Commune, Party, State

A chapter from Rational Freedom vol 8 Political Structures The theory of commune democracy builds upon the conception of social control in going on to describe the overall form of work and of work relations. One thus proceeds to examine the organisation of labour within commune democracy. In sum, this study ties up the various themes of Marx’s political theory in terms of the community of everyday life, the democracy of ends, social self-mediation and the cooperative mode of production. The study shows that the principles which Marx elaborated with respect to the Paris Commune, particularly in terms of the dissolution of the state power into a society organised in terms of commune democracy, closely mirror the principles he developed more abstractly in the critique of Hegel's philosophy of the state.

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Praktyka Teoretyczna, 2023

Review of the book Commun-Commune: penser la Commune de Paris (1871), published on the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune. The author of the publication aims to reconstruct the entire spectrum of political ideas circulating in "Free Paris" in the spring of 1871. The analysis is carried out from the perspective of the political practices and participants of events. The content of the studied ideas is considered only through the methods of their use and the consequences which influenced history. In the review this is interpreted as a manifestation of thinking close to the theoretical concept of the "social history of ideas". Another important aspect of the reviewed book is the reflections on the politics of memory and legends, i.e. a mythologized approach to the past understood as a source of cognitive errors that hinder the proper understanding of events.

Rethinking Marxism, 2010

This issue brings together papers that tackle a series of problematics which are formulated around the concepts of common, commune, community, and communism, and which engage with the field of critical Marxism. The discussions include the critique of property and commodity fetishism; the relation between 'modes of production' and 'modes of subjectivity'; the rupture with a bourgeois political imaginary circumscribed by the relation between public and private; and the antagonistic nature of class as a process or composition. While an organizing aspiration has been to stage an encounter between operaismo and Althusserian Marxism, contributors complicate this divide by drawing from different philosophical sources and bringing into existence a broader intellectual plane within which these problematics can be situated.

"The argument of this book attempts to show the relevance of Marx's work to the attempt to create a new politics of citizenship. This argues that Marx is engaged above all in an attempt to formulate a new politics - specifically, a communist politics based upon the reintegration of political and social relationships, the overcoming of the state and civil society dualism and the dissolution of both spheres. This means defining democratisation as a repoliticisation, implying the extension of public spaces through a decentralisation resulting from the relocation of power from the abstracted political realm to the social realm. The concept of on active citizenship rooted in society is distinguished from the abstract citizenship conceded by the state, reading Marx in opposition to centralised, bureaucratised elitist state politics. Public life – libertarian communalism – social power and the state – conscious control – free association – commune democracy – the lost traditions of anarchism and marxism – postmarxism – democratisation – radical democracy – democracy as method – Norberto Bobbio, democracy and socialism – the social public."

2021

New Pollitics, 2021

The Paris Commune of 1871 only lasted from March 18 to May 28, just 72 days, yet it is one of the most celebrated events in socialist history. It is a legend. Yet, what was it? What is it for us today? A model for socialists? A heroic failure? Negation of the state? Or the first workers’ government? Karl Marx wrote the most famous contemporary account, yet he failed to take up some of the Commune’s serious problems. Why?

The reference to the Commune of 1871 returns as a reference for contemporary movements, but following a usage that contrasts with those made by the left in the 20th century. It is no longer a question of overcoming the weaknesses of the Commune, but of asking the Commune how to go beyond certain impasses of left-wing traditions, such as left-wing republicanism, Marxism or anarchism. This is the sense of the ongoing construction of a communalist movement, which can find in the Commune of 1871 a set of inspirations - on the substitution of a confederation of communes for the state, the self-institution of a commune that is both democratic and social, and the emancipation of women - and in the work of Murray Bookchin a theoretical contribution to defining the relationship between communalism and ecology. With the development of popular assembly movements and commons around the world, a new communalist left is taking shape.

This essay situates recent calls for a return to the organizational form of the party by Bruno Bosteels and Jodi Dean in the current historical conjuncture. This conjuncture is described as an “age of riots”; this age, in turn, is defined both by a global capitalist crisis and an emergent “politics of the street.” The limits of this form of politics, I argue, give real urgency to the felt need for a new type of party form. My exploration of this question has recourse to a little-known text by Louis Althusser on the innovations of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, in particular the development of organs of power external to the Party. I conclude with a consideration of the way in which the notion of the commune poses a countermodel for thinking political organization that any current reconsideration of the party form must address.