Brecht paraphrase: what is robbing a bank vs. founding a bank
example · Brecht ·
retold in 3 talks
Žižek paraphrases Brecht to ask: what are the destructive outbursts of Red Guards compared to the true cultural revolution, the permanent dissolution of all life forms that capitalist reproduction dictates?
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 3
“What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a new bank? What are the violent and destructive outbursts of Red Guardists... compared to the true cultural revolution”
“what is robbing a bank comparing to organizing a good bankruptcy of a bank no where you get hundreds of billions”
“What is the stealing of a couple of thousands of dollars for which you go to prison compared to financial speculations which deprive tens of millions of their homes and savings?”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
Its cast and sources
populated by
Thomas Friedman1Charles Baudelaire1Beppe Grillo1Myers (B.R. Myers)1Milton Friedman1Santiago Zabala1Ève Chiapello1Élisabeth Roudinesco1
alongside works
Every retelling 3
Žižek paraphrases Brecht to ask: what are the destructive outbursts of Red Guards compared to the true cultural revolution, the permanent dissolution of all life forms that capitalist reproduction dictates?, illustrating systemic vs. physical violence,capitalism as permanent cultural revolution
Žižek invokes Brecht's dictum 'what is robbing a bank compared with founding a bank?' and updates it: 'what is robbing a bank compared to organizing a good bankruptcy where you get hundreds of billions?', to illustrate the second-order crime inscribed in the system itself., illustrating negation of negation,capitalism as crime,systemic critique
Žižek twice paraphrases Brecht's line, 'what is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a new bank?', first to compare Maoist violence to capitalist creative destruction, then to compare petty financial crime to the speculations that robbed tens of millions of homes., illustrating capitalism,financial crisis,Cultural Revolution and capitalism