The 'Mood of the Masses': A Forgotten Marxist Theory of Collective Emotions

• In Event: Marxist Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Marxist Sociology Section Roundtable 3

Abstract

Social Movement theory has repeatedly criticized Marxism for being too rationalistic and structural, thereby unable to address problems of collective identity, framing, and emotions. This paper challenges this conventional position and makes two related interventions. First, it argues, through a critical genealogy, that social movement scholarship’s engagement with Marxism has been partial and misleading because it has privileged certain traditions of Marxist thought while excluding and ignoring others. These other forgotten traditions of Marxist thought were not inimical to questions of collective identity and emotions but centrally concerned with understanding and explaining them. As Leon Trotsky declared, Marxism “does not ignore the feeling, thinking, and acting man, but explains him” ([1932]2008, 353). Second, this paper will offer a conceptual recovery and reconstruction of the forgotten Marxist concept of the “mood of the masses” using the writings of Rosa Luxemburg and Leon Trotsky. This concept offers a radical understanding of political subjectivity overcoming artificial distinctions between rationality and affects, as well as individual and collective emotions. This concept thus illustrates that Marxist political thought contains unexplored conceptual and theoretical resources to study collective emotions in the context of social movements.

Authors

• Udeepta Chakravarty, New School For Social Research

• Luis Meiners, New School for Social Research