Volume containing contributions and other texts stemming from a now legendary conference under the same title, which took place at the Birkbeck Institute in London in March 2009. The conference was the first in a series developed by Žižek and Alain Badiou, among others, to examine the ‘idea of communism’ as the only relevant philosophical and political proposition that is available to us today. Contributions by: Žižek, Badiou, Antoni Negri, Michael Hardt, Jacques Rancière, Terry Eagleton, Jean-Luc Nancy, Susan Buck-Morss, Bruno Bosteels, Peter Hallward, Alberto Toscano, and Wang Hui, among others.