The communist hypothesis and the question of organization

Abstract

The international discussion of the communist hypothesis has quickly developed into a debate regarding the adequate party-form for radical politics today. This article argues that the stakes of this development become clearer when it is related to the central debates of the earlier alternative globalization movement. The article then explores some significant models of organization that emerged in previous periods in which the renewal of the communist hypothesis was closely linked to attempts to rethink the party-form: the notion of the ‘compositional party’ of Italian operaismo, Lukács’s concepts of a ‘laboratory party’ and a ‘political subject’, and Gramsci’s ‘modern Prince’. The modern Prince is argued to represent the type of ‘expansive’ party-form that might be able to respond productively to the challenges of contemporary political movements.