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The Communist Horizon
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256 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2012
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About the author
Jodi Dean
47 books144 followersJodi Dean teaches political and media theory in Geneva, New York. She has written or edited eleven books, including The Communist Horizon and Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews
February 28, 2023
I saw Jodi Dean give the Mark Fisher Memorial Lecture at Goldsmiths University earlier this year. She spoke authoritatively on the need to overcome "left melancholia" and struggle towards a set of clearly defined collective aims. I doubt very much, however, that this worthwhile message was understood or internalised by the carnival of individualism that makes up a typical Goldsmiths audience.
When I saw she had written a book about the idea of communism as an external horizon to which anti-capitalist politics can orient itself, and as a means of escape from defeatism and disorganisation, I decided to pick up a copy and read it.
Sadly, although the idea is excellent, the execution is a disaster.
Jodi Dean is far more interested in interrogating weird and wonderful quasi-marxist sociologists and psychoanalysts before an audience of post-graduates than she is in presenting a solid, historically grounded image of the future, one that could be read and understood by the agents of history themselves - the working class.
If you've got the intellectual tools and saint-like patience to wade through impenetrable layers of exposition in which words like "subjectivities" appear more than once per sentence, there's a few good moments here. She attacks the mythologising of the Soviet Union as an unchanging, ineffective and terrifying monolith, and explains quite carefully how both the USA and the Soviet Union impacted on each other, each reading in each other something of their own deficiencies.
If this book had stuck closely to this theme, unpacking the Soviet Union-as-a-collective-vision from the Soviet Union-as-a-state-formation (be that revolutionary, Stalinist, military industrial or welfarist), it might have been a more interesting text. Instead she goes down a jargon strewn rabbit-hole on what she calls "communicatory capitalism", essentially the idea that social media represents an intellectual commons, and online business a new form of capitalist expropriation. This isn't a bad idea in itself, but it has since been expressed much more coherently in Nick Srnicek's Platform Capitalism, and here it just comes off as a bit of a mess.
She formats the book in such a way as to systematically address the cornerstones of the communist idea (sovereignty of the people, common wealth, party etc). However, instead of demonstrating how each of these parts of the communist horizon could be expressed today, using anecdote and example, she casts the reader adrift in a sea of theoretical word salad.
The last section, on the role of a Leninist party, is actually just a scrambled set of reflections on the Occupy Wall Street movement, a feature of nearly every book written by a left wing academic in the last 10 years or so. It says more about the psychological death march undertaken by the radical left between the collapse of communism and the 2008 crash than it does about the potential role of a Leninist party in the modern world. It's also aged particularly badly in the light of the intense radicalisation of mass social democratic parties in the last few years.
Ultimately, Jodi Dean's basic premise is a good one. Communism is a necessary alternative horizon in the vista of capitalist infinity, guiding left wing movements towards escape from an endless cycle of micro-activity, characterised by irrelevance and marginalisation. However, by writing a book unintelligible to anyone outside of a university humanities department - and of limited relevance to someone in one - she hasn't contributed very much to that horizon.
The Communist Horizon would have been better off formatted as a 2000 word Jacobin article than as a 250 page act of auto-asphyxiation.
When I saw she had written a book about the idea of communism as an external horizon to which anti-capitalist politics can orient itself, and as a means of escape from defeatism and disorganisation, I decided to pick up a copy and read it.
Sadly, although the idea is excellent, the execution is a disaster.
Jodi Dean is far more interested in interrogating weird and wonderful quasi-marxist sociologists and psychoanalysts before an audience of post-graduates than she is in presenting a solid, historically grounded image of the future, one that could be read and understood by the agents of history themselves - the working class.
If you've got the intellectual tools and saint-like patience to wade through impenetrable layers of exposition in which words like "subjectivities" appear more than once per sentence, there's a few good moments here. She attacks the mythologising of the Soviet Union as an unchanging, ineffective and terrifying monolith, and explains quite carefully how both the USA and the Soviet Union impacted on each other, each reading in each other something of their own deficiencies.
If this book had stuck closely to this theme, unpacking the Soviet Union-as-a-collective-vision from the Soviet Union-as-a-state-formation (be that revolutionary, Stalinist, military industrial or welfarist), it might have been a more interesting text. Instead she goes down a jargon strewn rabbit-hole on what she calls "communicatory capitalism", essentially the idea that social media represents an intellectual commons, and online business a new form of capitalist expropriation. This isn't a bad idea in itself, but it has since been expressed much more coherently in Nick Srnicek's Platform Capitalism, and here it just comes off as a bit of a mess.
She formats the book in such a way as to systematically address the cornerstones of the communist idea (sovereignty of the people, common wealth, party etc). However, instead of demonstrating how each of these parts of the communist horizon could be expressed today, using anecdote and example, she casts the reader adrift in a sea of theoretical word salad.
The last section, on the role of a Leninist party, is actually just a scrambled set of reflections on the Occupy Wall Street movement, a feature of nearly every book written by a left wing academic in the last 10 years or so. It says more about the psychological death march undertaken by the radical left between the collapse of communism and the 2008 crash than it does about the potential role of a Leninist party in the modern world. It's also aged particularly badly in the light of the intense radicalisation of mass social democratic parties in the last few years.
Ultimately, Jodi Dean's basic premise is a good one. Communism is a necessary alternative horizon in the vista of capitalist infinity, guiding left wing movements towards escape from an endless cycle of micro-activity, characterised by irrelevance and marginalisation. However, by writing a book unintelligible to anyone outside of a university humanities department - and of limited relevance to someone in one - she hasn't contributed very much to that horizon.
The Communist Horizon would have been better off formatted as a 2000 word Jacobin article than as a 250 page act of auto-asphyxiation.
September 3, 2018
start at chapter four -- the early stuff is Dean at her least helpful because most obtuse/allusive (the first two chapters, she's noticeably out of her element -- chapter three is a not-terribly illuminating debate with Zizek and Badiou that I'm not sure has the stakes she thinks it does) -- the rest, back in her wheelhouse of communicative capitalism, desire and the party-form, is exciting.
August 12, 2016
Over the last few years, Jodi Dean has been working up and developing her notion of communicative capitalism – see
Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies
and
Blog Theory
– described here as “the convergence of communication and capitalism in a formation that incites engagement and participation in order to capture them in the affective networks of mass personalised media” (p 215). In this contribution to Verso’s Pocket Communism series (of the volumes I have read, see
The Communist Hypothesis
and
The Actuality of Communism
, I’d say the most accessible).
Here she takes a brief comment by Álvaro Garciá Linera (reported in Bruno Bosteels’ Actuality) that “The general horizon of the era is communist” to explore three principle strands in contemporary political debate and practice. The first is the existence of actual reference points of communism – that is, the invocation of the Soviet image and the continuing implicit fear/loss-of-communism in US political culture. She sees fear in the politics of the Right and loss in those of the Left, and makes a compelling point that the Left’s shift from images and invocations of anti-capitalism to democracy has closed off options for alternatives.
The second strand is one of a positive presence (rather than absence of the first strand) in the form of actual but often unnamed class struggle seen in the common political and economic activity, including resistance to the proletarianisation of most work(ers) in the form of their heightened exploitation, dispossession and immiseration.
She then shifts approach and tone again for the final strand to focus on collectivities, in the form of a need for a collective desire not in the form of the same desire by many individuals but a collective shared for the common, for communism (I'm not entirely convinced by her call to Michael Hardt here, because I don't find Hardt's case in The Idea of Communism convincing). Crucially, this is neither the communism of the unrealised Soviet model nor the lost form formerly held by the Left but the collectivity of the 99%. Despite the call to Hardt, she presents a convincing argument against the widely held view that we are in an era of left melancholia. The focus on the collective becomes an argument in favour of Leninist style party, and I have to say here that our experience on the Left of aspects of the Leninist party has not been one I’d like to see us repeat – this is that experience of secretive hierarchical control and privilege claiming to be democratic centralism of the kind that resulted in the early 2013 implosion of the UK’s Socialist Workers’ Party amid allegations of a cover-up of rape by a senior Party figure. Dean’s argument is not for this kind of secretive hierarchical decision-making; she sees a Leninist party as essential where it remains open.
She also builds an argument for a Party out of three key elements of the Occupy event – the first is division as a fundamental wrong of inequality, theft and exploitation where this division marks the fundamental antagonism that holds together the movement and defines the 99%. The second is that in asserting division, and despite the claims of many of its adherents, Occupy becomes and is a form of representation of something bigger, of a form of division+; Occupy as a collective event asserts capitalism’s fundamental antagonism as class struggle. The third element is Occupy as a collective event, here division and representation becomes collective and public; in this it is fundamentally antagonistic to communicative capitalism; this is not, she argues, ‘clicktivism’ but public collective action. It is at this stage that reminds her readers that waiting for the 99% to all realise their need to act means waiting forever – realisation comes from action and that action needs to be lead. She is scathing about the myths of voluntarism concealed in the claims to horizontalism as well as often obfuscated leadership; she comes close to the tyranny of structurelessness, but not quite. Her Party then does not seem to have all the answers, but politicises exclusion and claims ownership of the identification of the gap that makes us the people, that makes the people (the 99%) ‘we’, not I and others. Crucially, she argues that the Party does not stand in for or represent the people, it “formalises the collective desire for collectivity” (p249).
There are shades, hints and risks of ‘permanent revolution’ here but I detect in her rejection of the unattained communism of the failed Soviet form means that this is not the permanent oppositionism of dominant forms of ‘permanent revolution’ and neither is it dominant myths Soviet/Maoist style planning. We’ve learned not to predict the shape of the alternative – it will emerge from the struggle – but in invoking an horizon Dean has identified a thing that is always there, always unattainable but actual and that shapes our current setting. She has asserted a need for collectivity and the collective and identified the public event as the path beyond communicative capitalism. There is less of an obvious invocation of Lacan than in some of her other work, although he is here and shapes much of her case – but this is a call to collective action, and all the more welcome for that.
It is a challenging, evocative and rewarding philosophical analysis, and a call to action. For that alone it is a welcome addition to her work and this series, and something to act on.
Here she takes a brief comment by Álvaro Garciá Linera (reported in Bruno Bosteels’ Actuality) that “The general horizon of the era is communist” to explore three principle strands in contemporary political debate and practice. The first is the existence of actual reference points of communism – that is, the invocation of the Soviet image and the continuing implicit fear/loss-of-communism in US political culture. She sees fear in the politics of the Right and loss in those of the Left, and makes a compelling point that the Left’s shift from images and invocations of anti-capitalism to democracy has closed off options for alternatives.
The second strand is one of a positive presence (rather than absence of the first strand) in the form of actual but often unnamed class struggle seen in the common political and economic activity, including resistance to the proletarianisation of most work(ers) in the form of their heightened exploitation, dispossession and immiseration.
She then shifts approach and tone again for the final strand to focus on collectivities, in the form of a need for a collective desire not in the form of the same desire by many individuals but a collective shared for the common, for communism (I'm not entirely convinced by her call to Michael Hardt here, because I don't find Hardt's case in The Idea of Communism convincing). Crucially, this is neither the communism of the unrealised Soviet model nor the lost form formerly held by the Left but the collectivity of the 99%. Despite the call to Hardt, she presents a convincing argument against the widely held view that we are in an era of left melancholia. The focus on the collective becomes an argument in favour of Leninist style party, and I have to say here that our experience on the Left of aspects of the Leninist party has not been one I’d like to see us repeat – this is that experience of secretive hierarchical control and privilege claiming to be democratic centralism of the kind that resulted in the early 2013 implosion of the UK’s Socialist Workers’ Party amid allegations of a cover-up of rape by a senior Party figure. Dean’s argument is not for this kind of secretive hierarchical decision-making; she sees a Leninist party as essential where it remains open.
She also builds an argument for a Party out of three key elements of the Occupy event – the first is division as a fundamental wrong of inequality, theft and exploitation where this division marks the fundamental antagonism that holds together the movement and defines the 99%. The second is that in asserting division, and despite the claims of many of its adherents, Occupy becomes and is a form of representation of something bigger, of a form of division+; Occupy as a collective event asserts capitalism’s fundamental antagonism as class struggle. The third element is Occupy as a collective event, here division and representation becomes collective and public; in this it is fundamentally antagonistic to communicative capitalism; this is not, she argues, ‘clicktivism’ but public collective action. It is at this stage that reminds her readers that waiting for the 99% to all realise their need to act means waiting forever – realisation comes from action and that action needs to be lead. She is scathing about the myths of voluntarism concealed in the claims to horizontalism as well as often obfuscated leadership; she comes close to the tyranny of structurelessness, but not quite. Her Party then does not seem to have all the answers, but politicises exclusion and claims ownership of the identification of the gap that makes us the people, that makes the people (the 99%) ‘we’, not I and others. Crucially, she argues that the Party does not stand in for or represent the people, it “formalises the collective desire for collectivity” (p249).
There are shades, hints and risks of ‘permanent revolution’ here but I detect in her rejection of the unattained communism of the failed Soviet form means that this is not the permanent oppositionism of dominant forms of ‘permanent revolution’ and neither is it dominant myths Soviet/Maoist style planning. We’ve learned not to predict the shape of the alternative – it will emerge from the struggle – but in invoking an horizon Dean has identified a thing that is always there, always unattainable but actual and that shapes our current setting. She has asserted a need for collectivity and the collective and identified the public event as the path beyond communicative capitalism. There is less of an obvious invocation of Lacan than in some of her other work, although he is here and shapes much of her case – but this is a call to collective action, and all the more welcome for that.
It is a challenging, evocative and rewarding philosophical analysis, and a call to action. For that alone it is a welcome addition to her work and this series, and something to act on.
April 4, 2021
This book's claims are as sweeping as they are disturbing. Like many Marxist polemics, it has some success in pointing out shortcomings in other ideologies and arguments, but is worse at making its own case. In fact, the book seems to proudly refrain from seriously attempting this.
False dichotomies and other rhetorical sleights of hand abound. For one, the author routinely implies an incredibly broad interpretation of what communism is (despite an attempt to define it in the opening pages). In one passage, communism seems to be shorthand for "the discipline of unionized workers and an organized Left", as though no other political ideology could inspire this. Elsewhere, communism is supposedly the only political program that represents the interests of the working class against the 1%. (Occupy Wall Street, elsewhere criticized for its lack of focus, is made an avatar for communist potential when convenient.) Finally, communism is summed up by the phrase "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need", which would perhaps be acceptable if it were any clearer how this state of affairs should be organized (who defines "ability" and "need"?), why it should take priority over any other egalitarian principle, and why only a system designated as "communist" can embody it as a value. Instead, Dean maintains a principle of silence and uncertainty on such questions.
Similarly, Dean redefines "the people" as only "those who would be oppressed". Yet when Dean refers to "the people" asserting their sovereignty, she restricts this definition further, to a Leninist vanguard party. (Dean may be quite right that communists cannot impose their rule without a vanguard party, but that has important repercussions for the ideology itself, which I will return to.)
Dean does make a valid point early on: that Western egalitarian reforms in the mid-twentieth century were the result of protracted political struggle, not gifts from the capitalist system itself. Yet ironically, these reforms were state socialist and Keynesian in nature, by Dean's own description. At the very same time, Dean ignores the fact that the downfall of the Soviet Union itself was precipitated by protracted political struggle (much of it coming from the bottom up, and often from a place that was ideologically to the left of the USSR's teetering bureaucracy). There is a stubborn refusal to learn from history that courses through this book; in fact, history itself is treated not as something to learn from, but to be occulted, deemed irrelevant or insufficient.
Then there's the strange derision of "democracy", which seems to be the author's least favourite word. It is apparently "the form the loss of communism takes", with Dean conveniently forgetting that democratic leftists did exist at the movement's height. Once again, there's a rhetorical sleight of hand here. First, Dean argues that capitalism's inequality essentially undermines its pretensions to being democratic in any true sense. Fair enough. But then Dean seems to take the idea that the words "democracy" and "individualism" are synonymous with "liberal-democratic capitalism" at face value. Thus, democratic leftists are suddenly told they are demanding what they already have(!) Even more sinister, they are identified with pro-capitalist forces, simply because there is apparently no valid anti-capitalist ideology besides communism. (Once again, the fact that communist regimes have frequently appropriated capitalist modes of production is mostly ignored when inconvenient, perhaps because they are not "truly" communist. But I would argue this is simply special pleading.) The idea that a revolution can be heterogeneous and gradual, but nonetheless real, is dismissed as a legitimate possibility. (In this case, why invoke the state socialist and Keynesian reforms mentioned earlier at all?) Insofar as Dean denigrates individualism in favour of collective will, what is the purpose of collective empowerment if not the existential preservation and self-actualization of each constituting individual?
What Dean never addresses is the most important point of all: the reason why communism is the preferable alternative to capitalism in the first place. The burden of proof is but briefly even acknowledged. The reason that this is concerning is because Dean appears to want to 'reset the score' on communism, insisting that its Soviet incarnation was but one of several possible developments. What goes unsaid is that diverse communist regimes have consistently failed by communism's very own declared standards - often in proportion to the state's geopolitical power. (The fact that liberal democracies have also generally failed by Enlightenment standards does not negate this objection, and radicals of all stripes are quite keen to point this fact out anyway.) Dean tells us that to be concerned about this consistently problematic and troubling history is to be against the working class and for the interests of capital. In practice, we are either communists, oppressors, or unwitting lackeys.
Unfortunately, this rhetorical move itself constitutes traditional communism's authoritarian logic, as explored by Koestler in Darkness at Noon and Orwell in Animal Farm (I presume that Dean is aware of these well-known texts, but simply dismisses them). One equates the people's sovereignty with communism, communism with the Party, and (almost always) the Party with the Party's leadership. There is a teleological endpoint (full communism), to be delivered to the people by the Party leadership. It follows that significant (ie. "non-constructive") dissent can only be seen as undisciplined or nefarious (and the fact that Dean lumps all of her opponents together, from anti-authoritarian leftists to conservatives, points in this direction). From here, any and every Party action is morally unassailable; despite Dean's assertion that Party decisions are always open to revision, the well-documented historical trope is that communist leaders show little tolerance for resistance and a limited desire to trust popular objections when so-called "mistakes" are made. When one identifies the people's desires with the Party (and Dean ominously suggests that the Party is necessary for the people to even understand what their desires are), it logically follows that the Party leadership's interests are paramount in any circumstance. Meanwhile, Dean urges democratic leftists to "trust our desire for collectivity" when arguing for centralized representation by the Party, without respect for the reasons why that trust may have eroded in the first place.
Despite its assertions to the contrary, The Communist Horizon sketches a fantasy. It yearns for an ultimate solution to injustice, for an end of history that is no less fanciful than Fukuyama's. It imagines that full economic justice will be delivered by a vanguard party, by means of uniting (read: controlling) diverse and multifaceted political movements under its influence. From here, we must have faith that the party leadership can and will guide the structure of the incoming society in a rational, benevolent way, with perhaps a little uncertainty thrown in along the way. I would argue that this has seldom happened, and I am skeptical towards the idea that we should simply assume it will. (Even relative communist success stories, like Cuba, have usually seen the regimes institute belated liberal reforms so as to arguably resemble state socialist societies more than anything traditionally communist - unless you're counting the limits on freedom of expression, that is). The bloody road Dean seems keen to take us on (since she chastises the democratic left for being "afraid" of political violence, while admittedly clarifying that violence should not be institutionalized) warrants such skepticism in my opinion. I can understand why one would not be thrilled at the idea of dying (or worse, killing) on behalf of a small group of people who paternalistically assure their eventual deliverance. That's religion, at its worst, typified by its aversion to the agnostic and the skeptic.
This book suggests that, ultimately, not all leftists are fighting for the same cause after all. Instead, this book -- like most communism, I'd suggest -- contains a latent totalitarianism, starving for nourishment. It follows from its assumptions. Because the concept of full communism is premised on an eschatological deliverance -- a solution to injustice -- it proposes a society in which "participation" is reserved for the assenting; it both presumes and requires the righteousness of the individual(s) in power, as though we have not by now learned which kinds of people tend to occupy such positions. (The fact that "the people's sovereignty" is not quite collective, but hinges upon such individual personalities as long as Party leadership calls the shots, is lost in her abstractions.) It is not clear how this is overcome by Dean's vague appeals to "diagonal" power structures, because the flaw lies in the logic and not merely the organization. To avoid totalitarianism requires turning away from full communism as a concept.
This is not to imply that communists can't genuinely believe in egalitarianism or contribute to social movements, but is to argue that communism contains a fundamental contradiction that threatens to undermine social equality at its core.
If you're already a converted communist, and you're simply looking for material to conveniently affirm your basic worldview, this book may be useful to you. For the rest of us, this book is helpful for little more than sharpening our wits against its arguments, lest we hear some misguided soul repeat them in some seminar.
False dichotomies and other rhetorical sleights of hand abound. For one, the author routinely implies an incredibly broad interpretation of what communism is (despite an attempt to define it in the opening pages). In one passage, communism seems to be shorthand for "the discipline of unionized workers and an organized Left", as though no other political ideology could inspire this. Elsewhere, communism is supposedly the only political program that represents the interests of the working class against the 1%. (Occupy Wall Street, elsewhere criticized for its lack of focus, is made an avatar for communist potential when convenient.) Finally, communism is summed up by the phrase "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need", which would perhaps be acceptable if it were any clearer how this state of affairs should be organized (who defines "ability" and "need"?), why it should take priority over any other egalitarian principle, and why only a system designated as "communist" can embody it as a value. Instead, Dean maintains a principle of silence and uncertainty on such questions.
Similarly, Dean redefines "the people" as only "those who would be oppressed". Yet when Dean refers to "the people" asserting their sovereignty, she restricts this definition further, to a Leninist vanguard party. (Dean may be quite right that communists cannot impose their rule without a vanguard party, but that has important repercussions for the ideology itself, which I will return to.)
Dean does make a valid point early on: that Western egalitarian reforms in the mid-twentieth century were the result of protracted political struggle, not gifts from the capitalist system itself. Yet ironically, these reforms were state socialist and Keynesian in nature, by Dean's own description. At the very same time, Dean ignores the fact that the downfall of the Soviet Union itself was precipitated by protracted political struggle (much of it coming from the bottom up, and often from a place that was ideologically to the left of the USSR's teetering bureaucracy). There is a stubborn refusal to learn from history that courses through this book; in fact, history itself is treated not as something to learn from, but to be occulted, deemed irrelevant or insufficient.
Then there's the strange derision of "democracy", which seems to be the author's least favourite word. It is apparently "the form the loss of communism takes", with Dean conveniently forgetting that democratic leftists did exist at the movement's height. Once again, there's a rhetorical sleight of hand here. First, Dean argues that capitalism's inequality essentially undermines its pretensions to being democratic in any true sense. Fair enough. But then Dean seems to take the idea that the words "democracy" and "individualism" are synonymous with "liberal-democratic capitalism" at face value. Thus, democratic leftists are suddenly told they are demanding what they already have(!) Even more sinister, they are identified with pro-capitalist forces, simply because there is apparently no valid anti-capitalist ideology besides communism. (Once again, the fact that communist regimes have frequently appropriated capitalist modes of production is mostly ignored when inconvenient, perhaps because they are not "truly" communist. But I would argue this is simply special pleading.) The idea that a revolution can be heterogeneous and gradual, but nonetheless real, is dismissed as a legitimate possibility. (In this case, why invoke the state socialist and Keynesian reforms mentioned earlier at all?) Insofar as Dean denigrates individualism in favour of collective will, what is the purpose of collective empowerment if not the existential preservation and self-actualization of each constituting individual?
What Dean never addresses is the most important point of all: the reason why communism is the preferable alternative to capitalism in the first place. The burden of proof is but briefly even acknowledged. The reason that this is concerning is because Dean appears to want to 'reset the score' on communism, insisting that its Soviet incarnation was but one of several possible developments. What goes unsaid is that diverse communist regimes have consistently failed by communism's very own declared standards - often in proportion to the state's geopolitical power. (The fact that liberal democracies have also generally failed by Enlightenment standards does not negate this objection, and radicals of all stripes are quite keen to point this fact out anyway.) Dean tells us that to be concerned about this consistently problematic and troubling history is to be against the working class and for the interests of capital. In practice, we are either communists, oppressors, or unwitting lackeys.
Unfortunately, this rhetorical move itself constitutes traditional communism's authoritarian logic, as explored by Koestler in Darkness at Noon and Orwell in Animal Farm (I presume that Dean is aware of these well-known texts, but simply dismisses them). One equates the people's sovereignty with communism, communism with the Party, and (almost always) the Party with the Party's leadership. There is a teleological endpoint (full communism), to be delivered to the people by the Party leadership. It follows that significant (ie. "non-constructive") dissent can only be seen as undisciplined or nefarious (and the fact that Dean lumps all of her opponents together, from anti-authoritarian leftists to conservatives, points in this direction). From here, any and every Party action is morally unassailable; despite Dean's assertion that Party decisions are always open to revision, the well-documented historical trope is that communist leaders show little tolerance for resistance and a limited desire to trust popular objections when so-called "mistakes" are made. When one identifies the people's desires with the Party (and Dean ominously suggests that the Party is necessary for the people to even understand what their desires are), it logically follows that the Party leadership's interests are paramount in any circumstance. Meanwhile, Dean urges democratic leftists to "trust our desire for collectivity" when arguing for centralized representation by the Party, without respect for the reasons why that trust may have eroded in the first place.
Despite its assertions to the contrary, The Communist Horizon sketches a fantasy. It yearns for an ultimate solution to injustice, for an end of history that is no less fanciful than Fukuyama's. It imagines that full economic justice will be delivered by a vanguard party, by means of uniting (read: controlling) diverse and multifaceted political movements under its influence. From here, we must have faith that the party leadership can and will guide the structure of the incoming society in a rational, benevolent way, with perhaps a little uncertainty thrown in along the way. I would argue that this has seldom happened, and I am skeptical towards the idea that we should simply assume it will. (Even relative communist success stories, like Cuba, have usually seen the regimes institute belated liberal reforms so as to arguably resemble state socialist societies more than anything traditionally communist - unless you're counting the limits on freedom of expression, that is). The bloody road Dean seems keen to take us on (since she chastises the democratic left for being "afraid" of political violence, while admittedly clarifying that violence should not be institutionalized) warrants such skepticism in my opinion. I can understand why one would not be thrilled at the idea of dying (or worse, killing) on behalf of a small group of people who paternalistically assure their eventual deliverance. That's religion, at its worst, typified by its aversion to the agnostic and the skeptic.
This book suggests that, ultimately, not all leftists are fighting for the same cause after all. Instead, this book -- like most communism, I'd suggest -- contains a latent totalitarianism, starving for nourishment. It follows from its assumptions. Because the concept of full communism is premised on an eschatological deliverance -- a solution to injustice -- it proposes a society in which "participation" is reserved for the assenting; it both presumes and requires the righteousness of the individual(s) in power, as though we have not by now learned which kinds of people tend to occupy such positions. (The fact that "the people's sovereignty" is not quite collective, but hinges upon such individual personalities as long as Party leadership calls the shots, is lost in her abstractions.) It is not clear how this is overcome by Dean's vague appeals to "diagonal" power structures, because the flaw lies in the logic and not merely the organization. To avoid totalitarianism requires turning away from full communism as a concept.
This is not to imply that communists can't genuinely believe in egalitarianism or contribute to social movements, but is to argue that communism contains a fundamental contradiction that threatens to undermine social equality at its core.
If you're already a converted communist, and you're simply looking for material to conveniently affirm your basic worldview, this book may be useful to you. For the rest of us, this book is helpful for little more than sharpening our wits against its arguments, lest we hear some misguided soul repeat them in some seminar.
March 15, 2023
Good book, v interesting points. Not for a beginner!
February 13, 2022
I didn't expect Jodi Dean to build off of Zizek at all, and I'm impressed with the way she did. There's a lot of really good stuff in here, but I have very specific criticisms with some of the definitions of communism that Dean explores, as well as a general disagreement with her attitude toward the Marxism as a science and the notion of inevitability.
Read
April 21, 2022kinda wish i read this before i submitted my thesis, but anyway, incredible! you should read it too!
July 12, 2022
I can't believe I spent 7 years trying to read this. I'm glad I did, but only so I can now never touch it again.
An infuriating read. As with many Marxist/leftist texts, it excels in its criticisms and flounders in presenting new, practical ways to achieve the goals presented. What makes it even more infuriating is the presence of some actually really useful ideas, particularly related to the form modern capitalism takes, the myth of horizontal organising and the lefts failure to appeal to the desire of the masses who it should naturally appeal to. These ideas however are let down by its academic, verbose writing, which is a huge challenge to decode, and a fetishisation of the leninist party. It spends half of the time attacking the old leninist left for its flaws before reverting back to presenting it as the only route available to the left. This would be more forgivable if Dean took efforts to lay out ways the leninist party could be reformed to compensate for its historical flaws but this doesn't happen. Good Marxist texts of this kind do exist, but this ain't one of them.
The Good ideas it contains could have easily been presented on a medium think piece, and didn't need to be spread across the nearly 250 word pages it did. Whether you're an avowed leninist, anti-leninist or even anti-leftist, there is very little to be found in here that really explains much of anything. The flashes of brilliance can be discovered much more easily through experience in political action (coincidentally, not at all easy) than reading this book.If you're the kind of academicly minded person who likes to read books to feel smart, you'll probably have a good time picking apart the puzzle of meaning in each sentence and indulging in the 'I'm not like the other leftists' cock stroking but if you give even remotely half a shit about actually changing the world, read something else instead, talk to people, touch grass.
The cover is nice though. 3/10
An infuriating read. As with many Marxist/leftist texts, it excels in its criticisms and flounders in presenting new, practical ways to achieve the goals presented. What makes it even more infuriating is the presence of some actually really useful ideas, particularly related to the form modern capitalism takes, the myth of horizontal organising and the lefts failure to appeal to the desire of the masses who it should naturally appeal to. These ideas however are let down by its academic, verbose writing, which is a huge challenge to decode, and a fetishisation of the leninist party. It spends half of the time attacking the old leninist left for its flaws before reverting back to presenting it as the only route available to the left. This would be more forgivable if Dean took efforts to lay out ways the leninist party could be reformed to compensate for its historical flaws but this doesn't happen. Good Marxist texts of this kind do exist, but this ain't one of them.
The Good ideas it contains could have easily been presented on a medium think piece, and didn't need to be spread across the nearly 250 word pages it did. Whether you're an avowed leninist, anti-leninist or even anti-leftist, there is very little to be found in here that really explains much of anything. The flashes of brilliance can be discovered much more easily through experience in political action (coincidentally, not at all easy) than reading this book.If you're the kind of academicly minded person who likes to read books to feel smart, you'll probably have a good time picking apart the puzzle of meaning in each sentence and indulging in the 'I'm not like the other leftists' cock stroking but if you give even remotely half a shit about actually changing the world, read something else instead, talk to people, touch grass.
The cover is nice though. 3/10
July 15, 2025
Severely suffers from using overly abstract philosophical jargon throughout the book (ironically like most historical communist texts *cough *cough Marx).Very little substantive topics are covered. The only interesting point (though again, said through a flurry of pretentiously worded paragraphs) was about how technically unpaid data harvesting could be considered a modern expansion of Marx's labour theory of value, which could also indicate how pervasive and ingrained the capitalist system has now become (tho I'm doing a lot of generous heavy lifting for the author, and making this point far more concisely than they did). Also the point itself is a bit mute given the scale of 'theft' is tiny comparatively with standard wages. it's hardly the main issue with capitalism, tho I still thought it was an interesting newer dynamic to bring up.
The author is presumably in favour of a revolution, yet themselves fails to push us closer to being over the horizon, because they're so obsessed with intellectualizing every point they make for no apparent reason. I get that you want a vanguard class to lead us there, but revolutions do actually require a sizeable amount of the population to be able to understand your position. I would bet that even of the highly educated, and leftist inclined population, few of them would be able to fully comprehend everything this book is trying to communicate.
The author is presumably in favour of a revolution, yet themselves fails to push us closer to being over the horizon, because they're so obsessed with intellectualizing every point they make for no apparent reason. I get that you want a vanguard class to lead us there, but revolutions do actually require a sizeable amount of the population to be able to understand your position. I would bet that even of the highly educated, and leftist inclined population, few of them would be able to fully comprehend everything this book is trying to communicate.
January 10, 2024
A short book assessing the current state of communism (whatever that is taken to mean) by the US academic and communist Jodi Dean. This was published 2012 at the time of the Occupy movement, and much of the later part of the book is taken up by a very optimistic assessment of Occupy as an assertion of collective desire for change and an end to modern capitalism. This is interesting, particularly the section on desire and what this means for a movement, based on psychoanalysis and particularly Lacan. This moves away from the traditional hierarchic command-and-control view of communism, but I'm not convinced by Dean's assertion of the need for a communist party and how it supports and structures the movement. Dean feels disconnected from the reality of the modern left, and unreasonably optimistic (particularly with hindsight) about the likelihood that Occupy can revivify this.
The earlier part of the book I found less interesting, focused again on the ongoing need for communism in the modern world. It doesn't feel like it tells us much about how that need might be made real and persuasive to the "man on the Clapham omnibus".
In short an interesting read, but one that is overoptimistic about the prospects of communism generally and the Occupy movement specifically.
The earlier part of the book I found less interesting, focused again on the ongoing need for communism in the modern world. It doesn't feel like it tells us much about how that need might be made real and persuasive to the "man on the Clapham omnibus".
In short an interesting read, but one that is overoptimistic about the prospects of communism generally and the Occupy movement specifically.
April 4, 2016
Jodi Dean starts off “The Communist Horizon” with a condemnation of the post-capitalist politics that has been advocated by J.K. Gibson-Graham and also criticizes contemporary Left's "obsession" of “inclusion” and “democracy” early on. She claims that these radical democratic, process-oriented struggles does not yield results. Engaging with Wendy Brown’s article on “Left Melancholia”, she attributes the contemporary Left’s obsession as the sublimation of “desire” into “drive” which is repetitive and mostly in vain (mostly not completely; because there are lessons to be learned from such an example etc.). While there definitely need to be a “re-activation of desire” from the Lacanian point of view, what Jodi Dean advocates is basically a vanguard party which is “strictly disciplined” but also “flexible, responsible, capable of learning from and adapting to ever-changing situation” (p. 134). That is: “The Leninist party doesn’t know what the people want. It’s a form for dealing with the split in the people, their non-knowledge of what they, as a collectivity, desire” (p. 135). The party “is a form of maintaining the gap that is constitutive of the people” that also creates the irreducible antagonism within the society. Dean’s party is a strategically-oriented one (read, "State and Revolution"-inspired Leninist) and Dean also gives historical contingency some of its due: “The party, then, is an organization situated at the overlap of two lacks, the openness of history as well as its own non-knowledge” (p. 133)
The most interesting part of the book might be her analysis of the Occupy movement in which she considers the Occupiers as “vanguards”: “Bluntly put, Occupy does work that Lenin associates with a revolutionary party: establishing and maintaining a continuity of oppositional struggle that enables broader numbers of people to join in the movement. It builds collectivity” (p. 128). Well… As she makes important remarks on the question of organization and “collective will” and desire, the early parts of the book on the Soviet past and also her interaction with Michael Hardt’s much-cited “Common in Communism” didn’t really click with me.
While her engagement with a large number of contemporary influential thinkers was great, “The Communist Horizon” spends a lot of time with Lacanian concepts while it is discussing an acute political subject. It is a book on revolutionary strategy with some obfuscating language to those not familiar with Lacan. I hope to look into her work on what she calls “communicative capitalism” in the near future: one of the things that sticked with me from this book, albeit sounds like too hybrid of a concept. That should be her book called "Blog Theory: Feedback and Capture in the Circuits of Drive" (2010).
The most interesting part of the book might be her analysis of the Occupy movement in which she considers the Occupiers as “vanguards”: “Bluntly put, Occupy does work that Lenin associates with a revolutionary party: establishing and maintaining a continuity of oppositional struggle that enables broader numbers of people to join in the movement. It builds collectivity” (p. 128). Well… As she makes important remarks on the question of organization and “collective will” and desire, the early parts of the book on the Soviet past and also her interaction with Michael Hardt’s much-cited “Common in Communism” didn’t really click with me.
While her engagement with a large number of contemporary influential thinkers was great, “The Communist Horizon” spends a lot of time with Lacanian concepts while it is discussing an acute political subject. It is a book on revolutionary strategy with some obfuscating language to those not familiar with Lacan. I hope to look into her work on what she calls “communicative capitalism” in the near future: one of the things that sticked with me from this book, albeit sounds like too hybrid of a concept. That should be her book called "Blog Theory: Feedback and Capture in the Circuits of Drive" (2010).
July 16, 2017
A compelling discussion on communism as the horizon shaping politics in these times of unparalleled crisis of capitalism, the need for collective action, and the concept of the party as revolutionary vanguard.
August 20, 2023
A beautiful, weird book. Some of the details are a bit off, but overall it's basically correct. The vision of a society organized around fidelity to desire is compelling, if occasionally somewhat messy.
June 1, 2020
Good book but it has a bit of an information overload.
December 15, 2021
A rare beast in contemporary left-wing literature: a book that addresses and evaluates the modern day capitalist realism hellscape and manages to persuade me to think that a better future is possible. "The communist horizon appears closer than it has in a long time", the author argues. Horizon is a communist spectre renamed, a trap-door into the realm of a collectively-decided better future.
The book is a call for the modern-day left to unite and find a new common "we", define our collective desires, challenge the neoliberal narrative of individualism. Dean revitalizes Marx's ideas of class struggle, gives back marxism its seemingly long-lost historical nature, provides a compelling attempt to resolve hot-topic of politics today.
We live under the rule of "communicative capitalism" the author argues. Our attention and collective insights were privatized and turned into profit. The competition turned wages into rewards that need to be won. Our political struggles are lost in social networks, where the content of the message does not matter and spectacle is turned into a brand deal. 20th-century commies needed to organize masses, contemporary - to "organise individuals". Horizon is something that will never be reached, but this should not stop us, the progress and betterment have a meaning. A path to the communist horizon leads through the rejection of neoliberal individualism and learning to desire as a collective. This means embracing the idea that we can define our own futures as a collective better than a blind game of everyone against everyone for profit. This also means the critical role of an organized party.
That was a nice but slightly dry read. Some parts and many sentences sound very cool, very few are unreadable. I sort of agree with everything that she writes, even parts that I do not understand, which are many.
The book is a call for the modern-day left to unite and find a new common "we", define our collective desires, challenge the neoliberal narrative of individualism. Dean revitalizes Marx's ideas of class struggle, gives back marxism its seemingly long-lost historical nature, provides a compelling attempt to resolve hot-topic of politics today.
We live under the rule of "communicative capitalism" the author argues. Our attention and collective insights were privatized and turned into profit. The competition turned wages into rewards that need to be won. Our political struggles are lost in social networks, where the content of the message does not matter and spectacle is turned into a brand deal. 20th-century commies needed to organize masses, contemporary - to "organise individuals". Horizon is something that will never be reached, but this should not stop us, the progress and betterment have a meaning. A path to the communist horizon leads through the rejection of neoliberal individualism and learning to desire as a collective. This means embracing the idea that we can define our own futures as a collective better than a blind game of everyone against everyone for profit. This also means the critical role of an organized party.
That was a nice but slightly dry read. Some parts and many sentences sound very cool, very few are unreadable. I sort of agree with everything that she writes, even parts that I do not understand, which are many.
February 21, 2017
Jodi Dean makes a great effort in parsing Hardt, Negri, Brown, Agamben, Zizek and Badiou while expressing her own contribution to a vision of the revolutionary subject.
"The object-cause is what makes an object desirable, not a property inhering in the object. / One might think that the object of communist desire would be a world without exploitation; a world characterized by equality, justice, freedom, and the absence of oppression; a world where production is common, distribution is based on need, and decisions realize the general will. … The object-cause of communist desire is the people and, again, the people not as a name for the social whole but as a name for the exploited, producing majority" (p.203). It is people, the 99%, that makes communism desirable - that is, when these same people take a moment to realize it.
"The object-cause is what makes an object desirable, not a property inhering in the object. / One might think that the object of communist desire would be a world without exploitation; a world characterized by equality, justice, freedom, and the absence of oppression; a world where production is common, distribution is based on need, and decisions realize the general will. … The object-cause of communist desire is the people and, again, the people not as a name for the social whole but as a name for the exploited, producing majority" (p.203). It is people, the 99%, that makes communism desirable - that is, when these same people take a moment to realize it.
November 3, 2017
Dean always (3/3 so far) feels like a slog, up until the last few pages, where everything comes together with an admirable clarity, buoyed onwards with positive determination. This book is a diverse and well-structured overview of, and argument for, the communist possibility in western-left theory and event post-USSR. Dean's constant wariness of the scope of communicative capitalism and neoliberal ideology is key to her analyses, just as her healthy scepticism for fanaticism tempers and titrates her otherwise enthusiastic engagement with militant faith as vital to an effective left movement.
February 5, 2020
Some parts of this were really interesting, but it’s a very academic book, so not the easiest read and definitely not for everyone. The third chapter on Sovereignty of the People went completely over my head. From chapter 4 it was easier to digest, perhaps because I’d gotten more used to the writing style.
Particularly liked the following 2 quotes/ideas: “Collective power isn’t just coming together. It’s sticking together.”
“To wait, to postpone until we are sure, until we know, is to fail now.”
Particularly liked the following 2 quotes/ideas: “Collective power isn’t just coming together. It’s sticking together.”
“To wait, to postpone until we are sure, until we know, is to fail now.”
July 14, 2023
Another certified Jodi Dean banger. Her tendency to misunderstand the material workings of networked technology and a somewhat confused/confusing take on occupy can be forgiven for the clearly written, persuasively argued, and unapologetic call for the renewal of communism as the driving goal of left politics. Many of the ideas developed in this book are fleshed out and concretized in 2019’s Comrade, which makes an excellent companion to this volume.
November 26, 2018
hopefulness on the Party; cute deployment of basic psychoanalytic categories (drive/desire) in sustaining a marxist, if not communist discourse; also: interesting engagements with and commentaries on the works of the likes of zizek, badiou (tactically "ahisotricizing" the idea of communism), hardt and negri and wendy brown and walter benjamin (WBs!)
March 6, 2020
id read Dean's other book, Comrade, and then read this one. in comparison this book is much more abstract and was harder for me to read. i had a lot of trouble grasping the theme and tying all of the examples and points dean gave. however the book was well written and the concepts were great, i believe i may have just read this at a time that my brain felt dead beyond belief
June 11, 2021
This book gave me the view of the horizon I was looking for when I picked it up, and is valuable in that sense.
Also, in this book's last chapter (first published in 2012), Dean has written a very trenchant analysis of Occupy Wall Street, highlighting both good and bad. Very nearly a decade on, I will never see that historical event the same way.
Also, in this book's last chapter (first published in 2012), Dean has written a very trenchant analysis of Occupy Wall Street, highlighting both good and bad. Very nearly a decade on, I will never see that historical event the same way.
November 24, 2019
It was certainly a well researched and authored book, but I just found it to be lacking. It was very difficult to read in places, but that may be because people would have to read a lot of the referenced bools
May 31, 2017
Lucid and sharp, as always from Jodi Dean
January 8, 2020
I'm genuinely shocked that this isn't a widely read book on the left. A clear-eyed and sober investigation of what 'communism' is made up of, and how we can construct it in the 21st century.
August 3, 2020
Does the opposite of what it is trying to do
October 1, 2020
Yazarla yapılmış, bu kitabı merkeze alan bir söyleşi : https://www.birikimdergisi.com/guncel...
January 10, 2021
3.5ish stars . complex reading but there is some good content in there about the communist party, the left, and how this new era of the internet and communications is hella exploitative
December 15, 2021
I liked this.
Read
April 2, 2022I think you need an undergraduate degree in Marxism (at a minimum) to get something worthwhile out of reading this
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