"Nothing is ‘real’ which does not sustain itself in existence, in a life-and-death struggle with the situations and conditions of its existence. The struggle may be blind or even unconscious, as in inorganic matter; it may be conscious and concerted, such as the struggle of man-kind with its own conditions and with those of nature. Reality is the constantly renewed result of the process of existence — the process, conscious or unconscious in which ‘that which is’ becomes ‘other than itself’" - Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution
In 1912 some co-founder-of-sociology type guy named Emile Durkheim published a book titled "The Elementary Forms of Religious Life." Inspired by the discovery of single-celled life, Durkheim wanted to investigate the simplest aspects of religions. He believed that only these forms which were simplest in nature would be the ones that had persisted since the genesis of religion (and therefore provide some insight into how religion actually functions). What followed was a theory chock-full of colonial-ass assumptions, yet a theory which would also become one of Durkheim's most important contributions.
The concept which Durkheim put forward as the source of religious life is called collective effervescence. It is necessarily social, and recognizable as the "bubbly" joy or warmth that we feel in intense social situations. Durkheim's study was of course centered almost exclusively around religious formations, but he also dedicated a portion of the book to studying the effects of alcohol. Collective effervescence can be found not only in religious gatherings but also at the bar with your friends, during musical performances, sporting events, really any social gathering. But it is not always a given. The necessary conditions for collective effervescence include a socially produced excess of (for lack of a better term) psychic energy.
Other theorists might call this socially-cultivated psychic energy desire or libido, but we'll return to that later. We still need to get to the heart of Durkheim's work first, which was to explain the seemingly irrational behaviors and beliefs which nonetheless had a massive impact in shaping human development: "if collective life awakens religious thought on reaching a certain degree of intensity, it is becuase it brings about a state of effervescence which changes the conditions of psychic activity. Vital energies are over-excited, passions more active, sensations stronger; there are even some which are produced only at this moment." Durkheim would go on to say that there is nothing illogical about it, that "collective consciousness is the highest form of the psychic life."
To feel collective effervescence is to be caught up in something greater than oneself, to lose yourself in it to some degree or another. And it is precisely this phenomenon which has enabled religions and other mass social movements to make such a massive and lasting impression on the history of humanity: "for our definition of the sacred is that it is something over and above the real...a man does not recognize himself; he feels transformed and consequently transforms the environment which surrounds him."
Any social system that is going to stand the test of time can only be produced and sustain itself through something akin to collective effervescence. This is where we now diverge quite sharply from Durkheim's theory and the conclusions he drew. We're talking not just about religions but the state and its political parties, non-governmental organizations, even capitalism as a whole.
What is specifically meant by collective effervescence here is not necessarily that warm "bubbly" feeling Durkheim described. There is still always an excess of so-called psychic energy flowing from each participant into the collective, but the social...atmosphere(?) that acts on the collective in turn can also be joyless, even downright hostile. What is the social atmosphere of a funeral? of a mass shooting? of living on this boiling pot of a planet as our slumlords gradually turn up the heat and dump trillions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere to make something called a "prophet"? Human action and energy sustains all of these situations, and each situation, large or small, affects us in turn. The social systems that we sustain SHOULD enrich us in turn, but others are parasitic or predatory instead. Such social formations should die (or be put to death), and as quickly as possible, but this brings us to a new problem. What if we don't always know which social systems we are sustaining through our actions? Something as simple as buying a chocolate bar could be sustaining slavery halfway across the world.
To get any more mileage out of this theory of collective effervescence, we'll need to combine it with something mentioned earlier. Enter desire, or what Freud's dumb ass once called polymorphous libido or polymorphous perversity. The psychic energy which Durkheim theorized runs through our every action, every word, every thought. "It is at work everywhere, functioning smoothly at times, at other times in fits and starts. It breathes, it heats, it eats. It shits and fucks. What a mistake to have ever said *the* id." Not all collective effervescence is the same, but the desire which forms it has an inherently revolutionary potential. The bubbly feeling shared by a gaggle of country boys as they crack Coors Lights and racist jokes is not aiding in anyone's liberation, but helping to maintain white supremacy. Given the right situation though, even those racist assholes carry the potential to rip apart the same social systems that helped form them.
Every so-called "apolitical" form of collective effervescence has the potential to be appropriated by white supremacy and capitalism. What we need instead is to build an explicitly political form of collective effervescence, a communist and anticolonial effervescence. It is one thing for white people and BIPOC to know that their future and their freedom are inextricably linked with each others'. It is another thing entirely to FEEL it. To know, bodily, that at least in this moment, you are carving a path to liberation together. This is what the theory of communist effervescence is for. Short of seeing someone [this clause extremely redacted for everyone's safety] a squad car, it can be very difficult for me to feel collective effervescence with white people at all, let alone a specifically political form of it. If you are a white-bodied person reading this, how do you know that BIPOC around you see you as someone fighting for their freedom as well? What can you do, and how hard do you have to fight, for them to actually feel the rhythm of their own liberation tied up with yours?
Some might discard it as “mob mentality” or herd thinking, but to do so would be a stupid mistake. There is no human force greater than the collective expression of our desire: a force strong enough to blow the locks and destroy even the most deeply entrenched human-built systems, because it’s what enabled people to build those systems in the first place. Collective effervescence is the glue that holds social movements together. A glue we’re typically unconscious or barely conscious of, but without it any form of organizing is fated for the dustbin of history. And it should hopefully go without saying that relying on alcohol for more than a tiny portion of this effervescence would be a recipe for disaster. A collective effervescence strong enough to crush the forces of capitalism will require sober thought, and the combined desire of Black and Indigenous peoples, of queer and trans people, of the disabled, of communists, of all those tired of living in the mosaic of concentration camps Capital has built to sequester us. Only a truly intersectional communist effervescence can build enough strength to wipe the slate clean and build new life on this Earth - free of the capitalist class that would sooner see us die for their prophet.