Is global emancipation a lost cause? Are universal values outdated relics of an earlier age? In this combative major new work philosophical sharpshooter Slavoj A i A ek takes on the reigning ideology with a plea that we should reappropriate several lost causes & looks for the kernel of truth in the totalitarian politics of the past. Examining Heidegger's seduction by fascism & Foucault's flirtation with the Iranian Revolution he suggests that these were the right steps in the wrong direction. Highlighting the revolutionary terror of Robespierre Mao & the Bolsheviks A i A ek argues that while these struggles ended in historic failure & monstrosity this is not the entire story. There was in fact a redemptive moment that gets lost in the outright liberal-democratic rejection of revolutionary authoritarianism & the valorization of soft consensual decentralized politics. A i A ek claims that particularly in the light of the forthcoming ecological crisis we should reinvent revolutionary terror & the dictatorship of the proletariat in the struggle for universal emancipation. We need to courageously accept the return to this cause
- even if we court the risk of a catastrophic disaster. In the words of Samuel Beckett: Try again. Fail again. Fail better.