Platonov was not a philosopher, but his novels provide, among many other things, a critique of thinkers like Žižek and Badiou who would revive the specter of communism as a kind of pure political leap out of the everyday, material constraints of necessity. Platonov shows only too vividly how the leap comes crashing down, how any truth that claims to be self-instantiating burns up on reentry from the heavens.