Thanks for having me back on this list.
I think that the current crisis of capitalism and the popular responses to it are providing the context for a renewed debate about capitalism and alternatives to it. The postmodernist vogue in the academy and elsewhere is receding together with it the idea that there was ever any alternative politics bound up with all that. I think there are three major debates of modernity that are and will be pressing themselves forward simultaneously, perhaps as never before:
1. The debate of communism or 'socialism' against (neo-) liberalism. 2. The liberal/conservative debate, which is becoming increasingly irrelevant to the left and the idea that communists should support liberal positions as the lesser evil becoming all the more bankrupt (Obama, etc.). 3. The important intra-communist debates (which for me includes anarchism vs. marxism).
I noticed in the archives that there was some quite strong debate about Zizek. I think the popularity (or notoriety) of Zizek is symptomatic of the current context as a whole. Like the case of Antonio Negri a few years ago, the Zizek phenomenon shows that there are many people out there looking for some intellectual renewal of communism. I think there is nothing wrong with people like Zizek playing this public intellectual role; frankly it is way better than the dry and dreary party discipline of the Trots and Stalinists, to which even Gramsci and Lukacs succumbed at times, or the gloomy cultural misanthropy of Adorno and/or Althusser. Unfortunately Zizek, while he is fun to read and he has firmly brought the 'c' word back into the public domain, draws a blank when it comes to a critical reexamination of the Leninist legacy. At some point he always withdraws into orthodoxy again, which can be annoying.
Tahir
-------------- next part -------------- All Email originating from UWC is covered by disclaimer http://www.uwc.ac.za/emaildisclaimer