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== In the work of Slavoj Žižek ==
<blockquote>Our [[message]] today should be: do not be afraid, join us, come back! You’ve had your anti-communist fun, and you are pardoned for it – [[time]] to get serious once again! (Žižek, ''[[First as Tragedy, Then as Farce|First as Tragedy]]'': 157)</blockquote>The impact of [[living]] under communist rule in [[Yugoslavia]] is [[apparent]] in much of Žižek’s [[writing]], but only recently has the [[idea]] of communism been raised to the level of an authentic [[project]] in his [[political]] [[philosophy]]. Deemed a dissident in ex-Yugoslavia, Žižek nearly failed the [[defence]] of his [[doctoral dissertation]] because it was [[thought]] not to be [[Marxist]] enough, and he was prohibited from lecturing at the [[University]] of [[Ljubljana]] out of [[fear]] that he might lead students away from the [[official]] Party [[doctrine]]. Although moving closer to democracy by the late 1980s, running as the candidate for the [[Liberal]] [[Democratic Party|Democratic party ]] during the first [[post-Communist]] elections in [[Slovenia]] in 1990, Žižek’s [[politics]] have shifted over time from the “radical democracy” of [[Ernesto Laclau|Laclau]] and [[Chantal Mouffe|Mouffe]] – the influence of which is noticeable in his earliest [[English]] books, particularly [[The Sublime Object of Ideology|''The Sublime Object of Ideology'']] – towards a renewed interest in [[Lenin]] in the late 1990s (see [[Revolution at the Gates: Selected Writings of Lenin from 1917|''Revolution at the Gates'']]); and finally, more recently, Žižek has started [[identifying]] himself not only as a Marxist, but also as a communist. It is his new [[identification]] as a communist, and his own [[recent]] writing on the renewal of [[the communist hypothesis]], that led Žižek to co-organize the conference “[[The Idea of Communism]]” at Birkbeck, University of [[London]], in 2009, and a second conference in New York City in 2012.
Žižek’s identification as a communist began shortly after [[Alain Badiou|Badiou]]’s call for a [[return]] to [[The Communist Hypothesis|the communist hypothesis ]] at the end of his book ''[[The Meaning of Sarkozy]]'' (2008). Badiou’s influence can be seen in the way that Žižek continues to take up the idea of communism in his recent writings, especially at the end of ''[[First as Tragedy, Then as Farce]]''. In this book, Žižek responds to Badiou’s [[statement]] that:<blockquote>The communist hypothesis remains the [[right]] hypothesis … If this hypothesis should have to be abandoned, then it is not worth doing anything in the [[order]] of collective [[action]] … Holding on to the Idea [of communism]… does not mean that its first [[form]] of presentation, focused on property and the [[state]], must be maintained just as it is; in fact, what we are ascribed as a [[philosophical]] task … is to [[help]] a new modality of [[existence]] of the hypothesis to come into [[being]]. ([[Badiou]] 2008: 115)</blockquote>Badiou, according to Žižek, does not propose a [[vision]] of communism as some kind of transhistorical [[utopian]] [[ideal]]. Rather, communism must be historicized in relation to actual historical problems and [[antagonisms]]. Conceiving communism as an “eternal idea” or ideal implies as well that the problems that give rise to this Idea are no less eternal. If we conceive the communist Idea as eternal, then the [[impossibility]] of ever overcoming actual historical antagonisms can be perceived as equally eternal.
For Žižek, the actuality of communism requires making reference to the crises and antagonisms within [[global]] [[capitalism]] that prevent indefinite production. These antagonisms are, according to Žižek, crises of “[[the commons]]”. Žižek describes the latter as “the shared substance of our being” (''FT'': 91) – that is, the actual [[material]] and [[intellectual]] resources upon which humanity as a [[whole]] is dependent. Žižek distinguishes [[three]] primary domains of the commons:
Žižek continues to note a significant [[difference]] between the “[[proletariat]]” and the “[[working]] class”: “to be a ‘proletarian’ involves assuming a certain [[subjective]] stance (of [[class]] struggle destined to achieve Redemption through [[Revolution]]) which, in [[principle]], can be adopted by any individual” (''TS'': 227), while “working class” designates one’s [[position]] within the positive order of the relations of production. Žižek adds, though, that proletarianization is defined by the [[loss]] of subjective substance. Borrowing an expression from [[Marx]] in the ''[[Grundrisse]]'', Žižek often refers to the proletariat as “[[substanceless subjectivity]]” (see, for example, ''TN'': 10). [[Proletarianization]] must, therefore, be [[understood]] as a [[process]] of depriving [[the excluded]] [[subject]] of the substance of [[the commons]].
Žižek also clearly opposes communism to [[socialism]]. Regarding the latter, he indicates that “the commons can also be restored to collective humanity without communism” (''FT'': 95) in two ways: either through an authoritarian-communitarian [[regime]] or through the return of the rootless subject to their [[place]] in a new substantial [[community]]. What he has in [[mind]] here are the two poles of authoritarian rule in countries like China and in Singapore and emerging forms of racist [[fundamentalism]]. Communism, then, has to be opposed to “socialism”. As he puts it: “While there may be a socialist [[anti-Semitism]] [as in the [[case]] of National Socialism], there cannot be a communist form” (''ibid.''). In the case of [[Stalinism]], the emergence of [[Anti-semitism|anti-Semitism ]] is, according to Žižek, only an indication of a [[lack]] of [[fidelity]] to the [[Event|revolutionary event]].
Rather than avoiding the failed [[past]] of communism, Žižek insists that its resuscitation requires confronting fully past regressions of emancipatory movements into hierarchical rule, from the [[Jacobins]] to [[Napoleon]], from the [[October Revolution]] to [[Stalinism]] and from [[Mao Zedong|Mao]]’s [[Cultural Revolution]] to [[Deng Xiaoping]]’s [[authoritarian capitalism]]. In each of these regressions the communist Idea persists and survives in its failed realization as a [[spectre]] that haunts. It is in this [[sense]] that Žižek takes up communism as an [[eternal Idea]] (in some ways contradicting the position he takes earlier on the [[historicization]] of communism), with its own “[[four fundamental concepts]]”: egalitarian justice; disciplinary [[terror]]; political voluntarism; and trust in the [[people]] (''FT'': 125). However, he still insists that, up until our own historical [[moment]], the Idea of communism persisted as a [[Platonic Idea]]. Today, this idea [[needs]] to be actualized in the context of [[real]] historical [[Class/Antagonism|antagonisms]] (''FT'': 126).
