Politics, State, Communism

The present book brings together a series of interventions concerning pressing political, ideological and organizational issues of the contemporary situation, edited by Agon Hamza and Frank Ruda. These texts were written in a very specific political conjuncture: some during the time when Álvaro García Linera was serving as a vice-president of Bolivia, others in the period after the coup d'état of November 2019. The chapters in this book are dealing with social movements and different forms of political and subjective autonomy in Bolivia; with democracy and its function in late capitalism; with the discrepancy between national and capitalist spaces; with the Russian October Revolution as an event, and its resonances in other parts of the world; with the concept and function of the state; and, finally, with the idea of communism in its relation to necessity and contingency. At the end, the book presents a long and detailed conversation between Linera and Hamza and Ruda, as well as an afterword written by Slavoj i ek. AUTHORS: 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 (Prometeo/CLACSO, 2010), Plebeian Power: Collective Action and Indigenous, Working Class and Popular Identities in Bolivia (Brill, 2014), and Democracy, State, Revolution: Anthology of Political Texts (Txalaparta, 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 i ek; Polity Press, 2021); Reading Marx (Polity, 2018; with Frank Ruda and Slavoj i ek), 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 i ek). In addition, he is the editor of Althusser and Theology: Religion, Politics and Philosophy (Brill, 2016) and Repeating i ek (Duke University Press, 2015), as well as co editor, with Frank Ruda, of Slavoj i ek 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 i ek (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 i ek (Polity Press 2018); Abolishing Freedom: A Plea for a Contemporary Use of Fatalism, Nebraska: Nebraska University Press 2016.