Group unity becomes self-sustaining by internalizing the third as a rotating role

Evidence

Yet this new organization in itself is not enough either, for seriality was also defined as a disposition of people around some central (practico-inert) object. The group needs to interiorize its unity in some more basic way, and this is done by the interiorization of the formerly external third party. Now each member of the group becomes a third to all the rest, and this is to be understood not statically but dynamically. It is not a form fixed once and for all, but a process of rotating or revolving thirds, in which everyone in turn serves as the unifier of the other members. Now the group no longer has to depend on the look of the outsider or the enemy: a structure has been evolved such that the group carries its own source of being within itself, and moreover this structure is a profoundly democratic one, for in it there are no leaders, only agitators (in other words, thirds who attempt to verbalize the implicit feelings and aims of the group), and at this stage in the group’s development everyone is equally a member, or third. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 507

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the central Sartrean concept of the ‘rotating third’ and the distinction between leaders and agitators.
• XREF: Directly ties into Sartre’s Critique de la raison dialectique, the core source Jameson is presenting here.