Discussion of a polemic vs. Badiou's "Politics of Emancipation"

Come and join Revolution Books in a Discussion of Alain Badiou's 'Politics of Emancipation:' A Communism Locked Within the Confines of the Bourgeois World by Raymond Lotta, Nayi Duniya, and K. J. A. from the first issue of Demarcations: A Journal of Communist Theory and Polemic. Badiou's work, which is attracting growing interest, is an important expression, among one-time communists, of "the retreat to the 18th century," to the bourgeois democratic ideals of Rousseau, Kant and Jefferson-all in the name of communism, or in Badiou's terms, reviving the communist "hypothesis." The themes of this polemic, such as the fundamental distinction between communism and radical bourgeois democracy, the need and the basis of the 'party-state' in making revolution and emancipating humanity, and the rationale, content, and goals of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China are of much wider significance at this historical juncture.In particular, the polemic's critiques of Badiou's theses on the Shanghai Commune of 1967 and Badiou's notions of the ruptural "event" offer something far more radical and far more emancipatory. They would be of interest to those yearning for a radically different and better world, especially the youth. This article can be found online at demarcations-journal.org