Stalin's formula for a good communist
anecdote · Soviet history ·
retold in 6 talks
Stalin said a good Bolshevik should combine Russian passion/dedication with American pragmatic spirit. Žižek adapts this, replacing it with the trio: Jack Bauer's brutal dedication, Stringer Bell's opportunism, Homer Simpson's evil humour.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 6
“i think we should say that today what we need is a person who unites the brutality, the brutal dedication of jack bauer”
“a person who combines Russian passion with American pragmatism and so on.”
“a combination of Russian tenacity, fidelity to a cause, and American dynamic pragmatic spirit.”
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)
contents · one story, 3 jobsuses
my stalinism / benevolent stalinism
×1
totalitarianism
×1
conformism
×1
Its cast and sources
populated by
Lucien Goldmann2Daniel Pink2André Monglond2Adam Kotsko2Hosni Mubarak2William Blake1Wolfgang Schirmacher1Paul Volcker1
alongside works
Every retelling 6
Stalin said a good Bolshevik should combine Russian passion/dedication with American pragmatic spirit. Žižek adapts this, replacing it with the trio: Jack Bauer's brutal dedication, Stringer Bell's opportunism, Homer Simpson's evil humour., illustrating revolutionary subjectivity,sociopathic subject
Stalin, who admired the United States to the end, defined the ideal Bolshevik as a person combining Russian passion with American pragmatism, evidence that Stalinism remained within the capitalist dream of total productivity., illustrating twentieth-century communism within the capitalist frame
Stalin defined the ideal Bolshevik as a combination of Russian tenacity and American dynamic pragmatic spirit, which Žižek finds fascinating despite Stalin's terror., illustrating Stalinist phenomenon,ideology
In a famous interview Stalin described the ideal Bolshevik as a combination of Russian dedicated obsession and American pragmatic spirit, Žižek repurposes this formula for the emancipatory subject today, substituting Jack Bauer / climbers / Homer Simpson., illustrating emancipatory subjectivity,Stalinism,model communist
~2:12 Slavoj Žižek Masterclass: Jacques Lacan: A Lateral Introduction. Part 7pub. 2018-11-28 · 1:33:07
Žižek argues Stalin was not a dogmatist but ruthlessly pragmatic, using bits of Marxism as needed, akin to British empiricism where 'everything depends on circumstances.', illustrating totalitarianism to cut a long story short
Stalin's text On Dialectical and Historical Materialism argues that 19th-century social scientists could see workers would become the revolutionary subject and rationally chose to align with them, like backing a horse you calculate will win., illustrating conformism,Marxism as objective knowledge,strategic thinking