Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Focaal
Department
Political Science
ISSN
15585263
Volume
2023
Issue
95
DOI
10.3167/fcl.2022.050403
First Page
61
Last Page
73
Publication Date
3-1-2023
Abstract
In this article, I analyze Marxist activists’ narratives of becoming Marxist and their practices in activist spaces. Drawing on Jeffrey Juris and Alex Khansna-bish’s notion of “militant ethnography” and on Jodi Dean’s recuperation of the political party form of organizing, I ethnographically describe activists’ motivations to become Marxist and examine two events—a pro-Bernie political meeting and an anti-Trump rally—in which activists intervened with the Marxist idea of “unit-ing working-class struggles” in democratic spaces. I argue that the socialist party form of organization addresses two related dilemmas that anti-capitalist activists face in the context of systemic economic and political crises in the United States: how to develop class consciousness and how to engage in the seemingly impossi-ble, personally risky endeavor of radically challenging capitalism.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Kanna, Ahmed, "Enlisted in struggle Being Marxist in a time of protracted crisis" (2023). Pacific Faculty Work. 156.
https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/all-faculty/156
