Let us Be Realists and Demand the Impossible: Communism

Video recording of a lecture [56 min] delivered by Prof. Slavoj Žižek, well-known Slovenian political philosopher, cultural theorist and author, at the 2011 Festival of Dangerous Ideas, Sydney, Australia.

In the late 90s, political theorists, economists and politicians were talking confidently about the “end of history” and the undisputed triumph of liberal "democratic" capitalism. Communism was written off as dead and buried. But after 9/11, the Arab Spring, and the protests spreading over Europe, the ideological gloss of capitalism may be beginning to fade. If the alternative is Putin's muscular Tsarism or China's authoritarian capitalism, then renovating the idea of communism may matter profoundly. For philosophical rock star and brilliant iconoclast Slavoj Žižek, it is something that we should demand, no matter how impossible it seems.