Coping with threats (Image: Channel4/Everett/Rex Features)

Is touchy-feely environmentalism a new opiate of the people? Why are we paying rent to Bill Gates? Is reality incomplete? Marxist cultural commentator Slavoj Žižek, the man they call the most dangerous philosopher in the west, unravels it all for Liz Else

Your new book, Living in the End Times, is about the demise of global capitalism. What is science’s place in all this?

Science is completely entangled with capital and capitalism. It is simultaneously the source of some threats (such as the ecological consequences of our industries or the uncontrolled use of …