The Body of Politics: On the Concept of the Party

The concept of the party has a long history in Marxist thought and has been the source of intense and unresolved polemics. Revisiting the “party-idea” today requires a rethinking, not only of what organization is and how it has been conceived in Marxist political thought, but also of the contemporary possibilities of new developments of the party. With reference to key interventions of Marx, Lenin, Gramsci, Badiou, Magri, and others, Walker attempts to think a new and open concept of the party that corresponds to our political moment of crisis, social struggle, and the return of the “idea of communism.”