I’m planning on writing a belated critique of Jodi Dean’s “Communist Horizon” lecture in the next day or so. Readers might want to familiarize themselves with the material in the meantime. Or you can just trust your heart and take what I say at face value.

Blurb from Dean’s original lecture:

Focusing on her book-in-progress The Communist Horizon, this seminar mounts a provocative response to the economic and social crises that define our time. From the extremes of corporate bonuses to the attacks on public sector unions, the antagonism that cuts across capitalist countries is increasingly apparent.

Democracy is no panacea, Dean argues. Extreme inequality is not inevitable. Politics are not dead. Communism didn’t end in 1989. Instead, the communist horizon is our horizon.

Come to discuss the potential of communism as the contemporary name for left political and economic aspiration. What possibilities does it open up? What aspects of our current conjunction suggest the continued force of communism as a universal and egalitarian ideal?

Background reading:

The Communist Horizon — Excerpt
Revolutionary Theory and the Communist Horizon