In 2009, many advocates for and theorists of communism in the 21st century contributed to the three-day conference, "The Idea of Communism", in London that drew a substantial paying audience.[3] Journals such asEndnotes,Salvage, Ebb Magazine[4]Kites[5] andHistorical Materialism launched with communist outlooks, as well as news outlets such asNovara Media.[6]
Furthermore,internet culture and declining life prospects[7] has led to a general rise amongstMillennials andGen-Z in support for communism and socialism,[8] in tandem with the rise ofleft-populism in the US[9] and the UK.[10] Explicitly left-wing contemporary artists, such as filmmakers,[11] musicians,[12] video-game creators[13] and comedians[14][15] have received widespread attention, such as the rapper/producerJPEGMafia,[16] and a whole media-creator ecosystem has developed around the online left, known asBreadTube.[17]
Empire was a major turning stone in 21st-century Marxist and communist thought.[45]
Theoretical publications, some published byVerso Books, includeThe Idea of Communism, edited byCostas Douzinas and Žižek;[46][19] Badiou'sThe Communist Hypothesis; and Bosteels'sThe Actuality of Communism. The defining common ground is the contention that "the crises of contemporaryliberalcapitalist societies—ecological degradation, financial turmoil, the loss of trust in the political class, exploding inequality—are systemic; interlinked, not amenable tolegislative reform, and requiring 'revolutionary' solutions".[1][46]
In the introduction toThe Idea of Communism (2009), Žižek and Douzinas also identified four common premises among the thinkers in attendance:
The idea of communism confronts depoliticization through a return tovoluntarism.
Communism as a radical philosophical idea. It must be thought of as taking distance fromeconomism andstatism as well as learning from the experiences of the 21st century.
Communism combatsneoliberalism by returning to the idea of the "common".
Communism asfreedom andequality. Equality cannot exist without freedom and vice versa.[46]
A rise in Marxist thought followed the2008 financial crisis, with the publishing of books includingG. A. Cohen'sWhy Not Socialism? (2009), Paul Paolucci'sMarx's Scientific Dialectics (2009), Kieran Allen'sMarx and the Alternative to Capitalism (2011), Terry Eagleton'sWhy Marx Was Right (2011) and Vincent Mosco'sMarx Is Back (2012).[47][48][49]The Communist Horizon,[22] published in 2012 by Jodi Dean, marked the beginning in a series of books from Dean which argue for the necessity of communist and Leninist politics. The most wide-read of these was Mark Fisher's (2009)Capitalist Realism.[50]
The Communist Necessity,[51] published in 2015 by J. Moufawad-Paul, also argues for the necessity of the communist party in radical social change.Fully Automated Luxury Communism, published in 2019, has helped normalise the term 'communist' within public discourse in the anglophone world.[52]
2023 saw the publication of two significant books on the topic of communism:Marx in the Anthropocene byKohei Saito,[53] which developed a notion of adegrowth communism, andCommunism and Strategy byIsabelle Garo, which examines contemporary communist theorists in relation toAntonio Gramsci andKarl Marx.[54]
^abcdefghBrincat, Shannon (2014). "Introduction - Communism in the 21st Century: Vision and Sublation". In Brincat, Shannon (ed.).Communism in the 21st Century. Vol. 1.Praeger. pp. xxvii–xxviii.ISBN978-1-4408-0126-6.
