Chmel Kirill

№ 1, 2019

• Reducing Complexity: Revolution in Contemporary Left-Wing Political Thought

  The article is devoted to the analysis of the role of the concept of “revolution” in the modern left discourse. Using the method of theoretical reduction, K.Chmel identifies three main currents in the modern left thought that determine the approaches of the left to the revolution in the context of the contemporary state of the world of politics and allude to such canonical left-wing philosophers as K.Marx, M.Heidegger and B.Spinoza. His hypothesis is that the failure of the left to define revolution stems from the lack of an adequate conceptual apparatus. If earlier the right had to borrow from the language of the left, today the opposite is true, and “constructions” of the left, in fact, do not go beyond the reaction to the victorious neoliberalism.

  Even the methods of the struggle of the left for their agenda are dominated by the system of liberal democracy rather than by the ideas formulated by the left movement itself. This applies not only to the electoral resistance in the form of elections, but also to non-electoral resistance, the highest form of which is protests with a limited negative agenda. As a result, there is no place for revolution with its pathos of liberation and radical social transformations either at the level of theory or in practice.

  According to the author, the reasons for the inability of the modern left political thought to define revolution in the context of the contemporary state of the world politics lie in the refusal of the left to turn to the concepts with a positive tone and their reorientation towards the strategy of providing a response to the dominant right political project.

  DOI: 10.30570/2078-5089-2019-92-1-22-40

  Pages: 22-40