Discusssion of Vilifying Communism and Accommodating Imperialism

Discussion of Raymond Lotta's article,Vilifying Communism and Accommodating Imperialism: The Sham and Shame of Slavoj Žižek's "Honest Pessimism"

The December 2011-January 2012 issue of The Platypus Review features an interview with philosopher and cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek. Raymond Lotta writes that it"is a fusillade of distortion of the historical experience of revolution and socialism in the 20th century, accompanied by an egregiously uninformed and unprincipled attack on Bob Avakian's new synthesis of communism."

Lotta, who has challenged Žižek to a public debate, says, "Žižek's musings about communism are dressed up as new and nuanced thinking, but on display is a rather old and clunky anti-communism of a piece with the dominant bourgeois narrative of communism as "failure" and "horror." Žižek portrays himself as "anti-capitalist," but on parade are apologetics for capitalist-imperialism."

Link to Platypus Review and the interview with Slavoj Žižek.

Link to the polemic Vilifying Communism and Accommodating Imperialism: The Sham and Shame of Slavoj Žižek's "Honest Pessimism" by Raymond Lotta

http://revcom.us/a/256/vilifying_communism_and_accommodating_imperialism-en.html
Link to Lotta's challenge to Žižek for a public debate.
http://revcom.us/a/260/lotta-challenge-to-zizek-en.html