Editing Slavoj Žižek (section)

===Communism===
Although sometimes adopting the title of 'radical leftist',<ref name="http">{{cite web |url=http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/15/slovenian_philosopher_slavoj_zizek_on_the |title=Slovenian Philosopher Slavoj Zizek on Capitalism, Healthcare, Latin American "Populism" and the "Farcical" Financial Crisis |publisher=Democracynow.org |access-date=13 August 2010 |archive-date=11 July 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220711165755/https://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/15/slovenian_philosopher_slavoj_zizek_on_the |url-status=live }}</ref> Žižek also controversially insists on identifying as a communist, even though he rejects 20th century communism as a "total failure", and decries "the communism of the 20th century, [[Anti-Stalinist left|more specifically]] all the network of phenomena we refer to as [[Stalinism]] as "maybe the worst ideological, political, ethical, social (and so on) catastrophe in the history of humanity."<ref>{{cite web |last1=Žižek |first1=Slavoj |title=20th Century Communism |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThTJBKYPiNo&t=153s |website=YouTube |date=13 April 2022 |access-date=7 May 2022 |archive-date=13 June 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220613131415/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThTJBKYPiNo&t=153s |url-status=live }}</ref> Žižek justifies this choice by claiming that only the term 'communism' signals a genuine step outside of the existing order, in part since the term 'socialism' no longer has radical enough implications, and means nothing more than that one "care[s] for society."<ref>{{cite web |last1=Žižek |first1=Slavoj and Tyler Cowen |title=Slavoj Žižek on His Stubborn Attachment to Communism |url=https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/slavoj-zizek/ |website=Conversations With Tyler |date=7 July 2018 |access-date=7 May 2022 |archive-date=14 June 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220614152849/https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/slavoj-zizek/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

In ''[[Marx Reloaded]]'', Žižek rejects both 20th-century totalitarianism and "[[Spontaneous order|spontaneous]] local [[Self-organization|self-organisation]], [[direct democracy]], [[Workers' council|councils]], and so on". There, he endorses a definition of communism as "a society where you, everyone would be allowed to dwell in his or her stupidity", an idea with which he credits [[Fredric Jameson]] as the inspiration.<ref>Barker, Josef (dir.) (2011). Marx Reloaded.</ref>

Žižek has labelled himself a "communist in a qualified sense"<ref name="democracynow.org">[http://www.democracynow.org/2008/3/11/everybody_in_the_world_except_us ''Democracy Now!'' television program online transcript] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220423203148/https://www.democracynow.org/2008/3/11/everybody_in_the_world_except_us |date=23 April 2022 }}, 11 March 2008.</ref> and as a "moderately conservative Communist".<ref>{{Cite web |title=Slavoj Žižek: We Need a Socialist Reset, Not a Corporate "Great Reset" |url=https://jacobin.com/2020/12/slavoj-zizek-socialism-great-reset |access-date=2023-11-02 |website=jacobin.com |language=en-US |archive-date=2 November 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231102184106/https://jacobin.com/2020/12/slavoj-zizek-socialism-great-reset |url-status=live }}</ref> When he spoke at a conference on ''The Idea of Communism'', he applied (in qualified form) the 'communist' label to the [[Occupy Wall Street]] protestors:
{{blockquote|They are not communists, if 'communism' means the system which deservedly collapsed in 1990—and remember that the communists who are still in power today run the most ruthless capitalism (in China). ... The only sense in which the protestors are 'communists' is that they care for the commons—the commons of nature, [[Knowledge commons|of knowledge]]—which are threatened by the system. They are dismissed as dreamers, but the true dreamers are those who think that things can go on indefinitely the way they are now, with just a few cosmetic changes. They are not dreamers; they are awakening from a dream which is turning into a nightmare. They are not destroying anything; they are reacting to how the system is gradually destroying itself.<ref>{{cite book|last=Slavoj |first=Žižek |year=2013 |chapter=Answers Without Questions |editor-last=Slavoj |editor-first=Žižek |title=The Idea of Communism |volume=2 |place=London & New York |publisher=Verso |pages=198–9}}</ref>}}