Lenin Reloaded (original) (raw)

The project of this book began almost as a provocative gesture, with the conference on Lenin ("Toward a Politics of Truth: The Retrieval of Lenin") held at the Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut, in Essen (Germany) in February 2001. For some commentators in the media, it remained just that. With the essays that comprise this book, some of them papers given at that conference, some others generously offered by their authors to be included in this volume, we want to show that this is something more than an attempt at scandal-mongering in an epoch dominated by the "post-political consensus." So why focus on Lenin today? Our answer is this: the name "Lenin" is of urgent necessity for us precisely now, at a time when very few people seriously consider possible alternatives to capitalism any longer. At a time when global capitalism appears as the only game in town and the liberal-democratic system as the optimal political organization of society, it has indeed become easier to imagine the end of the world than a far more modest change in the mode of production. This liberal-democratic hegemony is sustained by a kind of unwritten Denkverbot (thought prohibition) similar to the infamous Berufsverbot (banning the employment of leftists by any state institution) of the late 1960s in Germany. The moment one shows a minimal sign of engaging in political projects that aim at seriously challenging the existing order, he or she receives the following immediate answer: "Benevolent as it is, this will necessarily end in a new Gulag!" The "return to ethics"

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