A vast and wild oeuvre it is, but the non-stop flirtation with extreme authoritarianism, even "terrorism" and "war communism," is hard to miss. Plato, Hegel, Marx: so much of what we've talked about runs together here, in revival. SZ seeks to inspire whole newish or newesque totalitarian movements.

"One of the mantras of the postmodern left is that one should finally leave behind the 'Jacobin-Leninist' paradigm of centralized and dictatorial power. Perhaps, the time has come to turn this mantra around and admit that a dose of this 'Jacobin-Leninist' paradigm is precisely what the left needs today." (Idea of Communism 1 p. 217)