21st-century communist theorists

According to the political theorist Alan Johnson, there has been a revival of serious interest in communism in the 21st century led by Slavoj Žižek and Alain Badiou. In 2009, many of these advocates contributed to the three-day conference, "The Idea of Communism", in London that drew a substantial paying audience. Journals such as Endnotes, Salvage, Ebb Magazine Kites and Historical Materialism launched with communist outlooks, as well as news outlets such as Novara Media. Furthermore, internet culture and declining life prospects has led to a general rise amongst Millennials and Gen-Z in support for communism and socialism, in tandem with the rise of left-populism in the US and the UK. Explicitly left-wing contemporary artists, such as filmmakers, musicians, video-game creators and comedians have received widespread attention, such as the rapper/producer JPEGMafia, and a whole media-creator ecosystem has developed around the online left, known as BreadTube. Étienne Balibar Bruno Bosteels Angela Davis Jodi Dean Costas Douzinas Mark Fisher Silvia Federici Anuradha Ghandy Agon Hamza Michael Hardt John Holloway Robin Kelley Andreas Malm China Miéville J. Moufawad-Paul Antonio Negri Vijay Prashad Jose Maria Sison Kohei Saito Alberto Toscano Gianni Vattimo Other non-Marxist thinkers who have also had an effect on the 'new communists' include the revolutionaries Subcomandante Marcos and Abdullah Öcalan, abolitionist Ruth Wilson Gilmore, economist Frédéric Lordon, architecture journalist Owen Hatherley and the late anthropologist David Graeber. Whilst these theorists come from a broad range of traditions, included but not limited to the Black Radical Tradition, Eco-socialism, Maoism, Neo-Marxism and post-Marxism, what they all tend to have in common is a critique of past socialist experiments, and a re-orientation of the revolutionary subject. Empire was a major turning stone in 21st-century Marxist and communist thought.