\Communism provides a positive moment: It is something that makes you do more than criticize and constantly subject everything to a ruthless critique. It provides a purpose and a direction for that sort of negativity to have a positivity in mind. Leftist intellectuals in particular often get lost in\ncritique. We fetishize critique. We enjoy it, in the\npsychoanalytic sense, but the question is: What to do with the critique or how to use it to move forward-to galvanize and organize the masses? What communism provides is an orientation for critique. That is what Marx had, too. Yet, when Marxism moved so strongly into the academy that critique\nbecame viewed as beneficial for its own sake, it lost the orientation to a politics that would be willing to take power.\\n- Jodi Dean