Good theory; bad politics - this is how Zizek's works have been described. Now Chris McMillan argues that Zizek's reading of global capitalism could reinvent political subversion. He highlights the political consequences of Zizek's fundamental concepts, such as the Lacanian Real, universality and the communist hypothesis. He argues that Zizek's turn to Communism represents the ultimate significance of Zizek's work for the 21st century and a marked new direction for Zizekian theory. While Zizek's work attracts a lot of labels, most of them pejorative - communist, conservative, anti-semantic - Chris McMillan identifies Zizek's unique and productive contribution to social and political theory, constructing his work as a response to the difficulties of contemporary social theory and the political deadlock of global capitalism.

Communist, conservative, anti-semantic - Slavoj Zizek's work attracts a lot of labels, most of them pejorative. Chris McMillan seeks to identify Zizek's unique and productive contribution to social and political theory, constructing a response to the diff

No other Marxist text has come close to achieving the fame and influence of The Communist Manifesto. Translated into over 100 languages, this clarion call to the workers of the world radically shaped the events of the twentieth century. But what relevance does it have for us today? In this slim book Slavoj Zizek argues that, while exploitation no longer occurs the way Marx described it, it has by no means disappeared; on the contrary, the profit once generated through the exploitation of workers has been transformed into rent appropriated through the privatization of the ‘general intellect’. Entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg have become extremely wealthy not because they are exploiting their workers but because they are appropriating the rent for allowing millions of people to participate in the new form of the ‘general intellect’ that they own and control. But, even if Marx’s analysis can no longer be applied to our contemporary world of global capitalism without significant revision, the fundamental problem with which he was concerned, the problem of the commons in all its dimensions – the commons of nature, the cultural commons, and the commons as the universal space of humanity from which no one should be excluded – remains as relevant as ever. This timely reflection on the enduring relevance of The Communist Manifesto will be of great value to everyone interested in the key questions of radical politics today.

In Trouble in Paradise, Slavoj Žižek, one of our most famous, most combative philosophers, explains how by drawing on the ideas of communism, we can find a way out of the crisis of capitalism. There is obviously trouble in the global capitalist paradise. But why do we find it so difficult to imagine a way out of the crisis we're in? It is as if the trouble feeds on itself: the march of capitalism has become inexorable, the only game in town. Setting out to diagnose the condition of global capitalism, the ideological constraints we are faced with in our daily lives, and the bleak future promised by this system, Slavoj Žižek explores the possibilities - and the traps - of new emancipatory struggles. Drawing insights from phenomena as diverse as Gangnam Style to Marx, The Dark Knight to Thatcher, Trouble in Paradise is an incisive dissection of the world we inhabit, and the new order to come. 'The most dangerous philosopher in the West' - Adam Kirsch, New Republic 'The most formidably brilliant exponent of psychoanalysis, indeed of cultural theory in general, to have emerged in many decades' - Terry Eagleton 'Žižek leaves no social or cultural phenomenon untheorized, and is master of the counterintuitive observation' - New Yorker Slavoj Žižek is a Hegelian philosopher, Lacanian psychoanalyst, and political activist. He is international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities and the author of numerous books on dialectical materialism, critique of ideology and art, including Less Than Nothing, Living in the End Times, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce and, most recently, The Year of Dreaming Dangerously.

A thousand-page resurrection of Hegel, from the bestselling philosopher and critic who has been hailed as “one of the world’s best-known public intellectuals” (New York Review of Books) For the last two centuries, Western philosophy has developed in the shadow of Hegel, an influence each new thinker struggles to escape. As a consequence, Hegel’s absolute idealism has become the bogeyman of philosophy, obscuring the fact that he is the defining philosopher of the historical transition to modernity, a period with which our own times share startling similarities. Today, as global capitalism comes apart at the seams, we are entering a new period of transition. In Less Than Nothing—the product of a career-long focus on the part of its author—Slavoj Žižek argues it is imperative we not simply return to Hegel but that we repeat and exceed his triumphs, overcoming his limitations by being even more Hegelian than the master himself. Such an approach not only enables Žižek to diagnose our present condition, but also to engage in a critical dialogue with key strands of contemporary thought—Heidegger, Badiou, speculative realism, quantum physics, and cognitive sciences. Modernity will begin and end with Hegel.

Marx's critique of political economy is vital for understanding the crisis of contemporary capitalism. Yet the nature of its relevance and some of its key tenets remain poorly understood. This bold intervention brings together the work of leading Marx scholars Slavoj i ek, Frank Ruda and Agon Hamza, to offer a fresh, radical reinterpretation of Marxism that explains the failures of neoliberalism and lays the foundations for a new emancipatory politics. Avoiding trite comparisons between Marx's worldview and our current political scene, the authors show that the current relevance and value of Marx's thought can better be explained by placing his key ideas in dialogue with those that have attempted to replace them. Reading Marx through Hegel and Lacan, particle physics, and modern political trends, the authors provide new ways to explain the crisis in contemporary capitalism and resist fundamentalism in all its forms. Reading Marx will find a wide audience amongst activists and scholars.

From the tragedy of 9/11 to the farce of the financial meltdown.