My first encounter with Badiou's thought was ten years ago, when I enthusiastically read BE over the course of a week. It took me a while to stop approaching him as a disciple, and I am skeptical about many aspects of his work, but I remain grateful that he introduced me to

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a version of Leninism that could stand up to sophisticated contemporary criticisms. In an academic environment where if Marxism existed it had been domesticated beyond recognition, Badiou's Leninism was unafraid to slaughter sacred cows, both theoretically and practically.

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His polemic against complexity is a good example:

"We are told every day how 'the complexity of modern society' prevents us from making any cut, any intervention. Contemporary conservatism no longer argues from the sacredness of the established order, but from

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its density. Every local cut, it says, is really a 'tear in the social fabric'. Leave natural laws (the market, appetite, domination) to operate - because it is impossible to interrupt them at any point. Every point is too dependent on all the others

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to permit the precision of an interrupting cut."
-Number and Numbers, Cuts

tl;dr - happy belated birthday Lenin, you would have loved (and ruthlessly critiqued) Badiou's polemical evisceration of those hiding behind the veil of complexity

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