An ossified revolutionary group can only be replaced, never renewed from within

Evidence

As with the life of the organism, so in the life of the group there is a temporal irreversibility: once having grown rigid in its structures, having given itself a sovereign, the group cannot swim back up the river of time to its heroic moment of formation. However, as with other apparently pessimistic aspects of Sartre’s thinking which we will examine shortly, it is important to draw the right practical consequences from this situation before judging the theory out of hand. Clearly, it has something to tell us about reform from above, and about all attempts to revivify group praxis and to restore more genuine revolutionary feeling from the hierarchy on down. The bureaucracy, Sartre seems to warn us, cannot transform itself back into a guerrilla unit: the ossified group cannot be renewed, it can only be replaced, by a new thrust of group-formation. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 536

Categorization

• XREF: Directly echoes Jameson’s general theme of the insoluble antinomy between institutionalization and revolutionary praxis; also connects to Adorno’s skepticism about the party form. — connects to: Class ascendancy cannot quietly mature within the regime it aims to replace — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 382; Endangered organizations widen memberships but never cede control of their domains. — Robert B. McCalla, NATO’s persistence after the cold war, 78
• SEED: Angle: the organizational implications of ‘can’t reform the ossified group, only replace it’ for modern movements and institutions beyond Marxism.

Broader Connections

• Class ascendancy cannot quietly mature within the regime it aims to replace #qualifies (0.80) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 382