In 2022, we at Negation Magazine published a dossier entitled The Specter of the Party. In it, several contributors discussed the historical and theoretical status of the party-form, a type of socialist organization dominant especially from the late 19th to late 20th centuries and which, a few years ago, was enjoying something of a minor conceptual renaissance. While each essay in our collection provided a singular perspective, all offered either a history, an analysis, or an appraisal of the party as a form of political organizing—that is, as a way of arranging individuals together so that they might achieve specific political goals. Despite our differences, we generally focused on a few specific aspects of the party: its historical capacity to further communist ends, its ability to sustain itself and its tendency to degenerate, the problems underlying the coherence of the party as a concept, and so on.

In the process of writing and compiling The Specter of the Party, we addressed what we felt were a number of important questions facing the organized left, especially in the United States and Canada. Even if we would not all write our contributions in the same exact way we did two years ago, the questions addressed in the dossier were, we still believe, crucial ones. However, despite how important these questions of the party-form may have been (and may remain), we recognize with the benefits of time and experience that in discussing the party-form in an isolated manner, we left a serious question of contemporary organization largely unaddressed: the question of organizational culture.

Our analyses of the party-form (and of organizational structure more broadly) spoke to methods for collectively directing individuals to achieve specific goals, but lacking were discussions of organizational culture, of the relations that maintain an organizational structure, the glue which holds an organization together. Questions of organizational structure generally address the rules of organizational relationships, asking: “Who in an organization is answerable to whom? What structures regulate the relationships within our group? How are leaders selected and cadre trained? How are tasks allotted, and what maxims have to be put in place in order to ensure they are carried out?” Questions of culture, meanwhile, tend far less to address the form of an organization than they do an organization’s everyday life, asking: “How do we ensure that people in our organization understand their personal similarities and differences? How do we prevent harms from affecting the individuals in our group, and more pressingly, how do we prevent our members from harming one another, and help them when interpersonal harms do arise? How do we communicate with one another within our group, and what kinds of communication are acceptable and unacceptable? If we want our organization to behave a certain way and meet particular goals, how do we create an environment where each and every member is invested in those behaviors and goals, while recognizing that every member’s dedication to the group will have its own semi-autonomous rhythm and reason?”

Most arguments over organizational form and structure (including our own past analyses) evade these questions, at least to some degree. Even when questions of organizational culture are broached, it is far easier to treat them as somehow downstream from questions of organizational structure—or to put things more simply, it’s easier to try and reimagine a group’s possible structure than to acknowledge that some practical questions can only be answered outside of the structure provided by organizational rules and regulations. 

Tempting as it might be to try and dream up an organizational form which could counter all internal cultural woes, we do not have the luxury of thinking so abstractly. As bleak and urgent as the political picture looked in 2022, when the George Floyd rebellion and its pacification were still recent memories, in 2024, as left-wing political organizations in the West have by-and-large failed to meaningfully oppose the horrors of the genocide in Palestine, the continued rise of American fascism, and the proliferation of liberal indifference, it no longer feels adequate to simply ask “Which organizational form can rise to our historic occasion?” Far cruder, less lofty questions now take precedence, questions like “How can we convince thirty people to get into a room to plan an action to throw a wrench into the gears of the machine?” and “How can we establish organizational spaces that offer an apparent alternative to the world as it is, rather than simply reflecting its worst cultural tendencies?” These questions may appear less ambitious, but they are all the more pressing in their immediacy.

This dossier contains nine essays, each of which addresses questions of organizational culture. Some do so in a primarily pragmatic manner, while others are more abstract, or more historical. All, however, concern questions of how meaning, communication, accountability, camaraderie, and collective self-understanding underlie (and challenge) more traditional socialist organizing questions about parties, strategies, and tactics. We believe that the differences between each of our contributions serve to emphasize what is most valuable in all of them.

In “no peace: Reflections on Columbia, the Student Intifada and the Culture of Counterinsurgency,” compañera recounts their experiences in the Student Intifada at Columbia, drawing out both points of militancy and points of failure. Criticizing the rearguard actions of the more complacent factions in the Columbia encampment, compañera narrates the taking of Hind’s Hall and argues for the necessity of divesting from the values of bourgeois society in order to more fully, collectively commit to the radical action needed to adequately challenge US empire and the police state.

Ahwar Sultan’s entry “Antipodal Marxisms and the Problem of Culture” analyzes the problem of establishing a “revolutionary” culture. By examining two cases of revolutionary cultural innovations, Soviet architecture and Maoist Cinema, Sultan demonstrates that both Soviet and Maoist attempts to utilize cultural forms to induce radical behavior have, with time, become entrenched in contemporary post-socialist and capitalist spaces. Sultan additionally navigates the confrontation between the surviving modes of attempted revolutionary culture and their reflected subsumption through cultural criticism. 

In “Thinking Reeds,” T. M. discusses how common understandings of the relationships between individuals, left-wing groups, and social structures lead to practical problems for communist organizing. T. M. critiques the view that left-wing groups ought to conform to the immediate demands of the social whole (to the extent that the group internalizes the totality’s oppressive aspects) as well as approaches which see left-wing groups as radically independent from the whole (which creates damaging organizational cultures and ineffectively represses the necessary intrusions of “outside” culture). T. M. concludes by outlining steps towards organizational practices that would allow a given group to engage frankly and openly with its own capacities, limitations, and environment.

Andrew McWhinney’s “Postmodernity Against Postmodernism” stages a critique of the use of the term “postmodernism” by Marxists as an insult against supposedly non-class-oriented activist groups and movements. Through an immanent critique of the concept and its use in Marxist organizational discourse guided by Fredric Jameson’s work on postmodernism, McWhinney argues that this term actually obfuscates what Marxists are trying to critique: namely, liberalism in the moment of postmodernity. Such obfuscation, he says, not only clouds effective analysis and action by nominally Marxist/socialist/communist organizations by distracting them from the real stakes of culture in our contemporary moment, but also enables chauvinism and maintains an unconscious reproduction of liberal modes of thinking within them.  Further elaborating on what liberalism under postmodernity looks like, McWhinney ultimately argues that good communists need to take postmodernity and its effects seriously if they ever hope to succeed in changing the world. 

In “The Correct Ideas Club,” Chloe Cannon returns to the crucial question of how the pursuit of emancipation can produce unfreedom, in the process offering a critical account of a dominant form of contemporary left-wing organizational culture. Cannon argues that the “Correct Ideas Club,” through its depoliticized thought and practice, enslaves the desire of its comrades, operating under the presumption that in building the Club they are inevitably contributing to the development of a socialist future—securing a guarantee of meaning for one’s life. Via a sweeping examination of Marxist, Leninist, and Augustinian thought which attempts to demarcate politics from the political, Cannon suggests an alternative to the nihilistic “Correct Ideas” model that instead centers the indeterminacy of friendship and care in which organization arises as an expression of politics, rather than its goal.

Marine Tucker addresses problems of accountability and organizational critique in her entry, “Inventing a Soul: Toward a Culture of Critique.” Drawing on Vicki Legion’s “Constructive Criticism” and on her own organizing experiences, Tucker argues for replacing what she calls a “culture of silence” with a culture of critique designed to adequately address individual and collective failings within left-wing organizations. Rather than allowing critique to be pursued implicitly, or as a punitive, surreptitious principle, Tucker asserts that organizations seeking a culture of critique must involve honest discussions of specific problems between parties willing to act in good faith, understand each others’ views, and accept clear requests from others to alter their behavior. Tucker additionally analyzes several causes of the culture of silence, simultaneously offering an account of organizing culture as it is and a glimpse of how it might change for the better. 

In “Going Beyond: The Cultures of Communist Education,” Caelum compiles analyses of several communist educational programs in order to highlight common flaws, namely a surplus of sectarianism and a shortage of self-criticism. He makes use of Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed to emphasize the severe consequences of these flaws, consequences that worsen the communist movement as a whole through questionable analyses, outdated strategies, and unhelpful hostilities. Caelum encourages greater collaboration on education across tendencies in the effort to give newcomers a more complete understanding. More importantly, he aims to promote intense criticism of ourselves, our organizations, our assumptions, and our heroes, a revival of the underutilized ruthless criticism of all that exists. 

In his contribution, "Unity and Division," Cam W explores how to build unity within organizations, based on his own experiences in labor unions, tenant unions, and cadre organizations. Cam starts out from the premise that division is the rule in capitalist society. This is because in societies with oppressive or exploitative social relations, individuals in the dominated classes are often divided from each other. In order to become a viable political force, these individuals must unite together in order to fight those in power. Yet building this unity is incredibly difficult. After all, the history of communism is defined by division in the form of splits, conflicts, and political defeats resulting in frequent periods of disorganization. Cam explores obstacles to unity, such as state repression, individualist ideologies, and burnout. Cam concludes the essay by advancing an approach to cultivating unity within organizations, which entails clearly defined roles for members, a clear strategy, tactical flexibility, and developing collective buy-in.

In the final essay, “Resurrecting ‘68,” AJ analyzes strategic and tactical questions arising out of the student movement protesting the genocide in Gaza. In anticipation of future student actions, AJ lays out high and low points of the movement, pointing out both beneficial and insufficient activities and aims. Beyond this analysis of practical problems, AJ emphasizes the importance of unifying disparate struggles and studying past movements for global liberation in order to inform future practice towards the liberation of Palestine in the imperial core.

We recognize that these essays are themselves attempts to contribute to organizational culture, at a time when questions of judicious and righteous practical activity seem both ubiquitous and profoundly empty among the socialist, anarchist, and communist left(s). To speak amidst pandemonium can feel quite the same as saying nothing at all. Yet the desire to suppress all sound before raising one’s own voice, however well-intended, contains in it both an impossible dream of uniformity and the fascistic appetite for total administration. We recognize that our voices may be lost in the din, but if our words are to harbor any good at all, it will come not from rising above the raucous panic of our time, but by finding a home within the chaos. For this task, we rely entirely on you.