We begin our year with an exploration of the relationship between the proletariat and the communist party. Revolutions are total transformations of existing social relationships, and must therefore be mass affairs made by crowds that both act and think. We’ll examine who this “mass” is that makes the revolution, and why the proletarian revolution is bound up with the establishment of communism. Furthermore, we’ll consider the distinction within the proletariat of those who’ve developed communist consciousness, and ask if there is a unique historical role to play for parties devoted to upending bourgeois society. The relationship between these conscious groupings and the larger working class is the problem of the party and class, and perhaps the essential problematic of revolutionary praxis.

To end, we’ll move away from Marx and the nineteenth century and look at 20th and 21st century movements and theories that trouble the central role of the proletariat in the process of revolution. We’ll see how these movements and thinkers also redefined the party of revolution, communism, and anarchy in light of new conditions and the decline of the traditional workers movement. The answer to the question who is the revolutionary subject, in other words who makes the revolution, has profound consequences for our understanding of revolt and social change in our own turbulent era.

Notes sheet with timeline and definitions

Lecture (10/18)

rosa chicago