The Coming of the Coming Insurrection: Notes on a Politics of Neocommunism

• Published in: Environment and planning. D, Society & space Society & space, 2010-04, Vol.28 (2), p.202-216
• Main Author: Merrifield, Andy
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Communism; Neoliberalism; Political conditions; Political ideology; Socialism
• ISSN: 0263-7758; 0954-1748; 1472-3433
• DOI: 10.1068/d12909

A specter is haunting Europe: the specter of autonomous communist activism. A new party is expanding its ranks, The Imaginary Party, which has already unnerved the French establishment, rattled Sarkozy's government, and penned its own intriguing manifesto: The Coming Insurrection. Everybody agrees: current society is about to explode. Even the French daily Le Monde, was forced to admit: “one hasn't seen power become so fearful of a book for a very long time.” Semiotext(e)‘s recent English translation has rattled the Anglo-Saxon establishment, too, unleashing a spate of bourgeois paranoia, highlighting for all to see what intelligent people knew already: how very flimsy their hegemony really is, how weak their grip is on political reality. This article examines the coming of The Coming Insurrection, its theoretical basis, and its revolutionary potential. It suggests this uncompromising text is in the ‘vanguard’ of disseminating a new brand of Marxism, a non-class-based Marxism, a runaway Marxism that has at its core an incipient neocommunist impulse, one currently pitting its wits against an intransigent neoliberalism. Its card-carrying membership thrives off nonaffiliated people, whose platform is grounded in everyday life, not at the workplace. Importantly, The Coming Insurrection employs a vitality of spirit and a principle of hope, as well as the direct action anarchism necessary to reinvigorate classical Marxism. Yes, everyone agrees: an exodus from capitalism has already begun.