THE COMMUNIST HYPOTHESISby Alain Badiou Ed

AFTER THE TRAGEDY, THE FARCE

or how history repeats itself

by Slavoj Zizek, Flammarion, 242 pages, 20 euros.

THE IDEA OF COMMUNISM

London Conference, 2009

by Alain Badiou and Slavoj Zizek, Ed. Lines, 348 pages, 22 euros.

THE COMMUNIST HYPOTHESIS

by Alain Badiou, Ed. Lines, 205 pages, 15 euros.

He is remembered for the first forms of the "Communist Manifesto" of Marx-Engels (1847): a "spectrum" is haunting Europe, that of communism. One hundred and fifty years later, with the fall of the Berlin wall, the disappearance of the USSR and the entry resolved of China in the market economy, could believe that the "spectrum", with its procession of gulags, miseries and tragedies, was finally dispelled. Not at all! Here is that there is a revival of the "hypothesis" or the Communist "idea".

We can take comfort: what is reborn is not communism of the Soviet Union, but communism as "idea" or "hypothesis". It does not resurrect old Marxism, but find the Communist idea that Marxism has been only one of the historical events. Communism is the idea that accompanies since always a project of emancipation, the uprising of a subjectivity which undertakes to discontinue the exclusion of a certain "proletariat". For Badiou, Communism is like an eternal idea, which can reactivate in different contexts. It is a possibility that structure every political community. So while the Communist idea cannot be contradicted by the successive failures of its realization. The position is somewhat terrifying through losses and profits millions of deaths in the Gulag, and all that realized communism could destroy.

The ideology of the end of ideology

Is allowing Slavoj Zizek to construct a story in two parts: the first is to support that, far from being in a period of ideology, we are instead in a time marked by a fierce struggle to make the "hypothesis" Communist impossible. Specifically, the theme of the end of ideology is an ideology. The idea of ending communism and communism watchword as idea - une way to combat the revival of the Communist idea une the presence of ideas in politics. The first part of "after the tragedy, the farce" is devoted to describing in detail the ideological battle that is currently being conducted against the Communist hypothesis.

The second time is what is meant by this that would be more Marxist communism. Badiou and Zizek offer any "obvious" like their predecessors in 1847. It is too early. The time, they say, is the philosophy to the reaffirmation of a subjective position that could restore a sense a "disoriented" story The context lends itself, marked by the fact that, due to the financial crisis, capitalism is private speech long.

Deserve such attempts to revive the Communist idea that we should stop No doubt, when we see that a conference held in London in 2009 to about 15 of the most important European intellectuals express forms it is true very varied, their commitment to the Communist idea. It is to find forms of a new radicalism, which is not unlike that which could inspire the first Christian communities. It is fundamentally hostile to parliamentary democracy. And the idea of freedom that accompanies it. After the (Islamic, in particular) religious radicalism and ecological, here is says another radicalism. Case to follow.