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  1. Culture
7 July 2010updated 12 Oct 2023 10:42am

Slavoj Žižek on “the idea of communism“

The Slovenian philosopher in full effect.

By Mike Sweeney

Verso Books have posted a video of the philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek on his favourite topic — the “idea of communism”. In discussion with Alex Callinicos and John Holloway at this weekend’s Marxism 2010 event, he returns to a theme explored at last year’s sell-out conference at Birkbeck University.

Callinicos begins the meeting by emphasising the need not just for a critique of the capitalist economy, but for its complete replacement with another system of social relations: “The idea of communism is [principally] about the alternative to the idea of capitalism.”

“To grasp today’s capitalist dynamic the logic of exploitation is no longer enough,” Žižek says. “[We] need to take into account the new role as a source of wealth of raw materials, which for Marx were out of the equation… and intellectual property.”

You can read Žižek’s writing for the NS here.

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