Political parties aren’t what they used to be. Whether of the proletariat or the bourgeoisie, the days when what Frankfurt School disciple Otto Kirchheimer called “mass-class” parties galvanized millions with bold visions of a better future are long past. The powerful sense of community once attached to party politics has given way to a sterile ritual, its mass organizations reduced to patronage networks and social clubs for a dwindling cohort of true believers.

This development was a long time coming. In the 1960s, Kirchheimer watched with apprehension as the mass-class parties of the early twentieth century gave way to “catchall” parties whose only mission was to maximize votes by any means necessary. While the old parties’ ties to coherent social milieus and competing worldviews had ensured a degree of democratic accountability, in the postwar welfare states they threatened to become little more than ideologically malleable “consensus purveyors.” Rather than empower the masses, political agency would be reduced to the isolated act of casting a ballot every few years for campaign machines with little to offer in the way of concrete alternatives.

His prognosis wasn’t far from the truth. Fifty years on, mainstream parties are more indistinguishable than ever. In democracies both old and new, they are overwhelmingly the domain of political operators who regard the involvement of “the masses” as a nuisance to be avoided. Party membership has dropped precipitously, while voter turnout is reaching all-time lows in many parts of the world. The Left, whose political strength rested on mass-class parties for decades, has been particularly hard hit by their decline, creating a deepening “crisis of representation” in which avenues for working people to influence government policy grow restricted and public disillusionment proliferates.