Hauser, M., Capitalism as a Zombie. Prague: Rybka Publishers. 2012

The book of the Czech philosopher Michael Hauser is the result of an eight-year effort to illuminate from different angles and in different light the disintegrated pillars of today's economic, political and cultural arrangement - neoliberalism, liberal democracy and postmodernism. The current state of affairs can be characterized in the light of the overall crisis (not just the economic crisis, but also the social, political, theoretical, ecological, as well as the crisis of resistance) characterized by the adherent designation of the zombie. The New York Times published in 2008 an editorial titled "Funeral talk about neoliberalism," but the political practice continues to follow the neoliberal ideas.
It follows the thought that is declared dead. It's a living corpse, a zombie. As Hauser explains, it is because the idea has an ideological element inside it, even after its failure has been shown. It continues to act by its magnetism, although it is already crashing at the level of consciousness. The current economic, political and social structures are internally cleaved and out of control not only by the public, but also by the control of the ruling people, who cease to have instruments to ensure their government, yet the order of things continues to run. This can not take long. The living corpse is not only neoliberalism, but capitalism itself. According to Hauser, capitalism had always had a "dead body" that was present in the times of its greatest prosperity: it was born as a living corpse. Even real socialism was like a zombie, but unlike capitalism, it managed to die by the second death.
If the first part of the book focuses primarily on criticism, the second part explores new directions and origins of possible change, contemplates the situation and perspectives of left-wing theory and the present left. The book consists of texts that were published in various periodicals (Journal Referendum, A2, Literary Newspaper, Shape, British Letters) or in collections or collective monographs. Thematic coverage of the publication is very wide, from the current crisis through education, multiculturalism, Václav Havel, atheism, Prague Spring, Charter 77, language, poetry, anti-communism, utopia and communism.