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The Actuality of Communism
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A new salvo in Verso’s burgeoning series on communism, after Badiou, Žižek and Groys
One of the rising stars of contemporary critical theory, Bruno Bosteels discusses the new currents of thought generated by figures such as Alain Badiou, Jacques Rancière and Slavoj Žižek, who are spearheading the revival of interest in Communism. Bosteels examines this resurgence of Communist thought through the prism of “speculative leftism” – an incapacity to move beyond lofty abstractions and thoroughly rethink the categories of masses, classes and state. Debating those questions with writers including Roberto Esposito and Alberto Moreiras, Bosteels also provides a vital account of the work of the Bolivian Vice President and thinker Álvaro García Linera.
Reviews
The idea of Communism is rising from its grave once again – but what does it effectively amount to? Bosteels confronts this issue with no illusions, in a critical dialogue with today’s Leftist thinkers, as well as with radical political practices such those of the Morales government in Bolivia. A beautifully written work which is a must for everyone interested in what’s left of the contemporary Left.
The Actuality of Communism is a remarkable achievement. Critically engaging some of the most prominent thinkers in contemporary left political theory, it moves beyond them, resetting the agenda for communism as not only a hypothesis and not only a struggle, but more vitally as the affirmation of the engaged, organized, political movement for emancipation and equality.
The book does what interventions must, namely draw a line of demarcation, in this case between communism as a real overdetermined process that must engage with the question of power and recent philosophical attempts to resuscitate the term as a pure, invariant kernel of sheer potentiality that exceeds any constitute power or historical actuality – an actuality which always amounts, in this instance, to the questions of state power and of socialism, as a certain modelling and management of the production of social wealth.
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The last places in today's America you would expect mass strikes would be the ultra-red states of West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Arizona -- until tens of thousands of education workers there organized themselves and shut down the schools. Red State Revolt by Eric Blanc gives a unique inside view of how these actions were organized and how they forced state governments and rightwing politicians not only to raise teachers pay but to elevate the role of public education. If you want to understand the power of workers and the strike, even in a time when labor seems down if not out, read Red State Revolt.