How might Zizek’s Communist hypothesis become more than a hypothesis? How does a real political revolution happen in a post-industrial capitalist state? Zizek is not extremely optimistic about our current state of affairs, but he does offer a few guidelines and examples. Drawing on Kant’s writings about the French revolution, Zizek points out Kant's notion of enthusiasm, which extends throughout the socio-political landscape in a type of wave effect. He informs us that “Kant interpreted the French revolution as [a] sign, which pointed towards the possibility of freedom: the hitherto unthinkable happened, a whole people had fearlessly asserted its freedom and equality . . . even more important than the often bloody reality of the events in the streets of Paris was the enthusiasm those events gave rise to in the eyes of sympathetic observers all around Europe.” Zizek seeks out this enthusiasm in today’s world, looking to the election of Barrack Obama, where he suggests, “[I]n light of the Kantian conception of enthusiasm . . . Obama’s victory should be viewed not simply as another shift in the eternal parliamentary struggle for a majority, with all its pragmatic calculations and manipulations. It is a sign of something more.”
