Communism in the 21st Century
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2010-07 · 1:33:26 · 13,128 words
with Cathy Newman
communism-socialismcapitalismideologyhegel-dialecticsrevolution-violencedemocracyecology-climatetechnology-ai-cyberspacegeopolitics-wareconomicsphilosophy-general
A panel debate on 'The Idea of Communism' featuring Žižek, Alex Callinicos, and John Holloway, held at Marxism 2010 (London). Žižek argues that communism must be understood as a real movement addressing today's four core antagonisms, ecology, intellectual property, biogenetics, and the exclusion of new forms of non-classical labour, rather than as an abstract Kantian ideal or a simple nostalgia for working-class insurrection. He criticises both the Stalinist heritage and the dream of spontaneous direct democracy/soviets, insists that state power and even limited counter-terror are sometimes necessary, and diagnoses 'anticapitalist overload' as ideological safety valve for the system.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 17
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Used to distinguish the ongoing enclosure of commons from the original seizure that made capitalism possible, in the debate about whether capitalism is reducible to appropriation.
Žižek's ironic label for the Foxconn management response to worker suicides, anti-suicide pacts, psychiatric referrals, safety nets, as the form exploitation takes when wrapped in pastoral concern.
as “rent”
Žižek argues that Bill Gates's wealth is best explained by the category of rent, appropriating what belongs to the commons of shared social/digital space, rather than by classical surplus value extraction.
as “privatization of the commons”
Žižek's phrase for the new, more radical enclosure whereby collective knowledge and shared social/digital space (exemplified by Microsoft/Windows) is appropriated as private rent-bearing property.
Žižek invokes Marx's Grundrisse category to argue that collective practical/productive knowledge is today being re-privatized by capital, which Marx did not foresee.
Žižek's label for Stalinist state socialism and Western welfare-state social democracy as two failed versions of the same basic model.
as “communist approach”
Žižek uses this phrase specifically for a large-scale mobilisation outside both the market and the legal-state form, needed to address ecological catastrophe.
as “what is possible / what is impossible”
Žižek identifies the opposition between the possible (private pleasure, technology, space travel) and the impossible (social change, healthcare reform) as the true ideological opposition of our era.
Holloway's term (adopted in the debate) for non-capitalist spaces/relations that break with capitalist logic from within; Žižek engages critically, arguing they still presuppose a relatively strong state.
Holloway's concept, used in debate with Žižek, for communism existing in the cracks and interstices of capitalism here and now rather than as a future state.
Implied in Žižek's defence of abstract labour and Marx's law of value as the suicidal dynamic structuring capitalist production.
Žižek's term for the ideological surfeit of anti-capitalist critique in mainstream media and Hollywood, a safety valve that personalises systemic critique as individual moral failure and therefore leaves the system untouched.
Žižek invokes Marx's definition of communism as the real movement abolishing the present state of things, insisting it must be grounded in actual social antagonisms rather than an ideal.
as “idea of communism”
Žižek diagnoses Badiou's use of this concept as Kantian, a regulative idea opposed to any direct mediation with actual social life, and argues one must pass from Kant to Hegel where the idea has the power of its own actualization.
as “four antagonisms”
Žižek's framework identifying ecology, intellectual property, biogenetics, and new forms of exclusion/non-classical labour as the four core antagonisms that even the most liberal-democratic capitalism cannot resolve.
Žižek invokes Agamben's figure to describe capitalism's structural need to produce de facto excluded, second-class citizens, immigrants, sans-papiers, as it recedes from universal legal equality.
Žižek's characterisation of the law of value's imperative, produce faster, produce more, as a self-destructive logic that, if not broken, will destroy humanity.
Stories he reaches for 4
Žižek uses Bill Gates's wealth as his vulgar example for the privatisation of the commons: Gates became the world's richest man not through super-exploitation of workers but by appropriating the shared social/digital space through which people communicate, charging rent for access to what is collectively produced.
“he appropriated part of what should be and in a way even is our commons”
Žižek invokes Congo's exploited as the paradigm case of human suffering that cannot be assimilated to the classical working class, demanding a broadened conception of revolutionary subjectivity.
“if there is an absolute human tragedy today and typically those who speak all the time about human rights never mention it, is today's Congo”
Žižek argues that Obama's response to the BP oil spill, treating it as a legal-private moral-culpability issue and threatening to 'kick BP in the ass', reveals how even radical ecological crises are absorbed into the legal-state form rather than triggering communist-style mass mobilisation.
“He changed it into a typical legal private immoral culprits problem. As if I will kick the BP in the ass and I will make them pay.”
Žižek recounts that Foxconn responded to a wave of worker suicides with three measures: making workers sign anti-suicide pacts, obliging them to denounce suicidal colleagues to factory authorities, and installing safety nets around high-rise factory buildings, the last because there is not enough floor space.
“they had to sign anti-suicide pact, some kind of promise that they will not kill themselves”
Works invoked 10
Capital book
Žižek invokes Marx's Capital on communism as 'rule of the associated producers' and on raw materials (oil) not being a source of value, to show that even Marx's example can be turned against a dogmatic reading.
Grundrisse book
Žižek invokes Marx's Grundrisse on 'general intellect' as the moment where Marx comes closest to predicting capitalism's internal dissolution through collective knowledge, and as the site Marx didn't foresee re-privatisation.
Communist Manifesto book
Cited (by Callinicos) for Marx and Engels's definition of communism as 'the real movement that abolishes the present state of things', which Žižek endorses as his own starting point.
Žižek's most recent book at the time, mentioned by the chair in introduction.
The Pelican Brief film
Žižek calls it 'that stupid second John Grisham movie' but uses it as a paradigm example of Hollywood anticapitalist overload: the villain is not just a corrupt capitalist but one connected to the US President.
Referenced (by Callinicos) for the principle 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs'; implicitly endorsed by Žižek.
Bonfire of Illusions book
Callinicos's book at the time, mentioned by the chair.
Holloway's book, which Žižek has read ('the KGB did it, I have it in black on blue on the desk') and challenges: all of its examples still presuppose a relatively strong state.
Commonwealth book
Žižek (and Callinicos) criticise Hardt and Negri's Commonwealth for reducing capitalism to appropriation of the commons, treating capital as external and parasitic.
Crack Capitalism book
Holloway's second book, mentioned in the discussion; Žižek's critique of interstitial politics applies to it.
People invoked 20
Saroj Giri positive
Described as 'my Indian friend' who coined the phrase 'overload of the critique of the horrors of capitalism', which Žižek adopts.
Co-author (with Negri) of a book referenced by Callinicos ('communists like us').
Mentioned in the context of Apple/iPad pricing as evidence that price is set not by adding up production costs but by a different, intellectual-property-based logic.
Lawrence Eagleburger positive
Cited as a source that convinced Žižek that Venezuelan food shortages are the product of orchestrated US sabotage rather than market spontaneity.
Antonio Negri negative
Žižek concedes Negri would acknowledge exploitation and new subjectivity but criticises the reduction of capitalism to commons-appropriation in Commonwealth (with Hardt); also partially defends Negri against Callinicos's reading.
Alain Badiou negative
Žižek credits Badiou with returning communism to intellectual debate but criticises his Kantian treatment of the 'communist hypothesis' as a regulative idea severed from political economy and from self-emancipation; argues one must pass from Badiou's Kant to Hegel.
Giorgio Agamben positive
Žižek invokes Agamben's homo sacer to describe capitalism's structural production of second-class excluded citizens, though notes it is 'in a mystified way'.
David Harvey positive
Mentioned approvingly alongside Holloway as someone who emphasises the ongoing (not merely original) enclosure of the commons under capitalism.
Wang Hui positive
Named as one of Žižek's Chinese critical intellectual contacts who informed him that Foxconn-area strikes were being tacitly encouraged by the Communist Party.
Used as Žižek's key example against Holloway: argues that taking power in Bolivia was the right move and that the election did not simply kill the cracks but created conditions in which liberated spaces are safer.
Bill Gates positive
Žižek calls him 'that creep who is now happily on the way down' but uses him as the paradigm case for the privatisation of the commons / rent logic.
John Holloway negative
Žižek engages critically with Holloway's 'cracks' / non-power politics, arguing that all of Holloway's examples still presuppose a strong state and that interstitial communism cannot scale without confronting state power.
Alex Callinicos positive
Co-panellist; Žižek shares his critique of Badiou and his insistence on political economy, but differs on working-class composition and immaterial labour.
Cited as one of Badiou's examples of communism erupting historically (Spartacus, Rosa Luxemburg, etc.), a model Žižek finds insufficient.
Barack Obama negative
Žižek expresses 'at least a certain minimal respect' but is 'deeply disappointed' by Obama's handling of the BP oil spill as a legal-private moral issue rather than a systemic crisis requiring communist-style mobilisation.
Žižek has 'great problems with Chavez' but defends him against the charge that food shortages in Venezuela are spontaneous market effects, arguing they are an orchestrated US-connected sabotage.
Karl Marx positive
Central reference throughout; Žižek affirms Marx's critique of political economy and law of value, invokes the Grundrisse on general intellect, but argues Marx must be updated on raw materials, rent, and the re-privatisation of knowledge.
Michael Hardt negative
Žižek criticises Hardt and Negri's Commonwealth for reducing capitalism to the appropriation of commons, treating capital as external and parasitic rather than as an internal social relation.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Žižek invokes Hegel's concept of the idea (against Kant/Badiou) to argue that communism is not merely a regulative ideal but has the power of its own actualization.
Immanuel Kant negative
Used as foil via Badiou: Žižek argues Badiou's 'idea of communism' is Kantian (regulative, opposed to historicism) and must be superseded by a Hegelian approach.
What it argues
communism as real movement vs. abstract ideafour core antagonisms of contemporary capitalismfailure of Stalinist state socialism and welfare social democracyillusion of direct democracy and workers' councilsanticapitalist overload as ideological symptomintellectual property, commons, and the category of rentthe necessity of state power and counter-terror
Dialectical moves 8
“Nothing is easier than to be anticapitalist today — which is precisely why anticapitalism, far from threatening the system, only makes it more efficient.”
Radical critique that stays within ethical-personalising logic actually reinforces the system by displacing attention from its structural logic.
“The true measure of freedom is not the political system but what goes on in what superficially appears as the apolitical domain of civil society — production, exploitation, family.”
The political and the economic are inverted: apparent depoliticisation is the very site where freedom is decided.
“What is possible and what is impossible is the true ideological opposition today: everything is possible in private pleasure and technology, but changing social relations is declared impossible.”
The boundary of the possible is not natural but ideological; the left's task is to do what the system calls impossible.
“Far from being an external parasitic force, capital is an internal social relation — and reducing it to appropriation of the commons misses this.”
Holloway/Hardt-Negri style 'commons' thinking obscures the constitutive internal exploitation at the heart of the capital-labour relation.
“If you apply Marx dogmatically to today's Venezuela, you cannot but say Chavez is exploiting the United States — which shows we have to rethink Marx.”
Strict application of labour-value theory to petro-state rent relations produces an absurd result, demanding revision of the theory.
“The Morales example shows that funnelling radical communizing into state forms is not the logical conclusion of the movement but its logical opposite.”
State institutionalisation does not fulfil the communizing process, it kills it by imposing present forms on an opening to the future.
“I would have called the police — sorry to tell you. A limited amount of state terror is totally justified.”
The critique of power cannot be absolutised: defending liberated spaces sometimes requires deploying the very state force that interstitial politics claims to transcend.
“Marx's general intellect argument predicts that when collective practical knowledge becomes the main source of wealth capitalism will dissolve — but Marx didn't take into account the possibility of this knowledge being re-privatized.”
The expected internal dissolution of capitalism is pre-empted by a new enclosure move Marx could not foresee.
Claims 17
asserts
Communism must be grounded in real social antagonisms, not treated as a Kantian regulative idea floating above social life.the concept of communism / Badiou's 'communist hypothesis'
asserts
The critique of political economy alone is no longer sufficient to grasp today's capitalist dynamics; one must also account for raw materials, intellectual property/commons, and biogenetics.limits of classical Marxist political economy
asserts
Bill Gates's wealth is better explained by the category of rent — appropriating collectively produced commons — than by classical surplus value extraction from workers.intellectual property and the category of rent
asserts
Not only Stalinist state socialism but also welfare-state social democracy and the dream of direct democracy/soviets have all been exhausted as viable models.the legacy of twentieth-century left politics
rejects
The dream of an authentic working class spontaneously awakening into direct democracy is an illusion that must be abandoned.council communism / direct democracy
asserts
Today's anticapitalist critique in media and culture functions as ideological safety valve, personalising systemic critique and leaving capitalism untouched.anticapitalist ideology and its limits
asserts
Ecology, intellectual property, biogenetics, and the new excluded (immigrants, sans-papiers) constitute four antagonisms that even the most reformed capitalism cannot resolve.structural limits of capitalism
asserts
Today's capitalism no longer even affords universal legal equality and is structurally producing new de facto second-class excluded citizens.capitalism and legal equality
asserts
Addressing ecological catastrophe absolutely requires a communist approach — large-scale mobilisation outside the market and outside the legal-state form.ecology and communism
asserts
The true measure of freedom is not the political system but what happens in the apparently apolitical domain of civil society: production, exploitation, family.freedom and political economy
rejects
Hardt and Negri's reduction of capitalism to appropriation of the commons is a profound misunderstanding because it treats capital as an external parasitic force rather than as an internal social relation.Hardt and Negri's theory of the commons
asserts
Local self-organisation models (cracks, gardens) still presuppose a relatively strong and efficient state to be viable.John Holloway's politics of non-power / interstitial communism
asserts
The left in power sometimes has the right and even the duty to use limited state force — police, counter-terror — to defend liberated spaces against sabotage.revolutionary violence and state power
asserts
What counts as possible or impossible is itself the key ideological battlefield today, not an empirical or technical question.ideology and the category of the possible
asserts
The class of Congo's exploited cannot be assimilated to the classical working class, and the left must think how to bring all these heterogeneous excluded groups together.the composition of revolutionary subjects
asserts
The price structure of products like the iPad reflects a logic of intellectual/immaterial value wholly disproportionate to material production costs.immaterial labour and value
asserts
One must pass from Kant to Hegel in thinking the idea of communism: for Hegel, idea is not merely an ideal but has the power of its own actualization.Kant vs. Hegel on the idea of communism
Quotes 11
“Nothing is easier than to be anticapitalist today. In all the media you are bombarded — that corrupted banker there, that company which is polluting the environment... You can be as much anticapitalist as you want, but this ethical anticapitalism always personalises it.”Slavoj Žižek · anticapitalist overload as ideological safety valve
“What is possible, what is impossible, is maybe the true ideological opposition today. And our message should be: yes, it is impossible — but look at us and learn, we will do the impossible.”Slavoj Žižek · ideology and the politics of the impossible
“The true measure of freedom is what goes on in what superficially appears as an apolitical set of civil society relations — production, exploitation, even family. There, freedom is decided.”Slavoj Žižek · political economy vs. political system as locus of freedom
“We should pass here from Kant to Hegel. For Hegel, idea is something which has in itself the power of its own actualization.”Slavoj Žižek · Kant vs. Hegel on the idea of communism
“If you apply dogmatically Marx to today's Venezuela, you cannot but say that Chavez is exploiting the United States. He is not. But that's why we have to rethink it.”Slavoj Žižek · limits of dogmatic Marxism on rent and raw materials
“What I am claiming is that to grasp today's capitalist dynamics, this logic of exploitation is no longer enough.”Slavoj Žižek · limits of classical exploitation theory
“What would you have done? Sorry to tell you, I would have called the police! If not, I would have organised very brutal thugs to keep violent people out. I'm sorry to tell you.”Slavoj Žižek · state power and counter-terror as necessary in liberated spaces
“A limited amount of state terror is totally justified to me. You put police on them, you use secret police, you smash them and so on. Otherwise, sorry, then step down from power!”Slavoj Žižek · revolutionary use of state force
“I'm still absolutely for communism. But what this means is that we, the left, really have to take into account the amount of the failure.”Slavoj Žižek · communism after the failures of the 20th century
“For me really, the only real question my god: where do we see today contradictions, antagonisms for which it is clear that even in the long term capitalism will not be able to even keep in check?”Slavoj Žižek · antagonisms as the only real starting point for communist politics
“I was convinced by statement by Lawrence Eagleburger and so on, that this lack of food in Venezuela is part of an orchestrated nature of the United States connected with local saboteurs.”Slavoj Žižek · US economic sabotage of Venezuela
Transcript 60 turns
unknown
This evening we will be discussing the idea of communism. My name is Sally Campbell, I work for Bookmarks Publications and I'll be chairing the session. We've got three excellent speakers on the panel tonight. First of all we've got Alex Callinicos, who's a leading member of the Socialist Workers Party and is a professor of European Studies at King's College London. He's also the author of dozens of books, the most recent of which is Bonfire of Illusions and there's also a new edition of his classic Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx. We also have John Holloway, he's a professor at the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities at the Autonomous University in Puebla, Mexico. He's the author, probably most famously, of Change the World Without Taking Power, of which there's a new edition coming in September, and also his most recent book is Crack Capitalism. And finally we have Slavoj Žižek, world-renowned philosopher, author of dozens of books, and the latest is Living in the End Times. I'm going to introduce each of the speakers to put their case. While they're doing that, members of the team in the red t-shirts will be going out with speaker slips. So if any of the thousand people in this room who want to contribute or ask a question or put a point to any of our speakers, please take a slip, fill it in and hand it in. So after they've all introduced the topic, we'll open it up then to the discussion from the floor. So first of all, I'll introduce Alex Callinicos.
This evening we will be discussing the idea of communism. My name is Sally Campbell, I work for Bookmarks Publications and I'll be chairing the session. We've got three excellent speakers on the panel tonight. First of all we've got Alex Callinicos, who's a leading member of the Socialist Workers Party and is a professor of European Studies at King's College London. He's also the author of dozens of books, the most recent of which is Bonfire of Illusions and there's also a new edition of his classic Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx. We also have John Holloway, he's a professor at the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities at the Autonomous University in Puebla, Mexico. He's the author, probably most famously, of Change the World Without Taking Power, of which there's a new edition coming in September, and also his most recent book is Crack Capitalism. And finally we have Slavoj Žižek, world-renowned philosopher, author of dozens of books, and the latest is Living in the End Times. I'm going to introduce each of the speakers to put their case. While they're doing that, members of the team in the red t-shirts will be going out with speaker slips. So if any of the thousand people in this room who want to contribute or ask a question or put a point to any of our speakers, please take a slip, fill it in and hand it in. So after they've all introduced the topic, we'll open it up then to the discussion from the floor. So first of all, I'll introduce Alex Callinicos.
unknown
Thanks very much. A couple of months ago I was visiting South Africa and I went to the Museum of Apartheid in Johannesburg, which is a fantastic record of the whole system of racial oppression in South Africa. And halfway through going around the museum I burst into tears. And the reason why I did was because I realized that apartheid, this whole institutionalized system of oppression, had been reduced to items in a museum. I, for the first few decades of my life, I was brought up on the assumption that apartheid was part of the permanent furniture of the world. And suddenly I was brought up with something that I'd known intellectually but was experiencing emotionally, that apartheid, this dense system of oppression, had gone. Of course that leaves many other evils in the world, but that particular form of oppression had gone and it was a wonderful moment. Now what I'd like to do one day, and it may be in a few decades’ time when I'm rather bent and on a stick, is to go to a museum of capitalism. I want capitalism to be reduced to the same status as apartheid. But that poses the question, where would I be if I went to a museum of capitalism? And the answer is in communism, in a communist society. Now because more than anything else communism is the name of the alternative to capitalism. I want to say something about the classical Marxist understanding of communism, but it's an idea that has been returned at least to intellectual debate in the past few years, particularly as a result of the interventions by Slavoj over there and by the French philosopher Alain Badiou. And I think this is a very useful thing to have happened because we're confronted with an extremely serious and I think protracted crisis of capitalism. And therefore we need to be talking not about regulating capitalism, not about reforming capitalism, but about replacing it with something completely different. And communism is about the alternative. The idea of communism is about the idea of the alternative to capitalism. So what is communism? Now Marx and Engels gave a classic definition of communism in the Communist Manifesto and they said, "for us, communism is the real movement that abolishes the present state of things." And I think that that's a very important idea that communism isn't, for Marx at least,
Thanks very much. A couple of months ago I was visiting South Africa and I went to the Museum of Apartheid in Johannesburg, which is a fantastic record of the whole system of racial oppression in South Africa. And halfway through going around the museum I burst into tears. And the reason why I did was because I realized that apartheid, this whole institutionalized system of oppression, had been reduced to items in a museum. I, for the first few decades of my life, I was brought up on the assumption that apartheid was part of the permanent furniture of the world. And suddenly I was brought up with something that I'd known intellectually but was experiencing emotionally, that apartheid, this dense system of oppression, had gone. Of course that leaves many other evils in the world, but that particular form of oppression had gone and it was a wonderful moment. Now what I'd like to do one day, and it may be in a few decades’ time when I'm rather bent and on a stick, is to go to a museum of capitalism. I want capitalism to be reduced to the same status as apartheid. But that poses the question, where would I be if I went to a museum of capitalism? And the answer is in communism, in a communist society. Now because more than anything else communism is the name of the alternative to capitalism. I want to say something about the classical Marxist understanding of communism, but it's an idea that has been returned at least to intellectual debate in the past few years, particularly as a result of the interventions by Slavoj over there and by the French philosopher Alain Badiou. And I think this is a very useful thing to have happened because we're confronted with an extremely serious and I think protracted crisis of capitalism. And therefore we need to be talking not about regulating capitalism, not about reforming capitalism, but about replacing it with something completely different. And communism is about the alternative. The idea of communism is about the idea of the alternative to capitalism. So what is communism? Now Marx and Engels gave a classic definition of communism in the Communist Manifesto and they said, "for us, communism is the real movement that abolishes the present state of things." And I think that that's a very important idea that communism isn't, for Marx at least,
unknown
primarily an idea, communism is the actual revolutionary process that abolishes capitalism. And implied in that is a degree of skepticism about too much discussion of the idea of communism as opposed to the development of a real movement that can begin to destroy it as a system. But of course that isn't all that Marx says about communism. In Capital he calls communism the rule of the associated producers. In other words, those who perform the labor, those who produce the wealth, collectively taking control of the productive resources of society. And in the Critique of the Gotha Programme he talks about the kind of principle that would govern a communist society. And this he says would be the principle of from each according to his ability and to each according to his needs, which is, if you think about it, a radically egalitarian principle. You distribute on the basis of what people need and you demand from people not what you're prepared to pay them, not, in other words, you don't get people to participate in production on the basis of material incentives, you get them to participate on the basis of what abilities they can bring to the whole process of producing things. Now I don't think Marx's very limited discussions of communism are the end of the story by any means. Apart from anything else, because of Marx's critique of utopian socialism, in other words, of constructing ideal schemes of a communist society, he says I think just too little about what a communist society would be like and that's a discussion that we need to continue. But it seems to me that fundamentally in those relatively brief intuitions that we find in Marx, we get the basis of a good understanding of communism. And it seems to me better than some of the things that have been put around in the current debate. Like Badiou in his writings on communism vacillates between a very abstract notion of communism as essentially the ideal of equality, which seems to me much too abstract because it says nothing about how production is organized. Alternatively, he's much too concrete because he moves from talking about communism with a small 'c', the alternative to capitalism, to talking about communism with a capital 'C', in other words, actually existing communist parties who more often than not are Stalinist parties compromised by all sorts of very fundamental failures. And I think there are two things that are missing from Badiou's discussion. First of all, the critique of political economy because when Marx talks about the real movement for the abolition of the present state of things, the soil from which that real movement grows, the grounding for any real movement towards communism, is provided by capitalist society and its contradictions. And Badiou says nothing about that. Secondly, what's missing from Badiou's discussion of communism is self-emancipation, the self-emancipation of the working class that was central to Marx's conception of how society would be transformed. In other words, the achievement of communism is the act of the oppressed and exploited themselves. No one else can do it for them. Now turning to Slavoj and John, I think that they both certainly agree about the necessity of the critique of political economy. I'm sure that John agrees about self-emancipation although I think we've different understandings of self-emancipation. I'd be interested to know what Slavoj thought about that because it seems to me critical to any notion of a genuine communist transformation or the actuality of a communist transformation. But I think there is a point on which we do disagree and I want to spend the last time that I have, how much have I got left? Seven minutes, good, that should be enough, talking about something where I think we will disagree, which is that contemporary discussions of communism tend to focus on the idea of the common, which is a very widespread idea on the radical left around the world.
primarily an idea, communism is the actual revolutionary process that abolishes capitalism. And implied in that is a degree of skepticism about too much discussion of the idea of communism as opposed to the development of a real movement that can begin to destroy it as a system. But of course that isn't all that Marx says about communism. In Capital he calls communism the rule of the associated producers. In other words, those who perform the labor, those who produce the wealth, collectively taking control of the productive resources of society. And in the Critique of the Gotha Programme he talks about the kind of principle that would govern a communist society. And this he says would be the principle of from each according to his ability and to each according to his needs, which is, if you think about it, a radically egalitarian principle. You distribute on the basis of what people need and you demand from people not what you're prepared to pay them, not, in other words, you don't get people to participate in production on the basis of material incentives, you get them to participate on the basis of what abilities they can bring to the whole process of producing things. Now I don't think Marx's very limited discussions of communism are the end of the story by any means. Apart from anything else, because of Marx's critique of utopian socialism, in other words, of constructing ideal schemes of a communist society, he says I think just too little about what a communist society would be like and that's a discussion that we need to continue. But it seems to me that fundamentally in those relatively brief intuitions that we find in Marx, we get the basis of a good understanding of communism. And it seems to me better than some of the things that have been put around in the current debate. Like Badiou in his writings on communism vacillates between a very abstract notion of communism as essentially the ideal of equality, which seems to me much too abstract because it says nothing about how production is organized. Alternatively, he's much too concrete because he moves from talking about communism with a small 'c', the alternative to capitalism, to talking about communism with a capital 'C', in other words, actually existing communist parties who more often than not are Stalinist parties compromised by all sorts of very fundamental failures. And I think there are two things that are missing from Badiou's discussion. First of all, the critique of political economy because when Marx talks about the real movement for the abolition of the present state of things, the soil from which that real movement grows, the grounding for any real movement towards communism, is provided by capitalist society and its contradictions. And Badiou says nothing about that. Secondly, what's missing from Badiou's discussion of communism is self-emancipation, the self-emancipation of the working class that was central to Marx's conception of how society would be transformed. In other words, the achievement of communism is the act of the oppressed and exploited themselves. No one else can do it for them. Now turning to Slavoj and John, I think that they both certainly agree about the necessity of the critique of political economy. I'm sure that John agrees about self-emancipation although I think we've different understandings of self-emancipation. I'd be interested to know what Slavoj thought about that because it seems to me critical to any notion of a genuine communist transformation or the actuality of a communist transformation. But I think there is a point on which we do disagree and I want to spend the last time that I have, how much have I got left? Seven minutes, good, that should be enough, talking about something where I think we will disagree, which is that contemporary discussions of communism tend to focus on the idea of the common, which is a very widespread idea on the radical left around the world.
unknown
And very often people talk, so powerful is the idea of the commons that people talk about commonism as opposed to communism. Now what's the idea here? The idea is that there's lots of good stuff in the world, either natural resources or human creativity and its fruits. And these, this good stuff is essentially in some sense collectively owned. And the problem is that capitalism comes along and pinches all this good stuff and turns it to its own purposes. And that's fundamentally what's, not simply what's wrong with capitalism, but what drives capitalism. Now of course it's true that there is lots of good stuff in the world that is a product of collective action or is collectively appropriated in some sort of way. And it's absolutely true that capitalism is coming along all the time and pinching it. Marx talks about the primitive accumulation of capital, the original seizure of key productive resources that makes capitalism possible as a system. But John and David Harvey and other people have stressed that this appropriation of what's commonly owned is a continuing reality of capitalism. It's not just something that happened in the past, it's something that goes on all the time. But I think it's a mistake simply to reduce what capitalism does to that. And there are people who do that. I'm not saying that either Slavoj or John does, but for example Hardt and Negri do, for example, in their most recent book Commonwealth. And the effect, what they essentially do is reduce capitalism to the appropriation of the commons. And what that means is capitalism is essentially an external and parasitic force that comes along and seizes things and turns them to its own purposes. This, I think, is a profound misunderstanding of Marx and, more importantly, a profound misunderstanding of capitalism. Because for Marx, capital, he insists on this, is a social relation. And it's a social relation defined by fundamentally all sorts of other things, the exploitative relationship between capital and wage labor. And the relationship between capital and wage labor is an internal, it's an intrinsic one. Each of the parties to the relationship, the workers who are exploited and the capitalists who exploit them, are defined socially by the connection with each other. Why does it matter? I mean, this may sound like a weird bit of philosophical abstraction that I'm engaging in. It matters because it helps us to understand what's happening in capitalism today. Let's look at China, the kind of fantasy world of the apologists of capitalism. If we look at what's happening in China today, of course it's true that commons have been appropriated in all sorts of ways and that a newly developing private capitalist class establishes itself as a social and economic force by grabbing collectively owned land, stealing all sorts of stuff and so on. But that's not what's critical to what's happening in China. What we see in China is a process of very rapid capitalist development that involves an enormous creation and expansion of human productive capabilities by bringing workers together in conditions where they're collectively exploited. There's this place called Foxconn, which is an extraordinary company which produces an awful lot of the iPads and iPods and iPhones and so on that everyone desires so much, which involves one complex in the southeast of China where workers are employed in the same factory town. That's crucial to the kind of capitalist development that is taking place in China. And what it involves is a vast expansion in human productive capabilities, but on the basis of the most intensive exploitation. What this means is, and this is something that Marx is very insistent on, that communism isn't just about taking back what capital stole, what those collectively owned resources that pre-existed the formation of the capital
And very often people talk, so powerful is the idea of the commons that people talk about commonism as opposed to communism. Now what's the idea here? The idea is that there's lots of good stuff in the world, either natural resources or human creativity and its fruits. And these, this good stuff is essentially in some sense collectively owned. And the problem is that capitalism comes along and pinches all this good stuff and turns it to its own purposes. And that's fundamentally what's, not simply what's wrong with capitalism, but what drives capitalism. Now of course it's true that there is lots of good stuff in the world that is a product of collective action or is collectively appropriated in some sort of way. And it's absolutely true that capitalism is coming along all the time and pinching it. Marx talks about the primitive accumulation of capital, the original seizure of key productive resources that makes capitalism possible as a system. But John and David Harvey and other people have stressed that this appropriation of what's commonly owned is a continuing reality of capitalism. It's not just something that happened in the past, it's something that goes on all the time. But I think it's a mistake simply to reduce what capitalism does to that. And there are people who do that. I'm not saying that either Slavoj or John does, but for example Hardt and Negri do, for example, in their most recent book Commonwealth. And the effect, what they essentially do is reduce capitalism to the appropriation of the commons. And what that means is capitalism is essentially an external and parasitic force that comes along and seizes things and turns them to its own purposes. This, I think, is a profound misunderstanding of Marx and, more importantly, a profound misunderstanding of capitalism. Because for Marx, capital, he insists on this, is a social relation. And it's a social relation defined by fundamentally all sorts of other things, the exploitative relationship between capital and wage labor. And the relationship between capital and wage labor is an internal, it's an intrinsic one. Each of the parties to the relationship, the workers who are exploited and the capitalists who exploit them, are defined socially by the connection with each other. Why does it matter? I mean, this may sound like a weird bit of philosophical abstraction that I'm engaging in. It matters because it helps us to understand what's happening in capitalism today. Let's look at China, the kind of fantasy world of the apologists of capitalism. If we look at what's happening in China today, of course it's true that commons have been appropriated in all sorts of ways and that a newly developing private capitalist class establishes itself as a social and economic force by grabbing collectively owned land, stealing all sorts of stuff and so on. But that's not what's critical to what's happening in China. What we see in China is a process of very rapid capitalist development that involves an enormous creation and expansion of human productive capabilities by bringing workers together in conditions where they're collectively exploited. There's this place called Foxconn, which is an extraordinary company which produces an awful lot of the iPads and iPods and iPhones and so on that everyone desires so much, which involves one complex in the southeast of China where workers are employed in the same factory town. That's crucial to the kind of capitalist development that is taking place in China. And what it involves is a vast expansion in human productive capabilities, but on the basis of the most intensive exploitation. What this means is, and this is something that Marx is very insistent on, that communism isn't just about taking back what capital stole, what those collectively owned resources that pre-existed the formation of the capital
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relation. What communism much more importantly is about is seizing the productive capacities that are created within the framework of the capital relation. Marx has this marvelously contradictory view of capitalism as a disastrous and destructive force, but also an enormous expansion in human productive powers, which revolution is about taking control of. Why does this matter politically? It matters politically because ultimately it comes down to the question of power. As I said, the relationship between capital and wage labor is an internal one. Exploiter and exploited are bound together in this intimate relationship of interdependence. Interdependence, that's critical. In other words, the worker depends upon the capitalist because the worker only owns his or her labor power, the worker has to go and work for a capitalist and be exploited and all that sort of thing. But there's another side to that. The capitalist depends on the worker. The worker's labor is the source of the capitalist profits. When the worker's labor stops, then capitalism stops. And this isn't just an abstract proposition, because again, let's go back to the case of China, the so-called future of capitalism. What we've seen in recent weeks are explosions of strikes by this new working class, bringing to a halt processes of production, extracting massive pay increases, shifting the whole relation of power between capital and wage labor. And that's the bottom line about communism. And actually it's an idea that pre-exists Marx, that goes back to Blanqui and the radical French communists, that what the force that is going to achieve communism is precisely that mass of wage laborers who are oppressed and exploited by capitalism, but precisely because they are exploited, have the capacity to carry through this revolution that can take us out of capitalism to communism. The next speaker is Slavoj Žižek. It's nice to immediately enter into a dialogue because strangely enough, let me first make a bad-taste remark. When you said you were down there in South Africa and then you started to cry, I thought because England lost to Germany. Okay, but... I also did share our opposition to cheap patriotism when Slovenia lost to England, my son was almost beaten by his peers because he was for England. So we are all clear. But let me go to the more serious work. Yes, I share deeply your wonderful idea of looking at ourselves from the future museum of capitalism. But the first bad news we have today, I was in a couple of them, is that you know, unfortunately museums of communism already exist. In practically all post-socialist Eastern European countries. I visited one in Budapest, for example, where I bought a wonderful thing, a candle as a figure of Stalin, and then you light a candle and Stalin disappears. This is an anti-Stalinist candle, you see, it's very clever. Okay, let's go on. Where I also share, what I also share with you is at least the first part of your critique of Badiou. That is to say his total conscious, you cannot accuse him that he didn't see it, he is absolutely consciously opposed to it, of the very notion that critique of political economy has a place, a direct place in what he calls idea of communism. My point here would have been simply that what one should do with regard to Badiou is, because Badiou is here although he denies it, obviously Kantian. He even calls in his communist hypothesis the idea of communism a kind of Kantian regulative idea. And he absolutely opposes any too narrow mediation between this idea and actual social life. For him this is already historicism, you fall into the historicist trap. What I think is that we should pass here from Kant to Hegel. For Hegel, idea is something which is not just an ideal opposed to reality, but something which has in itself the power of its own actualization, which may sound ultra-idealist, but it's
relation. What communism much more importantly is about is seizing the productive capacities that are created within the framework of the capital relation. Marx has this marvelously contradictory view of capitalism as a disastrous and destructive force, but also an enormous expansion in human productive powers, which revolution is about taking control of. Why does this matter politically? It matters politically because ultimately it comes down to the question of power. As I said, the relationship between capital and wage labor is an internal one. Exploiter and exploited are bound together in this intimate relationship of interdependence. Interdependence, that's critical. In other words, the worker depends upon the capitalist because the worker only owns his or her labor power, the worker has to go and work for a capitalist and be exploited and all that sort of thing. But there's another side to that. The capitalist depends on the worker. The worker's labor is the source of the capitalist profits. When the worker's labor stops, then capitalism stops. And this isn't just an abstract proposition, because again, let's go back to the case of China, the so-called future of capitalism. What we've seen in recent weeks are explosions of strikes by this new working class, bringing to a halt processes of production, extracting massive pay increases, shifting the whole relation of power between capital and wage labor. And that's the bottom line about communism. And actually it's an idea that pre-exists Marx, that goes back to Blanqui and the radical French communists, that what the force that is going to achieve communism is precisely that mass of wage laborers who are oppressed and exploited by capitalism, but precisely because they are exploited, have the capacity to carry through this revolution that can take us out of capitalism to communism. The next speaker is Slavoj Žižek. It's nice to immediately enter into a dialogue because strangely enough, let me first make a bad-taste remark. When you said you were down there in South Africa and then you started to cry, I thought because England lost to Germany. Okay, but... I also did share our opposition to cheap patriotism when Slovenia lost to England, my son was almost beaten by his peers because he was for England. So we are all clear. But let me go to the more serious work. Yes, I share deeply your wonderful idea of looking at ourselves from the future museum of capitalism. But the first bad news we have today, I was in a couple of them, is that you know, unfortunately museums of communism already exist. In practically all post-socialist Eastern European countries. I visited one in Budapest, for example, where I bought a wonderful thing, a candle as a figure of Stalin, and then you light a candle and Stalin disappears. This is an anti-Stalinist candle, you see, it's very clever. Okay, let's go on. Where I also share, what I also share with you is at least the first part of your critique of Badiou. That is to say his total conscious, you cannot accuse him that he didn't see it, he is absolutely consciously opposed to it, of the very notion that critique of political economy has a place, a direct place in what he calls idea of communism. My point here would have been simply that what one should do with regard to Badiou is, because Badiou is here although he denies it, obviously Kantian. He even calls in his communist hypothesis the idea of communism a kind of Kantian regulative idea. And he absolutely opposes any too narrow mediation between this idea and actual social life. For him this is already historicism, you fall into the historicist trap. What I think is that we should pass here from Kant to Hegel. For Hegel, idea is something which is not just an ideal opposed to reality, but something which has in itself the power of its own actualization, which may sound ultra-idealist, but it's
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exactly what Marx says in what you refer to him back. That is to say to conceive the idea of communism as a real movement. Maybe our small differences begin with where to locate these real movements. Let me begin with some quite empirical remarks. You know, I was in China when this happened, three-four weeks ago when these strikes started. And maybe this is a manipulation what I was told there, but I wasn't told by official representatives, I was told by this, maybe you know them, Wang Hui and other critical intellectuals. They told me that these strikes were strictly tolerated, even up to a point, how do you call it, incited by the Communist Party, as part they think that the only way to cut a long story short for China to retain its economic momentum in a situation of worldwide crisis is to increase the purchase power of the local working class. So for them, they're maybe a little bit too cynical, they say, of course, discontent with strikes was all the time there. The mystery for them is why all of a sudden were strikes not only tolerated but even, that was for them the big sign, positively reported in the media. You know, till
exactly what Marx says in what you refer to him back. That is to say to conceive the idea of communism as a real movement. Maybe our small differences begin with where to locate these real movements. Let me begin with some quite empirical remarks. You know, I was in China when this happened, three-four weeks ago when these strikes started. And maybe this is a manipulation what I was told there, but I wasn't told by official representatives, I was told by this, maybe you know them, Wang Hui and other critical intellectuals. They told me that these strikes were strictly tolerated, even up to a point, how do you call it, incited by the Communist Party, as part they think that the only way to cut a long story short for China to retain its economic momentum in a situation of worldwide crisis is to increase the purchase power of the local working class. So for them, they're maybe a little bit too cynical, they say, of course, discontent with strikes was all the time there. The mystery for them is why all of a sudden were strikes not only tolerated but even, that was for them the big sign, positively reported in the media. You know, till
Slavoj Žižek
now if you mentioned the word independent trade unions, before you finished the sentence, to put it in a bad taste ironic way, you already had a one-way ticket train to Mongolia to some camp. All of a sudden now, my God, strikes get positive mention in the official media. But my modest counter-example to you would have been precisely China. What my friends there were trying to convince me is that exploited as they are, and I totally agree with you, this Foxconn story is ridiculous. The nicest part of the story is this one, it was reported, I hope you know it probably better than me in the media, you know how Foxconn reacted, it's ridiculous, it's the best of the brutal cynicism of what we call patriarchal caring charity human relations capitalism. You know how Foxconn reacted to this wave of suicides? Three things. First, all people who work for Foxconn had to sign anti-suicide pact, some kind of promise that they will not kill themselves. Second, this is not a joke, that's what's
now if you mentioned the word independent trade unions, before you finished the sentence, to put it in a bad taste ironic way, you already had a one-way ticket train to Mongolia to some camp. All of a sudden now, my God, strikes get positive mention in the official media. But my modest counter-example to you would have been precisely China. What my friends there were trying to convince me is that exploited as they are, and I totally agree with you, this Foxconn story is ridiculous. The nicest part of the story is this one, it was reported, I hope you know it probably better than me in the media, you know how Foxconn reacted, it's ridiculous, it's the best of the brutal cynicism of what we call patriarchal caring charity human relations capitalism. You know how Foxconn reacted to this wave of suicides? Three things. First, all people who work for Foxconn had to sign anti-suicide pact, some kind of promise that they will not kill themselves. Second, this is not a joke, that's what's
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so crazy about it. Second point, now this we got more into Orwellian ominous quarters, they had also to sign a legal obligation
so crazy about it. Second point, now this we got more into Orwellian ominous quarters, they had also to sign a legal obligation
Slavoj Žižek
that if they see their fellow worker like depressed in a suicidal mood, that they will denounce him to the factory authorities so they can call a psychiatrist. And the last measure, it's not a joke, because as you said, these are gigantic factories, they don't have enough space, most of the work happens in high-rise buildings, which is why the suicides mostly happen by jumping through windows. This is not a joke. They are putting large nets, safety nets, around. I am the first one to agree with you. But what nonetheless they told me is that, and this is the tragedy of the situation, that in spite of all of this, those who can move to these big industrial cities like Shanghai and others consider themselves up to a point even the lucky ones. The true problem is background. And there, there we have a totally different situation of these half-unemployed farmers. And maybe this is at least as important a movement. This is why I think maybe we should show a little bit more mercy towards China, namely I was told that these poor farmers who are left behind by this capitalist explosion are starting to organize themselves and organize themselves in Chinese numbers. A kind of a self-created network, we are talking about tens, according to some sources, even hundred to two hundred of millions of people. Autonomous farmers self-organization. And the Communist Party, not for any good democratic reason, but because they think that if they oppress this, they risk an even stronger explosion at a certain point, is seriously considering the possibility of allowing them, of recognizing them at least as some kind of a partner. Maybe this is just an old fascist formula, corporate organization, maybe it's something more. But where I maybe don't quite agree, now I come to basic... first, I think you were a little bit unfair although I criticized him all the time, I'm ready to take the blame for the commons, towards Toni Negri, because he would concede all this, you know exploitation, new subjectivity exploited by capital. What I am claiming is something and I will try to put it as brutally and openly as possible so that I expose myself to the counter-attack. What I am claiming is that to grasp, I repeat what I, the claim I made here the last year, that to grasp today's capitalist dynamics, this logic of exploitation is no longer enough. That again, to grasp the capitalist dynamic, you need to take into account first the new role, important role, as a source of wealth of raw materials, which for Marx were basically out of the equation. You know the irony is that when Marx, check it up in Capital, wants to demonstrate that raw materials cannot be a source of wealth in the sense of value, of course he, you know what he gives as an example? Oil. So, to provoke you, I already was interrupted a year ago, I like to repeat the provocation. I claim something very simple. If you apply dogmatically Marx to today's Venezuela, you cannot but say that Chavez is exploiting the United States. He is not. But that's why we have to rethink it. One thing are raw materials, which are an important part of the struggle, who will confront them. Another one is so-called intellectual property and there for me the problem of commons is crucial. Again, my vulgar example which I used a year ago. How did that creep who is now happily on the way down, Bill Gates, how did he become at some point the wealthiest man in the world? I don't believe in the classical Marxist explanation of, you know, extreme extra extra superprofit exploitation. I think we should return to the category of rent, which is still some kind of exploitation but different. I think Bill Gates is not so rich because he especially exploited his workers or whatever, but because again he appropriated part of what should be and in a way even is our commons. Each of us, when we want to be in touch in a shared public space, you have to pay to him the price just so that we can share the same field through internet, social space and so on and so on. This is for me the logic of the privatization of the commons. It has something to do... Okay. Okay, let me overcome this quick heart attack and go on. Yes, it has something I think to do with the big problem of what Marx called general intellect, where I think Marx is at his best. You remember in Grundrisse where Marx says how, how the moment when the knowledge, collective practical knowledge will become the main source of wealth, capitalism will dissolve. He comes very close to a some kind of almost economic determinism. I think what Marx didn't take into account is the possibility of this general knowledge, collective practical knowledge, productive knowledge being reprivatized again. This is why I think that although I agree with you commons were enclosed all the time, I nonetheless agree with those who claim that today we have a new much more radical, maybe even unthinkable for Marx twist in this story. So this was the introduction, now the shorter part, the main part. What I, okay, I will just enumerate points for you. Since I'm again, as I always emphasize, the victim of a brutal metaphysical linear notion of time. Sorry, quickly. Firstly, you know, museum of communism. I'm still absolutely for communism. But what this means is that we, the left, really have to take into account the amount of the failure of What I claim is that not only did a certain Stalinist state socialism disintegrate, now with a years delay we are getting that also welfare state social democracy lost, is slowly disappearing. And I would add to provoke you something which probably you will not agree with, but it's my crucial point. That you know, all those who were criticizing these twin brothers of two versions of state socialism, Western democratic welfare state and the Stalinist, usually do it from a position of a dream of councils, soviets, immediate democracy and so on and so on. I claim that that one also has to be abandoned. That this was the big dream which died different deaths, Chinese Cultural Revolution, '68 and so on and so on. I claim this is an illusion. The idea that somehow the authentic working class will awaken in some kind of direct democracy and so on. Second point, when we are anticapitalists here, now I am look up here, at least we will all agree. Did you notice how today we even have, as my Indian friend Saroj Giri recently told me, wonderful expression, an overload of the critique of the horrors of capitalism. Nothing is easier than to be anticapitalist today. In all the media you are bombarded, that corrupted banker there, that company which is polluting the environment, that company which is using child slave labor and so on and so on. It's elementary to say what is wrong here. You can be as much anticapitalist as you want, but this ethical anticapitalism always personifies it with you know that corrupted, that corrupted. They obfuscate the question, is the question of the system. Even Obama, to whom I still have at least a certain minimal respect, deeply disappointed me here. How did Obama react to BP oil spill? I'm not paid by British Petroleum, I also think they are disgusting. All I'm saying is that, you see, we have a great natural catastrophe with unpredictable consequences. Instead of approaching it in a radical way, mobilizing all the people, maybe even the army, at least the US Army in this way would have been doing something more meaningful than killing Afghans, no? What is he doing? He changed it into a typical legal private immoral culprits problem. As if I will kick the BP in the ass and I will make them pay. Which is totally ridiculous. You can see here how we cannot do with ecology the amount of crisis which are definitely ahead of us. They absolutely need something that I cannot but call a communist approach. That is to say, a large mobilization outside the market and outside this legal state form. So again, the problem for me is the following one of communism. I hope here also we all agree. This basic insight of Marx that the problem of freedom, the true side of the problem of freedom is not the political system, you know all this measurement done by Western agencies who in a patronizing way measure third world countries. Do you have free elections, do you have independent judges and so on? The true measure of freedom is what goes on in what superficially appears as an apolitical set of civil society relations, production, exploitation, even family and so on and so on. There, in this not directly of course they are in reality political, political. There freedom is decided. Which is why I think that this cheap anticapitalism, oh how corrupted they are, BP, this company, that, still implicitly yes, remains within the scope of this legal approach. We need to expand political democracy to cover it up and so on and so on. It cannot be done. Okay, I will now really sum it up because I would like maybe to engage in a debate with you, John, with your legendary statement which I hope maybe I misunderstood about, you know, like let's do our job properly at this local level and somehow... Now I'm not sure I got you correctly. The way you are radically interpreted is, you know, it's like this what Hegel would have called subterranean work of slow work so that you don't have to confront the power directly, you just do this local work. We don't need to take power. But some, well, well, to be very brutal and really to sum it up, my problem is one that I read your work, no, no, the KGB did it, I have it in black on blue on the desk, yes. All the examples that you, this is an empirical claim, please I would like to be refuted, this is not a rhetorical stupidity. All, all examples that you enumerate, I claim still presuppose not only a relatively strong but even a relatively efficient state, I claim. Yes, I claim. Show me a, you know, you can have all these local communist units doing their work as always in the background the state remains. Second point, what to do then when, to put it in very naive terms, how literally am I to take, yes, stop, okay yeah yeah yeah I'm stopping, it's a dialectical process, yes. How literally do we take this non-power? Like now I am consciously to provoke you as an aggressive among comrades, we are contradictions up there. How, what would you say to Morales? No no, step down, rather do your work down on... my idea is not Chavez, I have... my idea is Morales here. We can grab power, why not? We can in collaboration with all those local movements that you like so much, we can do the work and it... okay I could go on for one hour but just to conclude, another point which we shared. People when we dream about society to come, people usually tell us, oh this is utopia, this is impossible. Just to conclude, Riva, don't give... yeah. I see your evil eye, through my ideological eyes I see the red letter and you are whipping me, okay sorry. So sorry, you know that you know that it's typical when people tell us impossible. Did you notice how, in what a strange way, the signifier impossible functions in our ideological space? On the one hand, the official ideology is telling us everything is becoming almost possible. You know, in the field of private pleasure, science and so on. We will be able to change our character, we will be able, not to mention what horrible things in sexuality doing, we will be able to travel to the moon, everything is possible there. But the moment you approach social relations, there are more and more things which are impossible. You know, as if the message of the ruling ideology: Will we be able to travel to the moon, to Venus, will we be able to become immortals? Of course, why not? But will it be possible to change a little bit the healthcare legislation? No, no way, that's impossible! So you see what is possible, what is impossible, is maybe the true ideological opposition today. And our message should be, of course not in an irrational sense, but in the sense of what appears as impossible within a certain ideological social space. It's, yes you are right, it is impossible, but look, see, look at us and learn, we will do the impossible. Thank you. The final speaker is John Holloway. Thank you, thank you very much. It's lovely to be back again. It's lovely and it's a little bit frightening, a little bit frightening to see so many people and to see the queue beforehand, all those people waiting. You think my goodness, my goodness, what are you all doing here? My goodness, why, why do you all want to talk about the idea of communism? And can it be perhaps that we are all here because we are all communists? And of course that's only the beginning, because the question is what do we mean by that? And I loved, I loved Alex's museum, the idea of a museum of capitalism. That's really lovely. The only problem is where is it? And I think he says, "well it's in communism, of course". But where, where is this communism? And I think my fear, really my fear is that communism becomes a kind of land of Oz, you know somewhere over the rainbow. And it's not like that, it can't be like that. It seems to me that no, that communism is very much here and now and we have to start from that. If we want communism, if we are communists, then we must start from the idea that communism is already here, here and now. I suppose partly why I say that is because I've just come from a very striking example of that. It was about days ago I was, I had the pleasure of giving a talk in Navarino Park in Athens. Navarino Park is very interesting because it's a garden created, a community garden created in the middle of the city. And it's just around the corner from where the police shot Alexis Grigoropoulos, the year old, in December And with all the huge riots that followed that shooting, one of the things that happened was that people occupied a car park in just around the corner from where this happened near the center of Athens and they tore down the walls of the car park and they transformed it into a garden. And it's a beautiful garden and it's used by all the people in the neighborhood and it's used by children and they hold meetings there, it's fantastic. And the first time I went I felt, wow, this is communism, this is revolution. And I still feel that strongly, I still feel very much that that is where communism is, that is what communism means. Why? I think firstly because the garden grew out of a 'no', grew out of a ¡Ya basta!, yeah we can't go on, we can't go on living in this capitalist world, we can't go on creating and recreating capitalism because it is destroying us and it is destroying us very quickly. We have to break the logic, we have to break the logic of capitalism and we have to do it now, not in some far off day in the future. And that was the starting point of the garden, it was just the refusal that enough, enough, we can't go on. But that refusal, that rage became transformed into a process of creation. In other words, it's not just a negation, it's a negation and creation. Not just an 'against', it's an against and beyond, the transformation of rage into a change here and now in the city of Athens. And this change seems to be crucial in two respects. Firstly, by being a garden, it announces that what we need is not just a change in our own social relations but also a change in our relation with other forms of life, with non-human forms of life. In other words, a garden has the special feature of saying that any anticapitalism, any communism must be based on a different relation with the plants and animals that surround us. And secondly, I think it's crucial in this garden that the whole process creates a different set of social relations. It's a process of creating a no-go area, if you like, creating a crack in the logic of capitalist social cohesion. That people involved in the park put up, they don't in fact, but symbolically you can imagine them putting
that if they see their fellow worker like depressed in a suicidal mood, that they will denounce him to the factory authorities so they can call a psychiatrist. And the last measure, it's not a joke, because as you said, these are gigantic factories, they don't have enough space, most of the work happens in high-rise buildings, which is why the suicides mostly happen by jumping through windows. This is not a joke. They are putting large nets, safety nets, around. I am the first one to agree with you. But what nonetheless they told me is that, and this is the tragedy of the situation, that in spite of all of this, those who can move to these big industrial cities like Shanghai and others consider themselves up to a point even the lucky ones. The true problem is background. And there, there we have a totally different situation of these half-unemployed farmers. And maybe this is at least as important a movement. This is why I think maybe we should show a little bit more mercy towards China, namely I was told that these poor farmers who are left behind by this capitalist explosion are starting to organize themselves and organize themselves in Chinese numbers. A kind of a self-created network, we are talking about tens, according to some sources, even hundred to two hundred of millions of people. Autonomous farmers self-organization. And the Communist Party, not for any good democratic reason, but because they think that if they oppress this, they risk an even stronger explosion at a certain point, is seriously considering the possibility of allowing them, of recognizing them at least as some kind of a partner. Maybe this is just an old fascist formula, corporate organization, maybe it's something more. But where I maybe don't quite agree, now I come to basic... first, I think you were a little bit unfair although I criticized him all the time, I'm ready to take the blame for the commons, towards Toni Negri, because he would concede all this, you know exploitation, new subjectivity exploited by capital. What I am claiming is something and I will try to put it as brutally and openly as possible so that I expose myself to the counter-attack. What I am claiming is that to grasp, I repeat what I, the claim I made here the last year, that to grasp today's capitalist dynamics, this logic of exploitation is no longer enough. That again, to grasp the capitalist dynamic, you need to take into account first the new role, important role, as a source of wealth of raw materials, which for Marx were basically out of the equation. You know the irony is that when Marx, check it up in Capital, wants to demonstrate that raw materials cannot be a source of wealth in the sense of value, of course he, you know what he gives as an example? Oil. So, to provoke you, I already was interrupted a year ago, I like to repeat the provocation. I claim something very simple. If you apply dogmatically Marx to today's Venezuela, you cannot but say that Chavez is exploiting the United States. He is not. But that's why we have to rethink it. One thing are raw materials, which are an important part of the struggle, who will confront them. Another one is so-called intellectual property and there for me the problem of commons is crucial. Again, my vulgar example which I used a year ago. How did that creep who is now happily on the way down, Bill Gates, how did he become at some point the wealthiest man in the world? I don't believe in the classical Marxist explanation of, you know, extreme extra extra superprofit exploitation. I think we should return to the category of rent, which is still some kind of exploitation but different. I think Bill Gates is not so rich because he especially exploited his workers or whatever, but because again he appropriated part of what should be and in a way even is our commons. Each of us, when we want to be in touch in a shared public space, you have to pay to him the price just so that we can share the same field through internet, social space and so on and so on. This is for me the logic of the privatization of the commons. It has something to do... Okay. Okay, let me overcome this quick heart attack and go on. Yes, it has something I think to do with the big problem of what Marx called general intellect, where I think Marx is at his best. You remember in Grundrisse where Marx says how, how the moment when the knowledge, collective practical knowledge will become the main source of wealth, capitalism will dissolve. He comes very close to a some kind of almost economic determinism. I think what Marx didn't take into account is the possibility of this general knowledge, collective practical knowledge, productive knowledge being reprivatized again. This is why I think that although I agree with you commons were enclosed all the time, I nonetheless agree with those who claim that today we have a new much more radical, maybe even unthinkable for Marx twist in this story. So this was the introduction, now the shorter part, the main part. What I, okay, I will just enumerate points for you. Since I'm again, as I always emphasize, the victim of a brutal metaphysical linear notion of time. Sorry, quickly. Firstly, you know, museum of communism. I'm still absolutely for communism. But what this means is that we, the left, really have to take into account the amount of the failure of What I claim is that not only did a certain Stalinist state socialism disintegrate, now with a years delay we are getting that also welfare state social democracy lost, is slowly disappearing. And I would add to provoke you something which probably you will not agree with, but it's my crucial point. That you know, all those who were criticizing these twin brothers of two versions of state socialism, Western democratic welfare state and the Stalinist, usually do it from a position of a dream of councils, soviets, immediate democracy and so on and so on. I claim that that one also has to be abandoned. That this was the big dream which died different deaths, Chinese Cultural Revolution, '68 and so on and so on. I claim this is an illusion. The idea that somehow the authentic working class will awaken in some kind of direct democracy and so on. Second point, when we are anticapitalists here, now I am look up here, at least we will all agree. Did you notice how today we even have, as my Indian friend Saroj Giri recently told me, wonderful expression, an overload of the critique of the horrors of capitalism. Nothing is easier than to be anticapitalist today. In all the media you are bombarded, that corrupted banker there, that company which is polluting the environment, that company which is using child slave labor and so on and so on. It's elementary to say what is wrong here. You can be as much anticapitalist as you want, but this ethical anticapitalism always personifies it with you know that corrupted, that corrupted. They obfuscate the question, is the question of the system. Even Obama, to whom I still have at least a certain minimal respect, deeply disappointed me here. How did Obama react to BP oil spill? I'm not paid by British Petroleum, I also think they are disgusting. All I'm saying is that, you see, we have a great natural catastrophe with unpredictable consequences. Instead of approaching it in a radical way, mobilizing all the people, maybe even the army, at least the US Army in this way would have been doing something more meaningful than killing Afghans, no? What is he doing? He changed it into a typical legal private immoral culprits problem. As if I will kick the BP in the ass and I will make them pay. Which is totally ridiculous. You can see here how we cannot do with ecology the amount of crisis which are definitely ahead of us. They absolutely need something that I cannot but call a communist approach. That is to say, a large mobilization outside the market and outside this legal state form. So again, the problem for me is the following one of communism. I hope here also we all agree. This basic insight of Marx that the problem of freedom, the true side of the problem of freedom is not the political system, you know all this measurement done by Western agencies who in a patronizing way measure third world countries. Do you have free elections, do you have independent judges and so on? The true measure of freedom is what goes on in what superficially appears as an apolitical set of civil society relations, production, exploitation, even family and so on and so on. There, in this not directly of course they are in reality political, political. There freedom is decided. Which is why I think that this cheap anticapitalism, oh how corrupted they are, BP, this company, that, still implicitly yes, remains within the scope of this legal approach. We need to expand political democracy to cover it up and so on and so on. It cannot be done. Okay, I will now really sum it up because I would like maybe to engage in a debate with you, John, with your legendary statement which I hope maybe I misunderstood about, you know, like let's do our job properly at this local level and somehow... Now I'm not sure I got you correctly. The way you are radically interpreted is, you know, it's like this what Hegel would have called subterranean work of slow work so that you don't have to confront the power directly, you just do this local work. We don't need to take power. But some, well, well, to be very brutal and really to sum it up, my problem is one that I read your work, no, no, the KGB did it, I have it in black on blue on the desk, yes. All the examples that you, this is an empirical claim, please I would like to be refuted, this is not a rhetorical stupidity. All, all examples that you enumerate, I claim still presuppose not only a relatively strong but even a relatively efficient state, I claim. Yes, I claim. Show me a, you know, you can have all these local communist units doing their work as always in the background the state remains. Second point, what to do then when, to put it in very naive terms, how literally am I to take, yes, stop, okay yeah yeah yeah I'm stopping, it's a dialectical process, yes. How literally do we take this non-power? Like now I am consciously to provoke you as an aggressive among comrades, we are contradictions up there. How, what would you say to Morales? No no, step down, rather do your work down on... my idea is not Chavez, I have... my idea is Morales here. We can grab power, why not? We can in collaboration with all those local movements that you like so much, we can do the work and it... okay I could go on for one hour but just to conclude, another point which we shared. People when we dream about society to come, people usually tell us, oh this is utopia, this is impossible. Just to conclude, Riva, don't give... yeah. I see your evil eye, through my ideological eyes I see the red letter and you are whipping me, okay sorry. So sorry, you know that you know that it's typical when people tell us impossible. Did you notice how, in what a strange way, the signifier impossible functions in our ideological space? On the one hand, the official ideology is telling us everything is becoming almost possible. You know, in the field of private pleasure, science and so on. We will be able to change our character, we will be able, not to mention what horrible things in sexuality doing, we will be able to travel to the moon, everything is possible there. But the moment you approach social relations, there are more and more things which are impossible. You know, as if the message of the ruling ideology: Will we be able to travel to the moon, to Venus, will we be able to become immortals? Of course, why not? But will it be possible to change a little bit the healthcare legislation? No, no way, that's impossible! So you see what is possible, what is impossible, is maybe the true ideological opposition today. And our message should be, of course not in an irrational sense, but in the sense of what appears as impossible within a certain ideological social space. It's, yes you are right, it is impossible, but look, see, look at us and learn, we will do the impossible. Thank you. The final speaker is John Holloway. Thank you, thank you very much. It's lovely to be back again. It's lovely and it's a little bit frightening, a little bit frightening to see so many people and to see the queue beforehand, all those people waiting. You think my goodness, my goodness, what are you all doing here? My goodness, why, why do you all want to talk about the idea of communism? And can it be perhaps that we are all here because we are all communists? And of course that's only the beginning, because the question is what do we mean by that? And I loved, I loved Alex's museum, the idea of a museum of capitalism. That's really lovely. The only problem is where is it? And I think he says, "well it's in communism, of course". But where, where is this communism? And I think my fear, really my fear is that communism becomes a kind of land of Oz, you know somewhere over the rainbow. And it's not like that, it can't be like that. It seems to me that no, that communism is very much here and now and we have to start from that. If we want communism, if we are communists, then we must start from the idea that communism is already here, here and now. I suppose partly why I say that is because I've just come from a very striking example of that. It was about days ago I was, I had the pleasure of giving a talk in Navarino Park in Athens. Navarino Park is very interesting because it's a garden created, a community garden created in the middle of the city. And it's just around the corner from where the police shot Alexis Grigoropoulos, the year old, in December And with all the huge riots that followed that shooting, one of the things that happened was that people occupied a car park in just around the corner from where this happened near the center of Athens and they tore down the walls of the car park and they transformed it into a garden. And it's a beautiful garden and it's used by all the people in the neighborhood and it's used by children and they hold meetings there, it's fantastic. And the first time I went I felt, wow, this is communism, this is revolution. And I still feel that strongly, I still feel very much that that is where communism is, that is what communism means. Why? I think firstly because the garden grew out of a 'no', grew out of a ¡Ya basta!, yeah we can't go on, we can't go on living in this capitalist world, we can't go on creating and recreating capitalism because it is destroying us and it is destroying us very quickly. We have to break the logic, we have to break the logic of capitalism and we have to do it now, not in some far off day in the future. And that was the starting point of the garden, it was just the refusal that enough, enough, we can't go on. But that refusal, that rage became transformed into a process of creation. In other words, it's not just a negation, it's a negation and creation. Not just an 'against', it's an against and beyond, the transformation of rage into a change here and now in the city of Athens. And this change seems to be crucial in two respects. Firstly, by being a garden, it announces that what we need is not just a change in our own social relations but also a change in our relation with other forms of life, with non-human forms of life. In other words, a garden has the special feature of saying that any anticapitalism, any communism must be based on a different relation with the plants and animals that surround us. And secondly, I think it's crucial in this garden that the whole process creates a different set of social relations. It's a process of creating a no-go area, if you like, creating a crack in the logic of capitalist social cohesion. That people involved in the park put up, they don't in fact, but symbolically you can imagine them putting
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up signs around the garden saying "capital keep out, here we are going to create something
up signs around the garden saying "capital keep out, here we are going to create something
Slavoj Žižek
different, here we are creating something
different, here we are creating something
unknown
according to
according to
Slavoj Žižek
a different logic, here we are not going to measure land according to the price per square meter, here we are going to appreciate land by the pleasure it gives to us and our children." So these non-capitalist, it seems to me that they are non-capitalist social relations, non-capitalist in the sense that they break with the logic of capital, that they consciously create relations that
a different logic, here we are not going to measure land according to the price per square meter, here we are going to appreciate land by the pleasure it gives to us and our children." So these non-capitalist, it seems to me that they are non-capitalist social relations, non-capitalist in the sense that they break with the logic of capital, that they consciously create relations that
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are asymmetrical in relation to capitalism, relations of horizontality, relations of cooperation, relations of friendship, of love if you like, relations that do not fit into the logic of capital. So you've got the creation then in this area of a communal structure, something that develops and takes up and develops the whole communal tradition of anticapitalism, the whole way in which the movement has always tried to develop, to organize itself, to find forms of taking decisions that are horizontal, that involve everybody in the struggle of capitalism. So you could think of the garden as a space of communism. That communism then exists, it is not
are asymmetrical in relation to capitalism, relations of horizontality, relations of cooperation, relations of friendship, of love if you like, relations that do not fit into the logic of capital. So you've got the creation then in this area of a communal structure, something that develops and takes up and develops the whole communal tradition of anticapitalism, the whole way in which the movement has always tried to develop, to organize itself, to find forms of taking decisions that are horizontal, that involve everybody in the struggle of capitalism. So you could think of the garden as a space of communism. That communism then exists, it is not
Slavoj Žižek
in the far-off future because we don't
in the far-off future because we don't
unknown
know if there's going to be a far-off future. Communism exists and it exists in the interstices of capitalism, that's where it exists. And it exists in the interstices of capital as an interstitial growth in, against and beyond capital. And it is always difficult and it is always contradictory and of course there are problems and of course there are conflicts and of course the people who run the garden have the problem of how do they keep out the police, how do they deal with drug addicts, how do they deal with drug pushers, how do they actually create and maintain it as a real communal space. But it seems to me that there is no other way we can think about revolution, that the only possible way we can think
know if there's going to be a far-off future. Communism exists and it exists in the interstices of capitalism, that's where it exists. And it exists in the interstices of capital as an interstitial growth in, against and beyond capital. And it is always difficult and it is always contradictory and of course there are problems and of course there are conflicts and of course the people who run the garden have the problem of how do they keep out the police, how do they deal with drug addicts, how do they deal with drug pushers, how do they actually create and maintain it as a real communal space. But it seems to me that there is no other way we can think about revolution, that the only possible way we can think
Slavoj Žižek
about revolution is as the
about revolution is as the
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creation, expansion, multiplication and confluence of such communal spaces, of such cracks in the texture of capitalist domination. And that seems ridiculous, it seems ridiculous until you begin to think that in fact this Navarino Park isn't just a kind of tiny local example as Slavoj would probably like me to say. But it is actually something that exists all over the place, that all over the place people create spaces, they create no-go areas, they
creation, expansion, multiplication and confluence of such communal spaces, of such cracks in the texture of capitalist domination. And that seems ridiculous, it seems ridiculous until you begin to think that in fact this Navarino Park isn't just a kind of tiny local example as Slavoj would probably like me to say. But it is actually something that exists all over the place, that all over the place people create spaces, they create no-go areas, they
unknown
create
create
unknown
areas in which they say "no, here capital
areas in which they say "no, here capital
unknown
will not come in, here we are going to develop our lives according to a different logic". And if you go to the southeast of Mexico, if you go to Chiapas to the Zapatista area, all around the Zapatista area there are signs saying "bad government stay out, here the people rule". But it's something that you can imagine in Navarino Park as I said, it's something that exists around occupied factories, it's something that exists say in the free software movement, it's something that we all do, it's something that we all do in our relations with our children, in our relations with our loved ones. We say "capital keep out, here we are doing something else, here we are developing different social relations". And when you begin to think of it like that, you begin to see that the world is not simply a world of domination, that the world is actually a world of cracks, a world of interstitial communism. So perhaps communism isn't the word, it isn't in fact communism, but you have perhaps not communism but communizing, a process of communizing in which people are trying to communize the society in many different ways. The only communism that we could really talk about in any full sense would be a world system in which we all participated in determining our own lives. But for the moment, and at least for the moment, all we have is these movements, these movements from the particular, these movements of communizing, of communization if you like. And to talk of experiences like that, to talk of it in terms of communizing I hope makes clear that I'm not thinking in micropolitics, it is not just the local, it is not just a garden. But if you think, it seems to me that it doesn't help to think of those spaces as autonomous spaces because autonomous spaces implies something self-contained. But they are cracks, and cracks move, cracks run, cracks shoot out in all directions, cracks come together. And they come together in ways that we can often not anticipate and not organize. So to think of radical social change, thoroughgoing change, we need to think of a confluence of cracks. But the question is, problem is that we don't have any model for talking about this confluence. We can say obviously that the confluence of the cracks, the coming together of the cracks requires some sort of organization. But this sort of organization is not institutionalization, because institutionalization doesn't work. And institutionalization doesn't work because the cracks by their nature are thresholds, they are opening to a different sort of society, to different sorts of social relations. And an institutionalization is always the imposition of the present upon the future. And that is why in fact institutions never work it seems to me as a way of promoting the confluence of cracks. How can we organize a revolution? As Raúl Zibechi says, we can't organize a revolution, in fact we can't organize a rebellion. Rebellion is a movement that nobody controls. What we can do is try and strengthen it, what we can do is try and promote these cracks, try and create and expand these cracks, but we can't institutionalize them, we can't organize them. And that is the answer to Slavoj's question about Evo Morales. In Bolivia between and you had a huge explosion of cracks, a huge explosion of communizing. And what the election of Morales did was to funnel that communizing process into its logical opposite. In other words, into state forms of organization and in many ways to bring that process to a closure. Not completely of course, because it's very contradictory, but that is what institutionalization
will not come in, here we are going to develop our lives according to a different logic". And if you go to the southeast of Mexico, if you go to Chiapas to the Zapatista area, all around the Zapatista area there are signs saying "bad government stay out, here the people rule". But it's something that you can imagine in Navarino Park as I said, it's something that exists around occupied factories, it's something that exists say in the free software movement, it's something that we all do, it's something that we all do in our relations with our children, in our relations with our loved ones. We say "capital keep out, here we are doing something else, here we are developing different social relations". And when you begin to think of it like that, you begin to see that the world is not simply a world of domination, that the world is actually a world of cracks, a world of interstitial communism. So perhaps communism isn't the word, it isn't in fact communism, but you have perhaps not communism but communizing, a process of communizing in which people are trying to communize the society in many different ways. The only communism that we could really talk about in any full sense would be a world system in which we all participated in determining our own lives. But for the moment, and at least for the moment, all we have is these movements, these movements from the particular, these movements of communizing, of communization if you like. And to talk of experiences like that, to talk of it in terms of communizing I hope makes clear that I'm not thinking in micropolitics, it is not just the local, it is not just a garden. But if you think, it seems to me that it doesn't help to think of those spaces as autonomous spaces because autonomous spaces implies something self-contained. But they are cracks, and cracks move, cracks run, cracks shoot out in all directions, cracks come together. And they come together in ways that we can often not anticipate and not organize. So to think of radical social change, thoroughgoing change, we need to think of a confluence of cracks. But the question is, problem is that we don't have any model for talking about this confluence. We can say obviously that the confluence of the cracks, the coming together of the cracks requires some sort of organization. But this sort of organization is not institutionalization, because institutionalization doesn't work. And institutionalization doesn't work because the cracks by their nature are thresholds, they are opening to a different sort of society, to different sorts of social relations. And an institutionalization is always the imposition of the present upon the future. And that is why in fact institutions never work it seems to me as a way of promoting the confluence of cracks. How can we organize a revolution? As Raúl Zibechi says, we can't organize a revolution, in fact we can't organize a rebellion. Rebellion is a movement that nobody controls. What we can do is try and strengthen it, what we can do is try and promote these cracks, try and create and expand these cracks, but we can't institutionalize them, we can't organize them. And that is the answer to Slavoj's question about Evo Morales. In Bolivia between and you had a huge explosion of cracks, a huge explosion of communizing. And what the election of Morales did was to funnel that communizing process into its logical opposite. In other words, into state forms of organization and in many ways to bring that process to a closure. Not completely of course, because it's very contradictory, but that is what institutionalization
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does, it kills cracks. Communism, communizing and statification are processes that move in opposite directions. So then what? How do we promote, how do we think about the confluence of cracks? How do we think about strengthening the communizing process? I think that the only way perhaps, or the best way is to think in terms of resonances, in terms of radiations, in terms of light shining in the dark. For me Navarino Park is a light that shines in the dark, and the dark is a very, very, very dark dark. But it's a light that shines and it's a light that lights up the dark and you look around, look around and you can begin to see those other lights and that is what we have to do, that is what we have to do, we have to strengthen those lights and create those lights and that for me is communism. We've had lots and lots of slips put in for contribution and also a lot of questions to read out. I'll fit in as many as I can in the next minutes. The first speaker will be Bassam Chit from Lebanon followed by Dusko Bolatovic from Montenegro. There's a microphone in the middle and one at the front, so if you come and use a microphone. Just while the speakers are coming up, I'll read the first couple of questions. May we have quiet please? I'll read them while they walk. The first question is from Chris Braburn, sorry. Bearing in mind that there have been no communist regimes that have survived more than years, why should I believe that communism has a real chance of becoming a reality? The second is from Alice Randerson from Communism for Dummies magazine. This is directed to Slavoj. Slavoj, do you do drugs? What is your attitude to drugs? What would be the role of drugs in a communist society? The third question is from Pauline Wheat Bowen from Unison. Would you say that communism is not only possible but inevitable? Okay, so the first speaker is Bassam and then Dusko. You've got three minutes to speak and I'll tap the microphone. The first thing that really hit me, the issue of communizing and the creation of spaces and all of these things. Honestly, I only see it happening in places where it can happen. I mean in places for example in the Middle East, it's impossible. You'll have tanks in a few minutes in front of you. What do you do with that? This is where you have to organize resistance and when you look at the issue of resistance and how you deal with all of these things. One of the trials that happened for example in the and in Lebanon, some people decided to start up a commune and they want to break totally with capital. One question was asked to them in a meeting and nobody answered. How do you get on a bus from one place to another? Who creates the bus? Who drives the bus? Who organizes the process of transportation? Who organizes all of these things that happen in the market? Talking about spaces and creation of different communization, it's for me it's more of a romantic luxury than actually because
does, it kills cracks. Communism, communizing and statification are processes that move in opposite directions. So then what? How do we promote, how do we think about the confluence of cracks? How do we think about strengthening the communizing process? I think that the only way perhaps, or the best way is to think in terms of resonances, in terms of radiations, in terms of light shining in the dark. For me Navarino Park is a light that shines in the dark, and the dark is a very, very, very dark dark. But it's a light that shines and it's a light that lights up the dark and you look around, look around and you can begin to see those other lights and that is what we have to do, that is what we have to do, we have to strengthen those lights and create those lights and that for me is communism. We've had lots and lots of slips put in for contribution and also a lot of questions to read out. I'll fit in as many as I can in the next minutes. The first speaker will be Bassam Chit from Lebanon followed by Dusko Bolatovic from Montenegro. There's a microphone in the middle and one at the front, so if you come and use a microphone. Just while the speakers are coming up, I'll read the first couple of questions. May we have quiet please? I'll read them while they walk. The first question is from Chris Braburn, sorry. Bearing in mind that there have been no communist regimes that have survived more than years, why should I believe that communism has a real chance of becoming a reality? The second is from Alice Randerson from Communism for Dummies magazine. This is directed to Slavoj. Slavoj, do you do drugs? What is your attitude to drugs? What would be the role of drugs in a communist society? The third question is from Pauline Wheat Bowen from Unison. Would you say that communism is not only possible but inevitable? Okay, so the first speaker is Bassam and then Dusko. You've got three minutes to speak and I'll tap the microphone. The first thing that really hit me, the issue of communizing and the creation of spaces and all of these things. Honestly, I only see it happening in places where it can happen. I mean in places for example in the Middle East, it's impossible. You'll have tanks in a few minutes in front of you. What do you do with that? This is where you have to organize resistance and when you look at the issue of resistance and how you deal with all of these things. One of the trials that happened for example in the and in Lebanon, some people decided to start up a commune and they want to break totally with capital. One question was asked to them in a meeting and nobody answered. How do you get on a bus from one place to another? Who creates the bus? Who drives the bus? Who organizes the process of transportation? Who organizes all of these things that happen in the market? Talking about spaces and creation of different communization, it's for me it's more of a romantic luxury than actually because
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the real thing is how do you organize the production process which we all survive on? We cannot survive without organizing how we live on a daily basis. And another thing is one park does not, it brings hope because they won a battle, they did not communize, they did not create communism because communism is on the picket line, is in demonstrations, is when you go into fight with the police and all of these things where all of society is being then we can talk about communism. It doesn't start in bits and pieces, it starts when the struggle hits the peak and then you start seeing the future because you start seeing the potential of the population organizing itself in its totality, not in bits and pieces. Because organizing tens of people or hundreds of people is not enough. That's what happened for example in when the Israeli attack. Beirut was organized by different grassroots groups, it was not organized by the state. The state did not exist. One week after, the state intervened in every single locality and then they banned aid from different grassroots groups. What do you do in these things? You cannot leave and keep the space and leave the other spaces being attacked by the state. You have to go there and fight them as well. This is how you spread it. And you don't spread it by spaces, you spread it by struggle. Thank you. So the next speaker is Dusko and he'll be followed by Rachel Eckold from Waltham Forest. Hello to everyone. I'm British-Montenegrin. I used to live here for years and I arrived in I moved back in to Montenegro and this spring I was chosen vice-president of Communist Party of Montenegro. This party used to be leading party in North Yugoslavia, but with disintegration Yugoslavia and counter-revolution we lost almost everything. We don't have anything, we don't have any property, because was taken over by counter-revolution when was actually made dictatorship and we had completely change of government in Montenegro. Our Communist Party changed name to Democratic Socialist Party, what is not democratic at all, nor what is not socialist. What they done? They privatized everything, they destroyed everything what three generations our grandparents, our parents and my generation built in Yugoslavia. They destroyed in years what we were building since in whole 20th century. They completely destroyed this thing. What they done? They first they legally take all property. Property was the government, all factory was property of workers. And it wasn't actually property of government. They legally just privatized all this property. And now there is not even workers anymore because they lost all factory. They privatized and they closed. This is what is happening. And Communist Party at this moment is completely without any power. I'm from member of Communist Party. I'm youngest member. That's why Communist Party is so weak because most of them are really old people, over years old. Young people, they don't know much about that and it's very difficult for me and little bit younger member to organize a program and show them what was actually Yugoslavia years ago. And many people don't know what actually, you know, all this was happening in Sarajevo, Serbia, Bosnia, but you don't know how was economic status in former Yugoslavia. when International Monetary Fund wanted to destroy Yugoslavia and they asked to close banks because bank wasn't
the real thing is how do you organize the production process which we all survive on? We cannot survive without organizing how we live on a daily basis. And another thing is one park does not, it brings hope because they won a battle, they did not communize, they did not create communism because communism is on the picket line, is in demonstrations, is when you go into fight with the police and all of these things where all of society is being then we can talk about communism. It doesn't start in bits and pieces, it starts when the struggle hits the peak and then you start seeing the future because you start seeing the potential of the population organizing itself in its totality, not in bits and pieces. Because organizing tens of people or hundreds of people is not enough. That's what happened for example in when the Israeli attack. Beirut was organized by different grassroots groups, it was not organized by the state. The state did not exist. One week after, the state intervened in every single locality and then they banned aid from different grassroots groups. What do you do in these things? You cannot leave and keep the space and leave the other spaces being attacked by the state. You have to go there and fight them as well. This is how you spread it. And you don't spread it by spaces, you spread it by struggle. Thank you. So the next speaker is Dusko and he'll be followed by Rachel Eckold from Waltham Forest. Hello to everyone. I'm British-Montenegrin. I used to live here for years and I arrived in I moved back in to Montenegro and this spring I was chosen vice-president of Communist Party of Montenegro. This party used to be leading party in North Yugoslavia, but with disintegration Yugoslavia and counter-revolution we lost almost everything. We don't have anything, we don't have any property, because was taken over by counter-revolution when was actually made dictatorship and we had completely change of government in Montenegro. Our Communist Party changed name to Democratic Socialist Party, what is not democratic at all, nor what is not socialist. What they done? They privatized everything, they destroyed everything what three generations our grandparents, our parents and my generation built in Yugoslavia. They destroyed in years what we were building since in whole 20th century. They completely destroyed this thing. What they done? They first they legally take all property. Property was the government, all factory was property of workers. And it wasn't actually property of government. They legally just privatized all this property. And now there is not even workers anymore because they lost all factory. They privatized and they closed. This is what is happening. And Communist Party at this moment is completely without any power. I'm from member of Communist Party. I'm youngest member. That's why Communist Party is so weak because most of them are really old people, over years old. Young people, they don't know much about that and it's very difficult for me and little bit younger member to organize a program and show them what was actually Yugoslavia years ago. And many people don't know what actually, you know, all this was happening in Sarajevo, Serbia, Bosnia, but you don't know how was economic status in former Yugoslavia. when International Monetary Fund wanted to destroy Yugoslavia and they asked to close banks because bank wasn't
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even government, it was controlled by workers. You know, Žižek knows that very well. I definitely don't know that at any point banks were controlled by workers. I'm sorry, that's Yugoslavia myth. Sorry. All right, okay, sorry. And they wanted to dismantle. All right, this is what I wanted to say. There is big problem of Montenegrin government they want to join NATO. Only way to stop them is to take out this government and to make some
even government, it was controlled by workers. You know, Žižek knows that very well. I definitely don't know that at any point banks were controlled by workers. I'm sorry, that's Yugoslavia myth. Sorry. All right, okay, sorry. And they wanted to dismantle. All right, this is what I wanted to say. There is big problem of Montenegrin government they want to join NATO. Only way to stop them is to take out this government and to make some
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kind of demonstration against joining NATO. And I mean this is only way. What I just ask, what I will ask from British people to help us organize a referendum what is not legally obliged by our government to be done. This is what I wanted. Before Rachel speaks, I've got a couple more questions to read out. This is from Toros. Is there a possibility for Marxists and anarchists to work together in the aim of reaching a communist world since their conceptualization of communism is generally the same? And secondly from Mark from LSE. Is democracy the biggest obstacle to stopping irreversible climate change before it becomes irreversible in about years, he says. Okay, the speaker after Rachel will be Paul Holbrow from Brixton. Hi. I want to take issue with John Holloway really, because I think listening to him, it seems to me that he underestimates what
kind of demonstration against joining NATO. And I mean this is only way. What I just ask, what I will ask from British people to help us organize a referendum what is not legally obliged by our government to be done. This is what I wanted. Before Rachel speaks, I've got a couple more questions to read out. This is from Toros. Is there a possibility for Marxists and anarchists to work together in the aim of reaching a communist world since their conceptualization of communism is generally the same? And secondly from Mark from LSE. Is democracy the biggest obstacle to stopping irreversible climate change before it becomes irreversible in about years, he says. Okay, the speaker after Rachel will be Paul Holbrow from Brixton. Hi. I want to take issue with John Holloway really, because I think listening to him, it seems to me that he underestimates what
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capitalism does to the human condition. Capitalism makes us alienated. Marx described a process where what is human becomes animal and we can only feel ourselves when we are doing the animal. And it's through our labor, which is what actually creates us as something special, that gets taken away from us and completely perverts our lives. It means that we can't imagine all our capabilities because of the world that we live in. And that relationship doesn't just stop at work. So we don't get rid of alienation when we leave work, it carries all through our lives, which is partly why so many people feel that they can't think, that they feel that they can't dream. And it's through resistance that you do see, but partly you have to dream if you are a Marxist and want to imagine a better world. Part of keeping you going is thinking about different possibilities. But it's important to think also and realize that your dreams are based in the world that we live in. So if you just think about a health care worker, as far as I can get when thinking about health work is better hospitals, because that's what I've known, that's what health care is, nicer drugs, more research on drugs and better hospitals. But actually, in a whole change in revolution, everything gets up and played for grabs and in that, all our ideas change. And what's exciting about within resistance is that dreams and dreamers are created. And those dreams are sometimes contingent, and you think about from the early Chartists and their sort of dreams about wanting land and wanting more. But one of the main things that come that people want is to be in the driving seat of their own minds. And I think that's what John Holloway doesn't see. If all we can have is a park or a series of parks, then we're not fundamentally changing and it's a funny thing because it's like we
capitalism does to the human condition. Capitalism makes us alienated. Marx described a process where what is human becomes animal and we can only feel ourselves when we are doing the animal. And it's through our labor, which is what actually creates us as something special, that gets taken away from us and completely perverts our lives. It means that we can't imagine all our capabilities because of the world that we live in. And that relationship doesn't just stop at work. So we don't get rid of alienation when we leave work, it carries all through our lives, which is partly why so many people feel that they can't think, that they feel that they can't dream. And it's through resistance that you do see, but partly you have to dream if you are a Marxist and want to imagine a better world. Part of keeping you going is thinking about different possibilities. But it's important to think also and realize that your dreams are based in the world that we live in. So if you just think about a health care worker, as far as I can get when thinking about health work is better hospitals, because that's what I've known, that's what health care is, nicer drugs, more research on drugs and better hospitals. But actually, in a whole change in revolution, everything gets up and played for grabs and in that, all our ideas change. And what's exciting about within resistance is that dreams and dreamers are created. And those dreams are sometimes contingent, and you think about from the early Chartists and their sort of dreams about wanting land and wanting more. But one of the main things that come that people want is to be in the driving seat of their own minds. And I think that's what John Holloway doesn't see. If all we can have is a park or a series of parks, then we're not fundamentally changing and it's a funny thing because it's like we
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need to realize, we need to dream, but we also
need to realize, we need to dream, but we also
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need to realize that our alienation perverts our dreams. It's
need to realize that our alienation perverts our dreams. It's
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only in actively changing the world that we can unpervert our dreams and really release our own imagination and dream the dreams we need to dream. Before Paul speaks, I've got a couple more questions. This is from Rifat. Does it not signify that the horizon of capitalism has not been transcended if communism is still defined within the framework of the terms of economic production? And secondly from Oliver from Germany. Don't we need socialism first and only then communism? After Paul will be Tomas Franka from Czech Republic. Comrades, these debates are fantastically important because they are a real riposte to those who argue that Marxism is a dead dogma. It is not. It is a tool to try to explain the world. But I
only in actively changing the world that we can unpervert our dreams and really release our own imagination and dream the dreams we need to dream. Before Paul speaks, I've got a couple more questions. This is from Rifat. Does it not signify that the horizon of capitalism has not been transcended if communism is still defined within the framework of the terms of economic production? And secondly from Oliver from Germany. Don't we need socialism first and only then communism? After Paul will be Tomas Franka from Czech Republic. Comrades, these debates are fantastically important because they are a real riposte to those who argue that Marxism is a dead dogma. It is not. It is a tool to try to explain the world. But I
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must say that both to Slavoj and to John that my perception of the world differs radically from theirs. John mentions Navarino Park, Slavoj mentions the anti-capitalist overload. Now, I think it's very difficult to explain to Greek workers that there is an anti-capitalist overload in Greece when they're being asked to take a percent cut in their wages. I think it is also, I think it is also quite frankly unbelievable to point to Navarino Park as a way of resisting the vicious attacks of the Greek government and indeed followed by other European governments across the continent. And it seems to me therefore that where we in the Socialist Workers Party differ from those other people on the platform is that we believe that our tradition looks at the democracy of workers in struggle. So that of course there is a perception in China that Foxconn is going to herald a more tolerant Chinese working class. But comrades, I do not believe that for one moment. The Chinese ruling class is a vicious ruling class that will use any means possible in order to hold down the Chinese workers. And what Foxconn have done is to frighten the Chinese ruling class into trying to hide their weakness. And therefore I believe that revolutionary Marxists say that the question of workers' struggle, and I don't agree with Slavoj, the question of workers' councils, of councils of trade unionists and neighborhoods, they are not an imposition from revolutionary Marxists, they are an imposition from the experience of workers in struggle. What I believe we've heard tonight from those two is very interesting, very entertaining, but in no way points a way forward to change this rotten world. Before Thomas speaks, I have a couple more questions to read out. And I'll just point out I've had this many questions so we won't get through them all. The first question is from Richard from the CWU to Slavoj. We now have the new international philanthropists like Bill Gates throwing money at good causes. I wonder if you could say a few words about these good people, or neo-communists or neo-paternalists or whatever name you'd care to give them. And the other question is: please justify Slavoj's view about direct democracy that it is an illusion, especially if you take into consideration the huge capabilities of computer networking. And after Thomas will be Judith Orr. Comrade Žižek I want to thank you for
must say that both to Slavoj and to John that my perception of the world differs radically from theirs. John mentions Navarino Park, Slavoj mentions the anti-capitalist overload. Now, I think it's very difficult to explain to Greek workers that there is an anti-capitalist overload in Greece when they're being asked to take a percent cut in their wages. I think it is also, I think it is also quite frankly unbelievable to point to Navarino Park as a way of resisting the vicious attacks of the Greek government and indeed followed by other European governments across the continent. And it seems to me therefore that where we in the Socialist Workers Party differ from those other people on the platform is that we believe that our tradition looks at the democracy of workers in struggle. So that of course there is a perception in China that Foxconn is going to herald a more tolerant Chinese working class. But comrades, I do not believe that for one moment. The Chinese ruling class is a vicious ruling class that will use any means possible in order to hold down the Chinese workers. And what Foxconn have done is to frighten the Chinese ruling class into trying to hide their weakness. And therefore I believe that revolutionary Marxists say that the question of workers' struggle, and I don't agree with Slavoj, the question of workers' councils, of councils of trade unionists and neighborhoods, they are not an imposition from revolutionary Marxists, they are an imposition from the experience of workers in struggle. What I believe we've heard tonight from those two is very interesting, very entertaining, but in no way points a way forward to change this rotten world. Before Thomas speaks, I have a couple more questions to read out. And I'll just point out I've had this many questions so we won't get through them all. The first question is from Richard from the CWU to Slavoj. We now have the new international philanthropists like Bill Gates throwing money at good causes. I wonder if you could say a few words about these good people, or neo-communists or neo-paternalists or whatever name you'd care to give them. And the other question is: please justify Slavoj's view about direct democracy that it is an illusion, especially if you take into consideration the huge capabilities of computer networking. And after Thomas will be Judith Orr. Comrade Žižek I want to thank you for
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three things. I want to thank you that you as an
three things. I want to thank you that you as an
Slavoj Žižek
Eastern European, as an anti-Stalinist and former dissident have put Lenin back
Eastern European, as an anti-Stalinist and former dissident have put Lenin back
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on the map, to get Lenin into the financial times, that's a wonderful thing. I want to thank you for coming to our demonstration in Prague against the missile defense shield the US wanted to establish in the Czech Republic. And third, I want to thank you for being frank in your last interview for the Guardian where you admit to
on the map, to get Lenin into the financial times, that's a wonderful thing. I want to thank you for coming to our demonstration in Prague against the missile defense shield the US wanted to establish in the Czech Republic. And third, I want to thank you for being frank in your last interview for the Guardian where you admit to
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bluffs and, because some people have taken all of your writing at face value and it has done some damage I think. I'm also a bit puzzled that you still hang onto Bill Gates and oil in Venezuela as being in contradiction to Marx. That's one of the first things I think that the value theory of labor actually
bluffs and, because some people have taken all of your writing at face value and it has done some damage I think. I'm also a bit puzzled that you still hang onto Bill Gates and oil in Venezuela as being in contradiction to Marx. That's one of the first things I think that the value theory of labor actually
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when you apply it to products that are produced in perfect markets. Bill Gates and oil in Venezuela are very much about monopoly and therefore the labor theory of value doesn't apply directly. Did you read Marx? Did you read Marx? How can you say this if you claim that you read Marx? I mean now you are talking... okay sorry, no. You just beat me and... I think what in the same interview in the Guardian you said that you are baffled by your popularity. I think what your popularity is about is an expression of the zeitgeist. When we follow what have been the icons of the left over the last years, then I think there's been quite a development, that you are talking about the polarization, that it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. You think that you talk about thinking globally, acting locally, but as part of humanity, not as part only of a local struggle. And you bring to the fore the immediacy, the importance of Lenin in that, looking at the actuality of revolution in the here and now, the cracks in the system not as a locale in the center of Athens, but in the social relations. In Eastern Europe we actually have the anti-capitalism of corruption or corruption is... capitalism can solve this. Okay, and what we have in the Czech Republic I think is that we made the whole Czech Republic the garden, and especially the place where the United States wanted to put their missile base because we showed them the door. We were able to defeat their plans. Okay and I'd like to apologize to all of these people who I haven't been able to either read their question or call them. Judith will have to be the last speaker so that I've got time to bring all three back. So thanks again for everyone who contributed. I think that when John Holloway asked you know, why is everybody queuing and it really was incredible to see that queue and incredible to see the size of all these meetings at Marxism and I think it's what the speakers said, is that you know, we can all agree that we hate capitalism, can't we? I mean it's clear to us all what is wrong with capitalism and to so many billions of people around the world and maybe
when you apply it to products that are produced in perfect markets. Bill Gates and oil in Venezuela are very much about monopoly and therefore the labor theory of value doesn't apply directly. Did you read Marx? Did you read Marx? How can you say this if you claim that you read Marx? I mean now you are talking... okay sorry, no. You just beat me and... I think what in the same interview in the Guardian you said that you are baffled by your popularity. I think what your popularity is about is an expression of the zeitgeist. When we follow what have been the icons of the left over the last years, then I think there's been quite a development, that you are talking about the polarization, that it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. You think that you talk about thinking globally, acting locally, but as part of humanity, not as part only of a local struggle. And you bring to the fore the immediacy, the importance of Lenin in that, looking at the actuality of revolution in the here and now, the cracks in the system not as a locale in the center of Athens, but in the social relations. In Eastern Europe we actually have the anti-capitalism of corruption or corruption is... capitalism can solve this. Okay, and what we have in the Czech Republic I think is that we made the whole Czech Republic the garden, and especially the place where the United States wanted to put their missile base because we showed them the door. We were able to defeat their plans. Okay and I'd like to apologize to all of these people who I haven't been able to either read their question or call them. Judith will have to be the last speaker so that I've got time to bring all three back. So thanks again for everyone who contributed. I think that when John Holloway asked you know, why is everybody queuing and it really was incredible to see that queue and incredible to see the size of all these meetings at Marxism and I think it's what the speakers said, is that you know, we can all agree that we hate capitalism, can't we? I mean it's clear to us all what is wrong with capitalism and to so many billions of people around the world and maybe
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now more clear to more millions of people than really we've seen in some generations in terms of what's happened with the crisis. But of course what we're debating tonight is what is the alternative and
now more clear to more millions of people than really we've seen in some generations in terms of what's happened with the crisis. But of course what we're debating tonight is what is the alternative and
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then how are we going to get there? Isn't it? Those are the things that we can disagree on or debate if you like, if we're all agreed that what's happening right now we don't like. And I mean absolutely
then how are we going to get there? Isn't it? Those are the things that we can disagree on or debate if you like, if we're all agreed that what's happening right now we don't like. And I mean absolutely
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clearly if we are looking at Eastern Europe, if we look at China, if we look at other countries that claim in some way to be an alternative to capitalism, they're not. They're another form of capitalism, aren't they? That's proved by what's happening to the Chinese workers who are fighting back and who knows if some of them are being wound up but to me this is people who are exploited fighting back even under the most repressive, repressive conditions. And I think so even in those countries that claim to be something different there is a social force being created that can actually challenge those
clearly if we are looking at Eastern Europe, if we look at China, if we look at other countries that claim in some way to be an alternative to capitalism, they're not. They're another form of capitalism, aren't they? That's proved by what's happening to the Chinese workers who are fighting back and who knows if some of them are being wound up but to me this is people who are exploited fighting back even under the most repressive, repressive conditions. And I think so even in those countries that claim to be something different there is a social force being created that can actually challenge those
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societies in the way they're run and that's the working class. And
societies in the way they're run and that's the working class. And
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I think the thing about the working class that is so unique is the ruling class and capitalists need it. Because how else do they create their surplus? How else is the wealth created if they don't have workers? And therefore we have a force that is created within the belly of the beast that can actually challenge the system. I don't think we can just create lots of little bits of socialism until they don't notice that we've taken over the world. I think we have to create a force that can actually smash it and change it. My point is that Marx said that the history of all class society is the history of class struggle. Struggle will happen whatever we decide here tonight. There will be struggles, whether here or China or everywhere around the world. Struggle will happen, it's a product of capitalism, of a minority exploiting a majority. What isn't predestined is of course whether our side will win. And that's the difference, isn't it? What sort of political leadership will the movement have, will the workers have, will people who come behind? And that's actually what Marxism is all about. I think we do need political leadership of the real force that can change the world and that is socialist politics and the idea that actually we can smash the system and replace it with, as the old anti-capitalist slogan said, something nicer, something a lot nicer, something a lot different where there really is true liberation for the whole of humanity. Just before I'll bring the speakers
I think the thing about the working class that is so unique is the ruling class and capitalists need it. Because how else do they create their surplus? How else is the wealth created if they don't have workers? And therefore we have a force that is created within the belly of the beast that can actually challenge the system. I don't think we can just create lots of little bits of socialism until they don't notice that we've taken over the world. I think we have to create a force that can actually smash it and change it. My point is that Marx said that the history of all class society is the history of class struggle. Struggle will happen whatever we decide here tonight. There will be struggles, whether here or China or everywhere around the world. Struggle will happen, it's a product of capitalism, of a minority exploiting a majority. What isn't predestined is of course whether our side will win. And that's the difference, isn't it? What sort of political leadership will the movement have, will the workers have, will people who come behind? And that's actually what Marxism is all about. I think we do need political leadership of the real force that can change the world and that is socialist politics and the idea that actually we can smash the system and replace it with, as the old anti-capitalist slogan said, something nicer, something a lot nicer, something a lot different where there really is true liberation for the whole of humanity. Just before I'll bring the speakers
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back in the same order they spoke. Just to let you know, they'll all be signing copies of their books if you want to buy them on the stall outside, just outside these doors in the foyer. We do have to leave the room because there's a play in here straight after this meeting. So first of all, I'll bring back Alex. Well it's frustrating because there's so many different
back in the same order they spoke. Just to let you know, they'll all be signing copies of their books if you want to buy them on the stall outside, just outside these doors in the foyer. We do have to leave the room because there's a play in here straight after this meeting. So first of all, I'll bring back Alex. Well it's frustrating because there's so many different
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points that have come up and I'm just going to deal with three, three points. First of all, Dusko and absolutely with you in
points that have come up and I'm just going to deal with three, three points. First of all, Dusko and absolutely with you in
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demonstrating against NATO. I'm absolutely not with you when it comes to defending the old Stalinist regime before The worst for people who are real communists, communists like us to quote a book by Negri and Deleuze, the biggest problem that communists like us have is the heritage of the Stalinist regimes and we have to insist on an absolute distance from what we're fighting for and the old regimes. That's one point. Secondly Slavoj, you really, all this stuff about intellectual property and immaterial labor, honestly it's a total dead end. Go don't go near it, honestly. I mean look at Bill Gates. At the minute Apple has overtaken Microsoft in terms of stock market value. What does Apple sell? It doesn't sell software, it crucially isn't to do with intellectual property, it sells things, it sells very nice things, computers and iPads and things like that. It produces material goods that are made by those workers in Foxconn. All this stuff about immaterial labor, what Marx shows is that under capitalism all labor is immaterial because the, and John is very good about this in his new book Crack
demonstrating against NATO. I'm absolutely not with you when it comes to defending the old Stalinist regime before The worst for people who are real communists, communists like us to quote a book by Negri and Deleuze, the biggest problem that communists like us have is the heritage of the Stalinist regimes and we have to insist on an absolute distance from what we're fighting for and the old regimes. That's one point. Secondly Slavoj, you really, all this stuff about intellectual property and immaterial labor, honestly it's a total dead end. Go don't go near it, honestly. I mean look at Bill Gates. At the minute Apple has overtaken Microsoft in terms of stock market value. What does Apple sell? It doesn't sell software, it crucially isn't to do with intellectual property, it sells things, it sells very nice things, computers and iPads and things like that. It produces material goods that are made by those workers in Foxconn. All this stuff about immaterial labor, what Marx shows is that under capitalism all labor is immaterial because the, and John is very good about this in his new book Crack
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Capitalism, because all the work that we do is
Capitalism, because all the work that we do is
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subject to the imperative logic of competition that means that our work, our
subject to the imperative logic of competition that means that our work, our
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productivity is constantly being compared
productivity is constantly being compared
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with the productivity and work of workers in other workplaces. We're subject, in other words, our actual, our concrete labor is transformed into the abstract labor which is the source of the profits that drive the system. That's the critical thing about Marx's theory of value. And all this stuff about services and you know, immaterial goods and immaterial labor is a total waste of time and you should just get away from that Slavoj because it's a big, a big mistake. Final point, final point to do with what John said. The picture that you paint John is incredibly inspiring, but the problem is that logic, that remorseless logic of capitalist competition, that logic of abstract labor constantly seeks to crush and to close those cracks. And the only way we can keep those cracks open and widen them is to establish a different social logic. And to do that we need power. And the thing that I really, I think I disagree with both of you about this, I don't think that power is reduced to what we could do when we could make a garden or form some better way
with the productivity and work of workers in other workplaces. We're subject, in other words, our actual, our concrete labor is transformed into the abstract labor which is the source of the profits that drive the system. That's the critical thing about Marx's theory of value. And all this stuff about services and you know, immaterial goods and immaterial labor is a total waste of time and you should just get away from that Slavoj because it's a big, a big mistake. Final point, final point to do with what John said. The picture that you paint John is incredibly inspiring, but the problem is that logic, that remorseless logic of capitalist competition, that logic of abstract labor constantly seeks to crush and to close those cracks. And the only way we can keep those cracks open and widen them is to establish a different social logic. And to do that we need power. And the thing that I really, I think I disagree with both of you about this, I don't think that power is reduced to what we could do when we could make a garden or form some better way
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of living, which people do do all the time. And I don't think power alternatively is just a matter of the existing state. I think there's a third form of power that comes
of living, which people do do all the time. And I don't think power alternatively is just a matter of the existing state. I think there's a third form of power that comes
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when people organize collectively to resist their exploitation and out of that power we can get a different way of running the world. And that's what will produce communism. Okay, again like you, I'm sorry, I mean there was such a, if not overload of anticapitalism at least overload of questions and
when people organize collectively to resist their exploitation and out of that power we can get a different way of running the world. And that's what will produce communism. Okay, again like you, I'm sorry, I mean there was such a, if not overload of anticapitalism at least overload of questions and
Cathy Newman
one cannot answer them all, so at least I would like to limit myself at least to answer yours, the two of you main point. First, as it was already noted, that metaphor of the garden keep capital out. I would also say there is nothing new, every capitalist system needs as its inherent component something like this. In traditional capitalism we had capital stay out of the family, capital stay out of the church and so on. A kind of a space outside. So for me, okay let me develop that. The problem is okay, garden, everything nice, okay. Let's see if there are drug dealers in that garden, there are women beaten and so on. What would you have done? Sorry to tell you, I would have called the police! If not, I would have organized very brutal thugs to keep violent people out. I'm sorry to tell you. Or let me go step further. We have not only a gardener, but a group of farmers putting together an efficient cooperative. Then of course the capitalist farmers don't just look and send us a telegram with best wishes, they organize a sabotage here and there to prove how a thing like this cannot function. What would you have done? I would have organized a counter-terror. I'm sorry to tell you. If they kill some of us, burn there, maybe they kill one of us, kill three of us and so on. I'm sorry to tell you this. Like Chavez now, I have great problems with Chavez. But as it is clear now, I was convinced by statement by Lawrence Eagleburger and so on, that this lack of food temporary in Venezuela, again I'm not totally defending Chavez, I'm referring to a very specific phenomenon of it can be proven beyond reasonable doubt that the lack of food in this state distribution stores in Venezuela is not just the spontaneity of the market where out of self-interest merchants operate like this, it's part of an orchestrated nature of the United States connected with
one cannot answer them all, so at least I would like to limit myself at least to answer yours, the two of you main point. First, as it was already noted, that metaphor of the garden keep capital out. I would also say there is nothing new, every capitalist system needs as its inherent component something like this. In traditional capitalism we had capital stay out of the family, capital stay out of the church and so on. A kind of a space outside. So for me, okay let me develop that. The problem is okay, garden, everything nice, okay. Let's see if there are drug dealers in that garden, there are women beaten and so on. What would you have done? Sorry to tell you, I would have called the police! If not, I would have organized very brutal thugs to keep violent people out. I'm sorry to tell you. Or let me go step further. We have not only a gardener, but a group of farmers putting together an efficient cooperative. Then of course the capitalist farmers don't just look and send us a telegram with best wishes, they organize a sabotage here and there to prove how a thing like this cannot function. What would you have done? I would have organized a counter-terror. I'm sorry to tell you. If they kill some of us, burn there, maybe they kill one of us, kill three of us and so on. I'm sorry to tell you this. Like Chavez now, I have great problems with Chavez. But as it is clear now, I was convinced by statement by Lawrence Eagleburger and so on, that this lack of food temporary in Venezuela, again I'm not totally defending Chavez, I'm referring to a very specific phenomenon of it can be proven beyond reasonable doubt that the lack of food in this state distribution stores in Venezuela is not just the spontaneity of the market where out of self-interest merchants operate like this, it's part of an orchestrated nature of the United States connected with
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local
local
unknown
saboteurs. What do you do here? I'm sorry to tell you, a limited amount of state terror is totally justified to me. You put police on them, you use secret police, you smash them and so on. Otherwise, sorry, then step down from power! Because you know, you use this wonderful poetic expression that you had all these gardens, gardens went wider wider and then Morales, you used the nice term, brought this to a logical conclusion. What is the logical conclusion? All Bolivia didn't become a garden. But the logical conclusion was that the left took power, controls police, controls up to a point, I know of the tensions, the army and so on. Which is why, which is why to refer to your example, the gardens, if I don't take the term garden in this isolated sense of where you go above, the gardens let's call them cracks, liberated territories, are I hope much
saboteurs. What do you do here? I'm sorry to tell you, a limited amount of state terror is totally justified to me. You put police on them, you use secret police, you smash them and so on. Otherwise, sorry, then step down from power! Because you know, you use this wonderful poetic expression that you had all these gardens, gardens went wider wider and then Morales, you used the nice term, brought this to a logical conclusion. What is the logical conclusion? All Bolivia didn't become a garden. But the logical conclusion was that the left took power, controls police, controls up to a point, I know of the tensions, the army and so on. Which is why, which is why to refer to your example, the gardens, if I don't take the term garden in this isolated sense of where you go above, the gardens let's call them cracks, liberated territories, are I hope much
unknown
safer because of that. Because you can count on the police that instead of annoying you, it will maybe even protect you. So I absolutely agree with both of you that power is not just state power. What nonetheless we all share I hope something, that power is not just state power, what really matters is local self-organization, or rather productive self-organization and so on and so on. I just have my doubts and this is the problem of councils and so on, to what extent can this local self-organization model be universalized? I think that we simply have to confront the problem, the problem of power. This is one thing. The second thing very quickly, as to this counter-attack, Greek made cynical my idea of overload. No, I was talking about propaganda in the wealthiest Western countries where my god, listen, look at Hollywood. It's almost difficult to find a movie having anything to do with business which doesn't in a ridiculous way portray a bad, egotist capitalist. And there are no limits here, remember that stupid second John Grisham movie, Pelican Brief, where even the evil capitalist is connected with the President of United States. My problem is not oh you see we are only anti-capitalist, no, my problem is why even such ideological topics which appear very radical really threaten no one, only make the system more efficient. That was my point of anticapitalist overload. And last, a more technical question with which I will not be afraid to conclude. This point first about working class exploitation all that complex and so on and so on. Sorry, but I definitely think that today it's much... first let me say something. I, it's so easy you know to play the old card, no, the working class will
safer because of that. Because you can count on the police that instead of annoying you, it will maybe even protect you. So I absolutely agree with both of you that power is not just state power. What nonetheless we all share I hope something, that power is not just state power, what really matters is local self-organization, or rather productive self-organization and so on and so on. I just have my doubts and this is the problem of councils and so on, to what extent can this local self-organization model be universalized? I think that we simply have to confront the problem, the problem of power. This is one thing. The second thing very quickly, as to this counter-attack, Greek made cynical my idea of overload. No, I was talking about propaganda in the wealthiest Western countries where my god, listen, look at Hollywood. It's almost difficult to find a movie having anything to do with business which doesn't in a ridiculous way portray a bad, egotist capitalist. And there are no limits here, remember that stupid second John Grisham movie, Pelican Brief, where even the evil capitalist is connected with the President of United States. My problem is not oh you see we are only anti-capitalist, no, my problem is why even such ideological topics which appear very radical really threaten no one, only make the system more efficient. That was my point of anticapitalist overload. And last, a more technical question with which I will not be afraid to conclude. This point first about working class exploitation all that complex and so on and so on. Sorry, but I definitely think that today it's much... first let me say something. I, it's so easy you know to play the old card, no, the working class will
Slavoj Žižek
arise against exploiters. I take very seriously communism and this is why for me really as you both emphasize it should be a real movement, not as my good friend Badiou is saying an idea of communism which then as he conceives from time to time it explodes like under Spartacus, Rosa Luxemburg and so on. That's not enough. What interests me, to put it in very naive terms, is where today do we see if not already elements of communism, at least to be very brutal but in the authentic Marxist sense, where do we see contradictions, antagonisms? This is for me the only real question my god. For which it is clear that even in the long term it will not be possible for no matter how reformed, democratic, multicultural, tolerant, liberal democratic capitalism will be able to not even resolve but even keep in check these antagonisms. And in a very modest way I try, precisely because I'm also like you guided by the problem, let's not dream about abstract communism, where do we see traces today? I claim ecology, I claim intellectual property, I claim I claim biogenetics, maybe the list is... I claim of course, and this for me is crucial, here for example I claim we should make a step further from Marx. Let me be very clear. For Marx the ideal radical pure form of capitalism was one in which legal equality, we are all citizens, I know you start to, you want to stop the voice of truth and so on... okay I but the whole point of Marx is that legal equality, we are all free citizens, is the very form of how in the civil society as legal free subjects we are exploited and so on and so on. What I claim, it's a very commonsensical claim empirically in the best British empiricism sense, is that obviously today's capitalism, this is for me the big meaning of things like which I agree with you in a mystified way are described by Agamben as homo sacer and all that, is that capitalism in order to function no longer can even afford this universal equality. It is receding from it. You have immigrants, you have les sans-papiers, you know what I mean. It has to create new and new de facto excluded second-class citizens and so on and so on. That's again another, my god, I'm very practical here, isn't this another side when we can start the struggle? As to Apple, you know I don't agree respectfully with your example. Yes I know Apple is selling products, Microsoft also, you buy a disc and so on. But I claim and it was proven that again the price of iPad is for me intellectual labor in what precise sense? In the sense that in the price of iPad, dollars and so on, the part of material production of it is practically negligible. It's not that you know Steve Jobs puts together the production cost and he says let's screw it with extra exploitation when we arrive at a price. It's a totally different logic. But again what makes me a little bit depressed, and I will get boos from this not applause, I want to be finished as the Jesus Christ at the end. It depresses me a little bit you know this rhetoric: "no revisionism, intellectual labor blah blah, nothing, working class" and so on. I don't... I think no, this is bad news but no matter how long you will wait you will not get a moment where this authentic working class the way we knew it will reappear and so on and so on. I claim that working class strikes are indeed strictly... you know like where do they fit the definition of working... if there is an absolute human tragedy today and typically those who speak all the time about human rights never mention it, is today's Congo. You cannot say this is working class. You know all these excluded, exploited in different ways, the problem is to bring all of them together. I stop. A problem, a problem is surely that we all live in, as we live in a society dominated by a suicidal dynamic. The dynamic which Marx analyzed in the law of value. The dynamic which structures production according to faster, faster, faster. Producing things, producing things that will sell, producing them as fast as possible, as quickly as possible. We know that we reproduce and reproduce this dynamic every time we produce value. We know that we do produce this dynamic every time we perform abstract or alienated labor. The question is how can we break that dynamic, because if we don't break it then it is very likely that we will destroy humanity in a reasonably short time, destroy humanity completely. Okay, how can we break that dynamic? It seems to me that we cannot break that dynamic by calling Tories scum. It doesn't help. We know that they're scum. We know that the other politicians are scum. Why waste our time saying it? We cannot do it either calling for socialist policies because anything that a state does, states are forms of organization so integrated into the reproduction of capital that they cannot break that dynamic. And if you look at what's happening in Bolivia. Bolivia is not trying to break that dynamic. What is happening in Bolivia, what is happening in Venezuela is very exciting indeed, but the dynamic of capitalist production is being reproduced in both places. We cannot break that dynamic by thinking we are going to create communism in years' time because we may not be around in years' time. It is ridiculous, it is absurd. I'm sorry Alex, your example of the museum was lovely, but it's very absurd to think of communism as a post-capitalist society someday. We cannot wait. How do we break the dynamic? The only way we can break the dynamic is by refusing and by doing things in a different way, by producing in a different way, by creating other social relations. And if we think of that then we can see that there are millions and millions of examples in the world of people dedicating their lives to doing just that. And sometimes these examples are pathetic, and sometimes these examples are so small that we can think we can just laugh at them, and sometimes we think of them as a tiny garden. But if you look at what's happened in Cuba, for example, there's been an explosion of tiny gardens by the people themselves so that they now produce percent of the food required for Havana within the city itself. And Alex says we need, if we want to build these cracks, if we want to expand these cracks, we need power. Yes, but we don't need their power, we need our
arise against exploiters. I take very seriously communism and this is why for me really as you both emphasize it should be a real movement, not as my good friend Badiou is saying an idea of communism which then as he conceives from time to time it explodes like under Spartacus, Rosa Luxemburg and so on. That's not enough. What interests me, to put it in very naive terms, is where today do we see if not already elements of communism, at least to be very brutal but in the authentic Marxist sense, where do we see contradictions, antagonisms? This is for me the only real question my god. For which it is clear that even in the long term it will not be possible for no matter how reformed, democratic, multicultural, tolerant, liberal democratic capitalism will be able to not even resolve but even keep in check these antagonisms. And in a very modest way I try, precisely because I'm also like you guided by the problem, let's not dream about abstract communism, where do we see traces today? I claim ecology, I claim intellectual property, I claim I claim biogenetics, maybe the list is... I claim of course, and this for me is crucial, here for example I claim we should make a step further from Marx. Let me be very clear. For Marx the ideal radical pure form of capitalism was one in which legal equality, we are all citizens, I know you start to, you want to stop the voice of truth and so on... okay I but the whole point of Marx is that legal equality, we are all free citizens, is the very form of how in the civil society as legal free subjects we are exploited and so on and so on. What I claim, it's a very commonsensical claim empirically in the best British empiricism sense, is that obviously today's capitalism, this is for me the big meaning of things like which I agree with you in a mystified way are described by Agamben as homo sacer and all that, is that capitalism in order to function no longer can even afford this universal equality. It is receding from it. You have immigrants, you have les sans-papiers, you know what I mean. It has to create new and new de facto excluded second-class citizens and so on and so on. That's again another, my god, I'm very practical here, isn't this another side when we can start the struggle? As to Apple, you know I don't agree respectfully with your example. Yes I know Apple is selling products, Microsoft also, you buy a disc and so on. But I claim and it was proven that again the price of iPad is for me intellectual labor in what precise sense? In the sense that in the price of iPad, dollars and so on, the part of material production of it is practically negligible. It's not that you know Steve Jobs puts together the production cost and he says let's screw it with extra exploitation when we arrive at a price. It's a totally different logic. But again what makes me a little bit depressed, and I will get boos from this not applause, I want to be finished as the Jesus Christ at the end. It depresses me a little bit you know this rhetoric: "no revisionism, intellectual labor blah blah, nothing, working class" and so on. I don't... I think no, this is bad news but no matter how long you will wait you will not get a moment where this authentic working class the way we knew it will reappear and so on and so on. I claim that working class strikes are indeed strictly... you know like where do they fit the definition of working... if there is an absolute human tragedy today and typically those who speak all the time about human rights never mention it, is today's Congo. You cannot say this is working class. You know all these excluded, exploited in different ways, the problem is to bring all of them together. I stop. A problem, a problem is surely that we all live in, as we live in a society dominated by a suicidal dynamic. The dynamic which Marx analyzed in the law of value. The dynamic which structures production according to faster, faster, faster. Producing things, producing things that will sell, producing them as fast as possible, as quickly as possible. We know that we reproduce and reproduce this dynamic every time we produce value. We know that we do produce this dynamic every time we perform abstract or alienated labor. The question is how can we break that dynamic, because if we don't break it then it is very likely that we will destroy humanity in a reasonably short time, destroy humanity completely. Okay, how can we break that dynamic? It seems to me that we cannot break that dynamic by calling Tories scum. It doesn't help. We know that they're scum. We know that the other politicians are scum. Why waste our time saying it? We cannot do it either calling for socialist policies because anything that a state does, states are forms of organization so integrated into the reproduction of capital that they cannot break that dynamic. And if you look at what's happening in Bolivia. Bolivia is not trying to break that dynamic. What is happening in Bolivia, what is happening in Venezuela is very exciting indeed, but the dynamic of capitalist production is being reproduced in both places. We cannot break that dynamic by thinking we are going to create communism in years' time because we may not be around in years' time. It is ridiculous, it is absurd. I'm sorry Alex, your example of the museum was lovely, but it's very absurd to think of communism as a post-capitalist society someday. We cannot wait. How do we break the dynamic? The only way we can break the dynamic is by refusing and by doing things in a different way, by producing in a different way, by creating other social relations. And if we think of that then we can see that there are millions and millions of examples in the world of people dedicating their lives to doing just that. And sometimes these examples are pathetic, and sometimes these examples are so small that we can think we can just laugh at them, and sometimes we think of them as a tiny garden. But if you look at what's happened in Cuba, for example, there's been an explosion of tiny gardens by the people themselves so that they now produce percent of the food required for Havana within the city itself. And Alex says we need, if we want to build these cracks, if we want to expand these cracks, we need power. Yes, but we don't need their power, we need our
unknown
power, we need our coming
power, we need our coming
Slavoj Žižek
together. We need to do things in a different way and if we create a community garden, of
together. We need to do things in a different way and if we create a community garden, of
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course we'll have problems because drug addicts go in, because drug pushers go in, because of course people will beat women. And do we call the police in then? Like hell we
course we'll have problems because drug addicts go in, because drug pushers go in, because of course people will beat women. And do we call the police in then? Like hell we
Slavoj Žižek
do! What do you do then? We don't call
do! What do you do then? We don't call
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the police because the Greek police are like the Greek police are supposed to be. If the Greek police are like the Mexican police then they will abuse those women systematically, they will not solve the problem. We do not... if we call in a power that is alien to us then we are reproducing their power. What we need, of course, is forms of community control over behavior in the garden. Not our own police, but certainly our own forms of vigilance, our own forms of control of behavior. And that is exactly what the, the, the gardens, the garden is doing in Greece and many other community gardens. Okay, so we need power, but we need our own power, not a power that we can take to a real movement. Communism, and that's what we've all said, the three of us, communism is the real movement of anti-capitalist struggle. But that real movement of anti-capitalist struggle, where do we find it? Where do we find the antagonism? We don't have to look to intellectual property or
the police because the Greek police are like the Greek police are supposed to be. If the Greek police are like the Mexican police then they will abuse those women systematically, they will not solve the problem. We do not... if we call in a power that is alien to us then we are reproducing their power. What we need, of course, is forms of community control over behavior in the garden. Not our own police, but certainly our own forms of vigilance, our own forms of control of behavior. And that is exactly what the, the, the gardens, the garden is doing in Greece and many other community gardens. Okay, so we need power, but we need our own power, not a power that we can take to a real movement. Communism, and that's what we've all said, the three of us, communism is the real movement of anti-capitalist struggle. But that real movement of anti-capitalist struggle, where do we find it? Where do we find the antagonism? We don't have to look to intellectual property or
unknown
or to China or to Greece or to Mexico or to Venezuela. The antagonism of capitalism is part of our everyday lives and the struggle against capitalism is part of our everyday lives. And not only of people who come to Marxism in but it is part of the everyday life of all of us who live in capitalism and that is why communism is a real possibility. It is a real possibility because it is a real actuality. And that's where we have to start. Thank you.
or to China or to Greece or to Mexico or to Venezuela. The antagonism of capitalism is part of our everyday lives and the struggle against capitalism is part of our everyday lives. And not only of people who come to Marxism in but it is part of the everyday life of all of us who live in capitalism and that is why communism is a real possibility. It is a real possibility because it is a real actuality. And that's where we have to start. Thank you.