Politics, State, Communism: Preface by Slavoj ?i?ek

The present book brings together a series of interventions concerning pressing political, ideological and organizational issues of the world, edited by Agon Hamza and Frank Ruda.

Politics, State, Communism brings together a series of interventions written by Álvaro García Linera in a unique political conjuncture: some date back to when he was serving as vice president of Bolivia, others to the period immediately after the coup d’état of November 2019. These writings cover a wide range of political subjects: social movements and forms of autonomy in Bolivia; democracy and its function in late capitalism; the discrepancy between national and capitalist spaces; the Russian October Revolution as an event, and its resonances in other parts of the world; the concept and function of the state; and, finally, the idea of communism in its relation to necessity and contingency.

Álvaro García Linera was Vice-President of Bolivia from 2006 to 2019. He is the author of Value–Form and Community–Form: Theoretical–Abstract Approach to the Civilizational Foundations that Precede the Universal Ayllu (2010); Plebeian Power: Collective Action and Indigenous, Working–Class and Popular Identities in Bolivia (2014); and Democracy, State, Revolution: Anthology of Political Texts (2016).

Agon Hamza, Ph.D. in philosophy, is Assistant Professor of political philosophy at ISSHS. He is the author of Reading Hegel (with Frank Ruda and Slavoj Žižek; Polity Press, 2021); Reading Marx (Polity, 2018; with Frank Ruda and Slavoj Žižek), Althusser and Pasolini: Philosophy, Marxism, and Film (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), and From Myth to Symptom: The Case of Kosovo (Kolektivi Materializmi Dialektik, 2013; with Slavoj Žižek). In addition, he is the editor of Althusser and Theology: Religion, Politics and Philosophy (Brill, 2016) and Repeating Žižek (Duke University Press, 2015), as well as co editor, with Frank Ruda, of Slavoj Žižek and Dialectical Materialism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). He is founder and co-editor (with Frank Ruda) of the international philosophy journal Crisis and Critique. Hamza is a political advisor to Albin Kurti, Prime Minister of the Republic of Kosova.

Frank Ruda is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Professor at the European Graduate School. His most recent publications include: Reading Hegel, with Agon Hamza and Slavoj Žižek (Polity Press, 2021); The Dash – The Other Side of Absolute Knowing, together with Rebecca Comay (MIT-Press 2018); Reading Marx, together with Agon Hamza and Slavoj Žižek (Polity Press 2018); Abolishing Freedom: A Plea for a Contemporary Use of Fatalism, Nebraska: Nebraska University Press 2016.