The Uncompromising Classes

Drawing on Joel Olson’s pioneering work on the ‘fanatical approach’ to politics and on his recognition of the dialectic of fanaticism and social crisis, this article seeks to move from the politics of intransigence that characterises the figure of the zealot to an exploration of a (lumpen)proletarian politics that exceeds compromises grounded in group interest. The wager governing this exercise is that the Marxian category of ‘surplus populations’, understood as a critical ingredient of a racial capitalism, provides a powerful prism for thinking fanaticism as both ‘abolition-democracy’ and class politics.