The Communist Hypothesis
By Alain Badiou
3.5/5
()
Unavailable in your country
Unavailable in your country
About this ebook
A new program for the Left after the death of neoliberalism.
‘We know that communism is the right hypothesis. All those who abandon this hypothesis immediately resign themselves to the market economy, to parliamentary democracy—the form of state suited to capitalism—and to the inevitable and “natural” character of the most monstrous inequalities.’—Alain Badiou
Alain Badiou’s ‘communist hypothesis’, first stated in 2008, cut through the cant and compromises of the past twenty years to reconceptualize the Left. The hypothesis is a fresh demand for universal emancipation and a galvanizing call to arms. Anyone concerned with the future of the planet needs to reckon with the ideas outlined within this book.
Alain Badiou
Alex Kirstukas has published and presented on Verne's work for both academic and popular audiences and is a trustee of the North American Jules Verne Society as well as the editor of its peer-reviewed publication Extraordinary Voyages. Kirstukas' first published translation was Robur the Conqueror by Jules Verne and published by the Wesleyan University Press in 2017.
Read more from Alain Badiou
In Praise of Love Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Communist Hypothesis Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5There’s No Such Thing as a Sexual Relationship: Two Lessons on Lacan Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Badiou by Badiou Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDemocracy in What State? Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Philosophy for Militants Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Pocket Pantheon: Figures of Postwar Philosophy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Polemics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Adventure of French Philosophy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Indifference and Repetition; or, Modern Freedom and Its Discontents Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSt. Paul Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Rebirth of History: Times of Riots and Uprisings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Heidegger: His Life and His Philosophy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPlato's Republic: A Dialogue in 16 Chapters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to The Communist Hypothesis
Related ebooks
Living in the End Times Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Left Hemisphere: Mapping Critical Theory Today Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For a Left Populism Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Return of the Political Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mad World: War, Movies, Sex Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIn Defense of Lost Causes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Revolution at the Gates: Selected Writings of Lenin from 1917 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Sublime Object of Ideology Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Absolute Recoil: Towards A New Foundation Of Dialectical Materialism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism?: Five Interventions in the (Mis)Use of a Notion Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFirst as Tragedy, Then as Farce Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hatred of Democracy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Practice and Contradiction Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fiery Brook: Selected Writings Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Comradely Greetings: The Prison Letters of Nadya and Slavoj Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Populist Reason Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Marxism and Philosophy Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Spectre of Hegel: Early Writings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Social History of Western Political Thought Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMarxism and the Philosophy of Science: A Critical History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Day After the Revolution: Remembering, Repeating, and Working Through Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Limits to Capital Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Spaces of Global Capitalism: A Theory of Uneven Geographical Development Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Towards a New Manifesto Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Aesthetics and Politics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Capitalism, Socialism, Ecology Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Searching for Socialism: The Project of the Labour New Left from Benn to Corbyn Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Philosophy For You
Bhagavad Gita (in English): The Authentic English Translation for Accurate and Unbiased Understanding Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Course in Miracles: Text, Workbook for Students, Manual for Teachers Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Complete Papyrus of Ani Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Buddha's Guide to Gratitude: The Life-changing Power of Everyday Mindfulness Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Little Book of Stoicism: Timeless Wisdom to Gain Resilience, Confidence, and Calmness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Daily Stoic: A Daily Journal On Meditation, Stoicism, Wisdom and Philosophy to Improve Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Inward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Be Here Now Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Experiencing God (2021 Edition): Knowing and Doing the Will of God Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lessons of History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sun Tzu's The Art of War: Bilingual Edition Complete Chinese and English Text Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of Loving Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mindfulness in Plain English: 20th Anniversary Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Republic by Plato Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bhagavad Gita Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Art of Living: Peace and Freedom in the Here and Now Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Four Loves Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lying Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tao Te Ching: Six Translations Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Denial of Death Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Courage to Be Happy: Discover the Power of Positive Psychology and Choose Happiness Every Day Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar...: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for The Communist Hypothesis
5 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This collection of previous writings along with essentially an essay tying them together serves as a limited but useful introduction to this aspect of Badiou's thought. His elaborations on three 'events' (May '68, the Cultural Revolution and the Paris Commune) are used to explain the general idea of the Communist Hypothesis. These chapters make for interesting reading and warrant several close readings if one wants to better understand his argument. This does not necessarily mean agreement, just an understanding. Without an understanding of the ideas as he perceives them (indeed any ideas presented for consideration) it is fruitless to argue for or against them.Briefly, his overarching argument is that even though the attempts at socialism and communism, particularly the latter, have failed it does not logically follow that the ideas at the core have to be abandoned. Much like a scientific theory or hypothesis, as he argues, a failure simply means that a particular attempt has not yet been proven. To a large extent the question may well not be whether the ideas are faulty in themselves but rather whether the attempts at implementation have been the problem. Destruction is not always the difficult aspect but rather filling the void left in the resultant space.While there are more questions raised than answered, this serves as a clear call not to demonize the ideas when one demonizes the failed attempts.Reviewed from an ARC made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The communist hypothesis is that a different collective organization is practicable, one that will eliminate the inequality of wealth and even the division of labour. The private appropriation of massive fortunes and their transmission by inheritance will disappear. The existence of a coercive state, separate from civil society, will no longer appear a necessity: a long process of reorganization based on a free association of producers will see it withering away.
I fear my response to this book, particularly to Badiou's horrific hagiography of The Cultural Revolution will lead to my expulsion from Zizek's cool kids club. Some matters are indefensible. That may not be philosophically progressive, it certainly doesn't coincide with Badiou's living for an Idea. This text isn't John Carpenter's They Live, if I wear the shades, Mao doesn't become decent, the denouncement remains too human and the idealism in the Cultural Revolution is negligible at best.
The section on the Paris Commune is easier to address. Strange how Badiou begins the book with pages of citation from his own play. Bad form. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Badiou needs to learn not to talk big. There are some interesting moments here; leading us through idiosyncratic interpretations of the student protests in France in 1968, the Cultural Revolution, and the Paris Commune, he makes and reinforces a case that a thread runs through these episodes, making them the best starting place for learning the lessons about what communism needs to be for the future and how we need to start making it that. Communism has blossomed or advanced a million different ways since the Manifesto, he says, and all of them have ended in abject failure. What that means isn't that communism isn't possible. It just means that we haven't figured out how to do it yet. All the communisms we've tried have been impossible, so the question before us is, how to rescue the idea of communism from those failures? And the hypothesis is that there exists a possible communism that works. And the reason to test that hypothesis is that "all those who abandon this hypothesis immediately resign themselves to the market economy, to parlaimentary democracy--the form of state suited to capitalism--and to the inevitable and "natural" character of the most monstrous inequalities."
Now that's exciting jacket copy! And the book is that particular light communist red that's definitely not orange and definitely not pink, and the writing is gold, Little Red Book-style, and all the signs are there: this is a major new salvo in the communism of the future that is struggling to birth, the indeterminate object around which Zizek, and David Harvey's Enigma of Capital, and in a weird way even housing protests and LOHAS and op-eds hacking on the banks, are orbiting. Take us a step closer, Badiou!
Oh hell, it's later now, and I would really like to know what the fuck happened to the rest of my review and why this keeps happening on librarything. Anyway, long story short on the step closer thing: he didn't.