Reviews and Comments

I’m reviewing Crowds & Party together with her The Communist Horizon because I read both books immediately after one another, they seem deeply linked, and I can’t figure out what comes from where anymore.

I think these are both books worth reading. They, like Comrade before, helped me articulate a dissatisfaction with current left organizing in my world. I think they also both go great as a chaser to If We Burn. Often, I feel like the greatest insights come from the quotes Dean selects from authors. I noticed in my own highlights that I’m more likely to highlight the original thoughts rather than Dean’s takes on them :)

On crowds and occupation:

Communist Horizon deals heavily with occupation as a tactic. I was left convinced by “If We Burn” that occupation is a dead end for political strategy, and this book helped me understand why. The core insight I take with me is that a crowd that ruptures (whether that’s an occupation or a riot) is not politics in itself, but an opportunity for politics. It’s an expression of a fundamental division (e.g. 99% vs 1%) that needs to be nurtured beyond the event and defended against competing political interests who themselves try to define the meaning. Importantly, we must not let the event be misread as one of unity and inclusivity – those are values that are fully compatible with capitalism. Instead, we must focus and build the gap that is shown.

One way to misread a crowd is to treat it as an example of truly non-representative politics, as if in this moment finally everybody speaks for themselves and nobody speaks for someone else. For one, as Dean argues through reference to Michels’s “iron law of oligarchy”, a non-representative organization is not sustainable. For two, even already during the occupation, there is clearly only ever a small subset of the actual population present in the square while that subset still claims to be speaking for “everybody”.

Lastly, it is a mistake to think occupations or masses are easy to organize. They’re hard to prepare and hard to execute and very far from a replicable political tactic (I can confirm this from personal experience.).

On communist history

I enjoyed some of the points here, although I think Bini Adamczak’s “Gestern Morgen” / “Yesterday’s Tomorrow” is a more thorough exploration. Dean argues for founding a Communist Party and for an orientation towards a communist horizon, and points out that the perception of communism is impossibly static, as if all communist parties are the late Soviet communist party, and that party remained unchanged throughout its history. I found illuminating that she pointed out that, given how the Soviet communist party is usually described as a bureaucratic, authoritarian monster, it’s impossible to believe that anybody would ever have voluntarily joined it, much less written and distributed newsletters and put their lives on the line for it. Whereas capitalism is presumed to be always changing and adaptable, communism is taken to be unchanged and unchangeable, a relict of the past, a history without historicity.

In this context, I also enjoyed the introduction to Robert Michels studies of political parties and how they inevitably lead to rule by the few; this is not a problem unique to communist or social democratic parties, but it becomes most salient there because of their egalitarian values. However, any organization will be led by the few; if democracy is supposed to mean rule by the many, then democracy is impossible. What we can do is understand these dynamics and build structures to work with them, but we should not pretend they can be prevent altogether or that we should eschew organization as a whole because of them.

On the proletariat

I’m not sure I have much of a clearer view of how to define the proletariat than I did before, but I did appreciate some notes. That we’re moving towards being more and more servants of the rich, rather producers. That proletarisation is a process. That one way of describing it is as the “part without a part”, (I’d like the German phrase “der Teil ohne Anteil” better), that segment of society that is part of society but has no part in it. That the proletariat is individualized, that this individualisation is misdescribed to them as freedom as opposed to submission to the dominant order. That it is those for whom survival itself feels like an accomplishment.

On what we do

This may be the core thing I take with me from the book: The role of communists, and a communist party, is to continuously organize the collective desire for collectivity. I won’t pretend to really understand the psychoanalytic background of this statement, but I find the distinction between a desire for collectivity and a collective desire for collectivity fascinating. The desire for collectivity I’d take as the sense of alienated individuality, the wish to be connected to one’s neighbors, to be part of a project, to live in a society. In my friends it’s the wish to join a compelling political project, to feel like they’re working on something together. This is different, and lacking, compared to the collective desire for collectivity. Not just wanting to be part of something, but recognizing that those next to you also want to be part of something, and that you (and everyone else) are that collectivity for each other.

It is important to always keep this desire as a desire for something not yet achieved. It must not b let met by micropolitics, by giving in to actionism and just doing things for the sake of doing them. There needs to always be a greater collectivity, greater egalitarianism that is yet to be pursued. A party is a way of making real that wish, of imbuing an entity with the ambitions and hopes expectations we have for ourselves and each other. Communism must not be another option or identity to be chosen in which one maintains one’s individuality and remains unchanged. To become a communist means and must mean to become different from those who have not yet chosen it. A revolutionary party cannot just aim for the transformation of society, it needs to aim for the transformation of the people within, and being a communist must be an individual transformation too.

This was a great book! On a large scale, it made me appreciate that the 2010s were a decade with uniquely many protests, that these protests all developed in reference to one another, that they converged on a style of protest that comes with predictable benefits and weaknesses, and that all in all, most of the protests failed, often leading to something even worse than what was protested against in the first place. And that we can and should learn from these failures!

On smaller scale, it drove home that a protest without a plan will always be co-opted because there can be no political vacuum, and the most organized, not-discredited group around in chaos will end up taking power or pushing through the reforms they like. In a direct conflict, and that’s what a protest becomes if it’s at all successful, the more hierarchical, disciplined, and authoritarian group will tend to win, and that’s usually the state or the elites. You need a plan.

I think this book is worth reading for anyone who was involved in a large grassroots protests in the last decade and is curious about what the fuck happened.

I read the author’s German Thesenpapier, an interview in the German podcast Jung & Naiv, as well as this book. It’s my understanding that he’s widely received in the academic world and has also gathered a considerable following there. Apparently psychoanalysts also like him.

The work is far too big for me to comment on it in detail, I also read this book in a way of jumping back and forth, trying to find things that are useful to me. The main thing I admire Rosa for is his project of painting a vision for the future, a way of talking about what positive societal change could look like that goes beyond “more of this” or “less of that”. As he rightly points out, such visions are pretty rare.

The central idea of Rosa is that the concept of resonance is helpful for elucidating some things that are happening in today’s societies, and that we can understand what a better future would look like by understanding what a world with more spaces for resonance could look like. To me, the idea of resonance is too individualistic to capture what my utopia looks like. It centers the liberal individual and their relationship to the world around them. Even in cases where resonance is experienced as part of groups (Rosa loves heavy metal concerts as examples) it’s about the individual’s experience in it. In one way, this feels like it makes the whole thing a more psychological than sociological project. In another way, I find it limiting insofar as I think the most relevant unit for thinking about society and human potential are groups, not individuals.

The most useful formulation of resonance to me was the idea of creating a precise counter-term to the imprecise term of “alienation”, which, as Rosa rightly notes, is used in a sprawling and generally ill-defined manner. The attempts at using physics metaphors often left me confused – I felt like Rosa might be forgetting that he’s using a metaphor, and as if a physical truth about the physical concept of resonance in some way implies, justifies, or even gives the slightest bit of evidence towards a similar truth obtaining in his sociological idea of resonance. Similary, all the references to actual physical examples (like skin conducting) or neuropsychology (“mirror neurons”) sounded uncomfortably bullshitty. I think Rosa should either come out and make a (likely falsifiable) claim that some empirical, physical thing correlates to his idea of resonance, or skip the gesturing towards it altogether. Same applies for the reference to psychoanalysis – I understand it’s common for philosophers to bring it up as a practice and a metaphor, but it did make me think that Rosa doesn’t quite appreciate that psychoanalysis is bullshit.

In some way, the idea of resonance feels a bit too much like a complicated form of the advice to stop and smell the roses for me. And I’m not even quite sure why I’d dislike that! I think it feels … incomplete, or unexciting, as if the best future is one in which can take more walks in nature and occasionally experience ecstasy at a concert. Or, put differently: In my personal experience, I do not struggle with resonating in those ways, and I certainly do not think that this completes the political project, although I do share the idea that everybody should have the economic means to live that lifestyle if they wanted. I think maybe I just want us to think bigger than once again recourse to work & family as axes of resonance?

Rosa argues that spaces of resonance are being undermined by late modernity’s constant drive towards acceleration, i.e. ever-increasing rates of outputs (whether in goods, ideas, or experiences). While this analysis is an attractive one to people who feel overwhelmed (I’d imagine this idea appeals to old people, my mum certainly loved it), it seems one could equally well make the opposing argument. Indeed, on the right it’s common to decry the great stagnation of our times, usually evidenced by decreased rates in productivity growth (here’s a random blogpost) or by pointing to a a slow-down in great scientific discoveries and innovations since 1970. Rosa would likely avoid this argument by saying that he’s talking about the “logic of acceleration” in late modernity, not any particular fact of acceleration, but then how isn’t this just talking about vibes?

In general, a lot in the book feels like hot takes, argued with reference to this new model. This becomes apparent whenever those hot takes are odds with one’s own lived reality. I cannot at all relate to what Rosa says about romantic relationships, but I’m willing to accept that I’m an outlier. But then it’d be nice to have some data though – did Rosa just talk to some friends, read some books of German poetry, and then decide this is how people do romance and then explain how resonance is relevant for it? Is there even supposed to be evidence? Do you become a sociologist just by having more compelling hot takes? How different would this book feel if Rosa took a break of it for a month and wrote love letters to all his friends and family and then reassessed how common alienation in romance is? Are these even relevant questions to ask? I did appreciate Rosa’s reading of the poetry he refers to, and feel like I understand those differently now – so the book works as a form of literary criticism for me I guess.

So all in all I’m not sure – I found the book interesting, and it’s come up for me in conversation since, and some of the ideas are helpful in explaining and communicating with people. I don’t know if this makes it good. The author says he wants to make sociology more precise, but it also seems like he’s just creating a new field with endless opportunities for funding, since you could study Resonance anywhere and everywhere. Maybe that’s just sociology’s form of “Take a noun and study it”? (taken from this great short essay on psychology).

(Context: Elke Kahr was elected mayor of Graz, Austria's second-largest city, two years ago. She's a member of the Communist Party of Austria and self-describes as a Marxist)

I find this a remarkable book. The contents are basic, it's really just a long-form chance for Kahr to espouse her political views, the journalist that's supposedly doing the interrogating does not show up except for in a fawning foreword and then, presumably, as the supplier of the 6 questions that frame the chapters.

But what strikes me is the sheer simplicity of the messaging. I swim in an educated, leftish circle where nobody would dare explain what communism means to them by referring to John Lennon's "Imagine" and "Working Class Hero", but, and this is important, where also nobody manages to win any fucking elections. Kahr speaks like a moderator on public TV, appealing to a 40+ crowd with day-to-day concerns and little academic interests. Throughout the book, and it's my understanding that this is basically her political brand, Kahr just seems like a pleasant, very decent person who cares about the people around her and wants things to be better for them. I will aspire to communicate like her.

On a political level, there are two things I find interesting. The first is the frequently reported-on self-imposed cap on politician's salaries at about the level of an educated worker. I am not convinced that any successful left-wing party in Europe needs to adapt this practice.

The second is how the party and the government sees itself in relationship to the administration:

"Inzwischen melden sich täglich einige Dutzend Menschen, die in Schwierigkeiten geraten sind, bei der Stadt, bei meinen Kolleginnen und Kollegen und bei mir. […] Würden wir diese Menschen, die sich vertrauens- und hoffnungsvoll an uns gewandt haben, einfach an das zuständige Amt beziehungsweise an die zuständigen politischen Referentinnen und Referenten weiterleiten, würden das viele als Abweisung verstehen. Andererseits können wir als Stadtregierung und Partei die Verwaltung mit ihrer vollen Kompetenz natürlich nicht ersetzen. Es braucht also ein Klima der gegenseitigen Wertschätzung, bei dem wir die Mitarbeiterinnen und Mitarbeiter in den Ämtern nicht bevormunden, während sie unseren direkten Zugang zu den Menschen respektieren. Dass dies möglich ist, zeigt, dass unser politischer Stil über Parteigrenzen hinweg Menschen motivieren kann."

They place themselves as the first point of interaction for the citizens and then refer them to the relevant administrative sectors. I find this interesting because it's not how political parties I'm familiar with act, and it strikes me as communist in the sense of trying to become part of the day-to-day life, rather than just seeking parliamentary representation.

I really liked this book! I found it helpful for understanding economics, the history of Chile, and the neoliberal mindset.

The core story of the book is that when neoliberalism was implemented without opposition by Pinochet after the anti-socialist coup, the country went through 8 economically difficult years of a transition to capitalism, a banking crisis, and then a gradual reaping of the economic fruits of the neoliberal reform. In particular, neoliberalism is seen to have won the war of ideas after the end of the dictatorship, with the centrist/center-left governments continuing and in some ways deepening the neoliberal reforms. These reforms led to the economic success of Chile but also increased inequality and dissatisfaction in non-economic parts of life, ultimately leading to the revolt in 2019, which was a surprised to members of the elite that considered economic markers to be sufficient for understanding the mood of the population.

“When Chile is compared with the other Latin American countries in the OECD sample (admittedly a small sample that, besides Chile, includes Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico), the picture that emerges is checkered and ambiguous. Chile is ranked first among the Latin American countries in only four out of the eleven indicators; and in the “Civil engagement” category it is dead last within the forty countries in the complete sample. In contrast, when traditional and purely economic metrics are used, Chile is always ranked first among these Latin American countries, often by a wide margin. Take, for instance, income per capita and the Gini coefficient: In 2018, Chile’s gross domestic product per capita (purchasing power parity) stood at US$23,000, Mexico’s at US$18,000, Brazil’s at US$14,500, and Colombia’s at US$13,600. Regarding the Gini coefficient, Chile had the lowest degree of inequality in this (small) sample; according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, in 2017 the Gini coefficient was 0.43 in Chile; it was 0.54 in Brazil, 0.51 in Colombia, and 0.50 in Mexico. The above discussion shows that when one moves to broader measures of horizontal inequality, the view of Chile as Latin America’s “paradise” or an “oasis” becomes blurred.”

UNOPPOSED, PURE NEOLIBERALISM

I appreciated learning what happens under neoliberalism when there is no opposition, when we get it in its purest form.

“The sheer length of the dictatorship (almost seventeen years) allowed them to experiment, to make mistakes and correct errors, to try one thing and then another, and to enact markets on an increasing number of fronts.”

On the positive side, we get economic development. It appears uncontroversial that Chile’s economy grew quickly and average standards of living rose. So by all traditional markers of an economy, neoliberal politics are a huge success.

On the negative side, we see protracted pain from the “shock-and-awe” treatment given (which Milton Friedman said would last a few months, but instead lasted almost a decade). This culminated in currency and banking crisis, which “gave the Chicago Boys an opportunity to push privatization further.” I’d say we can consider any banking crisis that happens today intentional.

We see some implementation of policies they’d usually be the first to reject, including capital controls and planned prices: “According to The Brick [(important document outlining the economic plan)], capital movements had to be regulated and restricted in order to avoid “capital flight” and speculation.”

“In 1975, and based on Harberger’s ideas, the Chicago Boys estimated “shadow” or “social” prices for the most important components of investment projects: capital, labor, and foreign exchange. These social prices considered a myriad of distortions in the Chilean economy and were used by the Office of Planning, Odeplán, to evaluate whether specific projects were worthwhile and socially beneficial. With time, as the distortions were lifted or eliminated, the need of using social prices was reduced. Harberger’s role was not restricted to assisting his former students on how to evaluate a particularly complex investment project. He was consulted about a variety of issues related to both macropolicy and social policy.”

We see ideological blindness to monopolistic behaviour:
 “The Chicago Boys did not worry about the increasing concentration of economic power. .. Government economists repeatedly stated that according to the “law of one price,” domestic prices could not exceed international prices plus transportation costs and the very low 10 percent uniform tariff. … What they missed was that many of the large firms created trading subsidiaries that had exclusivity contracts with foreign brands for selling those products in Chile. As a result, the main or only producer of white goods in Chile was the main importer of refrigerators and washing machines from Asia, Europe, or the United States.”

We see cronyism as part of the privatization during the dictatorship: Total revenue from these operations added up to almost US$2 billion, a figure that even then was considered to be low. In the years to come, the military, Hernán Büchi, and the rest of the economic team were accused of practically giving the companies away to relatives and friends. … In the process leading up to the 2019 revolt, one of the most common complaints by demonstrators was that the military and its civilian “accomplices” had plundered Chile by selling valuable companies with very bright potentials for very little.

We see political capture after the dictatorship: Little by little the cases of abuse, collusion, price rigging, use of inside information, tax evasion, artificially inflated balance sheets, bribery, and corruption added to the notion among some groups (and especially among young university students) that things were not quite right and that the narrative of transparency, competition in a leveled playing field, and meritocracy was mostly an illusion. Many suspected that the problem involved not only the business elite but also left-of-center politicians from the Concertación coalition—politicians who despite their prodistribution and equity rhetoric had been captured by the private sector and the corporate world. It is not clear whether captured is the right term, but what is true is that many former cabinet members and senior officials in the Aylwin, Frei, Lagos, and Bachelet administrations joined the boards of the largest corporations and conglomerates—boards with high pay from an international comparative perspective, and with numerous perks. From those positions they lobbied in favor of corporations and the large conglomerates and tended to play down the plight of consumers and workers.

We see class-based justice: “But the main issue raised by the critics was that despite the investigation proving beyond any doubt that there had been collusion, not a single executive involved in planning and executing the schemes served any prison time. This, they pointed out, contrasted sharply with the type of sentencing—usually jail time—received by petty thieves and by those who broke laws that protect private property.”

THE SOCIAL IDEOLOGY OF NEOLIBERALISM

I also found fascinating to see where the explicit cultural and societal ambitions of neoliberalism came through. And just how amateurish they are from a sociological perspective, ideas about culture built by economists who never once were trained in understanding that their lived experience is not common and that the values they believe in are dependent on the bubble they live in. It bears to mention at this point that not a single woman shows up in the entire book.

“The launching of the Seven Modernizations marked a turning point in Pinochet’s regime. The goal was no longer to reform the economy, making it more competitive and efficient; the objective now was to expand market relations everywhere in order to change Chile’s values and character. It is not an exaggeration to say that this was the moment when Chile adopted a transformational neoliberal perspective.”

The speech was written by Piñera, referencing Mao’s Four Modernizations through its title.

“[In 2015], Rolf Lüders, who was appointed minister of finance and economics by Pinochet in 1982, told the interviewer: “I really don’t care about inequality … the problem with income distribution is that it’s an envy problem.… Do you understand me?””

To think that economic inequality does not engender an inequality of power, that the only thing people care about or experience is the quality of their consumption, is bizarre.

“Cash transfers were avoided, as it was thought that recipients would spend the money unwisely.”

The Chicago boys had so much contempt for poor people that in their conviction that they are simply less competent humans than the rich they managed to even shove one of economic’s fundamental insights aside, that cash transfers are always better than in-kind transfers.

The author himself also represents some of this view, often mentioning Nobel prize for economics as an indicator of the stature of economists or praising the “elegance” of models or the “clarity” of prose, like he’s stuck in a world where politics is a gentleman’s endeavour to be discussed over port in a parlour room, with great men guiding us with their ideas.

I have mixed feelings about this book; I'd picked it up as it was recommended by China Miéville in "A Spectre, Haunting". The first two chapters ("What Is Ideology?" and "Ideological Strategies") were great – truly an introduction and overview, bringing to the foreground the many conflicing notions of ideology I'd encountered and linking them to political practice. I enjoyed the beginning of the third chapter "From the Enlightenment to the Second International" as helpful contextualization of the birth of the study of ideology, but then felt the book got lost in detailed intellectual history and rehashing of academic fights, so I began skipping and picked up again in the second-to-last chapter, "Discourse and Ideology", which turned out to just be a particular in-fight about semiotics with some other academics. The "Conclusion" was short and summarized the ideas of the first few chapter well. If you pick this up out of practical rather than academic interest, I'd recommend treating it as a primer and sticking to the first two or three chapters.

I found the historic part of this book (first two chapters) interesting, but not particularly helpful politically; I guess it's nice to rehabilitate the Luddites (and the anarchic style of organizing is interesting), but I'm not sure there's so much to learn from. The last two chapters I found more engaging. Particularly striking was the author's finding that people (workers, consumers) already engage in anti-automation, Luddite practices (like stealing from a self-checkout, or messing with food delivery robots in a fast food restaurant) and that it's good Marxist practice to build on that. Or this finding: "A large majority (85%) said they would support restricting workforce automation to jobs that are dangerous or unhealthy for humans to do." [^Pew] So as an overview of what automation currently does and how the Left can relate to it, the book was good; as a source of ancient wisdom from the Luddites, not so much.

[^Pew] www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/08/how-americans-see-automation-and-the-workplace-in-7-charts/

This book has helped me articulate a few things I’d experienced before. For one, the sense of joy of being seen as a comrade. I distinctly remember being in a very large online seminar on labour organizing when one of the Indian workers casually addressed everyone else as comrades, creating a unity where before I’d only felt the detachment of yet-another-zoom-call.

It also reminded me of when someone I’d just met said they were quite excited about knowing me now because they so rarely encounter “peers”. I understand now that the it was comradeship that happened in that moment – meeting someone else who is also trying to change the world the way you are, and whom you recognize as being on your side, and who is ready to judge you and be judged by you about the value of your activities in pursuit of that goal.

I know a good number of people who are politically active, but only very few who I think would tell me that what I’m doing is pointless, and who would accept my telling them that their pet political project is misguided. These, I understand now, are my comrades.

I also liked the distinction between ally & comrade, with an ally being an identity you pursue ultimately on your own, and comrade being an identity that can only be ascribed by someone else.

For political movements, the notion that to be a comrade is to place the party above the self, and that joy comes from knowing that one is only a part of a bigger thing, and not ultimately necessary for it, would be a helpful one. I think framing making oneself superfluous as not just a way of preventing burnout but as a source of pleasure might aid in building more resilient organisations.

This is a wonderful book to stimulate thinking. I don’t think it makes for good front-to-back reading material, but the pattern-based style works great for flipping through, and every once in a while I struck on one that immediately made sense to me and appealed. Some of the patterns feel dated (I really hope we will not need so many patterns around how to defend ourselves against cars in thirty years!), but more interesting were those bits were things felt missing – there’s no pattern for a community house except for large families, nothing to think about more temporary living situations, and no help in how to set up a space for a party. But the way of describing a pattern is so straightforward that each lacuna made me want to design my own, and even if the book had only produced that feeling, it would have been enough.

The patterns for designing a livable city made me sad – it all makes sense, but it’s at best an aspiration for where we want to get. As a utopia, I enjoyed it.

This book is easy to read and has a compelling central idea. It talks about what made the moon race work so well and indicates how to replicate the success. However, I worry that through the very writing of this book, the very mission-ness of the idea gets lost. I am sure that McKinsey already has a long presentation deck on what makes a mission a mission and how to properly set up a mission and execute it (and spend billions in the process). Using the moon race as an example is easy because it obviously succeeded and happened a long time ago, but it's also a cop-out to not have to say why similar efforts (many of them started with the advice of Mazzucato herself) are failing. The contemporary examples she cites are not compelling; she points towards the "Energiewende" (energy turn) in Germany as a positive example, a term describing the change from fossil fuels to renewables. However, while the term itself is well known, it is no mission. To the extent that it at some point was a mission, it has failed: coal plants continue to run, and Germany is building fewer renewable energy farms than it used to.

Similarly, Mazzucato has worked on the "UK Industrial Strategy" [1]. What has happened to it? Has it failed? Is it succeeding? Or do we only call things "mission" if they end up working – if so, why bother defining the term as a goal at all?

All in all, the concept of a mission economy is compelling, but all the hard parts seem to be in execution and navigating a political climate in which you cannot rely on a cold war to get everyone's support for your mission. Those parts do not get addressed by the book.

[1] www.gov.uk/government/publications/a-mission-oriented-approach-to-building-the-entrepreneurial-state