Nomadic proletarians? No, thanks!
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2019-04-30 · 2:02:12 · 15,054 words
communism-socialismcapitalismideologypsychoanalysishegel-dialecticshistorygeopolitics-warrevolution-violencesubjectivitycinema-art-culturephilosophy-generaleconomics
Žižek delivers a two-day seminar talk (with Q&A) centered on the figure of the 'nomadic proletariat', refugees and displaced persons who are structurally 'less than nothing' within Marxist categories, reading Andrei Platonov's Soviet fiction as the best diagnostic of why communism fails to subsume this remainder. He then turns to Étienne Balibar's concept of 'total subsumption' and the redoubling of surplus value through investment in human capital (health, education), arguing this immanent self-referential loop is capitalism's structural crack rather than any external site of resistance. The Q&A ranges across Lacanian discourse theory, Antigone, freedom vs. desire, Julian Assange, and the difficulty of translating Lacanian concepts into collective political action.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 18
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
as “true measure of historicity”
Not that everything changes, but that certain things become impossible, the real index of historical transformation is when a formerly acceptable discourse or practice can no longer be openly advocated.
as “socialism in one country”
Stalin's program for normalization after years of revolutionary upheaval, Žižek offers a sociologically sympathetic reading: it was popular precisely because it promised respite from permanent emergency.
Marx's distinction between the sphere of necessary labor and the sphere of genuine freedom, Žižek argues history shows the opposite: true freedom is gained only through discipline and work, not beyond it.
as “nomadic proletariat”
Displaced refugees and stateless wanderers who are not proletarians in the strict Marxist sense but exist in an in-between netherworld produced by global capitalism, making classical class solidarity impossible.
Those who don't fit into the social order even as a zero, not merely excluded proletarians but people structurally outside any class position, unable to be subsumed.
Platonov's term for the uncountable remainder, homeless nomads who belong to no class category, trapped between life and death, social and biological, who Žižek reads as 'neighbors' in the biblical sense.
Lacan's discourse in which knowledge addresses the unaccountable object a with the aim of producing a subject, Žižek uses it to describe the Bolsheviks' civilizing project toward displaced nomads.
Used here in the University Discourse schema: the Bolsheviks' relationship to the prochie others, treating them as object a to be enlightened and transformed into modern subjects.
Lacan's notion of language as a material, senseless play of sound resemblances beyond semantic meaning, Žižek finds its concrete social instantiation in Platonov's depiction of illiterate peasants garbling Bolshevik slogans.
Implied in the discussion of how Bolshevik slogans failed to interpellate the prochie others, who absorbed revolutionary language in garbled, unrecognizable forms.
The self-referential loop in which labor-power, itself the source of surplus value, becomes an object of capital investment that generates additional surplus value, producing an immanent inconsistency that threatens to collapse the system.
as “total subsumption”
Balibar's concept, taken up by Žižek, denoting capitalism's tendency to subsume not only labor but the workers' own reproduction (health, education, sexuality) as fields of capital investment generating surplus value.
Identified here as the immanent crack within capitalism itself, the inner inconsistency produced by the self-referential redoubling of surplus value, not any external site of resistance.
The form of genuine subversion that works not by stepping outside the system but by following its logic to an absurd extreme, illustrated by Antigone's formal transgression and the Saudi women-driving example.
The self-entrepreneur logic whereby workers treat their own capacities, health, education, psychic state, as capital to be invested and managed for profitability, generating a second-order surplus value.
as “the non-all”
Hegelian/Lacanian concept invoked to explain how total subsumption, by becoming self-referential, cannot be totalized, the self-relating element introduces a gap that makes the system incomplete.
as “Lumpenproletariat”
Marx's category for those outside the production process, Žižek notes Marx viewed them with suspicion as susceptible to reactionary mobilization, but argues today's refugees exceed even this category.
Lacan's ethical injunction, Žižek uses it to argue that in daily life we do not really want what we think we want, and heroism consists in honestly confronting what one truly desires.
Stories he reaches for 3
New Zealand Maori painters first told Žižek they paint what the mountain spirits tell them; once he got to know them they admitted they had an agent in New York who told them what was fashionable, and their mountain spirits suddenly started dictating exactly that (religious sex).
“their mountain spirits started to tell them to paint this”
Some people close to Corbyn privately admitted after the near-victory election that it was perhaps for the best they didn't win outright, 'just imagine if we were simply to win, all the troubles.' Illustrates the desire not to get too close to what one ostensibly wants.
“Maybe this is the best thing that could have happened. Just imagine if we were simply to win”
In the Stalinist film The Fall of Berlin, WWII is fought as a backdrop for a soldier getting his girl; in the final scene she asks Stalin for a kiss. Žižek uses this to identify a deep Hollywood logic, historical catastrophe as backdrop for romance, that he finds in high art too (Platonov's The Soul).
“the whole World War II is fought against the background of producing a couple”
Works invoked 19
Capital book
Marx's key economic text; Žižek cites the realist passage where Marx abandons the German Ideology's idea that work will become pleasure, replacing it with the realm of freedom/necessity distinction.
Žižek says he 'hates the series' but uses the scene where the commander's wife petitions fundamentalists to allow women to read, an act of compliant content but disruptive form, to illustrate how true subversion works.
The German Ideology book
Marx's early text where he imagines communist life as merging freedom and work; Žižek cites it as the 'useful utopia' Marx himself renounces in Capital.
State and Revolution book
Lenin's text; Žižek says Lenin imagined the lower stage of communism as radical egalitarianism, the only way he can see it functioning.
Finnegans Wake book
Žižek says if you are at the very bottom of a gulag you would have to read Finnegans Wake, his expression of personal dislike for Joyce's late work.
Chevengur book
Platonov's major novel; called 'maybe a little bit too much' for a first reader but key to understanding what was wrong in Bolshevik communism from the start; depicts nomadic prochie trying to build communism in a village, ending in void.
Platonov's 'mega work': workers build what remains only a giant pit; written with total dedication while articulating nihilism, the greatest portrayal of the communist project's failure, important for understanding Stalinism.
Reds film
Warren Beatty film; October Revolution is the backdrop for the couple's passionate lovemaking, illustrates the Hollywood couple-creation logic.
The Soul book
Late Platonov novel (recommended in pocket edition); a party emissary tries to bring a nomadic Central Asian tribe to communism under Stalinism, the tribe disappears, he gets the girl; Žižek reads it as Platonov discovering the Hollywood couple-creation logic at the height of Stalinism.
Crisis and Critique journal
Journal whose last issue is dedicated to Lacan; contains Milner's 'Political Considerations about Lacan's Later Work' and Adrian Johnston's text; freely downloadable.
Day for Night film
Truffaut film; the cameraman/girl anecdote (desire deflated by consent) is used to illustrate Lacan's ne pas céder, we don't really want what we think we want.
Marx's text where the Lumpenproletariat is analyzed as Napoleon III's reactionary base; used by Žižek to set up the structural problem of those outside the production process.
The Fall of Berlin film
Stalinist film used to illustrate the Hollywood logic of historical catastrophe as backdrop for romance, WWII fought so a soldier can get his girl; compared to Platonov's The Soul.
Shostakovich's opera prohibited by Stalin, mentioned as example of Stalinist repression of culture; Žižek's broader point is that the 'compromised' later work (Fifth Symphony) turned out more enduring.
Le sinthome book
Lacan's seminar on Joyce from which Milner takes the opening quote about deportees and history as flight vs. exodus.
Awakenings film
Called 'disgusting', Robin Williams and Robert De Niro film; the catatonic patients serve only to 'awaken' the doctor to ask the nurse out, another couple-creation Hollywood logic.
Kingston University volume containing Balibar's essay on total subsumption; meant as a critique of the Badiou/Žižek communism conferences, Žižek says 'why not' to that.
Dances with Wolves film
Described as 'absolutely disgusting', a film Žižek would 'burn'; used to illustrate how humanitarian gestures toward others (Native Americans) serve only to create the white couple.
Nicomachean Ethics book
Aristotle's text cited for the observation that animals doing only what they want are 'freer' than humans in the sense of doing what one wants, used to support Žižek's reversal of freedom.
People invoked 37
Mentioned as one of the Soviet thinkers discussed in Chehonadskih's thesis.
Franz Kafka positive
Listed among Žižek's three great 20th-century writers alongside Beckett and Platonov.
Maria Chehonadskih positive
Extensively cited from her doctoral thesis 'Soviet Epistemologists and Materialist Ontology of Poor Life' on Bogdanov, Vygotsky, and especially Platonov; used as the primary scholarly source for the Platonov material.
Jean-Pierre Dupuy positive
Mentioned as having told Žižek about Luhmann's book on the paradox of the twelve camels as name of God.
Alenka Zupančič positive
Described as 'my good friend', her argument about why Lacan moved from Antigone to Le Signe de la Fontaine (Antigone's self-admiring PR performance in the cave) is approvingly cited.
Described as 'the Croat friend', mentioned as one of Žižek's contacts regarding Assange visits.
Edmund Burke negative
Symptomatic that Judith Butler quotes Burke positively, Žižek sees the conservative anti-revolutionary position (revolution violates authentic social life) as exactly what Platonov's work transcends.
Jacques Lacan positive
Central theoretical reference throughout: University Discourse schema, la langue, ne pas céder sur son désir, the non-all, objet petit a, and the notion of the saint as abject all deployed. Žižek notes Lacan in his last years adopted anti-capitalist rhetoric but questions what this amounts to practically.
Mentioned as one of the Soviet thinkers discussed in Chehonadskih's thesis.
Gilles Deleuze negative
The 'Deleuzian temptation' to read the prochie as a site of immanent productivity and nomadic multitude is rejected, they are not Deleuzian but living dead in non-productive passivity.
Felix Dzerzhinsky positive
Described as 'always my hero, I'm not joking', praised for dedicating his last years to caring for homeless children after the Civil War and warning against too-fast collectivization, in contrast to the political game-players.
Mentioned twice: once negatively for quoting Edmund Burke approvingly on Hegel, and once positively for the insight that women's first step of liberation is to refuse the master's politeness and demand he treat them as a master.
Étienne Balibar positive
Žižek takes up Balibar's concept of 'total subsumption' and 'generalized surplus value' from his essay in the Kingston volume Capitalism: Concept, Idea, Image as the key theoretical tool for analyzing contemporary capitalism.
Referenced via anecdote: people close to Corbyn privately said their near-victory was perhaps better than an outright win, illustrating that political actors often don't really want what they think they want.
Alain Badiou negative
Described as 'my friend' but criticized for the idea that the 'true event' happens in post-evental commentary, leftists write analyses of why events had to fail instead of doing real work; also targeted for simplified notion of the unaccountable surplus as the site of the event.
Andrei Platonov positive
One of Žižek's 'three big writers of the 20th century' (with Beckett and Kafka); praised as maybe the greatest poet of Russian language; his novels are the best diagnostic of why the communist project failed with displaced nomads; Chevengur and Foundation Pit recommended.
Jean-Claude Milner negative
Žižek reads Milner's text on Lacan's later work and immigrants approvingly for the diagnosis, but criticizes Milner's broader position: that politics is a domain of imaginary/symbolic fictions, that psychoanalysis should resist politicization, and his support for Macron.
Mentioned for a famous text praising British working-class pub culture, used to illustrate that even proletarians retain cultural identity unlike the fully dispossessed.
Discussed as the loser against Stalin: not because of dark conspiracies but because his 'permanent revolution' meant, in ordinary people's eyes, more suffering after years of hell.
Mentioned for his dismissal of Slavic nations as reactionary forces and an 'unfortunate' formulation about European revolution sweeping away small nations in a 'Holocaust', Žižek contextualizes this historically but notes right-wingers exploit it.
Audience member asks if Žižek would visit Assange in Belmarsh prison; Žižek says 'of course' but doubts access is possible even for lawyers and family.
Mentioned as having a text in the Crisis and Critique journal issue dedicated to Lacan, alongside Milner's text.
Samuel Beckett positive
Listed among Žižek's three great 20th-century writers alongside Kafka and Platonov.
Jacques Rancière negative
Grouped with Badiou as holding a simplified notion of the unaccountable surplus as the site of the emancipatory event, a position Žižek argues Platonov's work refutes.
Used to illustrate Stalinist ambiguity: died same day as Stalin, couldn't get flowers for funeral; Oistrakh's 'dissident' performance used a sonata that had just won the Stalin Prize.
Indirectly referenced through discussion of Milner's Voltaire/Zadigue movement and the politicization debate in Latin American psychoanalysis.
Éric Laurent negative
Žižek argues Laurent's claim that psychoanalysis is 'always on the side of the subject' and resists biopolitics amounts to making psychoanalysis an instrument for capitalism to function more smoothly.
Niklas Luhmann positive
Žižek says 'I love Luhmann' and notes the paradox that Luhmann was often more to the left than Habermas in concrete positions despite the official Habermas-left / Luhmann-systems framing.
Jordan Peterson negative
Mentioned only in passing: Žižek dismisses as 'upper-middle class guilt' the reaction that his debate with Peterson proved capitalism won because he was paid.
Søren Kierkegaard positive
Cited for the insight that authority requiring justification (being good/intelligent) loses authority, and for extending this to Christ: Christ's message is what he is, not what he says.
James Joyce positive
Žižek says he 'cannot stand Joyce' and Finnegans Wake would be gulag punishment, yet Lacan's Seminar on Joyce is the source of the flight/exodus quote with which Milner opens, and Žižek respects the conceptual use of Joyce.
Mentioned only as Luhmann's official polemical counterpart in the Habermas/Luhmann debate.
Mentioned in Q&A; Žižek admits he only briefly looked at the book and his sources are secondary, though he notes Deacon's other work points toward complex systems theory resembling Luhmann.
Used as example of Stalinist cultural ambiguity: his 'compromised' Fifth Symphony is judged by critics as the greatest 20th-century symphony, while his 'authentic' works are less celebrated.
Offered a sociological-psychological explanation for Stalin's victory, not admiration, but a refusal of purely moralistic condemnation; Stalinism in culture described as structurally similar to Hollywood.
Aristotle positive
Cited from Nicomachean Ethics for the insight that animals who do only what they want are, in a sense, freer than humans, used to support Žižek's claim that human freedom is not about doing what one wants.
Karl Marx positive
Extensively engaged: his stages of communism, the realm of freedom/necessity, Capital, German Ideology, and treatment of the Lumpenproletariat are all discussed and partially corrected; Žižek sees continuing urgency in the Marxist project while identifying naïvetés.
What it argues
nomadic proletariat and 'less than nothing' as remainder outside Marxist categoriesPlatonov's Soviet fiction as diagnosis of the failed subsumption of displaced otherstotal subsumption of labor under capital, including human capital self-investmentimmanent contradictions of capitalism as source of its potential collapsethe antagonism between proletarians and sub-proletarian others as unsurpassablefreedom as discipline and self-overcoming rather than doing what one wantsthe political limits of psychoanalytic discourse (Lacan, Milner, Laurent)
Dialectical moves 9
“The lower stage of communism is the true utopia — not the higher stage.”
The supposedly achievable transitional phase of communism (just distribution by contribution) is actually the harder, more unrealistic vision; the higher stage (to each according to need) is comparatively easier to imagine.
“Far from being the realm of freedom, Marx's 'realm beyond necessity' inverts itself — true freedom is gained only through work and discipline.”
Žižek reverses Marx's topology: freedom is not found beyond the realm of necessity but is constituted through disciplined engagement with it.
“The true measure of historicity is not that everything changes, but that something becomes impossible.”
Real historical transformation is indexed not by what is newly possible but by what can no longer be openly said or done.
“These nomadic others cannot be subsumed not because they are too different, but because they are absolutely immanent to our system.”
The inassimilable remainder is not exotic or pre-modern but is produced by capitalism itself, its very familiarity (immanence) makes it impossible to subsume.
“With total subsumption, the system becomes non-all — it cannot be totalized precisely because it has become total.”
When capital subsumes even its own source (labor-power) as a field of investment, it introduces a self-referential gap that prevents any coherent totalization, opening a crack from within.
“The ideal of most refugees is precisely to become normal exploited proletarians.”
The dispossessed do not want freedom from chains but are begging to be allowed to wear them, inverting the classical Marxist emancipatory subject.
“Authority that has to be good in order to have authority has no authority.”
Citing Kierkegaard: genuine authority is not legitimated by rational or moral justification; the demand that authority prove its worth destroys authority as such.
“Happiness is not getting what you want — it is cheating: 'I dream about that but don't come too close to me.'”
The structure of desire is that we want objects at a distance; achieving the object collapses desire and produces not happiness but a nightmare.
“Communism, whatever it will be, will certainly not be happiness.”
Deflating both liberal and utopian expectations: communism is a political-economic necessity, not a vision of fulfilment or bliss.
Claims 13
reframes
The 'lower stage' of communism (where the law of value still holds but is made just) is in fact the greater utopia — far harder to realize than higher-stage communism — because it would require a megalithic bureaucratic apparatus to measure and compensate each worker's contribution.Marx's stages of communism
reframes
Freedom is not doing what you want but disciplining oneself to rise above immediate desires — the Auschwitz motto 'Arbeit macht frei' should be read as a cynical appropriation of a truth, not a lie.freedom and work
asserts
There is an urgent need for some form of transnational global coordination — which Žižek calls communism — to address ecological crisis, digital control, and mass migration, none of which can be solved by market or state alone.communism as political necessity today
reframes
Stalin's victory over Trotsky was not due to dark plotting but to a correct reading of mass psychology: after years of war and civil war, people wanted normalization, and Trotsky's 'permanent revolution' was experienced as more suffering.Stalin vs. Trotsky
asserts
Today's refugees and nomadic dispossessed cannot be subsumed into a unified proletariat not because they are too different or pre-modern, but because their nomadic existence is absolutely immanent to global capitalism — they are its own product.nomadic proletariat and class solidarity
asserts
The antagonism between proletarians proper and the sub-proletarian others is in some sense even more unsurpassable than the class antagonism within a community.limits of working-class solidarity
rejects
The prochie should not be elevated into a Deleuzian site of pure immanent productivity — they are not a nomadic multitude but living dead caught in non-productive passivity.Deleuzian valorization of the dispossessed
asserts
With total subsumption, the source of surplus value (labor-power) becomes itself an object of capital investment generating surplus value, creating a self-referential loop that the system cannot totalize — and this immanent inconsistency, not external resistance, is capital's true danger.internal contradictions of capitalism
reframes
The Opium Wars demonstrate that 'free trade' was used as a justification for imperial violence — the same logic by which China was attacked for restricting opium imports could condemn the US for drug-war interventions in Mexico.imperialism and free trade ideology
asserts
The Bolsheviks' failure with the displaced prochie was structural, not a matter of insufficient effort — the tension between party language and the speech of others was irresolvable, and this same failure repeats today with immigrants.Bolshevik communism and nomadic others
rejects
Psychoanalytic discourse (as theorized by Milner and Laurent) effectively functions as an instrument for making capitalism run more smoothly, not as a site of resistance to it.psychoanalysis as anti-capitalism
asserts
Happiness is structurally a byproduct — it cannot be pursued directly; we do not really want what we think we want, and heroism consists in confronting one's true desire.happiness and desire
asserts
The most genuinely subversive acts are not transgressive breaks from the outside but acts that conform too well to the system's logic, precisely as such bringing it to ruin.political subversion and the act
Quotes 12
“The true measure of historicity is for me not everything changes, but when something becomes impossible, when you no longer can do it.”Slavoj Žižek · true measure of historical change
“The ideal of most of them is precisely to become normal exploited proletarians.”Slavoj Žižek · nomadic proletariat as inversion of classical emancipatory subject
“The others are the others, nobody, they are even worse than the proletariat.”Slavoj Žižek · prochie as less than proletariat — Platonov's Chevengur
“True social love is the love for the unaccountable less-than-nothings.”Slavoj Žižek · Christian neighbor-love as love for the structurally excluded
“Arbeit really makes us free. Really free. Freedom is not that you do what you want... Freedom is precisely freedom to rise above this.”Slavoj Žižek · freedom as self-overcoming, not desire-satisfaction
“What is most difficult to subsume is our own product. Capitalism loves precisely defined entities.”Slavoj Žižek · capitalism integrates the exotic other more easily than its own remainder
“The antagonism between proletarians and less than proletarian others is an antagonism which is in some sense even more unsurpassable than the class antagonism within the same community.”Slavoj Žižek · new unsurpassable antagonism in global capitalism
“With the production of working force itself as a field of capital investment, the subsumption under capital becomes total. But precisely as such it becomes non-all, it cannot be totalized.”Slavoj Žižek · total subsumption generates non-all — immanent crack in capitalism
“Happiness is not getting what you want. This is a nightmare as a rule. Happiness is cheating, happiness: 'I dream about that but don't come too close to me.'”Slavoj Žižek · happiness as necessarily a byproduct, desire as constituted by distance
“Whatever communism will be, don't worry it will not be happiness.”Slavoj Žižek · communism as political necessity, not promise of fulfilment
“Happiness has to be structurally, to be real, what rational choice theorists call a state that is necessarily a byproduct.”Slavoj Žižek · happiness as byproduct, not direct aim
“Don't underestimate Stalin. It wasn't you absolutely don't need any of this dark plotting... Stalin got it: what people want. They wanted peace, a minimum of normalization of daily life.”Slavoj Žižek · sociological explanation for Stalinism's popularity
Transcript 38 turns
Slavoj Žižek
I’m looking forward to the to the debate because just let me make a brief, not really political but generally political statement. You know why people ask me, "Why are you making all these crazy things, Trump and so on?" My first, my my big problem is this one. It may sound conformist or whatever. I would like to see some real change. I'm sick and tired of the leftists who play principal, principle leftists and then the most that they do is some big public event where they "Oh, one million people on on Tahrir Square here and there." And then again, it’s my old joke I know, but after the event they write excellent analysis of why the event had to fail and so on and so on, you know. Like, I’m I’m more and more convinced this is a slight stab, critical point about my friend Alain Badiou, that the true event is after the event. Forget the big thing. What fascinates me more and more is, okay, the big orgy we all cry there is over. Things return to normal. How do ordinary people feel the difference there in their daily practices and so on and so on. Here, although I was very critical about sixty-eight, May, Paris and so on, I must say something: that the way we are no longer permitted, and this is good censorship, to talk in this standard male chauvinist way, making fun of gays, making fun of women and so on and so on, this is, I'm quite respectful here, this is a result of sixty-eight. Something did change in the public discourse. And this is for me when people ask me, "Are you a historicist or not?" Usually right-wingers ask me this question, you know, this simplistic view: "You postmodern historicist, you think everything is historically conditioned, relative and so on and so on." I say, no. The true measure of historicity is for me not everything changes, but when something becomes impossible, when you no longer can do it. For example, and that's why it's so sad what happened in the last couple of years, when you cannot any longer talk in a certain way about women or making fun of gay people and so on and so on. Or when—when was it? Well, it was all the time after World War Two where at least publicly, and I'm always a partisan of hypocrisy, pretend and something will come out of it, when torture is prohibited, in the sense that you cannot publicly advocate it. Now, you know why I'm mentioning this, because today we can, we silently reasserted in a more or less public way the the legitimacy of the legitimacy of torture. On the other hand, the best way to detect historical changes is, I think, maybe I will write a text on it, is precisely to approach things consciously in an anachronistic way. Then you see the absurdity. For example, when United States is now fighting Mexican drug cartels and so on and so on, you know. I'm always, sorry for this old example known to all of you, but I checked it up in some history books, it’s really a depressive story. The so-called Opium Wars, you know, 1840s, they began earlier. You know how it looked? It’s really a sad story. From the British were massively selling opium to China, to the mainland. And the emperor at that point, who was a relatively good guy, was absolutely desperate. He saw that they are really tens of millions become drug addicts, ruin the nation, and he did all these public pathetic things possible. He uh wrote at the very beginning of her reign, this dragged on for decades, he wrote a quite pathetic public letter to Queen Victoria, like, "You as a good Christian don't you see what your merchants are doing" and so on and so on, absolutely to no avail. Nothing. Just to give you an idea: Do you know that in 1820s, China was still by far, not per capita, okay, England was better, but in absolute amount, by far the strongest economy in the world. It was not inert in decay and so on. Then, you know the story, the big Western powers—England, France, Germany, blah, blah—attacked China with free trade justification, claiming, to put it simply, but they did put it in exactly these terms, that free trade is the basis of civilization. If a nation puts a limit on free trade—and the only thing that the Chinese did is to prohibit import of opium from British India—that if you if you do this, then you regress into barbarism, you exclude yourself from civilized nations. So China should be re-civilized again and so on and so on. And the result was also an immense social and economic catastrophe. In those years when the war dragged on again and again, as far as we can measure it today through statistics, what’s available, China, China's, how we would call it, Bruto National Product in today's terms was halved, one half. It was so devastating. So, what’s my idea here? That’s my dream. Maybe they should do a Hollywood movie or what. That now that United States attack all the time Mexican cartels and so on, Mexico and Guate—and who is—Colombia should declare war on United States, that United States are opposing civilization, free trade and so on, and "What is this?" and that would have been the same logic and so on. And it’s also so nice to see how all the things that even Stalin is—don’t be afraid, I’m not in any sense of Stalin—but like they mention Ukrainian famine, you know, horror and so on, how in Soviet Russia they simply isolated that part where the famine was and they even didn’t feel famine in other parts. Where? Remember Irish famine. The British did exactly the same there. Not only this, I read a history of it, you know that in the years of the worst famine, some British, English landlords had there uh were there growing some place I don't know what food for not potatoes of course for export, and this was going on continuously. The British, no humanitarian action and so on, they simply they simply they simply isolated it. So that’s my dream again. I would really like, I would really like to see this. On on behalf of civilized relations among nations, Mexico and Colombia declaring war against United States for obstructing free trade. But now speaking about—ah yes, a remark, this is just introduction, then we go to serious work. It came to me also uh you know, we should take a new look at the 20th century and get rid of this in bad sense utopian moments playing with false alternatives. For example, I read, I don't know why, because I saw that one you can download it on Proxy, it’s disgusting, anti-Semitic and so on, the official Putin version of Trotsky. Seven or eight one-hour episodes, it’s pure anti-Semitism and so on, Trotsky with the help from Wall Street and Jewish circles organized—it’s disgusting. But uh then I read some books and came to something, you know, this is why I emphasized so much this how do ordinary people live experience life. I it became so clear to me from reading some historical books why why Stalin won. Trotsky didn’t have a chance. I simplify now the picture, but you know what was basically the situation? Look: Ten years it was pure hell for Russian population. From the standpoint of everyday calm life: war, World War, civil war and so on and so on. And then uh after this relative stabilization, the civil war is over, Bolsheviks won, and then also it was clear that there will be no European revolution. So what Stalin did, it was quite ingenious. He wasn’t yet radical there, he was more with Bukharin. He said, "Okay, years of hell, let’s bring a little bit of normality. We need," that was what meant for Stalin "Socialism in One Country." Let’s stop playing this permanent emergency, state of emergency. Let’s have a return to some normal life, stabilization and so on and so on. Of course, this was immensely popular after years of hell. And then Trotsky, the idiot, comes and says, "No, permanent revolution, why don’t we get some more suffering" and so on. Don’t underestimate Stalin. It wasn’t you absolutely you don’t need any of this dark plotting, whatever, torture and so on. Stalin, not even he’s not even very intelligent, but in just this cunning, almost you know ordinary farmers can be tricky, cunning in this way, got it: what people want. They wanted peace, a minimum of normalization of daily life. And in their eyes, Trotsky meant, "Oh my God, civil war, revolution, the same thing will go on." That’s how ordinary people understood it. It was sad. Now, before I go and I will do exactly what I promised, two ideas, maybe it will be interesting for you, came to me how we should maybe critically reread some proposals of Marx today. Two things are usually mentioned here. The first one is that already in Marx you find it, this rather naive, I think it should be rejected, distinction between lower state of communism where, to cut a long story short, the law of value still holds, it will just be done in a just way. Every worker will get the equivalent of his, her, their contribution. And then in higher state communism, it is that famous formula which incidentally is taken from Christianity, you know, to each according to his abilities, each gives to society to his—but what I want to say is this: the usual perception of this is, okay, we can imagine lower stage somehow, but higher stage communism is a true utopia. No, I think that already the lower stage is the true utopia. It’s much more difficult than some kind of communism. Because just imagine, okay, I don't want to bore you with quotes, but Marx basically imagines some kind of—I don't care—but if you just try to imagine it, it must be a if it's not market, it must be a mega bureaucratic apparatus where which records what you do, your work, and gives you some money which will no longer be the fetish money but some kind of confirmation you did so much to the society and you get then this to get to be properly paid. I I never got it how how this was even meant to be done. I can only imagine it like Lenin imagined it in his *State and Revolution* as radical egalitarianism. Because there at least it would have functioned. We are here, I don't know, people, each of you gets, and then you can relativize it if you have a family with three children you get more. But the moment you start to make it more complex, like you are a manager, an engineer, who would measure this? How? I think this is the true utopia. The second thing that I think Marx should be a little bit corrected, you know that famous realist passage in *Capital Vol. when Marx renounces his useful utopia in *German Ideology* where Marx says in communism the the very gap that separates freedom from work necessity will disappear, work itself will become pleasure and all that. Marx says here that the realm of freedom is forever separated from the realm of necessity. Realm of necessity is work to produce basic goods so that a society can survive and again, freedom begins beyond it. I think if history teaches us of anything is that exactly the opposite is true. What it all depends what do you mean by freedom. If you mean by freedom, actual freedom, you gain it only through discipline, work and so on and so on. I could just imagine what Marx meant by by his realm of freedom—no, I again I think that that’s another debate going on here. You know that Auschwitz inscription, "Arbeit macht frei"? There are two ways to read it. One is as cynical appropriation of something which is basically true. The other reading is, "Work really is like Auschwitz slavery." I’m for the first reading. I think Nazis were just ultra cynical there. Arbeit really makes us free. Really free. Freedom is not that you do what you want, because what do you want? Freedom is to regain a relationship of precisely a free relationship towards what you want. If you do what you—Aristotle put this nicely in his in his *Nicomachean Ethics* where he says that in this sense animals, they do only what they want, they are much more free than us humans. If you understand freedom as doing what you want. Freedom is never doing what you want. Freedom is precisely freedom to rise above this and so on and so on. But I don't want to get, I'm sorry, lost lost in this. I just think that if we want to—just to recapitulate my position—if we and I try to, if we want to talk seriously about communist prospects of communism today, and I do, I see not only arguments for but even an urgency. Again as I always repeat: look at ecological situation, digital control, immigrants, global chaos and so on and so on. It’s absolutely clear to me that, you can call it whatever you want, but some kind of transnational global coordination, regulation which cannot be left, shouldn't be left neither to market nor to state. And the worst combination that we get today is the combination of these two. That’s all that I mean by that I mean by communism and so on, you know. And my point is my point is how to how to keep this space open, and I'm a pessimist. But okay, I'm sorry for this improvised introduction, now I warn you, I'm even more ill, I don't know what's happening, so please be ready for one hour of slightly boring theory. As I promised yesterday, I will begin with Jean-Claude Milner. It's again a short text published in the journal *Crisis and Critique*. You can freely download it, it's the last issue dedicated to Lacan, where you also find, I mentioned it yesterday, the text by Adrian Johnston. And here Milner, sorry, Milner, sorry, has a short text entitled "Political Considerations about Lacan’s Later Work." And surprisingly, he begins by a quote from Lacan’s seminar on Joyce, *Le Sinthome*, Joyce symptom. I quote, it’s just one line: "*Ne participent l’histoire que les déportés, puisque l’homme a un corps, c'est par le corps qu'on le a.*" Translation: "The only ones to participate in history are the deported. Since man has a body, it is by means of the body that others have him." And then the quote goes on: "*Joyce a raison, l’histoire n’étant rien de plus qu’une fuite dont ne se racontent que des exodes.*" Joyce is right, history being nothing more than a flight about which only exoduses—there are some debates how you make plural of exodus, exoda or, okay, I will take the primitive one—exoduses are told. Of course, end of quote, Lacan refers here to the opposition between flight, wandering around without goal, and exodus, when you wander around but with a final destination in mind, like the Jews in search of a promised land. Flight is the real of history, lawless wandering, and this flight becomes part of narrated history only when it changes into exodus. Milner then applies this opposition to today's immigrants. They wander around and the place where they eventually land is not their chosen destination. They remain flight, it’s not exodus. This impossibility to organize their experience into the narrative of an exodus is what makes the immigrant refugees real and as such unbearable. Their bodies, which is often the only thing they possess, are an embarrassment disturbing our peace. We perceive these bodies as a potential threat, as something that demands food and care, that pollute our land and so on and so on. Hence a quote from Milner: "The hate the immigrants are subjected to, as well as the necessity of humanitarian pity in order to avoid the only logical consequence that Western political systems should draw explicitly if they were to accept their own real structure: the physical elimination of immigrants. As a middle term between verbal pity and factual cruelty, the honorable souls have discovered the virtues of segregation. Since the beginning of 1970s, Lacan considered segregation as the social fact par excellence, racism being but a subcase of that general process." End of quote from Milner. So now comes my question: How do these wandering intruders relate to proletarians in the Marxist sense? In some leftist circles, the exploding growth of homeless refugees gave rise to the notion of nomadic proletariat. The basic idea is that in today’s global world, the main antagonism or, to use Maoist terms, the primary contradiction is no longer the one between the capitalist ruling class and the proletariat, but between those who are safe beneath the cupola of our so-called civilized world, with at least some kind of public order, basic rights and so on, and those excluded, reduced to bare life. So nomadic proletarians are not simply outside the cupola, but somewhere in between. Their pre-modern substantial life form is already in ruins, devastated by the impact of global capitalism, but they are not integrated into our safe world beneath the cupola. So that they roam in some in-between netherworld. They are not proletarians in the strict Marxian sense. Paradoxically, when they enter the cupola of developed countries, their the ideal of most of them is precisely to become normal exploited proletarians. Recently I saw an interview when a refugee from El Salvador who wanted to enter United States, still on the Mexican side, said to the TV cameras, "Please Mr. Trump, let us in, we just want to be good hard workers in your country." So I like this paradox. This is not proletarians who wanted to get rid of their chains. This is people coming from outside said, "Please allow us to be good proletarians," no. So can can the distinction between proletarians proper, exploited workers, and the nomadic less than proletarians be somehow blurred in a new more encompassing category of today's proletarians? So can we talk about nomadic proletarians? From the strict Marxist standpoint, the answer is no. For Marx, proletarians are not only the poor but those who are on account of their role in the production process reduced to subjectivity deprived of all substantial content. As such, they are also disciplined by the production process to become bearers of their future power, the dictatorship of the proletariat. Those who are outside the production process and thereby outside a place in social totality are treated by Marx as *Lumpenproletariat*, and he doesn't see in them any or almost no emancipatory potential. He rather treats them with great suspicion as the force which is as a rule mobilized and corrupted by reactionary forces, like his big example from *18th Brumaire* is how Napoleon the Third didn't just uh use the support of the wealthy, no, he mobilized this, Marx uses all the dirty words, scum or whatever you want. So again, you see the structural problem. The we have here another gap, split. Proletarians are a zero, but they are a zero within our world, as it were. Now what do we do with those who are, it's a tasteless reference to the title of my book I know, a social less than zero. Less than zero, it means they don't fit into our world not even as a zero. Now I would like here to go a little bit into history, and I will refer to a manuscript which came to me through friends of friends of friends. It's a lady called Maria Chehonadskih. Maybe some of you know, she—you know her? From Kingston. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She did a doctor's thesis, "Soviet Epistemologists and Materialist Ontology of Poor Life." She talks about Alexander Bogdanov, Lev Vygotsky, but especially Andrei Platonov. So she will be my source, my reference here. What does her thesis focus on? How things get complicated with the victory of the October Revolution, when Bolsheviks exerted power in a country where not only the large majority of the population were small farmers, and Bolsheviks gained power precisely by promising them land. You know this is the irony. We associate Bolsheviks with collectivization and so on. But my god, the whole trick of getting power of Lenin was to give them land. It was the formula was as we all know, Peace and Land to farmers. It was not it was not uh it was not mainly working class and so on and so on. But where in Russia after the revolution, as the result of violent upheavals during the Civil War, millions of people found themselves in the position not of classic *Lumpenproletariat*, but of homeless nomads who were not yet proletarians reduced to the nothing of their working force, but literally less than proletarians, less than nothing. And that's why, if you want to understand, I claim, even today's immigrants, refugees and so on, the best historical background you still get it from the work of again one of my three big writers of 20th century, Beckett, Kafka and Andrei Platonov, sorry, the Russian, who described in detail their way of life and elaborated a kind of again materialist ontology of poor life. Platonov focuses on displaced nomadic groups in a post-revolutionary situation, when the new communist power tries to mobilize this displaced poor for the communist struggle. Each of his works departs from the same political problem: how to build communism, what communism means, and how the communist idea meets the concrete conditions of reality of the post-revolutionary society. That was his problem. We have communists in power, they speak from the work, and but what do you do with that chaotic majority, it's not even traditional farmers. Almost the majority of farmers were somehow displaced, wandering around, and you can hear, you can read here such fascinating stories. Sometimes when I'm totally desperate and the choice is uh another of my another of my paradoxes, either you kill yourself or you find something on YouTube that may save you, you know. I found an excellent documentary of the guy who is usually dismissed as the model of brutality. He was always my hero, I'm not joking, Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of Cheka. He was not a crazy madman. You know that already from he saw when civil war was won, he saw the ultimate catastrophe. He saw just around Moscow there were basically around half a million homeless children wandering around. And he dedicated literally in the last years—he died in early, I think—his life to how to take care of all these problems and so on. And he began losing power, because the real power, those Stalin, even up to a point Trotsky, they said, "Oh fine, you take care of this, we will find real political games." But he was obsessed by this problem of what to do for ordinary people. He even warned against too fast collectivization, that he said, "Forget about socialism, now the first step is to organize life minimally, to organize agricultural production" and so on and so on. So Platonov's answer to this problem of how to build communism with non-proletarian refugees, dispossessed people, Platonov's answer is again paradoxical, far from the usual dissident rejection of communism. His result is a negative one. All his stories are stories of a failure. The synthesis between the communist project and the displaced nomadic groups ends in a void. There is no unity between proletarians and less than proletarians. But not simply because these less than proletarians are too primitive and so on, it's much more subtle. First, Platonov is as far as possible from this conservative-liberal critique of revolution as a violent attempt to impose on actual life models which are foreign to it, you know this Edmund Burke critique and—I’m so evil but I like to notice these are always symptomatic points how you get strange bad fellows. I was so shocked that when that in one of her books when she speaks of Hegel, my god, I haven't met her in last years, so I wanted to ask her, sorry she is Judith Butler, she quotes positively Edmund Burke as a she saw the complexity and so on, revolution shouldn't violate it and so on and so on. Okay, what did Platonov do? Platonov first articulates his despair, that’s why he’s authentic, from the position of an engaged fighter for communism. You know, he wasn't bluffing. He spent years from the end of the Civil War doing concrete work. And he engaged with nomadic groups in the 20s, also at a very practical technical level, planning, organizing irrigation projects and so on and so on. Second, Platonov is not depicting a conflict between the traditional texture of social life and the radical revolutionary attempt to change it. His focus is not on the traditional forms of life but on the dispossessed nomads who whose lives were already irretrievably ruined by the process of modernization. You know, his story is not that of—which is that part, my god, where there was the strongest counter-revolution—the Vendée. No, it's not you have these conservative farmers who resist revolution. The paradox is that the dispossessed were already dispossessed, no way back. But nonetheless they couldn't be integrated into the communist project. In short, the radical cut Platonov depicts is not the cut between the spontaneous proletarian crowd and the organized communist forces. It's the cut between the gap that separates two aspects of the proletarian crowd itself: the strictly proletarian nothing of modern workers, and the less than nothing of those not integrated into the system. There is a wonderful quote from his great novel *Chevengur*, and it’s strange: "Who did bring us, whom whom who who did you bring us?" and Chepurny, one of Chepurny asks Prokofiy, another guy. The answer is: "That’s proletarians and others." Prokofiy said. Chepurny was disturbed. "What others? Again the layer of residuals, residual swine." The first guy answers: "The others are the others, nobody, they are even worse than the proletariat." That’s a Platonov's problem. Platonov names his marginal de-classed wanderers as "handmade people with an unknown designation," uncounted, mistakable or—he uses the Russian word *prochie*, *prochie*, "others" in the English translation, but the Russian word *prochie* also refers to the rest, the remainder. Thus "others" is the rest of the people. They don't belong to any class category existing in Marxist theory because they are too poor and detached from normal social life. The "other" therefore refers to someone who remains unaccounted for due to their amorphous and marginal status, but who is also part of a multiplicity which is not countable. Part of the scattered and nomadic people, an anomaly of humanity trapped between life and death, between social and biological. You know why I quote this? Because you—sorry, not as a terrorist, just as a—yeah, you mentioned yesterday this unaccountable Badiou and so on, no. But uh I think we should read this against the background as potentially critical of this simplified Badiou or Rancière notion of this unaccountable surplus which is the site of the event. Where they are just, how should I put it in cynical terms, simply unaccountable. And all the attempts to make them the site of a communist event fail. That’s basically the tragedy of the tragedy of Platonov. So one has to avoid absolutely the elevation of this *prochie* into an original site of productivity. Because that would have been let’s call it—although this is more Deleuzianism than Deleuze—the Deleuzian temptation, you know, to say, "Oh, but this unaccountable, they are the site of presence, not representation, the true site of social productivity and so on." No, these *prochie*, they are not Deleuzian multitude, they are on the contrary living dead caught in a non-productive passivity, basically deprived of the very will to be active. This is why I'm tempted to risk another translation of *prochie*: neighbors in all the biblical weight of this term. Those who are others and precisely as such always too close to us, no matter how far away they are. What makes them too close is that we lack a proper distance towards them because they don't possess a clear identity, a place in society. The Christian motto, "Love your neighbor as yourself," acquires here its full weight. True social love is the love for the unaccountable less-than-nothings. However, this love can take different forms. And while Bolsheviks certainly loved them, wanted to help and redeem them, they followed the model of what Lacan called University Discourse. *Prochie* were their object small a, *objet petit a*, and they put all their effort into enlightening them, into changing them in modern subjects. You know the Lacan scheme of University Discourse: university knowledge addresses object a, unaccountable, and the point is to produce modern subject. The conflict that lies at the heart of Platonov’s work is thus not a conflict between enemies but a kind of a lover’s quarrel. Bolsheviks wanted to help the homeless others, to civilize them. And these others, depicted by Platonov, sincerely endorsed the communist ideals and fought for them. So it was not even a conflict. Many of them were more—*Chevengur* is a big story of a group of nomads who claim, "We will do communism in our village" and so on and so on, but everything goes wrong. Another quote from Chehonadskih: "Others in Platonov's novels are always manipulated by more conscious comrades, party leaders and intellectuals, but always unsuccessfully. It is almost impossible to integrate others into the collective body of the workers and to establish a normalized sociality based on the collectivization of labor and industrial production." End of quote. However, now comes Platonov’s complexity: Platonov subtly noted that this gap is not just the gap between self-conscious revolutionary force and the inertia of the crowds. While Bolsheviks focused on the operational aspect of social transformation, the core of the communist utopia was directly present in the dreams of these *prochie* others, who expected something radically new to arise. You know, Platonov noticed how precisely these total outcasts, precisely because they didn't have any concrete content—you know Marxist, if you ask them "What will communism look like?" you get a five-hour lecture with all and so on and so on—but these they embraced communism absolutely enthusiastically. But they but they took it in a very literal way, you know, like not as a first phase, second phase, let’s just do it. Platonov, in—and what is so fascinating here is that Platonov, that’s why he is maybe the greatest poet of Russian language, noticed how this conflict between enlightened party bureaucracy, not in the bad sense, but even sincere apparatchiks who wanted to build new communist society, and these homeless *prochie* neighbors, how it inflected the language. It’s the tension between official party language and the primitive speech of these others. Quote, don't be afraid the last quote from this Chehonadskih: "Platonov reflected the historical development of a new Soviet language made of revolutionary slogans, the vocabulary of Marxist political economy, the jargon of the Bolsheviks and party bureaucrats and its absorption by the illiterate peasants and workers. Historical research shows that for most of the post-revolutionary population, especially in the provinces, the language of the party—official communist jargon—was foreign and unintelligible, so that they themselves perforce the this *prochie* illiterate people, refugees began to absorb the new vocabulary, often garbled into unfamiliar bookish terms or reconfigured or they reconfigured these terms as something more comprehensible, however absurd. For example, the term *Deystvuyushchaya Armiya*, 'Acting Army,' in ordinary slang of that people it become it becomes *Devstvuyushchaya Armiya*, 'Virginal Army.' This was how Red Army was reflected among ordinary people. Or *militshioner*, 'militiaman,' became *litsimer*. *Litsimeriya* is the Slavic for hypocrisy and so on. So I this is a unique bastard mixture with all its senseless mobilization of sound resemblances and so on and so on. Of course, there is an unexpected truth in it. In an oppressive regime, policemen are hypocrites. Revolutionaries are supposed to act like a virgin, in a kind of innocence and so on and so on. I think this Platonov is a wonderful example of what Lacan called *la langue*, language as this beyond semantic confusion. But what’s so beautiful in Platonov, here I will make a leftist turn, is that what for Lacan is more some stupid boring enjoyment—I cannot stand Joyce, I mean for me in my gulag prison if you are the lowest there, you will have to read *Finnegans Wake*, you know—but you know it's so wonderful to find this precisely these confusions, playing with words, with sound, with sound, but with a concrete concrete social conflict addressed in it. So again, what is the political implication of this loss of meaning, of how communist slogans become some kind of meaningless play with words? Although interpenetrating, the two levels—official Bolshevik speech and the everyday speech of the others—remain antagonistic. The more the revolutionary activity tried to combine them, the more their antagonism becomes palpable. And sadly, I claim—now it's the end of this detour to Platonov—the same failure is occurs necessarily for structural reasons also in in our situation today, namely with the project of a fusion of today's working class and today's less than proletarians, refugees, immigrants and so on and so on. Here also, one has to assume Platonov’s lesson: the tension is not only between the local conservative racist lower classes and the immigrants. The difference in the entire way of life is so striking that one cannot count on some easy solidarity of all exploited. Perhaps the antagonism between proletarians and less than proletarian others is an antagonism which is in some sense even more unsurpassable than the class antagonism within the same community. Precisely at this point, when the subsumption of this refugees, others, into our working class seems the most obvious, and the universality of all oppressed seems at hand, it slips out of our grasp. In other words, the less than proletarian others cannot be subsumed, integrated, not because they are too different, too heterogeneous with regard to our life world, but because they are at the same time absolutely immanent to it. You know, again, these wandering nomads are not out there not civilized enough. Their nomadic situation is absolutely immanent to today’s global system. They embody the most brutal impact of this of global consequences of our of our system. And again, I don't have an easy positive solution here, but this is my pessimism, if you want to put it like this: that that this new contradiction will be extremely antagonistic, whatever, will be extremely difficult to overcome. The again the problem is that of subsumption. The classical Marxist project is, these are just new forms of those exploited and so on, bring them together. Although already in Marx and especially Engels, you have a little bit of this arrogant West European highly developed proletarian dismissal of those who are not yet developed proletarians. For example, right-wingers in my country are endlessly exploiting some lines which were published already in under the name of Marx, but they are really were written by Engels. Where Engels says doesn't—Engels speaks about the Austrian Empire and so on, and he doesn't count the Slavic nations there as potential revolutionary force. He strictly dismisses them as those primitive, pre-modern forces which, if they get politicized, they will only serve reactionary forces in the Austrian Empire. One can understand why Engels thought this, because you know his big trauma was forty-eight revolution, where, for example, in Austria it was the Slavic volunteers—my own nation played their role, Slovenes, Croats—who crushed the revolution in Hungary and even helped the emperor in Vienna and so on. So right-wingers like to quote an unfortunate passage, you know, to make their anti-communist point that Hitler just took the idea of Holocaust from Marx. Because in an unfortunate formulation Engels writes there that when revolutionary process will explode in Western Europe, these—and Engels uses there a wonderfully aggressive twist of the words—he said, "How could these small nations, Croats, Slovenes, not be reactionary when their existence itself is already a reaction, like a remainder of the past?" And then he says that European revolution will sweep away in one big Holocaust all these nations and so on. No, no, Engels' vision—he says openly—"I don't care if Slavs suffer and so on. The only thing I care is, will they be an obstacle to the revolution in Germany?" And so what I'm saying is that this problem is even already there and if if anything it if anything it exploded. And again, I the problem again is that it’s not, I repeat it, it’s not this usual problem of, we have others, our proletarians are nonetheless part of our society, but we have primitive others. No, these are people who live, these nomads, in between. Their existence nomadic nomadic is not some so it would be wonderful to subsume them, because their existence is nomadic which means they their way of life is traditional, if they ever they ever had it, is already totally ruined. And it's very interesting to observe, to analyze, the spontaneous cultures, wild improvised religious social forms that they improvise that they improvise to survive. But don't underestimate again this total destruction of the way of life. And these are our problems today, for well-known reasons about which we talked enough yesterday. I was recently in Canada, and then they already told me, I always ask this, you know that their own Inuit, to put it in racist term, Eskimo and how do they call them, First Nation or whatever. I don't like this term because, you know, it doesn't matter if they are First Nation or what, as if they were really first there. The last guys from whom I you spoke used this term is South African apartheid people, who always emphasized and my black friends confirmed to me that this is true, when first Dutch emigrants landed in Cape Town, whatever South Africa, blacks were not yet there, today's black majority. It was Bushman, Hottentot. And the blacks that we know today arrived a couple of decades later and of course they slaughtered, they did the ethnic cleansing and so on. Does this justify apartheid? No, of course it doesn't. But precisely this means that we shouldn't play this game of who was first there and so on and so on. So what I wanted to say is that they are not in any sense these nomadic proletarians the first people. They are in some sense I see the temptation to proclaim them the true proletarians, because don't underestimate the degree to which our proletarians are still part of our culture, with a certain identity. If nothing else, think about didn't George Orwell write a famous text where he praising it, analyzing it, these British pubs and so on, elements of very ordinary British working class culture and so on. These are people who are totally at a loss, and again what I learned in Canada is that there, even today, and even much worse than the United States, these whatever you call them, First People, so-called Indians and and Inuit, Eskimos, are totally traumatized, deprived of the will—you know that there is a city, I wrote about it briefly, now I ask again my friends they told me the same shit goes on, somewhere in middle of Canada but way up north there is an Inuit city, okay, of them live there, it’s world capital in suicide. Like, in the last year about of guys killed themselves and so on. So we are not talking just about despair or what. We are talking literally about—and this is the true social less than nothing—you either even, you know, losing these basic coordinates which allow you somehow to survive, to construct a meaningful life in spite of all suffering and so on and so on. It’s just total despair, drugs, alcohol, suicide and so on and so on. Now, okay, now I come to the last part, speaking about subsumption which I promised you yesterday, Balibar and so on. Because now I go to the opposite. But the what you should learn from this first part is that nonetheless again those that we cannot subsume are not some foreign exotic culture and so on, they are easy to subsume. It’s I never saw a problem for capitalism to integrate some I don't know how exotic cultures, and they are also, and I love them for that, very cunning and manipulative. If you must remember I use it here two times, I mean my favorite story when I was years ago in New Zealand, I met some authentic artists there, you know, painters, you know. But I become their friend, oh my god I love them. First they gave me the bullshit, you know, "Ah, we are not like you commercial oriented, we we see a mountain, we listen to the voice of the mountain telling us what to paint" and so on. And then when I get got to know them, they told me, "But nonetheless we have an agent in New York and he tells us what’s in, what’s fashionable, no." At that point what was fashionable was religious sex. You have some monument in ruins and a naked lady there somewhere, something and as they told me cynically, all of a sudden their mountain spirits started to tell them to paint this. But I love them for this. You know why don't you give them the right to, you know my in my ideal world of just punishment, we multicultural white liberals who admire "Oh, this authentic life not..." We should go to live into some city New Zealand village, no, and allow them to play commercial games here. That would have been wonderful. Okay, but so again the lessons of this is that what is most difficult to subsume is our own product. Again, it's not the others out there. Capitalism loves this precisely defined entities. "Oh you have a tribe there, it is defined into their identity" and so on and so on, you know. They are they are easy to integrate because you can instantly be located and so on and so on. So just to conclude with this problem of subsumption, please be patient, a couple of quotes and it’s not so easy but nonetheless I think it’s important. This Étienne Balibar’s lesson. This is there is a volume published by Kingston again University, it's collective volume called *Capitalism: Concept, Idea, Image*. And in it Étienne Balibar has a text "Towards a New Critique of Political Economy: From Generalized Surplus-Value to Total Subsumption." End of quote. I like this volume, although incidentally I learned it’s meant as a critique of what Alain Badiou and us did here, the communism conference. No, this is okay, why not. Okay, so Balibar develops here the notion of the total subsumption as the basic tendency of today’s capitalism. This term does not cover only the phenomena of so-called cultural capitalism, the growing commodification of the cultural sphere and so on, but above all the full subsumption under the logic of the capital of the workers themselves and the process of their reproduction. Now this is the crucial point I will try to elaborate. It’s not that total subsumption mean means even things which were before not done by reducing workers to proletarians but still autonomous artisans and so on, we are today all proletarians. No, there is another twist. Which one? Be patient a longer quote from Balibar. "Whereas Marx explained that capital ultimately could be reduced to productive labor or was nothing other than labor in a different form appropriated by a different class, the theory of human capital explains that labor, more precisely laboring capacity, *Arbeitsvermögen* in German, can be reduced to capital or become analyzed in terms of capitalist operations of credit, investment, and profitability. This is of course what underlies the ideology of the individual as a self-entrepreneur or an entrepreneur of oneself. The issue is here not so much to describe a growth of markets for existing products; it is much more to push the range of the market beyond the limits of the production sphere in the traditional sense, therefore to add new sources of permanent extra surplus value that can become integrated into valorization, overcoming its limitations, because capitalist valorize both on the objective side of labor and production and on the subjective side of consumption and use." End of quote. So it’s not just about making working force more productive; it is to conceive of the working force itself directly as another field of capitalist investment. All aspects of subjective life itself of workers—health, education, sexual life, psychic state—are considered not only as important for the productivity, like you should keep workers educated so that they will be more productive, but as fields of investment which can generate additional surplus value. Health services do not only serve the interest of capital by way of making workers more productive, they are themselves an incredibly power field of investment. Not only for the capital health services, I hope you know this, is the single strongest branch of the US economy. Health service is double in quantity, financially double the amount of military. It’s absolutely but for the workers themselves who treat paying health insurance as an investment into their future. That’s the catch. You treat, this is the self-entrepreneur aspect, no, you treat yourself as a possible capital investment. Should I invest in education? Should I invest in health care? and so on and so on. The same goes for education. It does not only get you ready for productive work, it is in itself a field of profitable investment for institutions as well for individuals who invest into their future. So it is as if in this way the commodification not only becomes total, but also gets caught into a kind of self-referential loop. Working power as the ultimate source of capitalist wealth, the origin of surplus value, becomes itself an object of capital investment bringing surplus value. So that we get two types of surplus value: the normal surplus value generated by the products of the working forces and the surplus generated by the production of the working force itself. A nice example we get here of Hegel's insight into how the absolute always involves self-splitting and is in this sense non-all. With the production of working force itself as a field of capital investment, the subsumption under capital becomes total. But precisely as such it becomes non-all, it cannot be totalized. The self-referential element of working force itself as a capital investment introduces a gap which brings imbalance into the entire field. And I think that again I think and it’s I have this wild hope if you look at how this effectively function, this reduplication of of surplus value, you know, I, which I'm not, I honestly admit, I as a proletarian working class produce surplus value but in a redoubled way. Also, I am also I produce surplus value but not only when I work and capital or the capitalist appropriates my surplus, I already produce surplus for those who invested in me. For example, to health care services or whatever you want there and so on and so on and so on. And I think, I cannot develop it now, I think that this this immanent inconsistency, not any sites of resistance out there, are the true danger for capitalism. In the sense that if you universalize commodification in this self-relating sense that again the very source of surplus value is itself point of an investment to produce surplus value, in some sense the system begins to collapse. It cannot function. It cannot function. Okay, I promised you that and I will keep my word, I was shorter today, so now maybe we should do a—what are you, were you sorry, I have bad eyes—no no no, I remember who was, I'm very sorry, no it's not my racism or sexism, it's simply it's simply I still I cannot see well, okay. Thank you so much actually. I mean, I think like Slavoj was saying during the talk, he mentioned that, you know, when his desire ebbs and he wants to kill himself or something, you go to YouTube and—well I felt like that at the beginning actually, I didn't even want to say an introduction, but you managed to revive us during the talk, especially—no it's true, especially with the the beautiful analysis of the Platonov stories, but also we have to go and read our Kingston—Sorry, can I interrupt you in a friendly way? No, please. He is incredible. Do read Platonov, maybe that *Chevengur* is a little bit too much, but the greatest portrayal of what was wrong in the project of Bolshevik communism from the very beginning. But it's not the cheap bourgeois criticism of it is his mega work *Foundation Pit*, when workers to build and all that remains is just a big pit. And you know what's really tragic there, that he writes it with such obvious enthusiasm. He brings out the nihilism, but writing about it with total dedication, you know. It's it-it-it—this is very important if we are to understand Stalinism, to see this dimension which was not yet the bad Stalinism, but something wrong already before. I'm sorry, I will not. It's the paradox that you were talking about yesterday as well that, you know, even though his project of subsuming this *Lumpenproletariat* is destined to failure and despair, you you're not left with despair, you still carry on what you were saying yesterday, that you still make him he becomes even more active in subsuming or in including these people in a project that is actually quite uh uh doomed. Can I just add another thing that maybe you will like? Then the late Platonov, but I think it was an inner necessity, it wasn't a compromise with Stalinism. You know where I'm also to amuse you a little bit, a little bit. My god, Stalinism was a nightmare, I admit it. But how ambiguous things are. For example, you know usual we say about the most famous Stalinist composer today from that era, Shostakovich, no? We usually say how his creativity was thwarted by Stalinist pressure, you know, his opera was prohibited, *Lady Macbeth*, and then to to regain favor he wrote the Fifth Symphony, which he ironically subtitled "Self-criticism to a just critique of an honest comm..." okay. Now comes the irony. It's so brutal. Yes, but I—I’m sorry if I repeat myself, I may already mentioned this here—but I read a half a year ago they made they some big critics, but representative, not popular bullshit, musical theorist, no, this opinion polls or whatever, they ask one-two thousand musical critics the best symphony of all times. It's predictable. I don't like it so much. Winner was Beethoven *Eroica*, you know. And now comes the irony. The only one from the 20th century that made the list was Shostakovich Fifth Symphony, which is exactly dismissed as "Oh, his compromise with Stalinism" and so on and so on. My god, his works which are dismissed as Stalinist compromise are today the most—okay, maybe this tells something wrong about our era, you know. This or with Prokofiev. I sorry if I repeat myself, but I always like when Prokofiev died, you know when he died? It's wonderful. Destiny, God. On the same day as Stalin. That's why friends were not able to do the proper burial because for all roses or flowers were sold out, no, for the other guy. And uh then I read in a biography of Prokofiev that David Oistrakh came and as a kind of a dissident gesture, played there, it's beautiful, you can download it anywhere for free, his his first violin-piano sonata, second movement, I think, very dark melancholic, no, and then they said, "Oh what a big defiant dissident gesture Oistrakh played this second movement there." Yeah, yeah, yeah, but this same sonata got two years earlier the biggest Stalin Prize, you know, which is the cri—it’s it’s so you cannot you cannot understand Stalinism without again taking into account all this inconsistency. No, I I'm getting lost here I admit. I’m sorry, no no no, I wanted to never mind, never mind. Look, I will with my male chauvinist terror, you know what favor I'm doing to you? I allow you to play this game on, you know, resisting oppressed woman, every minute you try to, no, male bad authority crushes you again and again. No, what I wanted to tell you is that seriously, read you can get it in pocket I think, although it's bad translation, the short novel of late Platonov called *The Soul*. Yes, that’s beautiful. Yeah, it's beautiful, no? Where it's a kind of a high Stalinism. But it's so beautifully ambiguous. It's a guy from somewhere down there, Azerbaijan and so on, who studies in Moscow, falls in, and then is sent by the party as a kind of to bring some nomadic tribe which are wandering around to civilize them. It's the same story as in early Platonov, but since we are in Stalinism, which means I always believe that Stalinism in culture is close to Hollywood. You know, I will not bore you, my old example the greatest maybe Stalinist movie, *The Fall of Berlin*, where the whole World War II is fought against the background of producing a couple. You remember, if you were here years ago, I showed you a clip in the last scene when the guy fights as a soldier to get his girl who is in German prison, and in the last scene in on a plane on a flat in Berlin, uh they are looking for each other, then Stalin comes, which he never did, lands, gives a speech, and the girl looks into Stalin's face and sees where Stalin looking and sees him, you know. And then she steps towards Stalin, "Comrade Stalin, can I give you a kiss?" and so on and so on. It's absolutely So in other words, this typical Hollywood logic. The example I usually made even in this hall years ago is uh you know Warren Beatty *Reds*, you know? Where basically the revolution is made so that they patch up their difference. Literally in that film, see it if you don't believe it. October Revolution is set as a background for their passionate lovemaking. Literally. Okay, but Stalinist is the same, my god, in this film. This symbolic in this symbolic space of echoes, World War II is won so that a guy gets the girl. And in this novel it's the same. The guy goes there and uh—don't tell them the end. No no, it's very simple, no big surprise. It's still authentic Platonov. He doesn't really cultivate this wild group, they just disappear. No, he it's very pathetic, he wants to bring back their will to life and so on, they just despair, go. But through this disappearance, he gets the girl at the end, so that at a deeper level it's Hollywood. It's that uh the function of the tribe is through its final erasure to create the couple. Yeah. You know two examples, repeating myself but they are nice, that you should read this against this background. Uh did you see two uh disgusting movies? Here I am I get what I call my Goebbels reaction. I my long theory is that we shouldn't just condemn Goebbels. When he proposed burning movies, books—this is my cynicism—he had the right principle but only applied it on wrong books and movies. Like, did you see *Dances with Wolves* of Kevin Costner? Oh yeah, that was—absolutely disgusting. You know he goes among the Native Americans Indians because he loses his will to live. He encounters among them a lady who is of course we learn a white lady who was kept there, and at the end Indians disappear, destroyed, but he gets the lady. So all this bullshit about helping the natives is here just to create a couple. Even a more disgusting example, a one of the movies which I would burn even faster maybe. Did you see with Robin Williams and Robert De Niro *Awakenings*? It's the same. The it’s apparently about Robert De Niro bringing this catatonic or whatever patient back to life. But it's only you remember it's absolutely crucial here. Maybe I'm not totally stupid. When I saw the movie the first time, I predicted at the beginning that this will happen. You know Robin Williams is a afraid shy and he has a nurse and is afraid to ask her. And then when Robert De Niro, his main patient who is temporarily awakened in the sense that he’s not just catatonic but speaks, tells him when he is relapsing back, "No, you are the true one who should be awakened." And at the end uh the ultimately you remember you saw the movie it’s disgusting the failure sorry the the treatment doesn't work, they are all back catatonic, but in the last scene Robin Williams asks the nurse, "Can I invite you out?" and she said gladly yes. And that's the whole point, you know. Fuck all those helping the catatonics, they are here to to create the couple. And I find it so crazy that at the highest level of art Platonov he does the same. He does the same, no. Anyway, now I will really not interrupt you. Now we’ll take some questions from the audience. And I didn't—I know, it was yeah from yesterday, I'm so sorry for that. The the the the the lady, the other lady is not here? She was sitting here. She has not come. She was in tears when we left yesterday. Sorry? Because we didn't ask her yesterday and she hasn't come. Oh, I like it so much. When when women are in tears for me, can you imagine something nicer? Sorry, please yes it's you. And then uh yes if we can go further with with you the traitor lady. Yeah. Jan, you have to ask a question whether you like it or not. No, Antigone we can go on, please now it's you, please. My question uh the title of this lecture is Disorder Under—Disorder Under Heaven. That that translates into Order Under Hell, if you see what I mean. Um, I understand that Julian Assange is in Belmarsh. That's also kind of called Hellmarsh. Yeah. I was wondering whether you as a kind of revolutionary action or something a positive thing to do, would you go and visit Julian? I inquired, I have just a few links, I know somebody, I think he’s called James who was my usual contact. Then I know that uh German movie director—no movie, sorry, um uh theater director Angela Richter, who is in close, then it's Srećko Horvat, the Croat friend. And uh un-unfortunately there will be something they plan—when will be the hearing, is it the first of June, second or when? I I have no idea. Yeah, no no no. No, I was told that he is in this separated part where it’s difficult to have contact with him I mean. You cannot just it's not the usual already the last year in the embassy, you know, it was a bureaucratic process. You should fill out a very complicated form, you should exactly and... But if you could visit him, would you visit him? Sorry? If you could visit him, would you visit him? Him in prison? Of course, but I just doubt do you have any connections there? He’s in Belmarsh. His his mother his own mother was tweeting yesterday who tweeting that his fund—you know that and his lawyers have been saying that they found it difficult to apply the three visits per week that are supposedly allowed. Yeah, that's the problem. Even the lawyers even the lawyers don't have access to him. So if you can get access we'll go. Yeah. All right, next question. But you gave me a book yesterday, I like it, I will read it. I because I'm sorry, I'm not in a good—Sorry? I brought it with me. No? No, I left it in the hotel room, no? Can I ask you, but it's meant as an extreme love gesture, but I have a strange question. Now as an old Nazi I will talk. You don't look quite British to me but your voice sound is your English is much better than what I expected from your face. Are you cheating? What are you really? Russian. Oh my god, how did you learn such a good English? Because your isn't his pronunciation—sorry, sorry. It’s good. All right, uh Bernard, did you have a question? If you put your hands up, then I’ll be able to see. Thank you. Um, just briefly, I wonder if you could say more about the contradiction in the idea of the worker being expected to invest in themselves to the point you finish up. I just I know that for instance something like in the United States there's less than of college degrees are supposed to add value net to someone's expected earnings over their lifetime, so you'd already have to be in the top to take on the debt and degree you'd expect for that to become productive in your life. But is this—is this a contradiction that it seems is kind of capable of being accommodated within contemporary capitalism? So I just wonder why would this contradiction be particularly useful in in a revolutionary or transformative sense? And I wonder also if you could connect it to the point you finished on yesterday because you said something really interesting about um the the relationship that this point might bear to Lacan and the the role of the real as a symbolic thing within Lacanian within Lacanian theory. Um, I have a separate question about Deacon, but I think I'll leave that. Deacon, meaning do you know maybe you know more about Deacon, you know in detail? Yeah, but well because for me I I know I know the book you referred to and I’ve seen him speak and I spoke to him briefly about it and I always my understanding of his um social theory if there is one is is it is very much like a complex systems theory that resonates maybe with like Luhmann and the idea of evolution and there being contingent constraints but nothing inherently in a Hegelian sense necessary to what changes and to what the constraints produce. So there's a kind of uh contingency at an emergent sort of negativity, which you you spoke very well about but but I was interested that you brought that up. But that's... No, now okay, I will first I try to be honest as much as possible in this world. So I will admit that I just looked a little bit at the book and that my sources are secondary. What I only liked and I then I looked Googled his other books which didn't which are much more in the direction that you indicated: complex system theory whatever, no? Although when you mentioned Luhmann, you know, I wouldn't underestimate Luhmann. He cannot just be dismissed as an idiot. Luhmann is interesting, you know. Even uh I knew people who knew Niklas Luhmann, and they told me that the paradox is that although in this official opposition they are not enemies but like polemics, Habermas versus Luhmann,
I’m looking forward to the to the debate because just let me make a brief, not really political but generally political statement. You know why people ask me, "Why are you making all these crazy things, Trump and so on?" My first, my my big problem is this one. It may sound conformist or whatever. I would like to see some real change. I'm sick and tired of the leftists who play principal, principle leftists and then the most that they do is some big public event where they "Oh, one million people on on Tahrir Square here and there." And then again, it’s my old joke I know, but after the event they write excellent analysis of why the event had to fail and so on and so on, you know. Like, I’m I’m more and more convinced this is a slight stab, critical point about my friend Alain Badiou, that the true event is after the event. Forget the big thing. What fascinates me more and more is, okay, the big orgy we all cry there is over. Things return to normal. How do ordinary people feel the difference there in their daily practices and so on and so on. Here, although I was very critical about sixty-eight, May, Paris and so on, I must say something: that the way we are no longer permitted, and this is good censorship, to talk in this standard male chauvinist way, making fun of gays, making fun of women and so on and so on, this is, I'm quite respectful here, this is a result of sixty-eight. Something did change in the public discourse. And this is for me when people ask me, "Are you a historicist or not?" Usually right-wingers ask me this question, you know, this simplistic view: "You postmodern historicist, you think everything is historically conditioned, relative and so on and so on." I say, no. The true measure of historicity is for me not everything changes, but when something becomes impossible, when you no longer can do it. For example, and that's why it's so sad what happened in the last couple of years, when you cannot any longer talk in a certain way about women or making fun of gay people and so on and so on. Or when—when was it? Well, it was all the time after World War Two where at least publicly, and I'm always a partisan of hypocrisy, pretend and something will come out of it, when torture is prohibited, in the sense that you cannot publicly advocate it. Now, you know why I'm mentioning this, because today we can, we silently reasserted in a more or less public way the the legitimacy of the legitimacy of torture. On the other hand, the best way to detect historical changes is, I think, maybe I will write a text on it, is precisely to approach things consciously in an anachronistic way. Then you see the absurdity. For example, when United States is now fighting Mexican drug cartels and so on and so on, you know. I'm always, sorry for this old example known to all of you, but I checked it up in some history books, it’s really a depressive story. The so-called Opium Wars, you know, 1840s, they began earlier. You know how it looked? It’s really a sad story. From the British were massively selling opium to China, to the mainland. And the emperor at that point, who was a relatively good guy, was absolutely desperate. He saw that they are really tens of millions become drug addicts, ruin the nation, and he did all these public pathetic things possible. He uh wrote at the very beginning of her reign, this dragged on for decades, he wrote a quite pathetic public letter to Queen Victoria, like, "You as a good Christian don't you see what your merchants are doing" and so on and so on, absolutely to no avail. Nothing. Just to give you an idea: Do you know that in 1820s, China was still by far, not per capita, okay, England was better, but in absolute amount, by far the strongest economy in the world. It was not inert in decay and so on. Then, you know the story, the big Western powers—England, France, Germany, blah, blah—attacked China with free trade justification, claiming, to put it simply, but they did put it in exactly these terms, that free trade is the basis of civilization. If a nation puts a limit on free trade—and the only thing that the Chinese did is to prohibit import of opium from British India—that if you if you do this, then you regress into barbarism, you exclude yourself from civilized nations. So China should be re-civilized again and so on and so on. And the result was also an immense social and economic catastrophe. In those years when the war dragged on again and again, as far as we can measure it today through statistics, what’s available, China, China's, how we would call it, Bruto National Product in today's terms was halved, one half. It was so devastating. So, what’s my idea here? That’s my dream. Maybe they should do a Hollywood movie or what. That now that United States attack all the time Mexican cartels and so on, Mexico and Guate—and who is—Colombia should declare war on United States, that United States are opposing civilization, free trade and so on, and "What is this?" and that would have been the same logic and so on. And it’s also so nice to see how all the things that even Stalin is—don’t be afraid, I’m not in any sense of Stalin—but like they mention Ukrainian famine, you know, horror and so on, how in Soviet Russia they simply isolated that part where the famine was and they even didn’t feel famine in other parts. Where? Remember Irish famine. The British did exactly the same there. Not only this, I read a history of it, you know that in the years of the worst famine, some British, English landlords had there uh were there growing some place I don't know what food for not potatoes of course for export, and this was going on continuously. The British, no humanitarian action and so on, they simply they simply they simply isolated it. So that’s my dream again. I would really like, I would really like to see this. On on behalf of civilized relations among nations, Mexico and Colombia declaring war against United States for obstructing free trade. But now speaking about—ah yes, a remark, this is just introduction, then we go to serious work. It came to me also uh you know, we should take a new look at the 20th century and get rid of this in bad sense utopian moments playing with false alternatives. For example, I read, I don't know why, because I saw that one you can download it on Proxy, it’s disgusting, anti-Semitic and so on, the official Putin version of Trotsky. Seven or eight one-hour episodes, it’s pure anti-Semitism and so on, Trotsky with the help from Wall Street and Jewish circles organized—it’s disgusting. But uh then I read some books and came to something, you know, this is why I emphasized so much this how do ordinary people live experience life. I it became so clear to me from reading some historical books why why Stalin won. Trotsky didn’t have a chance. I simplify now the picture, but you know what was basically the situation? Look: Ten years it was pure hell for Russian population. From the standpoint of everyday calm life: war, World War, civil war and so on and so on. And then uh after this relative stabilization, the civil war is over, Bolsheviks won, and then also it was clear that there will be no European revolution. So what Stalin did, it was quite ingenious. He wasn’t yet radical there, he was more with Bukharin. He said, "Okay, years of hell, let’s bring a little bit of normality. We need," that was what meant for Stalin "Socialism in One Country." Let’s stop playing this permanent emergency, state of emergency. Let’s have a return to some normal life, stabilization and so on and so on. Of course, this was immensely popular after years of hell. And then Trotsky, the idiot, comes and says, "No, permanent revolution, why don’t we get some more suffering" and so on. Don’t underestimate Stalin. It wasn’t you absolutely you don’t need any of this dark plotting, whatever, torture and so on. Stalin, not even he’s not even very intelligent, but in just this cunning, almost you know ordinary farmers can be tricky, cunning in this way, got it: what people want. They wanted peace, a minimum of normalization of daily life. And in their eyes, Trotsky meant, "Oh my God, civil war, revolution, the same thing will go on." That’s how ordinary people understood it. It was sad. Now, before I go and I will do exactly what I promised, two ideas, maybe it will be interesting for you, came to me how we should maybe critically reread some proposals of Marx today. Two things are usually mentioned here. The first one is that already in Marx you find it, this rather naive, I think it should be rejected, distinction between lower state of communism where, to cut a long story short, the law of value still holds, it will just be done in a just way. Every worker will get the equivalent of his, her, their contribution. And then in higher state communism, it is that famous formula which incidentally is taken from Christianity, you know, to each according to his abilities, each gives to society to his—but what I want to say is this: the usual perception of this is, okay, we can imagine lower stage somehow, but higher stage communism is a true utopia. No, I think that already the lower stage is the true utopia. It’s much more difficult than some kind of communism. Because just imagine, okay, I don't want to bore you with quotes, but Marx basically imagines some kind of—I don't care—but if you just try to imagine it, it must be a if it's not market, it must be a mega bureaucratic apparatus where which records what you do, your work, and gives you some money which will no longer be the fetish money but some kind of confirmation you did so much to the society and you get then this to get to be properly paid. I I never got it how how this was even meant to be done. I can only imagine it like Lenin imagined it in his *State and Revolution* as radical egalitarianism. Because there at least it would have functioned. We are here, I don't know, people, each of you gets, and then you can relativize it if you have a family with three children you get more. But the moment you start to make it more complex, like you are a manager, an engineer, who would measure this? How? I think this is the true utopia. The second thing that I think Marx should be a little bit corrected, you know that famous realist passage in *Capital Vol. when Marx renounces his useful utopia in *German Ideology* where Marx says in communism the the very gap that separates freedom from work necessity will disappear, work itself will become pleasure and all that. Marx says here that the realm of freedom is forever separated from the realm of necessity. Realm of necessity is work to produce basic goods so that a society can survive and again, freedom begins beyond it. I think if history teaches us of anything is that exactly the opposite is true. What it all depends what do you mean by freedom. If you mean by freedom, actual freedom, you gain it only through discipline, work and so on and so on. I could just imagine what Marx meant by by his realm of freedom—no, I again I think that that’s another debate going on here. You know that Auschwitz inscription, "Arbeit macht frei"? There are two ways to read it. One is as cynical appropriation of something which is basically true. The other reading is, "Work really is like Auschwitz slavery." I’m for the first reading. I think Nazis were just ultra cynical there. Arbeit really makes us free. Really free. Freedom is not that you do what you want, because what do you want? Freedom is to regain a relationship of precisely a free relationship towards what you want. If you do what you—Aristotle put this nicely in his in his *Nicomachean Ethics* where he says that in this sense animals, they do only what they want, they are much more free than us humans. If you understand freedom as doing what you want. Freedom is never doing what you want. Freedom is precisely freedom to rise above this and so on and so on. But I don't want to get, I'm sorry, lost lost in this. I just think that if we want to—just to recapitulate my position—if we and I try to, if we want to talk seriously about communist prospects of communism today, and I do, I see not only arguments for but even an urgency. Again as I always repeat: look at ecological situation, digital control, immigrants, global chaos and so on and so on. It’s absolutely clear to me that, you can call it whatever you want, but some kind of transnational global coordination, regulation which cannot be left, shouldn't be left neither to market nor to state. And the worst combination that we get today is the combination of these two. That’s all that I mean by that I mean by communism and so on, you know. And my point is my point is how to how to keep this space open, and I'm a pessimist. But okay, I'm sorry for this improvised introduction, now I warn you, I'm even more ill, I don't know what's happening, so please be ready for one hour of slightly boring theory. As I promised yesterday, I will begin with Jean-Claude Milner. It's again a short text published in the journal *Crisis and Critique*. You can freely download it, it's the last issue dedicated to Lacan, where you also find, I mentioned it yesterday, the text by Adrian Johnston. And here Milner, sorry, Milner, sorry, has a short text entitled "Political Considerations about Lacan’s Later Work." And surprisingly, he begins by a quote from Lacan’s seminar on Joyce, *Le Sinthome*, Joyce symptom. I quote, it’s just one line: "*Ne participent l’histoire que les déportés, puisque l’homme a un corps, c'est par le corps qu'on le a.*" Translation: "The only ones to participate in history are the deported. Since man has a body, it is by means of the body that others have him." And then the quote goes on: "*Joyce a raison, l’histoire n’étant rien de plus qu’une fuite dont ne se racontent que des exodes.*" Joyce is right, history being nothing more than a flight about which only exoduses—there are some debates how you make plural of exodus, exoda or, okay, I will take the primitive one—exoduses are told. Of course, end of quote, Lacan refers here to the opposition between flight, wandering around without goal, and exodus, when you wander around but with a final destination in mind, like the Jews in search of a promised land. Flight is the real of history, lawless wandering, and this flight becomes part of narrated history only when it changes into exodus. Milner then applies this opposition to today's immigrants. They wander around and the place where they eventually land is not their chosen destination. They remain flight, it’s not exodus. This impossibility to organize their experience into the narrative of an exodus is what makes the immigrant refugees real and as such unbearable. Their bodies, which is often the only thing they possess, are an embarrassment disturbing our peace. We perceive these bodies as a potential threat, as something that demands food and care, that pollute our land and so on and so on. Hence a quote from Milner: "The hate the immigrants are subjected to, as well as the necessity of humanitarian pity in order to avoid the only logical consequence that Western political systems should draw explicitly if they were to accept their own real structure: the physical elimination of immigrants. As a middle term between verbal pity and factual cruelty, the honorable souls have discovered the virtues of segregation. Since the beginning of 1970s, Lacan considered segregation as the social fact par excellence, racism being but a subcase of that general process." End of quote from Milner. So now comes my question: How do these wandering intruders relate to proletarians in the Marxist sense? In some leftist circles, the exploding growth of homeless refugees gave rise to the notion of nomadic proletariat. The basic idea is that in today’s global world, the main antagonism or, to use Maoist terms, the primary contradiction is no longer the one between the capitalist ruling class and the proletariat, but between those who are safe beneath the cupola of our so-called civilized world, with at least some kind of public order, basic rights and so on, and those excluded, reduced to bare life. So nomadic proletarians are not simply outside the cupola, but somewhere in between. Their pre-modern substantial life form is already in ruins, devastated by the impact of global capitalism, but they are not integrated into our safe world beneath the cupola. So that they roam in some in-between netherworld. They are not proletarians in the strict Marxian sense. Paradoxically, when they enter the cupola of developed countries, their the ideal of most of them is precisely to become normal exploited proletarians. Recently I saw an interview when a refugee from El Salvador who wanted to enter United States, still on the Mexican side, said to the TV cameras, "Please Mr. Trump, let us in, we just want to be good hard workers in your country." So I like this paradox. This is not proletarians who wanted to get rid of their chains. This is people coming from outside said, "Please allow us to be good proletarians," no. So can can the distinction between proletarians proper, exploited workers, and the nomadic less than proletarians be somehow blurred in a new more encompassing category of today's proletarians? So can we talk about nomadic proletarians? From the strict Marxist standpoint, the answer is no. For Marx, proletarians are not only the poor but those who are on account of their role in the production process reduced to subjectivity deprived of all substantial content. As such, they are also disciplined by the production process to become bearers of their future power, the dictatorship of the proletariat. Those who are outside the production process and thereby outside a place in social totality are treated by Marx as *Lumpenproletariat*, and he doesn't see in them any or almost no emancipatory potential. He rather treats them with great suspicion as the force which is as a rule mobilized and corrupted by reactionary forces, like his big example from *18th Brumaire* is how Napoleon the Third didn't just uh use the support of the wealthy, no, he mobilized this, Marx uses all the dirty words, scum or whatever you want. So again, you see the structural problem. The we have here another gap, split. Proletarians are a zero, but they are a zero within our world, as it were. Now what do we do with those who are, it's a tasteless reference to the title of my book I know, a social less than zero. Less than zero, it means they don't fit into our world not even as a zero. Now I would like here to go a little bit into history, and I will refer to a manuscript which came to me through friends of friends of friends. It's a lady called Maria Chehonadskih. Maybe some of you know, she—you know her? From Kingston. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She did a doctor's thesis, "Soviet Epistemologists and Materialist Ontology of Poor Life." She talks about Alexander Bogdanov, Lev Vygotsky, but especially Andrei Platonov. So she will be my source, my reference here. What does her thesis focus on? How things get complicated with the victory of the October Revolution, when Bolsheviks exerted power in a country where not only the large majority of the population were small farmers, and Bolsheviks gained power precisely by promising them land. You know this is the irony. We associate Bolsheviks with collectivization and so on. But my god, the whole trick of getting power of Lenin was to give them land. It was the formula was as we all know, Peace and Land to farmers. It was not it was not uh it was not mainly working class and so on and so on. But where in Russia after the revolution, as the result of violent upheavals during the Civil War, millions of people found themselves in the position not of classic *Lumpenproletariat*, but of homeless nomads who were not yet proletarians reduced to the nothing of their working force, but literally less than proletarians, less than nothing. And that's why, if you want to understand, I claim, even today's immigrants, refugees and so on, the best historical background you still get it from the work of again one of my three big writers of 20th century, Beckett, Kafka and Andrei Platonov, sorry, the Russian, who described in detail their way of life and elaborated a kind of again materialist ontology of poor life. Platonov focuses on displaced nomadic groups in a post-revolutionary situation, when the new communist power tries to mobilize this displaced poor for the communist struggle. Each of his works departs from the same political problem: how to build communism, what communism means, and how the communist idea meets the concrete conditions of reality of the post-revolutionary society. That was his problem. We have communists in power, they speak from the work, and but what do you do with that chaotic majority, it's not even traditional farmers. Almost the majority of farmers were somehow displaced, wandering around, and you can hear, you can read here such fascinating stories. Sometimes when I'm totally desperate and the choice is uh another of my another of my paradoxes, either you kill yourself or you find something on YouTube that may save you, you know. I found an excellent documentary of the guy who is usually dismissed as the model of brutality. He was always my hero, I'm not joking, Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of Cheka. He was not a crazy madman. You know that already from he saw when civil war was won, he saw the ultimate catastrophe. He saw just around Moscow there were basically around half a million homeless children wandering around. And he dedicated literally in the last years—he died in early, I think—his life to how to take care of all these problems and so on. And he began losing power, because the real power, those Stalin, even up to a point Trotsky, they said, "Oh fine, you take care of this, we will find real political games." But he was obsessed by this problem of what to do for ordinary people. He even warned against too fast collectivization, that he said, "Forget about socialism, now the first step is to organize life minimally, to organize agricultural production" and so on and so on. So Platonov's answer to this problem of how to build communism with non-proletarian refugees, dispossessed people, Platonov's answer is again paradoxical, far from the usual dissident rejection of communism. His result is a negative one. All his stories are stories of a failure. The synthesis between the communist project and the displaced nomadic groups ends in a void. There is no unity between proletarians and less than proletarians. But not simply because these less than proletarians are too primitive and so on, it's much more subtle. First, Platonov is as far as possible from this conservative-liberal critique of revolution as a violent attempt to impose on actual life models which are foreign to it, you know this Edmund Burke critique and—I’m so evil but I like to notice these are always symptomatic points how you get strange bad fellows. I was so shocked that when that in one of her books when she speaks of Hegel, my god, I haven't met her in last years, so I wanted to ask her, sorry she is Judith Butler, she quotes positively Edmund Burke as a she saw the complexity and so on, revolution shouldn't violate it and so on and so on. Okay, what did Platonov do? Platonov first articulates his despair, that’s why he’s authentic, from the position of an engaged fighter for communism. You know, he wasn't bluffing. He spent years from the end of the Civil War doing concrete work. And he engaged with nomadic groups in the 20s, also at a very practical technical level, planning, organizing irrigation projects and so on and so on. Second, Platonov is not depicting a conflict between the traditional texture of social life and the radical revolutionary attempt to change it. His focus is not on the traditional forms of life but on the dispossessed nomads who whose lives were already irretrievably ruined by the process of modernization. You know, his story is not that of—which is that part, my god, where there was the strongest counter-revolution—the Vendée. No, it's not you have these conservative farmers who resist revolution. The paradox is that the dispossessed were already dispossessed, no way back. But nonetheless they couldn't be integrated into the communist project. In short, the radical cut Platonov depicts is not the cut between the spontaneous proletarian crowd and the organized communist forces. It's the cut between the gap that separates two aspects of the proletarian crowd itself: the strictly proletarian nothing of modern workers, and the less than nothing of those not integrated into the system. There is a wonderful quote from his great novel *Chevengur*, and it’s strange: "Who did bring us, whom whom who who did you bring us?" and Chepurny, one of Chepurny asks Prokofiy, another guy. The answer is: "That’s proletarians and others." Prokofiy said. Chepurny was disturbed. "What others? Again the layer of residuals, residual swine." The first guy answers: "The others are the others, nobody, they are even worse than the proletariat." That’s a Platonov's problem. Platonov names his marginal de-classed wanderers as "handmade people with an unknown designation," uncounted, mistakable or—he uses the Russian word *prochie*, *prochie*, "others" in the English translation, but the Russian word *prochie* also refers to the rest, the remainder. Thus "others" is the rest of the people. They don't belong to any class category existing in Marxist theory because they are too poor and detached from normal social life. The "other" therefore refers to someone who remains unaccounted for due to their amorphous and marginal status, but who is also part of a multiplicity which is not countable. Part of the scattered and nomadic people, an anomaly of humanity trapped between life and death, between social and biological. You know why I quote this? Because you—sorry, not as a terrorist, just as a—yeah, you mentioned yesterday this unaccountable Badiou and so on, no. But uh I think we should read this against the background as potentially critical of this simplified Badiou or Rancière notion of this unaccountable surplus which is the site of the event. Where they are just, how should I put it in cynical terms, simply unaccountable. And all the attempts to make them the site of a communist event fail. That’s basically the tragedy of the tragedy of Platonov. So one has to avoid absolutely the elevation of this *prochie* into an original site of productivity. Because that would have been let’s call it—although this is more Deleuzianism than Deleuze—the Deleuzian temptation, you know, to say, "Oh, but this unaccountable, they are the site of presence, not representation, the true site of social productivity and so on." No, these *prochie*, they are not Deleuzian multitude, they are on the contrary living dead caught in a non-productive passivity, basically deprived of the very will to be active. This is why I'm tempted to risk another translation of *prochie*: neighbors in all the biblical weight of this term. Those who are others and precisely as such always too close to us, no matter how far away they are. What makes them too close is that we lack a proper distance towards them because they don't possess a clear identity, a place in society. The Christian motto, "Love your neighbor as yourself," acquires here its full weight. True social love is the love for the unaccountable less-than-nothings. However, this love can take different forms. And while Bolsheviks certainly loved them, wanted to help and redeem them, they followed the model of what Lacan called University Discourse. *Prochie* were their object small a, *objet petit a*, and they put all their effort into enlightening them, into changing them in modern subjects. You know the Lacan scheme of University Discourse: university knowledge addresses object a, unaccountable, and the point is to produce modern subject. The conflict that lies at the heart of Platonov’s work is thus not a conflict between enemies but a kind of a lover’s quarrel. Bolsheviks wanted to help the homeless others, to civilize them. And these others, depicted by Platonov, sincerely endorsed the communist ideals and fought for them. So it was not even a conflict. Many of them were more—*Chevengur* is a big story of a group of nomads who claim, "We will do communism in our village" and so on and so on, but everything goes wrong. Another quote from Chehonadskih: "Others in Platonov's novels are always manipulated by more conscious comrades, party leaders and intellectuals, but always unsuccessfully. It is almost impossible to integrate others into the collective body of the workers and to establish a normalized sociality based on the collectivization of labor and industrial production." End of quote. However, now comes Platonov’s complexity: Platonov subtly noted that this gap is not just the gap between self-conscious revolutionary force and the inertia of the crowds. While Bolsheviks focused on the operational aspect of social transformation, the core of the communist utopia was directly present in the dreams of these *prochie* others, who expected something radically new to arise. You know, Platonov noticed how precisely these total outcasts, precisely because they didn't have any concrete content—you know Marxist, if you ask them "What will communism look like?" you get a five-hour lecture with all and so on and so on—but these they embraced communism absolutely enthusiastically. But they but they took it in a very literal way, you know, like not as a first phase, second phase, let’s just do it. Platonov, in—and what is so fascinating here is that Platonov, that’s why he is maybe the greatest poet of Russian language, noticed how this conflict between enlightened party bureaucracy, not in the bad sense, but even sincere apparatchiks who wanted to build new communist society, and these homeless *prochie* neighbors, how it inflected the language. It’s the tension between official party language and the primitive speech of these others. Quote, don't be afraid the last quote from this Chehonadskih: "Platonov reflected the historical development of a new Soviet language made of revolutionary slogans, the vocabulary of Marxist political economy, the jargon of the Bolsheviks and party bureaucrats and its absorption by the illiterate peasants and workers. Historical research shows that for most of the post-revolutionary population, especially in the provinces, the language of the party—official communist jargon—was foreign and unintelligible, so that they themselves perforce the this *prochie* illiterate people, refugees began to absorb the new vocabulary, often garbled into unfamiliar bookish terms or reconfigured or they reconfigured these terms as something more comprehensible, however absurd. For example, the term *Deystvuyushchaya Armiya*, 'Acting Army,' in ordinary slang of that people it become it becomes *Devstvuyushchaya Armiya*, 'Virginal Army.' This was how Red Army was reflected among ordinary people. Or *militshioner*, 'militiaman,' became *litsimer*. *Litsimeriya* is the Slavic for hypocrisy and so on. So I this is a unique bastard mixture with all its senseless mobilization of sound resemblances and so on and so on. Of course, there is an unexpected truth in it. In an oppressive regime, policemen are hypocrites. Revolutionaries are supposed to act like a virgin, in a kind of innocence and so on and so on. I think this Platonov is a wonderful example of what Lacan called *la langue*, language as this beyond semantic confusion. But what’s so beautiful in Platonov, here I will make a leftist turn, is that what for Lacan is more some stupid boring enjoyment—I cannot stand Joyce, I mean for me in my gulag prison if you are the lowest there, you will have to read *Finnegans Wake*, you know—but you know it's so wonderful to find this precisely these confusions, playing with words, with sound, with sound, but with a concrete concrete social conflict addressed in it. So again, what is the political implication of this loss of meaning, of how communist slogans become some kind of meaningless play with words? Although interpenetrating, the two levels—official Bolshevik speech and the everyday speech of the others—remain antagonistic. The more the revolutionary activity tried to combine them, the more their antagonism becomes palpable. And sadly, I claim—now it's the end of this detour to Platonov—the same failure is occurs necessarily for structural reasons also in in our situation today, namely with the project of a fusion of today's working class and today's less than proletarians, refugees, immigrants and so on and so on. Here also, one has to assume Platonov’s lesson: the tension is not only between the local conservative racist lower classes and the immigrants. The difference in the entire way of life is so striking that one cannot count on some easy solidarity of all exploited. Perhaps the antagonism between proletarians and less than proletarian others is an antagonism which is in some sense even more unsurpassable than the class antagonism within the same community. Precisely at this point, when the subsumption of this refugees, others, into our working class seems the most obvious, and the universality of all oppressed seems at hand, it slips out of our grasp. In other words, the less than proletarian others cannot be subsumed, integrated, not because they are too different, too heterogeneous with regard to our life world, but because they are at the same time absolutely immanent to it. You know, again, these wandering nomads are not out there not civilized enough. Their nomadic situation is absolutely immanent to today’s global system. They embody the most brutal impact of this of global consequences of our of our system. And again, I don't have an easy positive solution here, but this is my pessimism, if you want to put it like this: that that this new contradiction will be extremely antagonistic, whatever, will be extremely difficult to overcome. The again the problem is that of subsumption. The classical Marxist project is, these are just new forms of those exploited and so on, bring them together. Although already in Marx and especially Engels, you have a little bit of this arrogant West European highly developed proletarian dismissal of those who are not yet developed proletarians. For example, right-wingers in my country are endlessly exploiting some lines which were published already in under the name of Marx, but they are really were written by Engels. Where Engels says doesn't—Engels speaks about the Austrian Empire and so on, and he doesn't count the Slavic nations there as potential revolutionary force. He strictly dismisses them as those primitive, pre-modern forces which, if they get politicized, they will only serve reactionary forces in the Austrian Empire. One can understand why Engels thought this, because you know his big trauma was forty-eight revolution, where, for example, in Austria it was the Slavic volunteers—my own nation played their role, Slovenes, Croats—who crushed the revolution in Hungary and even helped the emperor in Vienna and so on. So right-wingers like to quote an unfortunate passage, you know, to make their anti-communist point that Hitler just took the idea of Holocaust from Marx. Because in an unfortunate formulation Engels writes there that when revolutionary process will explode in Western Europe, these—and Engels uses there a wonderfully aggressive twist of the words—he said, "How could these small nations, Croats, Slovenes, not be reactionary when their existence itself is already a reaction, like a remainder of the past?" And then he says that European revolution will sweep away in one big Holocaust all these nations and so on. No, no, Engels' vision—he says openly—"I don't care if Slavs suffer and so on. The only thing I care is, will they be an obstacle to the revolution in Germany?" And so what I'm saying is that this problem is even already there and if if anything it if anything it exploded. And again, I the problem again is that it’s not, I repeat it, it’s not this usual problem of, we have others, our proletarians are nonetheless part of our society, but we have primitive others. No, these are people who live, these nomads, in between. Their existence nomadic nomadic is not some so it would be wonderful to subsume them, because their existence is nomadic which means they their way of life is traditional, if they ever they ever had it, is already totally ruined. And it's very interesting to observe, to analyze, the spontaneous cultures, wild improvised religious social forms that they improvise that they improvise to survive. But don't underestimate again this total destruction of the way of life. And these are our problems today, for well-known reasons about which we talked enough yesterday. I was recently in Canada, and then they already told me, I always ask this, you know that their own Inuit, to put it in racist term, Eskimo and how do they call them, First Nation or whatever. I don't like this term because, you know, it doesn't matter if they are First Nation or what, as if they were really first there. The last guys from whom I you spoke used this term is South African apartheid people, who always emphasized and my black friends confirmed to me that this is true, when first Dutch emigrants landed in Cape Town, whatever South Africa, blacks were not yet there, today's black majority. It was Bushman, Hottentot. And the blacks that we know today arrived a couple of decades later and of course they slaughtered, they did the ethnic cleansing and so on. Does this justify apartheid? No, of course it doesn't. But precisely this means that we shouldn't play this game of who was first there and so on and so on. So what I wanted to say is that they are not in any sense these nomadic proletarians the first people. They are in some sense I see the temptation to proclaim them the true proletarians, because don't underestimate the degree to which our proletarians are still part of our culture, with a certain identity. If nothing else, think about didn't George Orwell write a famous text where he praising it, analyzing it, these British pubs and so on, elements of very ordinary British working class culture and so on. These are people who are totally at a loss, and again what I learned in Canada is that there, even today, and even much worse than the United States, these whatever you call them, First People, so-called Indians and and Inuit, Eskimos, are totally traumatized, deprived of the will—you know that there is a city, I wrote about it briefly, now I ask again my friends they told me the same shit goes on, somewhere in middle of Canada but way up north there is an Inuit city, okay, of them live there, it’s world capital in suicide. Like, in the last year about of guys killed themselves and so on. So we are not talking just about despair or what. We are talking literally about—and this is the true social less than nothing—you either even, you know, losing these basic coordinates which allow you somehow to survive, to construct a meaningful life in spite of all suffering and so on and so on. It’s just total despair, drugs, alcohol, suicide and so on and so on. Now, okay, now I come to the last part, speaking about subsumption which I promised you yesterday, Balibar and so on. Because now I go to the opposite. But the what you should learn from this first part is that nonetheless again those that we cannot subsume are not some foreign exotic culture and so on, they are easy to subsume. It’s I never saw a problem for capitalism to integrate some I don't know how exotic cultures, and they are also, and I love them for that, very cunning and manipulative. If you must remember I use it here two times, I mean my favorite story when I was years ago in New Zealand, I met some authentic artists there, you know, painters, you know. But I become their friend, oh my god I love them. First they gave me the bullshit, you know, "Ah, we are not like you commercial oriented, we we see a mountain, we listen to the voice of the mountain telling us what to paint" and so on. And then when I get got to know them, they told me, "But nonetheless we have an agent in New York and he tells us what’s in, what’s fashionable, no." At that point what was fashionable was religious sex. You have some monument in ruins and a naked lady there somewhere, something and as they told me cynically, all of a sudden their mountain spirits started to tell them to paint this. But I love them for this. You know why don't you give them the right to, you know my in my ideal world of just punishment, we multicultural white liberals who admire "Oh, this authentic life not..." We should go to live into some city New Zealand village, no, and allow them to play commercial games here. That would have been wonderful. Okay, but so again the lessons of this is that what is most difficult to subsume is our own product. Again, it's not the others out there. Capitalism loves this precisely defined entities. "Oh you have a tribe there, it is defined into their identity" and so on and so on, you know. They are they are easy to integrate because you can instantly be located and so on and so on. So just to conclude with this problem of subsumption, please be patient, a couple of quotes and it’s not so easy but nonetheless I think it’s important. This Étienne Balibar’s lesson. This is there is a volume published by Kingston again University, it's collective volume called *Capitalism: Concept, Idea, Image*. And in it Étienne Balibar has a text "Towards a New Critique of Political Economy: From Generalized Surplus-Value to Total Subsumption." End of quote. I like this volume, although incidentally I learned it’s meant as a critique of what Alain Badiou and us did here, the communism conference. No, this is okay, why not. Okay, so Balibar develops here the notion of the total subsumption as the basic tendency of today’s capitalism. This term does not cover only the phenomena of so-called cultural capitalism, the growing commodification of the cultural sphere and so on, but above all the full subsumption under the logic of the capital of the workers themselves and the process of their reproduction. Now this is the crucial point I will try to elaborate. It’s not that total subsumption mean means even things which were before not done by reducing workers to proletarians but still autonomous artisans and so on, we are today all proletarians. No, there is another twist. Which one? Be patient a longer quote from Balibar. "Whereas Marx explained that capital ultimately could be reduced to productive labor or was nothing other than labor in a different form appropriated by a different class, the theory of human capital explains that labor, more precisely laboring capacity, *Arbeitsvermögen* in German, can be reduced to capital or become analyzed in terms of capitalist operations of credit, investment, and profitability. This is of course what underlies the ideology of the individual as a self-entrepreneur or an entrepreneur of oneself. The issue is here not so much to describe a growth of markets for existing products; it is much more to push the range of the market beyond the limits of the production sphere in the traditional sense, therefore to add new sources of permanent extra surplus value that can become integrated into valorization, overcoming its limitations, because capitalist valorize both on the objective side of labor and production and on the subjective side of consumption and use." End of quote. So it’s not just about making working force more productive; it is to conceive of the working force itself directly as another field of capitalist investment. All aspects of subjective life itself of workers—health, education, sexual life, psychic state—are considered not only as important for the productivity, like you should keep workers educated so that they will be more productive, but as fields of investment which can generate additional surplus value. Health services do not only serve the interest of capital by way of making workers more productive, they are themselves an incredibly power field of investment. Not only for the capital health services, I hope you know this, is the single strongest branch of the US economy. Health service is double in quantity, financially double the amount of military. It’s absolutely but for the workers themselves who treat paying health insurance as an investment into their future. That’s the catch. You treat, this is the self-entrepreneur aspect, no, you treat yourself as a possible capital investment. Should I invest in education? Should I invest in health care? and so on and so on. The same goes for education. It does not only get you ready for productive work, it is in itself a field of profitable investment for institutions as well for individuals who invest into their future. So it is as if in this way the commodification not only becomes total, but also gets caught into a kind of self-referential loop. Working power as the ultimate source of capitalist wealth, the origin of surplus value, becomes itself an object of capital investment bringing surplus value. So that we get two types of surplus value: the normal surplus value generated by the products of the working forces and the surplus generated by the production of the working force itself. A nice example we get here of Hegel's insight into how the absolute always involves self-splitting and is in this sense non-all. With the production of working force itself as a field of capital investment, the subsumption under capital becomes total. But precisely as such it becomes non-all, it cannot be totalized. The self-referential element of working force itself as a capital investment introduces a gap which brings imbalance into the entire field. And I think that again I think and it’s I have this wild hope if you look at how this effectively function, this reduplication of of surplus value, you know, I, which I'm not, I honestly admit, I as a proletarian working class produce surplus value but in a redoubled way. Also, I am also I produce surplus value but not only when I work and capital or the capitalist appropriates my surplus, I already produce surplus for those who invested in me. For example, to health care services or whatever you want there and so on and so on and so on. And I think, I cannot develop it now, I think that this this immanent inconsistency, not any sites of resistance out there, are the true danger for capitalism. In the sense that if you universalize commodification in this self-relating sense that again the very source of surplus value is itself point of an investment to produce surplus value, in some sense the system begins to collapse. It cannot function. It cannot function. Okay, I promised you that and I will keep my word, I was shorter today, so now maybe we should do a—what are you, were you sorry, I have bad eyes—no no no, I remember who was, I'm very sorry, no it's not my racism or sexism, it's simply it's simply I still I cannot see well, okay. Thank you so much actually. I mean, I think like Slavoj was saying during the talk, he mentioned that, you know, when his desire ebbs and he wants to kill himself or something, you go to YouTube and—well I felt like that at the beginning actually, I didn't even want to say an introduction, but you managed to revive us during the talk, especially—no it's true, especially with the the beautiful analysis of the Platonov stories, but also we have to go and read our Kingston—Sorry, can I interrupt you in a friendly way? No, please. He is incredible. Do read Platonov, maybe that *Chevengur* is a little bit too much, but the greatest portrayal of what was wrong in the project of Bolshevik communism from the very beginning. But it's not the cheap bourgeois criticism of it is his mega work *Foundation Pit*, when workers to build and all that remains is just a big pit. And you know what's really tragic there, that he writes it with such obvious enthusiasm. He brings out the nihilism, but writing about it with total dedication, you know. It's it-it-it—this is very important if we are to understand Stalinism, to see this dimension which was not yet the bad Stalinism, but something wrong already before. I'm sorry, I will not. It's the paradox that you were talking about yesterday as well that, you know, even though his project of subsuming this *Lumpenproletariat* is destined to failure and despair, you you're not left with despair, you still carry on what you were saying yesterday, that you still make him he becomes even more active in subsuming or in including these people in a project that is actually quite uh uh doomed. Can I just add another thing that maybe you will like? Then the late Platonov, but I think it was an inner necessity, it wasn't a compromise with Stalinism. You know where I'm also to amuse you a little bit, a little bit. My god, Stalinism was a nightmare, I admit it. But how ambiguous things are. For example, you know usual we say about the most famous Stalinist composer today from that era, Shostakovich, no? We usually say how his creativity was thwarted by Stalinist pressure, you know, his opera was prohibited, *Lady Macbeth*, and then to to regain favor he wrote the Fifth Symphony, which he ironically subtitled "Self-criticism to a just critique of an honest comm..." okay. Now comes the irony. It's so brutal. Yes, but I—I’m sorry if I repeat myself, I may already mentioned this here—but I read a half a year ago they made they some big critics, but representative, not popular bullshit, musical theorist, no, this opinion polls or whatever, they ask one-two thousand musical critics the best symphony of all times. It's predictable. I don't like it so much. Winner was Beethoven *Eroica*, you know. And now comes the irony. The only one from the 20th century that made the list was Shostakovich Fifth Symphony, which is exactly dismissed as "Oh, his compromise with Stalinism" and so on and so on. My god, his works which are dismissed as Stalinist compromise are today the most—okay, maybe this tells something wrong about our era, you know. This or with Prokofiev. I sorry if I repeat myself, but I always like when Prokofiev died, you know when he died? It's wonderful. Destiny, God. On the same day as Stalin. That's why friends were not able to do the proper burial because for all roses or flowers were sold out, no, for the other guy. And uh then I read in a biography of Prokofiev that David Oistrakh came and as a kind of a dissident gesture, played there, it's beautiful, you can download it anywhere for free, his his first violin-piano sonata, second movement, I think, very dark melancholic, no, and then they said, "Oh what a big defiant dissident gesture Oistrakh played this second movement there." Yeah, yeah, yeah, but this same sonata got two years earlier the biggest Stalin Prize, you know, which is the cri—it’s it’s so you cannot you cannot understand Stalinism without again taking into account all this inconsistency. No, I I'm getting lost here I admit. I’m sorry, no no no, I wanted to never mind, never mind. Look, I will with my male chauvinist terror, you know what favor I'm doing to you? I allow you to play this game on, you know, resisting oppressed woman, every minute you try to, no, male bad authority crushes you again and again. No, what I wanted to tell you is that seriously, read you can get it in pocket I think, although it's bad translation, the short novel of late Platonov called *The Soul*. Yes, that’s beautiful. Yeah, it's beautiful, no? Where it's a kind of a high Stalinism. But it's so beautifully ambiguous. It's a guy from somewhere down there, Azerbaijan and so on, who studies in Moscow, falls in, and then is sent by the party as a kind of to bring some nomadic tribe which are wandering around to civilize them. It's the same story as in early Platonov, but since we are in Stalinism, which means I always believe that Stalinism in culture is close to Hollywood. You know, I will not bore you, my old example the greatest maybe Stalinist movie, *The Fall of Berlin*, where the whole World War II is fought against the background of producing a couple. You remember, if you were here years ago, I showed you a clip in the last scene when the guy fights as a soldier to get his girl who is in German prison, and in the last scene in on a plane on a flat in Berlin, uh they are looking for each other, then Stalin comes, which he never did, lands, gives a speech, and the girl looks into Stalin's face and sees where Stalin looking and sees him, you know. And then she steps towards Stalin, "Comrade Stalin, can I give you a kiss?" and so on and so on. It's absolutely So in other words, this typical Hollywood logic. The example I usually made even in this hall years ago is uh you know Warren Beatty *Reds*, you know? Where basically the revolution is made so that they patch up their difference. Literally in that film, see it if you don't believe it. October Revolution is set as a background for their passionate lovemaking. Literally. Okay, but Stalinist is the same, my god, in this film. This symbolic in this symbolic space of echoes, World War II is won so that a guy gets the girl. And in this novel it's the same. The guy goes there and uh—don't tell them the end. No no, it's very simple, no big surprise. It's still authentic Platonov. He doesn't really cultivate this wild group, they just disappear. No, he it's very pathetic, he wants to bring back their will to life and so on, they just despair, go. But through this disappearance, he gets the girl at the end, so that at a deeper level it's Hollywood. It's that uh the function of the tribe is through its final erasure to create the couple. Yeah. You know two examples, repeating myself but they are nice, that you should read this against this background. Uh did you see two uh disgusting movies? Here I am I get what I call my Goebbels reaction. I my long theory is that we shouldn't just condemn Goebbels. When he proposed burning movies, books—this is my cynicism—he had the right principle but only applied it on wrong books and movies. Like, did you see *Dances with Wolves* of Kevin Costner? Oh yeah, that was—absolutely disgusting. You know he goes among the Native Americans Indians because he loses his will to live. He encounters among them a lady who is of course we learn a white lady who was kept there, and at the end Indians disappear, destroyed, but he gets the lady. So all this bullshit about helping the natives is here just to create a couple. Even a more disgusting example, a one of the movies which I would burn even faster maybe. Did you see with Robin Williams and Robert De Niro *Awakenings*? It's the same. The it’s apparently about Robert De Niro bringing this catatonic or whatever patient back to life. But it's only you remember it's absolutely crucial here. Maybe I'm not totally stupid. When I saw the movie the first time, I predicted at the beginning that this will happen. You know Robin Williams is a afraid shy and he has a nurse and is afraid to ask her. And then when Robert De Niro, his main patient who is temporarily awakened in the sense that he’s not just catatonic but speaks, tells him when he is relapsing back, "No, you are the true one who should be awakened." And at the end uh the ultimately you remember you saw the movie it’s disgusting the failure sorry the the treatment doesn't work, they are all back catatonic, but in the last scene Robin Williams asks the nurse, "Can I invite you out?" and she said gladly yes. And that's the whole point, you know. Fuck all those helping the catatonics, they are here to to create the couple. And I find it so crazy that at the highest level of art Platonov he does the same. He does the same, no. Anyway, now I will really not interrupt you. Now we’ll take some questions from the audience. And I didn't—I know, it was yeah from yesterday, I'm so sorry for that. The the the the the lady, the other lady is not here? She was sitting here. She has not come. She was in tears when we left yesterday. Sorry? Because we didn't ask her yesterday and she hasn't come. Oh, I like it so much. When when women are in tears for me, can you imagine something nicer? Sorry, please yes it's you. And then uh yes if we can go further with with you the traitor lady. Yeah. Jan, you have to ask a question whether you like it or not. No, Antigone we can go on, please now it's you, please. My question uh the title of this lecture is Disorder Under—Disorder Under Heaven. That that translates into Order Under Hell, if you see what I mean. Um, I understand that Julian Assange is in Belmarsh. That's also kind of called Hellmarsh. Yeah. I was wondering whether you as a kind of revolutionary action or something a positive thing to do, would you go and visit Julian? I inquired, I have just a few links, I know somebody, I think he’s called James who was my usual contact. Then I know that uh German movie director—no movie, sorry, um uh theater director Angela Richter, who is in close, then it's Srećko Horvat, the Croat friend. And uh un-unfortunately there will be something they plan—when will be the hearing, is it the first of June, second or when? I I have no idea. Yeah, no no no. No, I was told that he is in this separated part where it’s difficult to have contact with him I mean. You cannot just it's not the usual already the last year in the embassy, you know, it was a bureaucratic process. You should fill out a very complicated form, you should exactly and... But if you could visit him, would you visit him? Sorry? If you could visit him, would you visit him? Him in prison? Of course, but I just doubt do you have any connections there? He’s in Belmarsh. His his mother his own mother was tweeting yesterday who tweeting that his fund—you know that and his lawyers have been saying that they found it difficult to apply the three visits per week that are supposedly allowed. Yeah, that's the problem. Even the lawyers even the lawyers don't have access to him. So if you can get access we'll go. Yeah. All right, next question. But you gave me a book yesterday, I like it, I will read it. I because I'm sorry, I'm not in a good—Sorry? I brought it with me. No? No, I left it in the hotel room, no? Can I ask you, but it's meant as an extreme love gesture, but I have a strange question. Now as an old Nazi I will talk. You don't look quite British to me but your voice sound is your English is much better than what I expected from your face. Are you cheating? What are you really? Russian. Oh my god, how did you learn such a good English? Because your isn't his pronunciation—sorry, sorry. It’s good. All right, uh Bernard, did you have a question? If you put your hands up, then I’ll be able to see. Thank you. Um, just briefly, I wonder if you could say more about the contradiction in the idea of the worker being expected to invest in themselves to the point you finish up. I just I know that for instance something like in the United States there's less than of college degrees are supposed to add value net to someone's expected earnings over their lifetime, so you'd already have to be in the top to take on the debt and degree you'd expect for that to become productive in your life. But is this—is this a contradiction that it seems is kind of capable of being accommodated within contemporary capitalism? So I just wonder why would this contradiction be particularly useful in in a revolutionary or transformative sense? And I wonder also if you could connect it to the point you finished on yesterday because you said something really interesting about um the the relationship that this point might bear to Lacan and the the role of the real as a symbolic thing within Lacanian within Lacanian theory. Um, I have a separate question about Deacon, but I think I'll leave that. Deacon, meaning do you know maybe you know more about Deacon, you know in detail? Yeah, but well because for me I I know I know the book you referred to and I’ve seen him speak and I spoke to him briefly about it and I always my understanding of his um social theory if there is one is is it is very much like a complex systems theory that resonates maybe with like Luhmann and the idea of evolution and there being contingent constraints but nothing inherently in a Hegelian sense necessary to what changes and to what the constraints produce. So there's a kind of uh contingency at an emergent sort of negativity, which you you spoke very well about but but I was interested that you brought that up. But that's... No, now okay, I will first I try to be honest as much as possible in this world. So I will admit that I just looked a little bit at the book and that my sources are secondary. What I only liked and I then I looked Googled his other books which didn't which are much more in the direction that you indicated: complex system theory whatever, no? Although when you mentioned Luhmann, you know, I wouldn't underestimate Luhmann. He cannot just be dismissed as an idiot. Luhmann is interesting, you know. Even uh I knew people who knew Niklas Luhmann, and they told me that the paradox is that although in this official opposition they are not enemies but like polemics, Habermas versus Luhmann,
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Luhmann
Luhmann
Slavoj Žižek
Habermas is supposed to be more to the left, but de facto in his positions Luhmann was often more to the left. Yeah, yeah, I love Luhmann,
Habermas is supposed to be more to the left, but de facto in his positions Luhmann was often more to the left. Yeah, yeah, I love Luhmann,
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yeah. Yeah, yeah. Also my source of Luhmann is you know that Dupuy told me this, Jean-Pierre Dupuy, I mentioned it here. You know that paradox that I try to draw maybe too many mileage out of it of this, I don't know which, twelve camel as the name of God, these paradoxes and so on. Luhmann wrote a short book on that paradox and so on. So I there are very intelligent system theorists which
yeah. Yeah, yeah. Also my source of Luhmann is you know that Dupuy told me this, Jean-Pierre Dupuy, I mentioned it here. You know that paradox that I try to draw maybe too many mileage out of it of this, I don't know which, twelve camel as the name of God, these paradoxes and so on. Luhmann wrote a short book on that paradox and so on. So I there are very intelligent system theorists which
Slavoj Žižek
emphasize on necessary inconsistencies and so on. But uh uh that I prefer not to answer today. The your the really tough was your first question: this—no, I'm not saying uh I agree with you, and that's the other mystery but I think which makes the case even stronger. I I also what I would say, the only way that I can resolve the problem that you mentioned, no, because we learn so much on education and from purely capitalist standpoint most of it is useless I claim, you know. Not not so much for social life as useless for as useless for um even from the capitalist standpoint and so on. I mean like uh I all these high business schools and so on, but do they really make you a more—and but this would be for me,
emphasize on necessary inconsistencies and so on. But uh uh that I prefer not to answer today. The your the really tough was your first question: this—no, I'm not saying uh I agree with you, and that's the other mystery but I think which makes the case even stronger. I I also what I would say, the only way that I can resolve the problem that you mentioned, no, because we learn so much on education and from purely capitalist standpoint most of it is useless I claim, you know. Not not so much for social life as useless for as useless for um even from the capitalist standpoint and so on. I mean like uh I all these high business schools and so on, but do they really make you a more—and but this would be for me,
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that's where my line of thought is going. This makes it even more interesting because I think that uh so much for education and so on, education is simply forget it, simply a new field of investment. It's as if capital needed a new field of investment and uh it is it doesn't matter if it's useful or not. In many American cities, smaller cities
that's where my line of thought is going. This makes it even more interesting because I think that uh so much for education and so on, education is simply forget it, simply a new field of investment. It's as if capital needed a new field of investment and uh it is it doesn't matter if it's useful or not. In many American cities, smaller cities
Slavoj Žižek
where I go, academia is the big business of that city. And some-how and this this here I see an unexpected, that would be my answer to you, positive result out of it. So in some sense, the end of capitalism is already happening here. Because you know how much we spend for health care, education and so on for something which is not really necessary for the capitalist reproduction. Although capital tries to subsume it and it does subsume it, but the result then is what you mentioned, this madness: that we are spending heavily heavily billions for something which, I agree with you, all this calculation if you go to university you will then whatever, maybe it has some symbolic value and so on. But uh very marginal, very marginal and so on, you know. So again, that's what that's where this is almost a good thing about our society: that so much money is spent, for example, for education which is in some sense socially useless. You cannot justify it really. Uh second point, when you mentioned uh you know where I see the link with my final point yesterday uh that inconsistency and so on. That precisely the real is just this inner crack how through total subsumption the capitalist reproduction is more and more turning into investments which are from the standpoint of capital reproduction useless. I see hope in this. Again, so it's not outside some external source. It through its inner radicalization it it is and this is the real. Not some original fisherman who hunts in Amazon river fishes and it's not it's not. This is why incidentally I also found so stupid—I mentioned yesterday—some reaction to this Jordan Peterson debate which were, "Ah capitalism already won because you were there to earn money or whatever" and so on, you know. As I already mentioned to you I think yesterday but I repeat it, you know, this is typical upper-middle class guilt. Every poor person with whom I speak, "You have a chance of getting money, grab it. What’s more wonderful than you know." That’s my basic Lacanian paradox: yes, money is not all, but you can only say this when you have enough money, no? Ah, I wanted to maybe can I ask you to elaborate on what you at the end yesterday you addressed that problem of Antigone and so on. You complicated it in a very uh precise way, how Antigone cannot be made into some kind of a you know radical change, revolution, all this transgressive act and so on. But I would like—okay, I simplified you to the utmost. So let me just make my point and then you strike back. My first point here would have been that uh would you agree, I'm here plagiarizing my good friend Alenka Zupančič who pointed out this: how it's clear what pushed Lacan from Antigone to *Le Signe de la Fontaine* in next seminar because the moment of her and I know I'm using a contradictory term because they are opposed, sublime and beautiful, but uh what is false about Antigone is that the moment she is excommunicated, becomes a victim, she explodes in this self-admi—you know, for me the most disgusting part of Antigone is after she finds herself in that cave or whatever, she composes basically a PR piece for herself, you know. She she says "What about that goddess or whatever who was there," like she she already stages herself as a myth to be narrated. So it's some kind of a weird self-satisfaction she gets there that I don't buy. But what you mentioned nonetheless, I think that what makes me nonetheless authentic, but what you mentioned about Antigone is that I agree with you that she is not this model of you know, let’s step out into the blind real or whatever, it’s brother’s funeral and so on and so on. But for me the truly subversive acts are always like this. It's not this external "we step out" and so on. You you do something which at some level fits perfectly or even too well the system. And precisely as such you bring uh ruin to it. Then another way to defend Antigone is that it's not what she does, it's the way she it’s the fact that as a woman she does, you know the fact that as a woman she acts publicly, that that’s quite formally her political dimension. It's not the content. If you look at the content of what she does you can say "Yeah, yeah, women family values" and so on, who cares. But the form of her—you know where you find the same logic? I hate the series as I already told you. If you saw *Handmaid’s Tale*, this when towards the end of the first season the lady who is supposed to be the bad lady, the commander’s wife, addresses some kind of a ruling body, these fundamentalists, and just pleads for them to allow women to read and write again. Not as a dissident gesture, but but claiming, "But we are on your side I..." So she does something totally compromise. But the fact that she does it in that way is that she is immediately punished, you know, they cut off her finger or whatever and so on and so on. I think this is how the true subversion works. Not it's not it's uh much more important is what you—it’s the same, you know who knows this very well? In Saudi Arabia today. This is my more and more my ideal country. I want to move there. No, it's cruel irony, but you know what happened now there? You know? Didn’t already mention it here, I think not. That that now they—and they were literally it's not a joke—they propagated this as a big achievement for women's rights, that now if a man divorces his wife, he has to inform her via iPhone or what, no? There’s an app for it. Yeah, but I like it, you know what triggered this? Oh I love this, this is Kafka. A guy divorced from his wife and was still sleeping with her, screwing her. But didn't tell her that they are divorced. The wife when she learned this, denounced him to the police. You know what happened? Oh my god, that's my country. She was arrested for sleeping with a guy who was not her husband. And then there as a big gesture I I why did I mention this? Because in you know they are aware there authorities: like, at the same time that they allowed women to drive, they arrested people who organized protests, demands for this. So, you know, it's clear that what bothered the authorities is not the
where I go, academia is the big business of that city. And some-how and this this here I see an unexpected, that would be my answer to you, positive result out of it. So in some sense, the end of capitalism is already happening here. Because you know how much we spend for health care, education and so on for something which is not really necessary for the capitalist reproduction. Although capital tries to subsume it and it does subsume it, but the result then is what you mentioned, this madness: that we are spending heavily heavily billions for something which, I agree with you, all this calculation if you go to university you will then whatever, maybe it has some symbolic value and so on. But uh very marginal, very marginal and so on, you know. So again, that's what that's where this is almost a good thing about our society: that so much money is spent, for example, for education which is in some sense socially useless. You cannot justify it really. Uh second point, when you mentioned uh you know where I see the link with my final point yesterday uh that inconsistency and so on. That precisely the real is just this inner crack how through total subsumption the capitalist reproduction is more and more turning into investments which are from the standpoint of capital reproduction useless. I see hope in this. Again, so it's not outside some external source. It through its inner radicalization it it is and this is the real. Not some original fisherman who hunts in Amazon river fishes and it's not it's not. This is why incidentally I also found so stupid—I mentioned yesterday—some reaction to this Jordan Peterson debate which were, "Ah capitalism already won because you were there to earn money or whatever" and so on, you know. As I already mentioned to you I think yesterday but I repeat it, you know, this is typical upper-middle class guilt. Every poor person with whom I speak, "You have a chance of getting money, grab it. What’s more wonderful than you know." That’s my basic Lacanian paradox: yes, money is not all, but you can only say this when you have enough money, no? Ah, I wanted to maybe can I ask you to elaborate on what you at the end yesterday you addressed that problem of Antigone and so on. You complicated it in a very uh precise way, how Antigone cannot be made into some kind of a you know radical change, revolution, all this transgressive act and so on. But I would like—okay, I simplified you to the utmost. So let me just make my point and then you strike back. My first point here would have been that uh would you agree, I'm here plagiarizing my good friend Alenka Zupančič who pointed out this: how it's clear what pushed Lacan from Antigone to *Le Signe de la Fontaine* in next seminar because the moment of her and I know I'm using a contradictory term because they are opposed, sublime and beautiful, but uh what is false about Antigone is that the moment she is excommunicated, becomes a victim, she explodes in this self-admi—you know, for me the most disgusting part of Antigone is after she finds herself in that cave or whatever, she composes basically a PR piece for herself, you know. She she says "What about that goddess or whatever who was there," like she she already stages herself as a myth to be narrated. So it's some kind of a weird self-satisfaction she gets there that I don't buy. But what you mentioned nonetheless, I think that what makes me nonetheless authentic, but what you mentioned about Antigone is that I agree with you that she is not this model of you know, let’s step out into the blind real or whatever, it’s brother’s funeral and so on and so on. But for me the truly subversive acts are always like this. It's not this external "we step out" and so on. You you do something which at some level fits perfectly or even too well the system. And precisely as such you bring uh ruin to it. Then another way to defend Antigone is that it's not what she does, it's the way she it’s the fact that as a woman she does, you know the fact that as a woman she acts publicly, that that’s quite formally her political dimension. It's not the content. If you look at the content of what she does you can say "Yeah, yeah, women family values" and so on, who cares. But the form of her—you know where you find the same logic? I hate the series as I already told you. If you saw *Handmaid’s Tale*, this when towards the end of the first season the lady who is supposed to be the bad lady, the commander’s wife, addresses some kind of a ruling body, these fundamentalists, and just pleads for them to allow women to read and write again. Not as a dissident gesture, but but claiming, "But we are on your side I..." So she does something totally compromise. But the fact that she does it in that way is that she is immediately punished, you know, they cut off her finger or whatever and so on and so on. I think this is how the true subversion works. Not it's not it's uh much more important is what you—it’s the same, you know who knows this very well? In Saudi Arabia today. This is my more and more my ideal country. I want to move there. No, it's cruel irony, but you know what happened now there? You know? Didn’t already mention it here, I think not. That that now they—and they were literally it's not a joke—they propagated this as a big achievement for women's rights, that now if a man divorces his wife, he has to inform her via iPhone or what, no? There’s an app for it. Yeah, but I like it, you know what triggered this? Oh I love this, this is Kafka. A guy divorced from his wife and was still sleeping with her, screwing her. But didn't tell her that they are divorced. The wife when she learned this, denounced him to the police. You know what happened? Oh my god, that's my country. She was arrested for sleeping with a guy who was not her husband. And then there as a big gesture I I why did I mention this? Because in you know they are aware there authorities: like, at the same time that they allowed women to drive, they arrested people who organized protests, demands for this. So, you know, it's clear that what bothered the authorities is not the
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fact that women drive, it’s that
fact that women drive, it’s that
Slavoj Žižek
much more what bothered them, what much more was that this the
much more what bothered them, what much more was that this the
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form of public protest
form of public protest
Slavoj Žižek
and so on and so on. The gesture was so clear: "We give you what you want, but nonetheless you will be a—" At the same way I spoke with a Russian friend and asked him because he tried to convinced me uh
and so on and so on. The gesture was so clear: "We give you what you want, but nonetheless you will be a—" At the same way I spoke with a Russian friend and asked him because he tried to convinced me uh
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that uh even if the elections they have
that uh even if the elections they have
Slavoj Žižek
that referendum in Crime—Crimea, how do you
that referendum in Crime—Crimea, how do you
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pronounce that, Crime, Crimea, how do you
pronounce that, Crime, Crimea, how do you
Slavoj Žižek
pronounce that? Crimea. Yeah, yeah, he told me, "But you know, probably even in a very fair referendum there the majority would have voted for annexation to Russia." So I asked him—I'm stupid Western European liberal—so why didn't Putin do then a more honest referendum? And he told me, "But that was the whole message. It in the eyes of Russian authorities it would already have been perceived as a weakness if you do it. Because this means that you uh admit democratic decision and so on and so on." The message was was precisely that it shouldn't be really democratic. It would have meant too much of a—you know
pronounce that? Crimea. Yeah, yeah, he told me, "But you know, probably even in a very fair referendum there the majority would have voted for annexation to Russia." So I asked him—I'm stupid Western European liberal—so why didn't Putin do then a more honest referendum? And he told me, "But that was the whole message. It in the eyes of Russian authorities it would already have been perceived as a weakness if you do it. Because this means that you uh admit democratic decision and so on and so on." The message was was precisely that it shouldn't be really democratic. It would have meant too much of a—you know
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form form matters. Form matters uh how you do it here. But I... It's like
form form matters. Form matters uh how you do it here. But I... It's like
Slavoj Žižek
Kierkegaard says about the father: if
Kierkegaard says about the father: if
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he has to be good in order
he has to be good in order
Slavoj Žižek
to have authority, then you have no authority. No, no, no, no, no. Kierkegaard has—and but Kierkegaard is a genius immediately. He goes to to Jesus Christ also, you know. He first says to say that "Father is a I obey my father because he’s intelligent and bright," that this is a blasphemy, you know. But then he goes, that’s here my
to have authority, then you have no authority. No, no, no, no, no. Kierkegaard has—and but Kierkegaard is a genius immediately. He goes to to Jesus Christ also, you know. He first says to say that "Father is a I obey my father because he’s intelligent and bright," that this is a blasphemy, you know. But then he goes, that’s here my
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Kierkegaard, he goes and says the same about Christ. That what Christ says are platitudes
Kierkegaard, he goes and says the same about Christ. That what Christ says are platitudes
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which—Kierkegaard's word I'm quoting—"Every average student of theology today can put it much better than Christ." Christ's message is what he is. Not what he says. I talk too much I promise, please if you want to counter-attack. I have just a question about this redoubling um that produces surplus value where the life produces a surplus value through investment. How is that different from um the speculative human capital um that through biopolitics and mode of reason and governance that produces um that self-enhances for the purposes of investments and credit and where all relationality is reduced to competition? And I'm just thinking of how someone like Éric Laurent, who I know you don't have a regard for... How how? No, no, I... But Éric Laurent’s work that psychoanalysis is the other reverse of biopolitics. And when I—how does he mean that? Well, I’ve asked a lot of contemporary Lacanians who work with him, who’ve come here to London to speak. And they say that psychoanalysis is always on the side of the subject. So it’s something about reactivating the subject because
which—Kierkegaard's word I'm quoting—"Every average student of theology today can put it much better than Christ." Christ's message is what he is. Not what he says. I talk too much I promise, please if you want to counter-attack. I have just a question about this redoubling um that produces surplus value where the life produces a surplus value through investment. How is that different from um the speculative human capital um that through biopolitics and mode of reason and governance that produces um that self-enhances for the purposes of investments and credit and where all relationality is reduced to competition? And I'm just thinking of how someone like Éric Laurent, who I know you don't have a regard for... How how? No, no, I... But Éric Laurent’s work that psychoanalysis is the other reverse of biopolitics. And when I—how does he mean that? Well, I’ve asked a lot of contemporary Lacanians who work with him, who’ve come here to London to speak. And they say that psychoanalysis is always on the side of the subject. So it’s something about reactivating the subject because
Slavoj Žižek
this transformation of the subject into speculative human
this transformation of the subject into speculative human
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capital is almost what you’re describing in this redoubling. And it’s about reactivating subjectivity. I mean, this is how I understand it, but I’d hoped you could explain. Yeah, you know the danger I see here is that no, it it this may sound as a wild speculation, but uh if I were to be a true truly evil and cunning capitalist, I would say: "But isn't but probably if you experience yourself in this radical self-objectivization as just manipulating with yourself, investing
capital is almost what you’re describing in this redoubling. And it’s about reactivating subjectivity. I mean, this is how I understand it, but I’d hoped you could explain. Yeah, you know the danger I see here is that no, it it this may sound as a wild speculation, but uh if I were to be a true truly evil and cunning capitalist, I would say: "But isn't but probably if you experience yourself in this radical self-objectivization as just manipulating with yourself, investing
Slavoj Žižek
in yourself as self-objectifying yourself as human capital, that in the end this doesn't work." So what if it’s in the interest of capital that the subjectivity of the people is kept alive? I know that I don't think capital can really work in this type of self-objectivization where everybody just invests in himself and so on or whatever. So I claim that what Laurent calls this "being on the side of the subject," you know, it’s an excellent instrument to make capitalism function more smoothly. Okay. May I answer? What about the you’re reducing the possibility of an act, an act which takes you from the bad infinite to a transitive infinite? You reducing—you saying that there’s—because I would say the non-all is that transitive infinite. And there is a possibility of an act in which you can move from the bad infinite to something else. And you suggesting that that’s not possible and that’s— No no, let’s go—no no, I would like what what’s your problem? what’s your problem? can I come in and you know uh—No no no, but this is sorry, it’s the same thing. But also to bring us back to the topic that of disorder under the heaven, because it's not you know I mean uh maybe your view would be that I mean the act you know you are calling not just for an individual act but more collective act with a collective agency and you haven't said enough really about this protests that are dotted around and we have different kinds of protests that might are not coordinated at the moment under this strong global agency that you would prefer to call communism even though and some of them as you pointed out are not just ironic they are deadly serious they're not cynical so how do we uh you know coordinate them in a way that this you know we can just subsume the Lumpenproletariat and immigrants that you are saying uh part of the immanent contradictions of capitalism anyway so as you keep telling us for the last two days is that all these problems are there we've got these immanent contradictions that David Bell also identified years ago so what do we do to bring them all together now and not lose our nerve like you said? Okay, I will try to give you a very brief answer first to this—sorry your last point about—sorry? Non-all and flight? About about the—yeah you know what always fascinates me more and more, and so that I don't only behind her back speak bad things about her: Judith Butler once said a nice thing, she said that in our society today where the reality of continued patriarchal dominance is masked by the appearance of "but we are permissive free individual" and so on, that the first step of woman’s liberation is that you reject this politeness, is that your demand to the master is, "Please give me orders, treat me as a master. Don’t bullshit me that we are equal" and so on and so on. So I would say that uh what would fascinate me much more is precisely and that was my attraction in this uh human capital and so on and so on. Isn't it much more subversive to claim, "Yes, I am just a human capital, please treat me—" you know to bring this position to its to its absurd point. Not not just to because again no no, it’s the same—no no, I would like to—what’s your problem? what’s your problem? no no, let’s go. No no, I would like what what’s your problem? no no, no no, but this is sorry, it’s the same thing. But also to bring us back to the topic that of disorder under the heaven, because it's not you know I mean uh maybe your view would be that I mean the act you know you are calling not just for an individual act but more collective act with a collective agency and you haven't said enough really about this protests that are dotted around and we have different kinds of protests that might are not coordinated at the moment under this strong global agency that you would prefer to call communism even though and some of them as you pointed out are not just ironic they are deadly serious they're not cynical so how do we uh you know coordinate them in a way that this you know we can just subsume the Lumpenproletariat and immigrants that you are saying uh part of the immanent contradictions of capitalism anyway so as you keep telling us for the last two days is that all these problems are there we've got these immanent contradictions that David Bell also identified years ago so what do we do to bring them all together now and not lose our nerve like you said? Okay, I will try to give you a very brief answer first to this—which was sorry your last point about—sorry? Non-all and flight? About about the—yeah you know what always fascinates me more and more, and so that I don't only behind her back speak bad things about her: Judith Butler once said a nice thing, she said that in our society today where the reality of continued patriarchal dominance is masked by the appearance of "but we are permissive free individual" and so on, that the first step of woman’s liberation is that you reject this politeness, is that your demand to the master is, "Please give me orders, treat me as a master. Don’t bullshit me that we are equal" and so on and so on. So I would say that uh what would fascinate me much more is precisely and that was my attraction in this uh human capital and so on and so on. Isn't it much more subversive to claim, "Yes, I am just a human capital, please treat me—" you know to bring this position to its to its absurd point. Not not just to because again no no, it’s the same—no no, I would like what what’s your problem? what’s your problem? now I'm not in a shape to go I admit it I didn't answer you. You know what uh for example when you mentioned the subject and so on and so on. But does not only Milner but even Lacan in his theory, okay, he says sometimes Milner speaks like, you know, psychoanalytic discourse sorry resist capitalism and so on and so on. But then the only example he gives is uh the saint. Concrete, no. Saint is of course the abject, the reject of the system and so on and so on. And my problem is precisely again, this is the political conflict as far as I can see. Maybe you know more than me here. Milner's position at least—and Laurent did follow here this line as far as I know—is that for example I know that there is a big polemics going on now in Latin America, where Milner as part of this what is his Voltaire title Zadigue movement, no, that the whole target is those who want to politicize psychoanalysis. Some of my followers claiming that, and it’s very naive to to me it seems a very naive argument: it’s that if you promote radical social change, this means—and I literally read this argument—this means you create conditions of social disorder. And in the conditions of social disorder psychoanalysis cannot be practiced regularly. Because it's a confusion so that's why we should and so on. So I like okay I'll put it in this way: in what sense even although Lacan has often even in his very last years adopted this anti-capitalist rhetorics and so on and so on, but what does this amount to? What does this effectively amount to? Because nonetheless again as I already said here a couple of times, Milner’s official position
in yourself as self-objectifying yourself as human capital, that in the end this doesn't work." So what if it’s in the interest of capital that the subjectivity of the people is kept alive? I know that I don't think capital can really work in this type of self-objectivization where everybody just invests in himself and so on or whatever. So I claim that what Laurent calls this "being on the side of the subject," you know, it’s an excellent instrument to make capitalism function more smoothly. Okay. May I answer? What about the you’re reducing the possibility of an act, an act which takes you from the bad infinite to a transitive infinite? You reducing—you saying that there’s—because I would say the non-all is that transitive infinite. And there is a possibility of an act in which you can move from the bad infinite to something else. And you suggesting that that’s not possible and that’s— No no, let’s go—no no, I would like what what’s your problem? what’s your problem? can I come in and you know uh—No no no, but this is sorry, it’s the same thing. But also to bring us back to the topic that of disorder under the heaven, because it's not you know I mean uh maybe your view would be that I mean the act you know you are calling not just for an individual act but more collective act with a collective agency and you haven't said enough really about this protests that are dotted around and we have different kinds of protests that might are not coordinated at the moment under this strong global agency that you would prefer to call communism even though and some of them as you pointed out are not just ironic they are deadly serious they're not cynical so how do we uh you know coordinate them in a way that this you know we can just subsume the Lumpenproletariat and immigrants that you are saying uh part of the immanent contradictions of capitalism anyway so as you keep telling us for the last two days is that all these problems are there we've got these immanent contradictions that David Bell also identified years ago so what do we do to bring them all together now and not lose our nerve like you said? Okay, I will try to give you a very brief answer first to this—sorry your last point about—sorry? Non-all and flight? About about the—yeah you know what always fascinates me more and more, and so that I don't only behind her back speak bad things about her: Judith Butler once said a nice thing, she said that in our society today where the reality of continued patriarchal dominance is masked by the appearance of "but we are permissive free individual" and so on, that the first step of woman’s liberation is that you reject this politeness, is that your demand to the master is, "Please give me orders, treat me as a master. Don’t bullshit me that we are equal" and so on and so on. So I would say that uh what would fascinate me much more is precisely and that was my attraction in this uh human capital and so on and so on. Isn't it much more subversive to claim, "Yes, I am just a human capital, please treat me—" you know to bring this position to its to its absurd point. Not not just to because again no no, it’s the same—no no, I would like to—what’s your problem? what’s your problem? no no, let’s go. No no, I would like what what’s your problem? no no, no no, but this is sorry, it’s the same thing. But also to bring us back to the topic that of disorder under the heaven, because it's not you know I mean uh maybe your view would be that I mean the act you know you are calling not just for an individual act but more collective act with a collective agency and you haven't said enough really about this protests that are dotted around and we have different kinds of protests that might are not coordinated at the moment under this strong global agency that you would prefer to call communism even though and some of them as you pointed out are not just ironic they are deadly serious they're not cynical so how do we uh you know coordinate them in a way that this you know we can just subsume the Lumpenproletariat and immigrants that you are saying uh part of the immanent contradictions of capitalism anyway so as you keep telling us for the last two days is that all these problems are there we've got these immanent contradictions that David Bell also identified years ago so what do we do to bring them all together now and not lose our nerve like you said? Okay, I will try to give you a very brief answer first to this—which was sorry your last point about—sorry? Non-all and flight? About about the—yeah you know what always fascinates me more and more, and so that I don't only behind her back speak bad things about her: Judith Butler once said a nice thing, she said that in our society today where the reality of continued patriarchal dominance is masked by the appearance of "but we are permissive free individual" and so on, that the first step of woman’s liberation is that you reject this politeness, is that your demand to the master is, "Please give me orders, treat me as a master. Don’t bullshit me that we are equal" and so on and so on. So I would say that uh what would fascinate me much more is precisely and that was my attraction in this uh human capital and so on and so on. Isn't it much more subversive to claim, "Yes, I am just a human capital, please treat me—" you know to bring this position to its to its absurd point. Not not just to because again no no, it’s the same—no no, I would like what what’s your problem? what’s your problem? now I'm not in a shape to go I admit it I didn't answer you. You know what uh for example when you mentioned the subject and so on and so on. But does not only Milner but even Lacan in his theory, okay, he says sometimes Milner speaks like, you know, psychoanalytic discourse sorry resist capitalism and so on and so on. But then the only example he gives is uh the saint. Concrete, no. Saint is of course the abject, the reject of the system and so on and so on. And my problem is precisely again, this is the political conflict as far as I can see. Maybe you know more than me here. Milner's position at least—and Laurent did follow here this line as far as I know—is that for example I know that there is a big polemics going on now in Latin America, where Milner as part of this what is his Voltaire title Zadigue movement, no, that the whole target is those who want to politicize psychoanalysis. Some of my followers claiming that, and it’s very naive to to me it seems a very naive argument: it’s that if you promote radical social change, this means—and I literally read this argument—this means you create conditions of social disorder. And in the conditions of social disorder psychoanalysis cannot be practiced regularly. Because it's a confusion so that's why we should and so on. So I like okay I'll put it in this way: in what sense even although Lacan has often even in his very last years adopted this anti-capitalist rhetorics and so on and so on, but what does this amount to? What does this effectively amount to? Because nonetheless again as I already said here a couple of times, Milner’s official position
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is politics as such is a domain
is politics as such is a domain
Slavoj Žižek
of identifications, imaginary symbolic fictions and so on and so on. So you know, this is for me again what I yesterday was targeting at as a position which is which is a little bit too cynical for me. Too cynical for me. So again when you say event, who is event? Is Macron event, my god? Milner engaged in Macron. I just in order I can speak about Jean-Claude Milner here in London a year ago. Who? Jean-Claude Milner. Ah Jean-Claude Milner,
of identifications, imaginary symbolic fictions and so on and so on. So you know, this is for me again what I yesterday was targeting at as a position which is which is a little bit too cynical for me. Too cynical for me. So again when you say event, who is event? Is Macron event, my god? Milner engaged in Macron. I just in order I can speak about Jean-Claude Milner here in London a year ago. Who? Jean-Claude Milner. Ah Jean-Claude Milner,
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yeah. Um in relation to that kind of infinite the bad infinite of capital. Yeah. Um and what would it mean to introduce a limit? And he said sublimation. So an act of sublimation indexed to the death drive which allows a destruction creation ex nihilo, and that brings us back to Antigone. I tend to, again I tend to agree in principle with you. But again, it's so primitive what
yeah. Um in relation to that kind of infinite the bad infinite of capital. Yeah. Um and what would it mean to introduce a limit? And he said sublimation. So an act of sublimation indexed to the death drive which allows a destruction creation ex nihilo, and that brings us back to Antigone. I tend to, again I tend to agree in principle with you. But again, it's so primitive what
Slavoj Žižek
I will say now. Can you even imagine of
I will say now. Can you even imagine of
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how to translate this beautiful formula: act of creation ex nihilo, act of sublimation, death drive into politics? What would give me an example, just imagine it. What would this have meant? Is where did it happen? Did it happen with Syriza? You started you started today when you talked about freedom, what does freedom mean?
how to translate this beautiful formula: act of creation ex nihilo, act of sublimation, death drive into politics? What would give me an example, just imagine it. What would this have meant? Is where did it happen? Did it happen with Syriza? You started you started today when you talked about freedom, what does freedom mean?
Slavoj Žižek
And you said freedom is not to do what you want but to be free from doing wanting to do what you want. That's sublimation. I'm just throwing it back to something you said at the beginning of your discourse today to be free from wanting to do exactly what you want when you want is in itself a sublimation to be free from that is freedom. Yeah but nonetheless I would here add something which may sound totalitarian but it's not. I think when you said to be free to do what you want, but I think
And you said freedom is not to do what you want but to be free from doing wanting to do what you want. That's sublimation. I'm just throwing it back to something you said at the beginning of your discourse today to be free from wanting to do exactly what you want when you want is in itself a sublimation to be free from that is freedom. Yeah but nonetheless I would here add something which may sound totalitarian but it's not. I think when you said to be free to do what you want, but I think
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psychoanalysis is here a little bit more severe and
psychoanalysis is here a little bit more severe and
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assumes the right
assumes the right
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to judge, "What do you really want?" We shouldn't trust what you want, that's the more of true freedom
to judge, "What do you really want?" We shouldn't trust what you want, that's the more of true freedom
Slavoj Žižek
for
for
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me. Freedom is not just do what you want. How do you know what do you want? How do you know what you want is what you really want? That’s my polemics that I went with Jordan Peterson and one of the points where we agreed even about happiness: happiness is not getting what you want. This is a nightmare as a rule. Happiness is cheating, happiness "I dream about that but don't come too close to me" and so on, you know. That's why the ultimate formula of shock for me, I used years ago I'm sorry if some of you know it, of this how happiness is not to get directly what you want. Did you see, but it’s not a great movie, *Day for Night*, *American Night* of where it's a side plot, a a cameraman and a girl, I don't know, two guys with but he wants to seduce
me. Freedom is not just do what you want. How do you know what do you want? How do you know what you want is what you really want? That’s my polemics that I went with Jordan Peterson and one of the points where we agreed even about happiness: happiness is not getting what you want. This is a nightmare as a rule. Happiness is cheating, happiness "I dream about that but don't come too close to me" and so on, you know. That's why the ultimate formula of shock for me, I used years ago I'm sorry if some of you know it, of this how happiness is not to get directly what you want. Did you see, but it’s not a great movie, *Day for Night*, *American Night* of where it's a side plot, a a cameraman and a girl, I don't know, two guys with but he wants to seduce
Slavoj Žižek
her and they are driving to the city the car breaks down, so they go there to rest a little bit and he starts telling her, "Oh my God, listen, now nobody is here, could we do it maybe quickly" and so on, no? And she said, "Yes why not," and starts to unbutton her trousers, no. And she is totally de—just like that, "What do you mean?" and so on, you know? For me and this is for me the catch in Lacan’s *ne pas céder*, don't compromise your desire. I mean, in our daily lives, we don't really want what we think we want. We play that’s why even I will give you now a political example. Even some people close to Corbyn told me here that when in the last election they won but almost won, many of them privately said, "Maybe this is the best thing that could have happened. Just imagine if we were simply to win, all the troubles" and so on and so on. That’s what I hate in the this notion of fake happiness or whatever, you know. This I happiness is that you almost get what you want but not quite and so on and so on. And and the great thing about psychoanalysis with all my troubles in my analysis what I got from it I hope so is that I learn to confront whenever I think I want something, do I really want that? And heroism is for me at least to to assume that, you know. Don't kill me, I'm getting ill but please let’s go on and let’s please I would love to go on more seriously because I will address all this rebus together in I will address it but you know some... Okay so there's lots of this disorder under the heaven, no end of disorder, and when you come back in July you can tell us how to activate it into a political program as well as sublimating individual acts like Jan does. But no, but no, my basic idea is very common
her and they are driving to the city the car breaks down, so they go there to rest a little bit and he starts telling her, "Oh my God, listen, now nobody is here, could we do it maybe quickly" and so on, no? And she said, "Yes why not," and starts to unbutton her trousers, no. And she is totally de—just like that, "What do you mean?" and so on, you know? For me and this is for me the catch in Lacan’s *ne pas céder*, don't compromise your desire. I mean, in our daily lives, we don't really want what we think we want. We play that’s why even I will give you now a political example. Even some people close to Corbyn told me here that when in the last election they won but almost won, many of them privately said, "Maybe this is the best thing that could have happened. Just imagine if we were simply to win, all the troubles" and so on and so on. That’s what I hate in the this notion of fake happiness or whatever, you know. This I happiness is that you almost get what you want but not quite and so on and so on. And and the great thing about psychoanalysis with all my troubles in my analysis what I got from it I hope so is that I learn to confront whenever I think I want something, do I really want that? And heroism is for me at least to to assume that, you know. Don't kill me, I'm getting ill but please let’s go on and let’s please I would love to go on more seriously because I will address all this rebus together in I will address it but you know some... Okay so there's lots of this disorder under the heaven, no end of disorder, and when you come back in July you can tell us how to activate it into a political program as well as sublimating individual acts like Jan does. But no, but no, my basic idea is very common
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sense, I hope we
sense, I hope we
Slavoj Žižek
agree. First, happiness has to be structurally to be real what rational theory rational choice theorists call a state that is necessarily a byproduct. It has you know it's the same that Lacan says, I think, about analytic cure. You don't try to cure it. It happens as a byproduct. But we've moved on from happiness, we're looking for communism, that's the question. I can guarantee you whatever communism will be, don't worry it will not be happiness. So you can... I agree with that.
agree. First, happiness has to be structurally to be real what rational theory rational choice theorists call a state that is necessarily a byproduct. It has you know it's the same that Lacan says, I think, about analytic cure. You don't try to cure it. It happens as a byproduct. But we've moved on from happiness, we're looking for communism, that's the question. I can guarantee you whatever communism will be, don't worry it will not be happiness. So you can... I agree with that.