neo-
within lead to the establishment of crowds as independent forces with their own
Communism
dynamics. On this matter she sides with the odious reactionary (C&P, 114) Le Bon
over Freud, who reduces crowds to an accessory of the leader. Canettis egalitarian
interpretation of crowd dynamics is particularly influential: as a crowd forms, there is a
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discharge where hierarchies dissolve, solidarity takes over and change becomes this content
possibleat least temporarily.
Free sample
The temporary nature of crowd attachments is indeed crucial for Dean. It is why, Open Access
contra autonomists, the occupation of spaces is not itself an alternative. Crowds rupture
and create possibilitiesthey open up a gapbut they are not yet political subjects. Restricted Access

To become subjects, organization and direction is required, which is why the

transformation of a crowd into an emancipatory egalitarian expression of the people as
a collective political subject depends on the party (C&P, 115).

The argument for the party has both negative and positive dimensions, with the
former the less persuasive of the two. Negatively, Dean tries to counter criticisms about
centralism and authoritarianism that are commonly used on the contemporary Left as a
basis to reject the party form. She responds, for example, to critiques based on Robert
Michels iron law of oligarchy by suggesting that a gap between the party and the
people is not specific to communist parties, but rather reflects technical and
psychological tendenciesin any political group (C&P, 195, original emphasis).
There is no doubt truth to this claim, just as in The Communist Horizon she is right to
suggest that Occupy Wall Street needs to recognize the facts of leadership (211). But
neither of these claims suggests that we shouldnt be concerned about oligarchic
tendencies, or that we shouldnt examine the forms of leadership, and accept some and
not others. Dean gives the sense that such questions are mere diversions from the real
struggle.

Deans positive case for the party relies in large part on the classic notion put forward
by Lenin, Lukcs and others that the party concentrates or gives form to the everyday
practical struggles of the people. This line of argument is more directly developed in the
final chapter of The Communist Horizon, which, after pointing out the unacknowledged
vanguardist elements of the Occupy movement, suggests the Leninist party makes
present to the people the demands they are already making on themselves, but cant yet
acknowledge (CH, 244). The final chapter of Crowds and Party adds an interesting
 twist, focusing on the often-overlooked affective dimensions of the party. Drawing
heavily on the stories recounted by former party members in Vivian Gornicks Romance
of American Communism, she argues that the Communist Party can provide a source of
courage, hope and support in the face of seemingly [End Page 233] insurmountable
forces of oppression and exploitation at both the micro and macro levels.

Horizons, Divisions and Collectivity

This argument for the communist party is, of course, directed against what she calls the
democratic Leftthe fragmented forces focused on issue and identity politics (CH,
53). While this critique of the Left is clearly present in Crowds and Party, it is relatively
muted. The Communist Horizon is a much more polemical work, with significant
portions dedicated to chiding the Left for failing to confront the class antagonism
central to capitalist society. At one point she uses Walter Benjamins idea of left-wing
melancholy to suggest those taking compromise positions have sold out or
betrayed (CH, 171, 174) the proletariat; at another she goes further to claim Leftists
focus on democratic issues of process and procedure because they really fear the
bloody violence of revolution (CH, 58).

Statements such as these are the most vivid expressions of the sharp
reform/revolution dichotomy central to Deans argument. There are those who are
oriented by the communist horizon and those trapped in the feedback circuits of
communicative capitalism or, to use Deans preferred Lacanian terminology, stuck in
drives repetitive loops (CH, 104). The latter group is said to include liberals,
democrats, capitalists, conservatives and probably radical democrats as well (CH, 7).
If the point of The Communist Horizon is to confront readers and force them to choose
sides, it will likely be successful. But this also means that it will reinforce concerns that
many on the Left have about Marxism, concerns that led to the ascendance of ideas of
horizontalism and leaderlessness in the first place: the idea that there is a correct
revolutionary way, which is typically the domain of a party who tells people how they
should be acting without consulting them.

As touched on earlier, Dean tries to address some of these concerns by suggesting

that the party hierarchies are less problematic than is often claimed. She similarly tries
to assuage concerns about a narrow class centrism by describing the collective force to
bring about communism in terms of fluidity, non-identity and division. In her most
explicit discussion of the subject of communism, found in chapter 3 of The Communist
Horizon, Dean opts against the notion of the proletariat because capitalist ideology has
successfully discredited the idea in many peoples eyes. This argument is perhaps odd,
given that chapter 1 of the work tries to reclaim communism from historical
associations of the term with Stalinism and collapse. Nevertheless, Dean develops the
concept of the people as the rest of us to replace the proletariat. One of the advantages
of this concept, she claims, is that it has no historical connection to industrial labourit
is more flexible and open-ended. [End Page 234] But it is not as inclusive as Hardt and
Negris multitude, which in her view is too focused on individual autonomy to break
with the circuits of communicative capitalism. Instead, Dean draws on Rancires
notion of the part of those who have no part because it highlights the divided and
incomplete nature of the people.

Rancires agonistic democracy plays an overall minor role in Deans argument, and
in fact she frequently hints that his part-of-no-part could be replaced by the Lacanian
objet petit a (see CH, 81, 189, 203). However, it is worth exploring her use of
Rancire further to illustrate the tensions that result from Deans fusion of an open-
ended politics of division with a revolutionary, discriminating, concept of the people
(CH, 70). Given the general tone of The Communist Horizon, Deans account of
Rancire is surprisingly uncritical. It takes more the form of a positive appropriation
than a critical assessment, perhaps because she has appraised his politics without
politics elsewhere.2 What she finds useful in Rancires theory is his idea of political
subjectification as the process whereby a gap in the prevailing order is named and those
who are miscounted by it collectively begin to challenge their exclusion. This part-
of-no-part is never designated in advanceits formation and membership are
contingent and uncertain, even if the gaps and exclusions that led to its emergence are
not. To use one of Deans examples, the gap between capitalism and the people existed
well before the Occupy movement formed a we by naming the division between the
99 percent and the 1 percent.

While Dean roughly agrees with this notion of political subjectification, the principal
difference between Rancires version and hers is that where Rancires is open-ended
hers is much more discriminating. She proceeds, for instance, to differentiate
capitalist and communist subjectification processes on the basis that the former is
individual and the latter is collective (CH, 191). Similarly, its clear that Deans people
of the rest of us is explicitly connected to capitalist proletarianization, unlike
Rancires part-of-no-part. But one of the consequences of this discriminating notion of
subjectification is to vacuum much of the substance out of her references to division and
non-identity throughout the two works.

There are two main gaps or divisions between the many and the few in Deans
argument. The first of these is the division between the people as the rest of us and the
rulers of the capitalist world order, or, as it was expressed in Occupy, the division
between the 99 percent and the 1 percent. The second is the division between the
people as the rest of us and the party, or between the collective and those who try to
lead or represent it. The former is the key division for Dean, and she sets out fairly strict
conditions on when it becomes political: a party oriented by the communist horizon is
required to escape the circuits of communicative capitalism and turn a crowd into a
political subject. [End Page 235]

Because of the partys vital role in defining the division between capitalism and the
people, the nature of the second divisionthe division between the people and the party
becomes even more important. The problem is that in her effort to counter Occupys
horizontalism, Dean by and large dismisses the second division as a necessary by-
product of organization, which leaves an instrumental conception of politics as a mere
means to achieving a revolutionary end. For her, the miscounts that matter are on class
lines, and politics is doing what is deemed necessary to eliminate these; for agonistic
democrats like Rancire, by contrast, politics and division will always be present
because there will always be groups who are miscounted and driven to assert their
equality, including groups within communist and other Left organizations. In other
words, the question of which miscounts matter is determined through politics according
to Rancire, not beforehand.

We can see the same issue in another form by looking at Deans notion of collectivity.
At various points throughout the works she criticizes the Left for undermining
collective solidarity by emphasizing identity and difference. For instance, discussing the
Occupy movements very loose, affinity-based structure, she asserts, participants are
encouraged to emphasize their individual positions rather than cultivate a general,
collective one. The result is that they continuously confront one anothers particularities
as differences that must be expressed rather than disciplined, repressed, redirected,
sacrificed, or ignored as not relevant for this struggle (CH, 220). Again, there is an
important corrective here about the limits of Left individualismsome sacrifice is
necessary because its not possible to build an egalitarian society on NIMBYism, where
no one wants to endorse a decision that negatively affects them in some way. But in
Deans framework, where any references to the individual or uniqueness are associated
with cooption by communicative capitalism, the argument seems to go much further, in
the direction of a simple and undifferentiated notion of collectivity.

Consider, for example, the difference in the way Canettis crowd theory is used in
Deans Crowds and Power and Miguel Abensours De la compacit (On
compactness). Portraying crowds as a rudimentary expression of the desire for
collectivity, Dean affirms Canettis argument about the psychic effects of crowd density,
the elimination of distinctions and separation between people. This egalitarian
discharge is crucial because it instils crowds with the intense solidarity needed to
challenge capitalist individualism. For agonistic democrat Abensour, on the other hand,
Canettis notion of crowd density is associated with the project of totalitarian
 domination.

Abensours focus is on totalitarian monumental architecture, which in his view

deliberately tries to overcome the fear of contact and fuse individuals into a compact
and unified body. The aim in forming [End Page 236] people into dense crowds is to
depoliticize them by eliminating the in-between space (to quote Arendt) required for
politics: Far from permitting human coexistence through the institution of an agonistic
space of speech and action, a differentiated space of appearance necessary for action to
occur, the totalitarian regime rather aims to constitute and mobilize a mass that is
subjected, in every sense of the word, to a multi-faceted experience, that of Canettis
discharge, that of a fused homogeneity3 While Dean would no doubt contest the
conception of politics at the base of Abensours argument, the point here is just to
advocate for more nuance in her notion of collectivity. Seeking to avoid what she
describes as the pitfalls of Left individualism and Left preoccupations with democratic
process, Dean ends up with an extremely strong emphasis on collective unity that
undermines the gaps or political spaces between people. This again pushes toward a
notion of politics as an instrumental activity in which all divisions are subordinated to
the one that is deemed to matter, the division between the people as the rest of us and
capitalism.

The demise of the Occupy movement set in motion a period of reflection on the
question of Left organization, while the question of class looms large on the Left in the
wake of the events of the 2016 US Presidential election. Crowds and Party and The
Communist Horizon no doubt make important contributions to both debates. With
regard to the latter, Deans arguments are bolstered by Bernie Sanders position that the
Democrats need to go beyond identity politics, returning attention to the working
class after a long period of neglect.4 With regard to the former, Dean makes a
compelling case that horizontalism should be thrown into the dustbins of history,
though the question of what organizational form should replace it remains much
thornier.

Devin Penner
Devin Penner is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Studies at Trent University. His recent publications include
a chapter on the political thought of Guy Debord in Thinking Radical Democracy: The Return to Politics in Postwar France, a
collection he co-edited. Devin can be reached at devinpenner@trentu.ca

Notes
1. Naomi Klein, Farewell to the End of History: Organisation and Vision in Anti-Corporate Movements, Socialist Register 38
(2002): 13.

2. See Jodi Dean, Politics without Politics, Parallax 15, no. 3 (2009): 2036, doi:10.1080/13534640902982579.

3. Miguel Abensour, De la compacit. architecture et rgimes totalitaire (Paris: Sens & Tonka, 1997), 37, 52, 60. My translation,
with thanks to Martin Breaugh.

4. Bernie Sanders, quoted in Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman, Democrats Leadership Fight Pits West Wing vs. Left
Wing, New York Times, November 23, 2016, A1.

Copyright 2017 Devin Penner and The Johns Hopkins University Press

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