I’d like to make a brief question, within the context of a basic agreement, to JC’s first two posts. Specifically, I want to take up the observation of communism as something lived today, but also as something encountering real difficulties and agonies. 

In a recent conversation with a friend – and I’m not at all conflating my friend’s statement with JC’s posts – I mentioned some of these difficulties.  To which my friend replied, “these are not difficulties for me, because I position myself within the movement.”  (Now, I know that Agamben has discussed this use of the concept “movement,” but I’m not taking Agamben’s position.)  What this conversation raised for me, however, was the question of whether such difficulties can be made a practical – or perhaps empirical – matter, or whether they must enter into the very conceptualization of any movement.

More precisely:  If we conceive communism as something lived today and not as lack, must we also conceive difficulties?  On one hand, the emphasis on the primacy of production, etc., rightly puts us beyond lack, but on the other, the problems once conceived as lack now become difficulties.  Thus it seems that the “we” that wants everything, or that wants to build a new common, is in a position of thinking primacy and difficulty at the same time.  Is it not therefore beyond both?  Would a new concept be necessary, one which mediates these two?  Or perhaps difficulty is a purely practical matter, and not one that must enter into conceptualization….