Ossified party institutions function as memory devices keeping revolutionary tradition alive

Evidence

Yet it is necessary to underscore the fact that the existing group institutions are not wholly without function; for they are, as we have seen, the material inertia, the structural, quasimathematical remnants of what was formerly genuine group action, and as such they function a little like reminders. Thus, for instance, it seems clear that it was the party apparatus in France which by its very existence kept the idea of revolution alive—through its cellular organization, through manifestations, through the various types of revolutionary education and training, through the dissemination of Marxist culture and the commemoration of the past history of the labor movement. The fact that the new revolutionary moment was obliged to express itself structurally in the formation of new groups does not mean that it could have succeeded in doing so without this institutionalized reminder, this mnemonic device, as it were, holding the place in the pages of history. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 538

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘institutionalized reminder as mnemonic device’ is a distinctly Benjaminian-Amontonian notion of tradition-as-preservation, worth connecting to Benjamin’s concept of tradition as a fragile transmission. — connects to: Outdated institutional partitions persist by tradition long after their logic expires — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1992
• DEEPTHINKING: Dense double-move: ossification is both what kills the group and what preserves its idea for the next formation — an antinomy where the same institution plays opposite roles across time.

Broader Connections

• Outdated institutional partitions persist by tradition long after their logic expires #corroborates (0.80) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1992