The Digital Commons & General Intellect

In his words 9

“Communism is for me the name of a problem. Our problem today is the problem of commons.”
1:21:06 What is to be done for politics? · communism redefined as problem of the commons

“problems are all the problems that you enumerated — refugees, these are problems of our commons. and it's clear that if we keep just capitalism the way we have it, it reproduces itself and it doesn't allow us to confront ecological.”
2:01:41 Duel + Duet with Graham Harman · communism as horizon for problems of the commons

“Communism today for me is not the name of a solution. It's the name of a problem. The problem of commons in all its dimensions.”
45:10 A New Kind of Communism · communism redefined as the problem of the commons

The stories that teach it

the jokes and anecdotes he reaches for when he works in this idea, ranked by how many of its talks they turn up in; each card is one story, with every retelling on its page

example · in 14 of its talks

Bill Gates as rent-extractor from general intellect

Gates became the world's richest person not through standard Marxist exploitation of workers (who are actually better paid than average) but by charging rent for access to the digital space, the internet commons, that we all share.

anecdote · in 13 of its talks

Niels Bohr's horseshoe

Niels Bohr had a horseshoe on his country-house door; when a scientist friend asked why a scientist would keep a superstitious charm, Bohr answered 'I was told it works even if you don't believe in it', Žižek's model for ideology today.

example · in 11 of its talks

Starbucks ethical consumerism

Buying a Starbucks cappuccino is sold as supporting Guatemalan organic farmers and saving the planet; the owner appeared like Anthony Giddens calling Starbucks an ersatz place of collective experience. The sin of consumerism and its redemption are packaged together in the same…

example · in 7 of its talks

Canned laughter / TV laugh track

Mentioned as another example of passive consumption and the removal of substance (laughter without the joke/comedy).

anecdote · in 7 of its talks

Fukushima and Tokyo evacuation

Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Žižek's friend and theorist of catastrophes, reported that after Fukushima the Japanese government secretly panicked at the prospect of evacuating all 30 million inhabitants of the Tokyo area, illustrating the scale of trans-state action that contemporary cr…

joke · in 6 of its talks

Light at the end of the tunnel is another train

Žižek subverts the reassuring proverb 'there is a light at the end of the tunnel' by adding: of course there is, it's another train coming towards us. Used to reject cheap optimism while not endorsing total pessimism.

V for Vendetta morning after7 Afghanistan: from secular to fundamentalist6 coffee without cream / coffee without milk8 Stephen Hawking's brain-wired wheelchair6 Organic apples as ideology6 Lacanian jealous husband6 Santa Claus Belief6 Lee Kuan Yew / Sloterdijk's monument question5 Stephen Weinberg on religion making good people do evil5 Lenin's Wife and Mistress5

Where it comes up 94

129 moments located in the transcripts, click a timestamp to play from there

To Begin from The Beginning2010-06-26 · 1:48:31

32:23 the commons

… So again, it is crucial to link the ongoing push towards this streamlining the high education to the process of enclosing the commons of intellectual products, of privatizing general intellect.

23:32 general intellect

… When due to the crucial role of what Marx called general intellect, knowledge and social cooperation, when due to the crucial role of general intellect in the creation of wealth, forms of wealth are more an …

24:38 privatization of commons

… Marx didn't envisage, I claim, the possibility of the privatization of the general intellect itself.

A New Kind of Communism2011-11-02 · 56:49

41:07 the commons

… The problems which we face today are precisely at their most fundamental level the problems of the commons.

35:30 general intellect

… th is no longer physical work but knowledge, shared knowledge, social knowledge, productive knowledge, whatever Marx called this in English general intellect, that the moment this happens, capitalism can no longer function, it will as it were disintegrate.

~44:54 communism as the name of a problem

is a good sign for the Chinese people. Like, those in power at least still see this as a danger. We in the West we don't need such a prohibition. We automatically assume that it's not possible. So communism today for me is not the …

Whither Left?2010-01-09 · 2:12:27

50:32 the commons

… Now what has all this to do with communism? Did you notice how I would like to return here to the old Marxist notion, not only Marx, of commons? And the idea of enclosure of the commons.

55:50 general intellect

… Marx had a right intuition but at the same time I think he missed the point when he developed this idea of what he called general intellect, which is the idea that with the development of productive forces, knowledge, scientific knowledge, expert knowledge becomes more and more the key factor of production.

51:54 intellectual proletarian

… When all your intellectual media are privatized or taken from you, it's a kind of intellectual proletarian position whose nice metaphor, although it's not a great film for me, is you remember Matrix, the first one at least.

Slavoj Žižek - 08/07/20132013-08-07 · 1:19:34

41:39 the commons

… A: all these problems are precisely problems of commons.

42:30 general intellect

… No, he owns part of what we Marx called general intellect, our common space of knowledge, internet the way...

Reconstructing Communism: Part 3 THREAT—Capitalism2018-06-17 · 1:14:39

51:41 the commons

… d even to look at it where I am now time okay I will go quickly through the four points where I see the limit of capitalism today first the commons of culture I will just repeat my old Marxist way I think that the problems that we usually refer to as intellectual property they clearly p …

52:46 privatization of commons

… oitation it's ridiculous to say that Bill Gates is extra exploiting his workers I think it's a totally different phenomenon what I call the privatization of commons all these new mega-capitalist they privatize something that should be our commons like Bill Gates owns the very tech digital not digital so …