How Do Communists Party?

This essay responds to the exchange between Jodi Dean and Stephen Healy at the 2013 Rethinking Marxism International Conference. By shifting ever so slightly the debate about “whether or not we need a communist party” to the question of what such “communist partying” actually entails, it seeks to focus attention on the question of communist method, practice, and responsibility. What does it mean to “party” like a communist? What are the key tasks that a communist party needs to take up, and which of them can we—as individuals and as members of existing organizations and networks—take up where we are now? How can we transform our praxis, our organizations, our audiences, and ourselves in advance of the formation of a formal communist party?