The idea of a Lenin renaissance might well provoke an outburst of sarcastic laughter. Marx is ok, but Lenin? Doesn't he stand for a monumental catastrophe that left an indelible mark on all of subsequent history and political thinking? This title tackles the key question of whether this man can be reinvented in our era of cultural capitalism.

How to reinvent Lenin in the era of cultural capitalism.

“A return to Marx may be acceptable today ... But a repetition of Lenin? ... Perhaps Žižek’s return to Lenin is merely tactical, figurative even. He can’t be serious, can he? ... Žižek claims that Lenin’s act, ‘his choice,’ continues to speak to those of us on the left today. Faced with our current conceptual deadlock, we must have the courage, the nerve, to risk isolation, self-annihilation even, in order to offer a real alternative to the false oppositions recuperated by and churned out for our consumption by the image industry of late capitalism ... The postmodernists and liberal multiculturalists, today’s Bernsteins and Kautskys—our contemporary Plekhanovs and Martovs, beware!”—Bad Subjects