21st-century communist theorists

According to the political theorist Alan Johnson, there has been a revival of serious interest in communism in the 21st century led by Slavoj Žižek and Alain Badiou. Other leading theorists are Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, Gianni Vattimo, Alessandro Russo, Jodi Dean and Judith Balso as well as Alberto Toscano (translator of Alain Badiou), Terry Eagleton, Eduard Limonov, Bruno Bosteels and Peter Hallward. In 2009, many of these advocates contributed to the three-day conference, "The Idea of Communism", in London that drew a substantial paying audience.[1]

Theoretical publications, some published by Verso Books, include The Idea of Communism, edited by Costas Douzinas and Žižek; Badiou's The Communist Hypothesis; and Bosteels's The Actuality of Communism. The defining common ground is the contention that "the crises of contemporary liberal capitalist societies—ecological degradation, financial turmoil, the loss of trust in the political class, exploding inequality—are systemic; interlinked, not amenable to legislative reform, and requiring 'revolutionary' solutions".[2]

In the introduction to The Idea of Communism (2009), Žižek and Douzinas also identified four common premises among the thinkers in attendance:

1. The idea of communism confronts depoliticization through a return to voluntarism.
2. Communism as a radical philosophical idea. It must be thought of as taking distance from economism and statism as well as learning from the experiences of the 21st century.
3. Communism combats neoliberalism by returning to the idea of the "common".
4. Communism as freedom and equality. Equality cannot exist without freedom and vice versa.[3]