beepbeepbooks's review against another edition
4.0
Jodi Dean does amazing work stressing the importance of pragmatic political activism, while criticizing horizontalist objections towards building political power on the Left. Her engagement with Lacan is an interesting turn in social psychology and the chapter unpacking the individual as an idea productive to capitalism is also incredibly enlightening. She continues to astound me and she's always prescient, especially in a time when building power is the number one question on everyone's mind. Thank you Jodi Dean.
boithorn's review
3.0
Dean builds off of the foundation of her previous book, The Communist Horizon, to make the case for why the Left needs to focus on party-building. I agreed with the conclusions of this book, but not the method. This book gets more into the philosophical weeds of how "the individual" and crowds are constructed and supported, but the latter practical half of the book isn't fleshed out as much as it could have been (unlike The Communist Horizon, which had a strong philosophical foundation backing her timely prescriptions for organizers).
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