Slavoj Zizek:Lenin,Stalin, China,India, Africa,Yugoslavia,Latin America, fascism, democracy, & West
Interview · India & Global Left ·
2024-02-03 · 1:25:29 · 9,139 words
historycommunism-socialismphilosophy-generalideologygeopolitics-warcapitalismdemocracyecology-climatesexuality-genderfascism-populismrevolution-violence
Žižek reflects on his intellectual formation in Yugoslavia, arguing that the specific 'moderate' communist oppression of the 1970s paradoxically enabled his international career by forcing him abroad and freeing him from local academic constraints. He details the regional philosophical divergences in ex-Yugoslavia (Frankfurt School in Slovenia, Heidegger in Croatia, Analytical Philosophy in Serbia) and concludes by praising Lenin’s 'principled pragmatism' as a model for political responsiveness. Žižek analyzes Lenin’s April Theses as a model for seizing revolutionary moments through pragmatic, non-dogmatic intervention, contrasting this with modern failures of decolonization and the rise of 'techno-feudalism.' He critiques the hypocrisy of Western human rights discourse, arguing that its collapse leaves a vacuum filled by authoritarian nation-states (BRICS, Modi, China) that combine free-market capitalism with nationalist homogenization, a dynamic he defines as 'fascism' in its minimal sense of conservative modernization. Žižek analyzes the intersection of ecology, immigration, and democracy, arguing that open borders without economic restructuring lead to neo-fascism, while criticizing the Western Left for its nostalgia for the welfare state and its complicity in maintaining class hierarchies through 'woke' politics. He evaluates various global leftist projects, praising Bolivia and Kerala while critiquing Venezuela and the Frankfurt School's theoretical inconsistencies, before expanding the scope of 'Me Too' to include the structural despair of poorer women and concluding with a defense of engaging with concrete political movements despite their flaws.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 21
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
A term used by Yanis Varoufakis to describe the current economic era, which Žižek partially agrees with despite disagreeing with the claim that capitalism is dead.
The official designation for Soviet-style communism, which Žižek identifies as the paradoxical foundation of his international academic recognition.
as “Western Marxists”
A classification for thinkers like those of the Frankfurt School or the Praxis Group, distinguished from orthodox Soviet Marxism by their critical stance toward the establishment.
Žižek’s phrase for the period in the early 1970s when communist oppression in Yugoslavia intensified, cutting off his local academic prospects and forcing his internationalization.
as “principled pragmatist”
Žižek’s positive characterization of Lenin, describing someone who follows unconditional principles while being extremely plastic and pragmatic about tactics in response to new situations.
Lenin’s key slogan in October, prioritizing immediate material needs (peace from war, land redistribution) over abstract 'working class power,' illustrating his pragmatic grasp of the revolutionary moment.
A Leninist proposal to install social control within mega-corporations (chopping off the head but keeping the machinery) rather than nationalizing them, leveraging their centralization for strong social action.
The process by which the free market, left to itself, abolishes itself through its own contradictions (monopolies), necessitating state intervention to preserve it, as seen in the transistor/radio history.
A pragmatic political form (exemplified by Rwanda) that maintains stability and economic progress through strict control of ethnic conflict, which Žižek argues can be more effective than chaotic multi-party liberal democracy in post-colonial contexts.
The current state in Gaza where Western human rights hypocrisy has collapsed, allowing violence to be committed openly without even the pretense of legal or moral justification, removing the 'moral compass' function of Western discourse.
The renaming of India by Modi, representing a Western-style homogenizing nationalism that erases India’s pluralistic tradition to fit a modern nation-state model, serving as a model for the new global order.
Žižek’s definition of fascism at its minimum: a political system that embraces free-market capitalism and technological development while imposing cultural/political hegemony based on invented traditional values to ensure social stability.
as “Leninist spirit”
A call for rethinking political constellations without prejudices, requiring a decisive break from liberal democratic constraints to address root causes like economic exploitation.
The idea that 'woke' culture serves the ruling class by policing the behavior of the poor (e.g., Mexicans) while allowing big corporations to maintain power through superficial progressive branding.
A form of authoritarian capitalism that is economically liberal and efficient but politically controlled, lacking the specific ideological hatred (like anti-semitism) of historical fascism but projecting disorder onto foreign intruders.
Žižek's specific formulation for the typical scenario of sexual coercion in 'Me Too' discourse, where indirect financial or positional pressure replaces direct force, highlighting the subtle dynamics of consent.
as “pessimist in theory optimist in practice”
A formula Žižek adopts from Horkheimer, advocating for a theoretical skepticism about the current system while maintaining an active, engaged optimism in supporting concrete political struggles.
Adorno and Horkheimer's concept that emancipatory reason turns into domination; Žižek argues Stalinism is the true example of this dialectic, which the Frankfurt School ignored.
Marcuse's concept describing a society where technological manipulation creates an apparent freedom that is actually total control, which Žižek critiques as ignoring the potential for anti-imperialist resistance.
as “not in Leninist sense principled opportunism”
Žižek's critique of Alain Badiou's stance, accusing him of waiting for 'pure' revolutions and dismissing concrete movements as failures, which Žižek sees as a cynical refusal to engage with actual historical agency.
Referenced implicitly in the context of exploitation and the 'big business' of immigration, where the system extracts value from the suffering of the poor.
Stories he reaches for 9
Žižek calls Biden's victory 'pure conservative nostalgia,' not in the political sense but in the desire to return to a 'glorious past' before Trump, arguing that Trump emerged from the failure of the progressive welfare state project.
“Biden's victory over Trump was pure conservative nostalgia... let's return to a glorious past before that monster Trump appeared”
He describes Syriza in Greece as a 'mega tragedy' where a party organically growing from social movements destroyed its own basis by compromising with Europe and using police against its supporters.
“Syriza... organically grew out of dozens of feminist consumerist farmers local movements... when they had to make a compromise with Europe they themselves destroyed their own basis”
He recounts the history of Haiti, noting that while French Jacobins supported the slave rebellion, Napoleon ordered them killed and Jefferson called Toussaint Louverture 'half animal,' revealing the hypocrisy of Western democracy.
“Napoleon we know what he did he said kill them all... Thomas Jefferson he said to Toussaint Louverture half animal”
After the Civil War, Lenin invited Western corporate chiefs to the USSR, telling them their organizational skills would function wonderfully in socialism, viewing large corporations as a 'stop towards socialism' that could be repurposed.
“Lenin not only personally these are wonderful details enjoyed talking with them... you with your organizational skills you would have functioned wonderfully in our system”
Lenin’s April Theses were so radical that his wife Krupskaya and Stalin thought he was in a 'strange psychic state' needing a doctor, illustrating the necessity of 'utopian' intuition to seize unique historical moments.
“even his wife Nadezhda Krupskaya wrote... that Vladimir Ilyich is getting into some kind of a strange psychic state maybe he needs a doctor”
He cites Rosa Luxemburg's idea that there is never the right time for a revolution, arguing that acting 'too early' creates the conditions for a 'right moment,' justifying unconditional engagement with imperfect movements.
“as Rosa Luxemburg said there is never the right time for a revolution by acting too early in a wrong way you create the conditions maybe for a right moment”
An old ANC fighter expressed sadness that the black poor majority in South Africa now nostalgically views apartheid as 'orderly' compared to the current chaos, high inequality, and lack of social safety, highlighting the failure of decolonization.
“she told me isn't this tragic that more and more the predominant ideology among the black poor majority in South Africa is I cry is nostalgia for apartheid because in their view apartheid was horrible but there was order”
Modi’s renaming of India to 'Bharat' and the Slovenian pharmaceutical company Krka’s expansion into India illustrate the new global order: free-flowing capital combined with strong, homogenizing nationalism that destroys local cultural heritage.
“Modi with his idea to change the name of India to Bharat with his more exclusive emphasis on on Hinduism... he is doing something in a bad sense Western he is the great Westernizer”
Žižek cites a recent heatwave in the Pacific Northwest (warmer than India/Emirates) to illustrate that ecological crises are global circulation issues, not local failures, and that local green measures are insufficient against planetary disruption.
“northwest of United States southwest of Canada Seattle Vancouver... that area in the summer two and a half years ago when was warmer than India and Emirates”
Works invoked 8
Adorno and Horkheimer's work; Žižargues it ignores Stalinism, which he sees as the true example of the dialectic of enlightenment going wrong.
Soviet Marxism book
A short book by Marcuse that Žižek dismisses as just an analysis of Khrushchev's speech, failing to address the deeper issues of Stalinism.
One-Dimensional Man book
Marcuse's concept of a technologically manipulated society; Žižek accepts the description but critiques the Frankfurt School's political stance despite it.
Frankfurt School other
Identified as the dominant philosophical orientation in Slovenia during Žižek's student years, representing a 'beautiful paradox' of official thought.
Lenin April Thesis book
Lenin’s famous text outlining the chance of revolution, cited as a model of seizing a unique historical moment through pragmatic slogans.
Me Too other
A social movement; Žižek supports its goals but critiques its focus on young, upper-middle-class women, arguing it ignores the structural despair of poorer, middle-aged women.
Praxis Group other
Referenced as a group of 'Western Marxists' in Croatia who were critical of the establishment, contrasting with the official party line.
Techno-feudalism book
Varoufakis’s book, which Žižek discusses in full, using its concept to analyze the current exploitation of creative capitalists by mega-corporations.
People invoked 36
Maoists / Naxalites positive
Žižek had contact with Maoists in Nepal and Naxalites in India; he admires them but critiques them as limited movements without the potential to become a predominant power.
Thomas Jefferson negative
Called the 'most democratic figure' of the American War of Independence, but Žižek highlights his racist comment to Toussaint Louverture ('half animal') as evidence of his hypocrisy.
Narendra Modi negative
Cited as the model of the new global order: a 'great Westernizer' who uses nationalism (Bharat) to counteract the cultural destruction of global capital, exemplifying 'conservative modernization'.
Mentioned as a potential winner in France if immigration issues are not addressed, representing the rise of the anti-immigrant right.
Vladimir Lenin positive
Praised for his optimism about small peasants and his 'Leninist spirit' of rethinking political constellations without prejudices.
Theodor W. Adorno negative
Criticized by Žižek for his 'ridiculous excuse' for not protesting US army intervention (being 'old and fat') and for ignoring Stalinism in the Frankfurt School's theory.
Luis Arce positive
Current Bolivian president, part of the group credited with Bolivia's economic miracle.
Referenced as the starting point for China’s reforms, after which China moved towards 'fascism' (conservative modernization).
Jacques Lacan positive
Cited as a key influence in Žižek's Slovenian circle; Žižek calls the influence of Lacanian psychoanalysis 'good' and notes that even Heideggerians hated them for it.
Abdullah Öcalan positive
Kurdish leader praised by Žižek for renouncing violence and discovering feminism in prison; he reads Žižek's work.
Toussaint Louverture positive
Leader of the Haitian slave rebellion; Žižek notes Jefferson called him 'half animal' and Napoleon ordered his people killed.
Mentioned as a figure from Haiti, a 'mega tragedy' of colonialism, where the West did not pardon the first successful slave rebellion.
Arundhati Roy positive
Admired as a figure who correctly identified the collapse of the 'moral compass' function of Western human rights discourse in the context of Gaza.
Cited as the person who wrote to others that Lenin was in a 'strange psychic state' needing a doctor, illustrating how radical his April Theses appeared to contemporaries.
SYRIZA negative
Greek political party described as a 'mega tragedy' that destroyed its own basis by compromising with Europe and using police against its supporters.
Donald Trump negative
Predicted to turn the US into a 'BRICS country' (fascist in the minimal sense) if he wins, representing the 'mega catastrophe' of combining free capital with nationalist sovereignty.
Álvaro García Linera positive
Morales' vice president, credited with helping achieve Bolivia's economic success.
Mother Teresa negative
Žižek agrees with Hitchens that she was a negative figure; he notes the Congress Party tolerated her in Kolkata because it fit their narrative of misery.
Alain Badiou negative
Žižek's friend with whom he has a conflict; he accuses Badiou of 'principled opportunism' for dismissing concrete movements like Syriza as failures.
Leon Trotsky negative
Contrasted with Lenin; Žižek argues Trotsky was more dogmatic and less optimistic about small peasants, whereas Lenin was wholeheartedly supportive of peasant pathways to revolution.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva positive
Brazilian leader praised for modest leftist policies that improved favela conditions, despite the paradoxical result of gentrification.
Mentioned as doing the same thing as Modi in Turkey: moving towards a Western-style nation state with strong nationalism.
Described as a 'good friend'; Žižek partially agrees with his thesis on techno-feudalism but explicitly states he does not totally agree with the claim that capitalism is dead.
Evo Morales positive
Bolivian leader praised for achieving an 'authentic economic miracle' through intelligent pressure on capital flight.
Ernesto Laclau positive
Mentioned as a contact Žižek sought in England during his unemployment, part of the network that facilitated his international career.
Alexander Kerensky negative
Described as a 'dogmatic Marxist' who followed a 'dogmatic historicist line' that revolution could only happen after bourgeois development, representing the mistake Lenin avoided.
Martin Heidegger positive
Identified as the philosophical orientation closest to the Communist Party in Croatia, serving as a 'dissidence' that was not too strong.
Christopher Hitchens positive
Žižek follows Hitchens' line in criticizing Mother Teresa as a 'largely negative evil person.'
Napoleon negative
Described as saying 'kill them all' regarding the Haitian rebellion, revealing the truth about the French Jacobins' hypocrisy.
Viktor Orbán negative
Hungarian president used as an example of anti-immigrant populism; Žižek argues that rejecting him as a democrat is difficult when he organizes referendums on immigration.
Herbert Marcuse positive
Cited alongside Horkheimer as a Frankfurt School figure whose criticism was politically sensitive in Slovenia.
Joe Biden negative
Žižek calls Biden's victory 'pure conservative nostalgia' and his inauguration 'fake,' arguing it represents a failure of the progressive welfare state project.
Rosa Luxemburg positive
Cited by Žižek for the idea that there is never the right time for a revolution, and that acting early creates conditions for a right moment.
Jürgen Habermas negative
Described as the 'state philosopher of Western Europe'; Žižek criticizes his silence on East German communism and his complicity with the West.
Max Horkheimer positive
Cited as a representative of the Frankfurt School Marxism that was the 'official thought' in Slovenia, such that criticizing him too much threatened one's career.
Joseph Stalin negative
Mentioned in a counterfactual about Lenin: Žižek speculates that if Lenin had died later, Stalin might have been overthrown, implying a negative view of Stalin's actual rule.
Transcript 21 turns
Slavoj Žižek
...feminism is that they don't play this sexually conservative game how for a woman to defend herself which brings the impression as if women really don't want sex only exceptionally sex is always pressure I read wonderful Spanish from Mexico text where they approach a much more refined difficult problem which is sorry but women also want to fuck why not for example although I don't totally agree with the thesis of my good friend Yanis Varoufakis that capitalism is dead we are entering neo-feudalism techno-feudalism sorry techno-feudalism yes there are too many things which I don't totally agree but I think he did clearly perceive a
...feminism is that they don't play this sexually conservative game how for a woman to defend herself which brings the impression as if women really don't want sex only exceptionally sex is always pressure I read wonderful Spanish from Mexico text where they approach a much more refined difficult problem which is sorry but women also want to fuck why not for example although I don't totally agree with the thesis of my good friend Yanis Varoufakis that capitalism is dead we are entering neo-feudalism techno-feudalism sorry techno-feudalism yes there are too many things which I don't totally agree but I think he did clearly perceive a
unknown
certain tendency hello and welcome to another episode of India and Global Left today we have with us a very special guest Slavoj Zizek Slavoj welcome to India and Global Left
certain tendency hello and welcome to another episode of India and Global Left today we have with us a very special guest Slavoj Zizek Slavoj welcome to India and Global Left
Slavoj Žižek
thank you very much for your kind invitation I am honored to be here
thank you very much for your kind invitation I am honored to be here
unknown
I have a lot of things to discuss with you but if you don't mind can you just give us a little bit of background about the kind of family you were born in or what interested you what when did you become a Hegelian so to speak what were the kind of things that you read and I think that would be a good preface to some of the to understand some of the things that we would eventually plunge into
I have a lot of things to discuss with you but if you don't mind can you just give us a little bit of background about the kind of family you were born in or what interested you what when did you become a Hegelian so to speak what were the kind of things that you read and I think that would be a good preface to some of the to understand some of the things that we would eventually plunge into
Slavoj Žižek
let's not lose too much time I would just like to mention the basic why not call it like this paradox I think my so-called international career the fact that people many people know me in academic circles of course is mostly due to the paradoxical character of Yugoslav version of whatever you call it communism really existing socialism because on the one hand I don't have these illusions of many Western intellectuals that Yugoslavia was nonetheless something special it was non-aligned it was not the same hardline bureaucratic socialism as in other East European countries yes there were considerable differences for example from early sixties borders to the west were completely open even somewhere I would say in the mid sixties the ruling Communist Party renounced to an official not so much ideology as philosophy it was no longer dialectical materialism yes you should maybe pay a little bit lip service to Marxism but de facto there were Marxists who were to be classified more as Western Marxists Frankfurt School and so on there were analytical philosophers there were phenomenologists and Heideggerians why am I mentioning this because as a student of philosophy you had a choice it wasn't just a choice between being a let's call it dissident you ruin your career and you follow the party line you have to choose which party line you prefer paradoxically in different from after republics six or however there were of republics of ex-Yugoslavia got more economic but especially intellectual independence and this brings me to a nice paradox in different republics there was a different philosophical orientation which was still closest to the power structure in Slovenia it was Frankfurt School Marxism which is a beautiful paradox like your job was threatened if you criticized Horkheimer or Marcuse too much in Croatia even more beautiful paradox it was Heidegger's thought which was closest to the well communist party intellectual life why they didn't like Marxism because in in Croatia Marxism was dominated by the Praxis group who were more too much Western Marxists and critical towards the establishment in Serbia even more interesting it was analytical philosophy you know why because there they liked this old styled depoliticized analytical thought where you didn't analyze concrete social situation but you know this more abstract language analysis what is the meaning of a sentence can we determine it objectively and of course the communists like this you know why because they didn't see a threat they knew that that type of philosophy cannot trigger a social movement in the sense of finding a great echo in social circles so if you want to make a career there it was best to be an analytical philosopher so we had a choice in Slovenia the basic opposition that predominated philosophy when I was young analytical philosophy was also beginning but it was some kind of a Frankfurt School Marxism more or less official thought and Heideggerian dissidence but not too strong a dissidence they still were able to publish books that's why my whole generation was formed by the big explosion of so-called structuralism post-structuralism in France it was a breath of fresh air for us it we always considered Heideggerians and Frankfurt School Marxists part of the same camp the opposite poles but within the same field we wanted to break out so again we found this way out in so-called new French thought we refer to all of them but in Slovenia specifically Jacques Lacan's psychoanalysis begin to predominate in our circle now this is the good influence of my environment the bad one and this is a beautiful irony is that not only official philosophers but also Heideggerians hated us they often attacked us in similar terms even so I had trouble when there was what I call the last moment of the Indian summer of communism things got harder in the 1970s I finished my postdoctoral studies in and I wasn't able to get a job I was for four five years unemployed it wasn't a terrible situation I earned enough money through translations my parents supported me and so on but what's the irony is that in this way since I was isolated here I began to look for contacts abroad first in France with Lacanians then in England with Ernesto Laclau some other people and so on so now I'm coming and then I will stop to my ironic result without communist oppression in the early 70s and throughout the 70s I can tell you exactly who I would have been I would have gotten a post at Ljubljana University at the Department of philosophy I was already I was already in that position I had to fill out forms but then I was prohibited so the point is that without the last wave of communist oppression I would have been probably an unknown professor of philosophy here in Slovenia because you know to be a professor of philosophy at a philosophy department lots of teaching obligations and so on and so on I wouldn't have time to do all my studies writings and so on after a couple of years of unemployment I got around a job at a small research institute which was also a blessing because research institute this research institute were a place where the communists in power put intellectuals whom they considered not to dissident you were not yet arrested or what but intelligent enough so they gave you a niche to do your work without too much contact with the public this was a paradise for me it meant I had no fixed obligations even to stay here I it was possible for me to be absent from Slovenia for a whole year and the salary went on so that's the most I can say it's a beautiful irony without the moderate communist oppression I would have been an average professor here and so on nobody so my gratitude is paradoxically to the key event is the moderate but still pretty strong communist oppression in the 70s feels like you're a real Marxist in the sense that a crisis was actually very instrumental in terms of who you became like if not for being unemployed probably but I was also a Leninist here in the slightly ironic sense because you know now I wrote another text short on Lenin where I admit Lenin did many things which appear to us today terrifying I never follow this line if just Lenin were to die a little bit later then Stalin would be overthrown there would have been a totally different Soviet Union maybe maybe not I don't idealize Lenin but what I like in Lenin and what is still actual for us today is whenever an unexpected new situation emerged Lenin was had an incredible ability to quickly totally rethink the situation to see how the coordinates radically change Lenin was never orthodox in the sense of following an abstract Marxist dogma he was I like this term and I mean it in a positive way he was a principled pragmatist a principled even opportunist he followed unconditionally his principles but he was at the same time extremely plastic pragmatic about what to do for example the outbreak of First World War was a shock to Lenin first he didn't believe this could happen not the war but the fact of how practically all social democratic parties in Europe took the patriotic line with the exception of Russian Bolsheviks and one has to say this especially with regard to what
let's not lose too much time I would just like to mention the basic why not call it like this paradox I think my so-called international career the fact that people many people know me in academic circles of course is mostly due to the paradoxical character of Yugoslav version of whatever you call it communism really existing socialism because on the one hand I don't have these illusions of many Western intellectuals that Yugoslavia was nonetheless something special it was non-aligned it was not the same hardline bureaucratic socialism as in other East European countries yes there were considerable differences for example from early sixties borders to the west were completely open even somewhere I would say in the mid sixties the ruling Communist Party renounced to an official not so much ideology as philosophy it was no longer dialectical materialism yes you should maybe pay a little bit lip service to Marxism but de facto there were Marxists who were to be classified more as Western Marxists Frankfurt School and so on there were analytical philosophers there were phenomenologists and Heideggerians why am I mentioning this because as a student of philosophy you had a choice it wasn't just a choice between being a let's call it dissident you ruin your career and you follow the party line you have to choose which party line you prefer paradoxically in different from after republics six or however there were of republics of ex-Yugoslavia got more economic but especially intellectual independence and this brings me to a nice paradox in different republics there was a different philosophical orientation which was still closest to the power structure in Slovenia it was Frankfurt School Marxism which is a beautiful paradox like your job was threatened if you criticized Horkheimer or Marcuse too much in Croatia even more beautiful paradox it was Heidegger's thought which was closest to the well communist party intellectual life why they didn't like Marxism because in in Croatia Marxism was dominated by the Praxis group who were more too much Western Marxists and critical towards the establishment in Serbia even more interesting it was analytical philosophy you know why because there they liked this old styled depoliticized analytical thought where you didn't analyze concrete social situation but you know this more abstract language analysis what is the meaning of a sentence can we determine it objectively and of course the communists like this you know why because they didn't see a threat they knew that that type of philosophy cannot trigger a social movement in the sense of finding a great echo in social circles so if you want to make a career there it was best to be an analytical philosopher so we had a choice in Slovenia the basic opposition that predominated philosophy when I was young analytical philosophy was also beginning but it was some kind of a Frankfurt School Marxism more or less official thought and Heideggerian dissidence but not too strong a dissidence they still were able to publish books that's why my whole generation was formed by the big explosion of so-called structuralism post-structuralism in France it was a breath of fresh air for us it we always considered Heideggerians and Frankfurt School Marxists part of the same camp the opposite poles but within the same field we wanted to break out so again we found this way out in so-called new French thought we refer to all of them but in Slovenia specifically Jacques Lacan's psychoanalysis begin to predominate in our circle now this is the good influence of my environment the bad one and this is a beautiful irony is that not only official philosophers but also Heideggerians hated us they often attacked us in similar terms even so I had trouble when there was what I call the last moment of the Indian summer of communism things got harder in the 1970s I finished my postdoctoral studies in and I wasn't able to get a job I was for four five years unemployed it wasn't a terrible situation I earned enough money through translations my parents supported me and so on but what's the irony is that in this way since I was isolated here I began to look for contacts abroad first in France with Lacanians then in England with Ernesto Laclau some other people and so on so now I'm coming and then I will stop to my ironic result without communist oppression in the early 70s and throughout the 70s I can tell you exactly who I would have been I would have gotten a post at Ljubljana University at the Department of philosophy I was already I was already in that position I had to fill out forms but then I was prohibited so the point is that without the last wave of communist oppression I would have been probably an unknown professor of philosophy here in Slovenia because you know to be a professor of philosophy at a philosophy department lots of teaching obligations and so on and so on I wouldn't have time to do all my studies writings and so on after a couple of years of unemployment I got around a job at a small research institute which was also a blessing because research institute this research institute were a place where the communists in power put intellectuals whom they considered not to dissident you were not yet arrested or what but intelligent enough so they gave you a niche to do your work without too much contact with the public this was a paradise for me it meant I had no fixed obligations even to stay here I it was possible for me to be absent from Slovenia for a whole year and the salary went on so that's the most I can say it's a beautiful irony without the moderate communist oppression I would have been an average professor here and so on nobody so my gratitude is paradoxically to the key event is the moderate but still pretty strong communist oppression in the 70s feels like you're a real Marxist in the sense that a crisis was actually very instrumental in terms of who you became like if not for being unemployed probably but I was also a Leninist here in the slightly ironic sense because you know now I wrote another text short on Lenin where I admit Lenin did many things which appear to us today terrifying I never follow this line if just Lenin were to die a little bit later then Stalin would be overthrown there would have been a totally different Soviet Union maybe maybe not I don't idealize Lenin but what I like in Lenin and what is still actual for us today is whenever an unexpected new situation emerged Lenin was had an incredible ability to quickly totally rethink the situation to see how the coordinates radically change Lenin was never orthodox in the sense of following an abstract Marxist dogma he was I like this term and I mean it in a positive way he was a principled pragmatist a principled even opportunist he followed unconditionally his principles but he was at the same time extremely plastic pragmatic about what to do for example the outbreak of First World War was a shock to Lenin first he didn't believe this could happen not the war but the fact of how practically all social democratic parties in Europe took the patriotic line with the exception of Russian Bolsheviks and one has to say this especially with regard to what
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Serbia became later and the Serb Social Democratic Party these were the only two bright spots at the beginning and then Lenin some people hold this against him behaved in a
Serbia became later and the Serb Social Democratic Party these were the only two bright spots at the beginning and then Lenin some people hold this against him behaved in a
Slavoj Žižek
totally pragmatic way his aim was not a nationalist victory his aim was revolution in Russia and when he saw this option after the February Revolution overthrew the Tsar but at the same time brought to power one should not forget brought to power a moderate Marxist Menshevik regime Kerensky was a dogmatic Marxist he followed this line there cannot be a revolution in Russia because we don't have enough of a working class we know the line the revolution can only happen when the relations of production are developed enough they the Mensheviks followed this dogmatic historicist line history is linear you cannot jump over first you have to do the bourgeois liberal revolution then slowly you go on Lenin immediately perceived a chance because of this a chance for a revolution because of what he saw two mistakes which is the government pursuing the war they didn't want to step out of the war the Menshevik government from February till October plus farmers were dissatisfied the government didn't do anything practically to break up large almost feudal structure of on the land of big farmers and so on so it's interesting we tend to forget Lenin's slogan in October was not working class power to working class it was Peace and Land it was Peace and Land you see Lenin Peace Land and Bread sorry Peace Land and Bread and Bread yeah but bread again meant because that because of the war confusion again there there was hunger and all that so what I admire with Lenin is that he was he had this incredible instinct to see a chance to grab a unique moment Lenin said if we miss this opportunity now the chance of a revolution is lost for years even more and it's interesting how when he wrote his famous Lenin April Thesis in outlining this chance of a revolution do you know that even his wife Nadezhda Krupskaya wrote to I don't know to whom that Vladimir Ilyich is getting into some kind of a strange psychic state maybe he needs a doctor or whatever and even Stalin and so on all those were against Lenin considered him a utopian so what I'm saying is that today I'm not playing nostalgia for Lenin I'm not saying we should return to his formula of central party organization and so on what I am saying is that a similar thinking is necessary today without any prejudices you know for example although I don't totally agree with the thesis of my good friend Yanis Varoufakis that capitalism is dead we are entering neo-feudalism techno-feudalism sorry techno-feudalism yes there are too many things which I don't totally agree but I think he did clearly perceive a certain tendency you know what's for me this you may amuse you and some of your readers the paradox is that I hope your listeners your public knew about Varoufakis's idea of techno-feudalism yeah we did a full book discussion on his book Techno-feudalism do you know that there are some people around Donald Trump who like his book you know how they read it at some part in some parts Varoufakis says that in today's typical constellation you have a big corporation who doesn't exploit only workers but also he doesn't use the term but I use it in a consciously naive way small creative inventing capitalists you know because it's not only as a book buyer that you have to go through Amazon it's also the under quotation marks capitalists here the big publishers they know if you ignore Amazon it can mean the end for you in our kind of books that me and my friend produce humanities philosophy in United States I was told Amazon covers to percent of the sales so again both old-fashioned capitalists who still produce stuff even if it's intellectual stuff and workers we are all exploited by these neo-feudal corporations so at some point when he evokes possibilities of what to do Varoufakis even mentions and I'm not opposed to it I like this is a typical Leninist procedure he said why not strategically risk a pack a pact temporary pact between ordinary exploited workers and let's call it creative capitalists who are both oppressed by big corporations then another option I would propose here but how to do it is to in some sense not necessarily nationalize but socialize these mega-corporations because in some other sense their ultra-centralization provides a machinery for strong social action why not simply chop off not physically the head and install in these big corporations from Amazon to Microsoft and so on some kind of social control and this is a moment which also always fascinated Lenin you know that it's interesting to follow what Lenin was doing in those days years a couple after the end of the Civil War '21 and before his not only death but a year before incapacitation and so on Lenin invited or they came to Russia many Western ultra-rich corporate chiefs because Soviet Union was in a desperate situation they needed foreign capital investment collaboration and Lenin maybe went a little bit too far he had excellent relations with them because for them big corporations were already a stop towards socialism creating a large organization you just chop off the head and it's socialism so Lenin not only personally these are wonderful details enjoyed talking with them telling some of them but listen you with your organizational skills you would have functioned wonderfully in our system not only this he even said that said that the main danger for him in were not big capitalists but the small bourgeois liberals all these individuals and individualistically oriented entrepreneurs and so on so I'm not saying we should follow here Lenin I'm just saying that similar radical decisions have to be taken today for example precisely with regard to what Varoufakis calls techno-feudalism what to do Varoufakis is well aware that the solution is not that we need to make a step back to more chaotic liberal capitalism through state intervention but Varoufakis is aware of something that Lenin would have liked namely that do you know that from the 1920s onwards free market survived only through extremely strong state interventions market left to itself would have abolished itself sublated itself in the Hegelian sense of Aufhebung already in the 1930s especially in the 1950s every American Marxist will tell you this wonderful example when transistors portable radios I mean simply and TV sets exploded in United States in the early and mid fifties one company got a monopoly of this technology and American state immediately took from them the copyright said no this technology should be free because if they were not to do it it would be an incredibly oppressive monopoly this thing another thing if you allow me to just finish where I think we should be Leninists and many people are mad at me if I say this you know I'm totally for decolonization and so on but the constant constant not always permanent failure predominant failure of decolonization independently of who won the decolonization process in the sense of which anti-colonial power took over often ends in catastrophe I always repeat this maybe you know it but the saddest thing for me that I heard in the last years what what I learned from an old African National Congress fighter a beautiful old lady from South Africa she told me isn't this tragic that more and more the predominant ideology among the black poor majority in South Africa is I cry is nostalgia for apartheid because in their view apartheid was horrible but there was order you had a certain salary your life if you didn't mess in politics of course was relatively safe and there was social safety because of course it was a police state now social differences are higher than ever you know that South Africa has the world record of a gap between rich and poor all that socially happened is that the old white ruling class is enlarged with the new black ruling class with incredible corruption social chaos signs of disintegration of law and order and instead of playing the usual game of blame the whites although this is because no let's ask why another country Angola where as you probably remember the communist-led supported from Cuba opposition won and it's also now a state of total division between new rich elite in Luanda which is a modern European cities with Starbucks all that bullshit and the incredible poverty around you see this is a problem that we should approach without prejudices not in the sense of oh colonization is better absolutely not but when decolonization went bad and now I will tell you another thing I've written this in a text and got hate mail as much as you want you know that not because African and other countries are primitive but because of the complex ethnic and religious situation exploited by those in power now I will say something to shock you and your public a moderate intelligent dictatorship moderate not madness can do a better job than simply an appropriation of Western democracy for example maybe I'm wrong I don't know what's happening there now but in Rwanda they have for the last two decades a guy I forgot his name who is a moderate dictator but he did the job he keeps absolutely under control the old conflict you remember between Tutsi and Hutu it's simply prohibited to play on this then economy is progressing there is a limited freedom of the press the situation is stable and as a black friend from there told me imagine now this pure Western liberal democracy the tragedy is that in a full multi-party system in this situation the parties would be for sure organized along ethnic lines primarily you see that's for me the Leninist approach totally pragmatic but never losing out of sight the absolute seriousness of our situation and it's the same for me with the problem of anti-Eurocentrism your figure whom I admire very much Arundhati Roy wrote something not about India but about the effects of the Gaza war she said honestly that although Western human rights and all that were of course always hypocritical absolutely always there was never a golden era when the West took them seriously it was always a tool for your own expansionist whatever call it but nonetheless as Arundhati put it correctly nonetheless they served as a kind of a moral compass to all precisely in seeing that they are hypocritical they open up a way for self-critical rethinking like the idea is not no human rights the idea is but let's take them more seriously let's see what does it mean have human rights in a poor oppressive country this especially so and then she said something very sad Arundhati she says that that now with Gaza reaction with Gaza with how the West which boasts with human rights ignores what Israel is doing in Gaza human rights even no longer work in this hypocritical way so that you can still the good thing about hypocrisy I more and more admire hypocrisy is that it opens up to victims a place for criticism you can say but you are a hypocrite look you are violating your own rules so let's no now I think human rights are violated there in such an open way we have as many people said in Gaza the first case in history of an open okay the term genocide is a little bit problematic but basically it is genocide going on there a first open genocide we see it every day on TV and so on and I think so I think that while some leftists think okay wonderful we see the Western discourse of human rights is over I wouldn't be so glad about it because okay the alternative is BRICS you know what I don't like in BRICS isn't that often in BRICS what you get is a kind of opportunistic coexistence in the sense of I tolerate your crimes you tolerate my crimes for me as I often repeat the model of BRICS is how Taliban taking over in Afghanistan and China immediately made a deal the deal was we Taliban tolerate how you are oppressing Muslims in that Uygur Uygur in that area we China will ignore what you are doing with women and so on blah blah in in Afghanistan what I am afraid is that since today we live in a global era what we are doing sorry the problems we are facing are by global warming immigration problems and so on are global problems which cannot be solved at the level of local sovereign state and my approach to non-Western countries who often as a rule in a justified way criticize the hypocrisy of Western legacy is that now many of them are copying imitating what I found in today's situation the worst part of Western legacy which is a strong nation state maybe you can correct me here I'm wrong but your commander Narendra Modi with his idea to change the name of India to Bharat with his more exclusive emphasis on on Hinduism and so on I see in this a tendency towards homogenizing India into pure this that's the catch he is not returning to Indian tradition the tradition was much more plural mixed and so on he is doing something in a bad sense Western he is the great Westernizer Erdogan is doing the same in Turkey even in China now the they are oppressing Uighurs Tibetans more even China is now becoming moving towards a Western style of nation state so that's what I see as a dark prospect a strong ideologically strong nationalist nation state but which leave the global market totally undisturbed if I know it correctly under Modi India is more than ever part of international market other country even ah in Slovenia we have our maybe I think even the biggest single company in Slovenia it's called Krka the name of a river it's a pharmaceutical company producing mostly pills blah blah other medical stuff and they want now to open up a factory in India and even Indians are buying things here so he is the model for me here Modi the model of this the new global market free flow of capital but to guarantee we all know that global capital is destructive of local cultural heritage etc. but to try to counteract here with stronger local nationalism emphasis on local traditions and so on and in this sense only things are more complex I never liked the leftists who use all too quickly the term fascism you know basically we often think use today the term fascism in a non-thinking way which is there is something slightly authoritarian that you don't like oh let's call it fascism no no but if we use the term fascism in a more general sense what is fascism at its minimum it's as they call it conservative modernization you want to enjoy the fruits of modernity technological development free market but you are aware that this can destroy destroy the homogeneity stability of social life so to control this you impose some cultural political hegemony based on traditional values which are always as it is always with traditions invented now you know this if we call in general sense this country's fascist it's not Naziism they are not necessarily expansionist I'm just talking about free market capitalism controlled by some traditional national sense of unity this is why although I wish the Chinese all the best this is what I see that effectively China is moving to after Deng Xiaoping reforms it moves not in any bad sense it moves from hardline Mao communism to fascism fascism in the sense that market functions with moderate often also very rational state interventions but with a state control imposing cultural unity trying to limit foreign influence and so on and so on this is I think where we even moving and I think I will conclude my god I gave a whole speech I think that even Trump if he wins United States will become another BRICS country because Trump was always for free capitalism but stronger America stronger local cultural identities and so on and so on I think this is a catastrophe a mega catastrophe because if the only thing that unites us is the free flow of capital and otherwise we have full national cultural and so on sovereignty how will we cope with the problems that we have? Ecology. No, you cannot say you in India now in some parts where in the south usually you know in the city how it is called now which was once called Madras I think yeah it's it's called Chennai now yeah yeah Chennai yeah yeah didn't you have there a couple of times a terrible drought in summer and so on okay but and flood and flood in... yeah yeah that's the paradox today you have both yes but you know my god this is not Indian problem the whole the whole circulation of air what we are doing with the sea and so on and so on we have to approach this globally and even I hope the developed countries ultra-developed discovered this for example my eternal example you remember three years ago northwest of United States southwest of Canada Seattle Vancouver at that point that area in the summer two and a half years ago when was warmer than India and Emirates for some time but again you shouldn't blame them locally they had a relatively good ecological measures it's that the whole circulation of air around the northern pole is disturbed so and the same it is with immigration that's why I don't see as a solution in contrast to Western liberals let's just open the borders we are guilty no if you do this you will get what is already happening in Europe in in Italy in Sweden and elsewhere the anti-immigrant right is taking over the same may happen in France Marine Le Pen maybe even in Germany and so on so I think we should now not in some imaginary future address the problem but why are people immigrating here what because and also how this immigration proceeds you know that immigration is a big business of half immigrant organizations which exploit poor immigrants like it's well known from Turkey to Europe the price is I think euros and so on so we had we have to change the whole set of economic interaction relations and so on people tell me but this is utopia I tell them okay but then Europe will become neo-fascist in this sense of focused of on national autonomy or or that's the paradox if you want to keep borders relatively open you will have to limit democracy like we all hate Orban the Hungarian president but what can you tell him how can you reject him as a if you're a democrat when he and in Poland also want to organize a big referendum asking people do we have to go on allowing immigrants to arrive into our country this is the sad thing the majority is against so right wing anti-immigrant populists have a point when they say millions of foreigners arriving to our country this is a big decision so the majority has nothing to say about it or whatever you know what I mean here a Leninist spirit is required this rethinking without any prejudices the new constellation even in India my sympathies there were where where of course as expected from me pretty radical I admire individuals like Arundhati Roy I even have I don't plan to go to India now so I hope I'll not be arrested do you know that I had a certain contact with Maoists in Nepal and with Naxalite guys in your country although unfortunately my problem with Naxalite is that I don't think they have the potential to become a really predominant power they are a limited movement and the big problem is if Modi will succeed in his relatively relatively you should tell me this if this is true but is he nonetheless although poverty persists and so on I know but economically in abstract terms in abstract terms it doesn't matter if people are dying there but in overall statistic India is developing modernizing itself what can the left do here it's a serious problem the left is today effectively de facto the left has two facets now I'm not talking about India I don't know enough I'm talking about so-called developed Western countries the left on the one hand is still in love with old social democratic ideas like let's try to save whatever possible of the welfare state sorry that's not enough this is why incidentally Biden's inauguration was a fake Biden's victory over Trump was pure conservative nostalgia not conservative in the political sense but conservative in the sense of let's return to a glorious past before that monster Trump appeared no my answer is Trump is secondary no he's extremely dangerous but we should never forget that Trump emerged because of the failure of the predominant relatively progressive American welfare state project and so on you know so one and second element this so-called cancel culture woke left this culturalization of economic class issues I totally support feminist struggles LGBT and so on and so on I'm just saying that if they are not closely linked with other social struggles they de facto became an element of the ruling class to keep under control the poor for example in United States they will not tell you publicly but I noticed immediately the hidden class dimension of political correctness it's usually always the poor Mexicans and so on who are not enough feminist and so on and so forth while the big corporations oh like political correctness you know you fire one of the big managers because he made an inappropriate remark socially you change nothing but you can sell yourself as progressive cut me off you don't play your game of being my domina with a black whip go on we you know you know a guy in Slovenia attacked me in a totally correct way he said how do you make a long one hour interview with Zizek you ask him one question you know let's try not to follow this model totally please counterattack what is I want to learn from you I apart from this general sympathy for parts of India for example I was in Kerala and there okay we can debate are they radical enough but there this very moderate part of the establishment communists did a relatively good job relatively one can debate it wasn't it the same even in Bengal till now communists were for a long time in power there also until yeah yeah but and but isn't it that they didn't do it so bad that almost for the first time in history I read under communist rule Bengal became self-sufficient in producing food but then I was told that communists as they always are became too obsessed with progress progress for them means socialize abolishing small farms larger farms and so you had thousands of suicides of small farmers it was it was a tragedy also I read another detail can you tell me yes or no an Indian friend told me this fascinated me that that it was part of the Congress party politics because Congress party practically never controlled Kolkata the old Calcutta that that's why they tolerated there Mother Teresa it fitted them that Kolkata became the symbol of Indian misery because it was not their Congress party you know that and I incidentally I don't know how you do it but I follow here the line of Christopher Hitchens and other knowing enough about Mother Teresa I tend to agree that she was a largely negative evil person if you ask me where do you disagree with me here please I think yeah there are a couple of points but I would pick up on the fascism thing I think you began by saying that we should not use the fascism word loosely which I completely agree with but then you went on and say that the Deng period was fascism because there was this kind of a combination of perhaps or a toleration of of market and some kind of state action but I think fascism it's it's hard to understand fascism if you just look at the political economy because if you look at Germany in the 1930s Germany's Naziism it's different I think unfortunately sorry to interrupt you you can also have a sorry for this obscene expression a soft fascism which doesn't need anti-semitism I don't mean just Jews here I mean a a foreign intruder group on which you can project the cause of disorder look at the Portugal look even up to a point Franco's dictatorship at least for till early mid 50s was extremely brutal look even at Mussolini so first we shouldn't put all the fascisms together you can have a relatively modern fascism but I agree with you that maybe another name should be invented no authoritarian capitalism is too abstract what would you say okay I'm asking you you are a couple of thousand miles closer to the place I know it's very specific why Singapore is such an economic success because precisely it became a nodal point for the undeveloped area around but Singapore would have fit my definition of a very broad definition and I want to overcome the term of fascism because it's again economically liberal efficient but politics is controlled they are obsessed I know I was there I spoke with some people close to the government they are obsessed with preventing any kind of public political debate for example I almost like this you have there a Chinese Confucianists Hindus blah blah and I was told that it's not only prohibited in the public media to attack other religions it's even prohibited to write long in public popular media long texts advocating your religion because in their view this may provoke an answer all you can do in big public media is set tomorrow in that church in that temple there will be this ritual but it's a kind of a thing which functions I I am not saying we should follow it because it function only with a relative stability of international global market and so on and so on but okay then I will tell you ask you another thing and that's what makes me sad look at Latin America and Africa show me one example I have one or two where the left really succeeded one case would have would have been Lula it's modest left but I spoke with radical leftists who said but he did many things which worked for example a beautiful paradox you know their slums in big cities Rio de Janeiro favelas do you know that he under Lula they invested so much in making life conditions better in favelas water electricity you know what's the result? some of the favelas are now so gentrified that they are too expensive for the poor you know but nonetheless he did it then the only authentic miracle that I see is Bolivia whatever you say about Evo Morales especially people around him Alvaro Garcia Linera his vice president and Lucho Arce who is now president they did an authentic economic miracle production grew standard of the ordinary people really went up and they did it in an intelligent way with pressures but not oppression so to prevent the flight of the capital outside but unfortunately I think that in Venezuela Nicaragua and Cuba they really screwed it up this cannot be a model so you know what I expect from the left is not just this nostalgia for welfare state and at the same time this obsession with cultural issues like I look it already happened to me I know I just had I didn't look really at the woman it just appeared because I had tears in my eyes I wasn't able to see clearly I was accused of visual rape just looking at I'm not saying all this should be spoken addressed to openly but I think the whole point of Me Too had and probably it was totally different in India in the west had this class dimension would you agree or not with this that a typical scene about which Me Too debated all the time is this famous only yes means yes woman somebody wants to have sex with a woman what kind of pressure he puts on her is it is it direct or indirect financial or because of his position of domination pressure and so on and so on but this for me means that the typical situation they describe is what I called a date in a public place in a bar you know you mingle there and so on and so on I the first thing I would do I would have done is to to expand the region of women's suffering why talk about this young free women who okay they had sex once under pressure but then you can get out what about in Mexico friends drew my attention to this what about imagine a woman in her mid-forties to use a male chauvinist language losing a little bit of her sexual attraction for a simple reason because in a marriage she has three children works all the time and the husband is losing interest in her she doesn't have a job what can she do? that's true despair she had nowhere to go what hope is there in her life? this is the true despair of millions my god you know so I would just broaden the scope not of this typically upper middle class problems she put his arm on my his hand on my arm wasn't this already a pressure? yeah I agree with all of this but my god let's look at millions of people who women who actually suffer and so on so I would like to know what goes on here I don't know in India because for example I discovered that in South Korea they had years ago a strong Me Too movement but totally different from the European and American one these were hundreds of thousands of women protesting
totally pragmatic way his aim was not a nationalist victory his aim was revolution in Russia and when he saw this option after the February Revolution overthrew the Tsar but at the same time brought to power one should not forget brought to power a moderate Marxist Menshevik regime Kerensky was a dogmatic Marxist he followed this line there cannot be a revolution in Russia because we don't have enough of a working class we know the line the revolution can only happen when the relations of production are developed enough they the Mensheviks followed this dogmatic historicist line history is linear you cannot jump over first you have to do the bourgeois liberal revolution then slowly you go on Lenin immediately perceived a chance because of this a chance for a revolution because of what he saw two mistakes which is the government pursuing the war they didn't want to step out of the war the Menshevik government from February till October plus farmers were dissatisfied the government didn't do anything practically to break up large almost feudal structure of on the land of big farmers and so on so it's interesting we tend to forget Lenin's slogan in October was not working class power to working class it was Peace and Land it was Peace and Land you see Lenin Peace Land and Bread sorry Peace Land and Bread and Bread yeah but bread again meant because that because of the war confusion again there there was hunger and all that so what I admire with Lenin is that he was he had this incredible instinct to see a chance to grab a unique moment Lenin said if we miss this opportunity now the chance of a revolution is lost for years even more and it's interesting how when he wrote his famous Lenin April Thesis in outlining this chance of a revolution do you know that even his wife Nadezhda Krupskaya wrote to I don't know to whom that Vladimir Ilyich is getting into some kind of a strange psychic state maybe he needs a doctor or whatever and even Stalin and so on all those were against Lenin considered him a utopian so what I'm saying is that today I'm not playing nostalgia for Lenin I'm not saying we should return to his formula of central party organization and so on what I am saying is that a similar thinking is necessary today without any prejudices you know for example although I don't totally agree with the thesis of my good friend Yanis Varoufakis that capitalism is dead we are entering neo-feudalism techno-feudalism sorry techno-feudalism yes there are too many things which I don't totally agree but I think he did clearly perceive a certain tendency you know what's for me this you may amuse you and some of your readers the paradox is that I hope your listeners your public knew about Varoufakis's idea of techno-feudalism yeah we did a full book discussion on his book Techno-feudalism do you know that there are some people around Donald Trump who like his book you know how they read it at some part in some parts Varoufakis says that in today's typical constellation you have a big corporation who doesn't exploit only workers but also he doesn't use the term but I use it in a consciously naive way small creative inventing capitalists you know because it's not only as a book buyer that you have to go through Amazon it's also the under quotation marks capitalists here the big publishers they know if you ignore Amazon it can mean the end for you in our kind of books that me and my friend produce humanities philosophy in United States I was told Amazon covers to percent of the sales so again both old-fashioned capitalists who still produce stuff even if it's intellectual stuff and workers we are all exploited by these neo-feudal corporations so at some point when he evokes possibilities of what to do Varoufakis even mentions and I'm not opposed to it I like this is a typical Leninist procedure he said why not strategically risk a pack a pact temporary pact between ordinary exploited workers and let's call it creative capitalists who are both oppressed by big corporations then another option I would propose here but how to do it is to in some sense not necessarily nationalize but socialize these mega-corporations because in some other sense their ultra-centralization provides a machinery for strong social action why not simply chop off not physically the head and install in these big corporations from Amazon to Microsoft and so on some kind of social control and this is a moment which also always fascinated Lenin you know that it's interesting to follow what Lenin was doing in those days years a couple after the end of the Civil War '21 and before his not only death but a year before incapacitation and so on Lenin invited or they came to Russia many Western ultra-rich corporate chiefs because Soviet Union was in a desperate situation they needed foreign capital investment collaboration and Lenin maybe went a little bit too far he had excellent relations with them because for them big corporations were already a stop towards socialism creating a large organization you just chop off the head and it's socialism so Lenin not only personally these are wonderful details enjoyed talking with them telling some of them but listen you with your organizational skills you would have functioned wonderfully in our system not only this he even said that said that the main danger for him in were not big capitalists but the small bourgeois liberals all these individuals and individualistically oriented entrepreneurs and so on so I'm not saying we should follow here Lenin I'm just saying that similar radical decisions have to be taken today for example precisely with regard to what Varoufakis calls techno-feudalism what to do Varoufakis is well aware that the solution is not that we need to make a step back to more chaotic liberal capitalism through state intervention but Varoufakis is aware of something that Lenin would have liked namely that do you know that from the 1920s onwards free market survived only through extremely strong state interventions market left to itself would have abolished itself sublated itself in the Hegelian sense of Aufhebung already in the 1930s especially in the 1950s every American Marxist will tell you this wonderful example when transistors portable radios I mean simply and TV sets exploded in United States in the early and mid fifties one company got a monopoly of this technology and American state immediately took from them the copyright said no this technology should be free because if they were not to do it it would be an incredibly oppressive monopoly this thing another thing if you allow me to just finish where I think we should be Leninists and many people are mad at me if I say this you know I'm totally for decolonization and so on but the constant constant not always permanent failure predominant failure of decolonization independently of who won the decolonization process in the sense of which anti-colonial power took over often ends in catastrophe I always repeat this maybe you know it but the saddest thing for me that I heard in the last years what what I learned from an old African National Congress fighter a beautiful old lady from South Africa she told me isn't this tragic that more and more the predominant ideology among the black poor majority in South Africa is I cry is nostalgia for apartheid because in their view apartheid was horrible but there was order you had a certain salary your life if you didn't mess in politics of course was relatively safe and there was social safety because of course it was a police state now social differences are higher than ever you know that South Africa has the world record of a gap between rich and poor all that socially happened is that the old white ruling class is enlarged with the new black ruling class with incredible corruption social chaos signs of disintegration of law and order and instead of playing the usual game of blame the whites although this is because no let's ask why another country Angola where as you probably remember the communist-led supported from Cuba opposition won and it's also now a state of total division between new rich elite in Luanda which is a modern European cities with Starbucks all that bullshit and the incredible poverty around you see this is a problem that we should approach without prejudices not in the sense of oh colonization is better absolutely not but when decolonization went bad and now I will tell you another thing I've written this in a text and got hate mail as much as you want you know that not because African and other countries are primitive but because of the complex ethnic and religious situation exploited by those in power now I will say something to shock you and your public a moderate intelligent dictatorship moderate not madness can do a better job than simply an appropriation of Western democracy for example maybe I'm wrong I don't know what's happening there now but in Rwanda they have for the last two decades a guy I forgot his name who is a moderate dictator but he did the job he keeps absolutely under control the old conflict you remember between Tutsi and Hutu it's simply prohibited to play on this then economy is progressing there is a limited freedom of the press the situation is stable and as a black friend from there told me imagine now this pure Western liberal democracy the tragedy is that in a full multi-party system in this situation the parties would be for sure organized along ethnic lines primarily you see that's for me the Leninist approach totally pragmatic but never losing out of sight the absolute seriousness of our situation and it's the same for me with the problem of anti-Eurocentrism your figure whom I admire very much Arundhati Roy wrote something not about India but about the effects of the Gaza war she said honestly that although Western human rights and all that were of course always hypocritical absolutely always there was never a golden era when the West took them seriously it was always a tool for your own expansionist whatever call it but nonetheless as Arundhati put it correctly nonetheless they served as a kind of a moral compass to all precisely in seeing that they are hypocritical they open up a way for self-critical rethinking like the idea is not no human rights the idea is but let's take them more seriously let's see what does it mean have human rights in a poor oppressive country this especially so and then she said something very sad Arundhati she says that that now with Gaza reaction with Gaza with how the West which boasts with human rights ignores what Israel is doing in Gaza human rights even no longer work in this hypocritical way so that you can still the good thing about hypocrisy I more and more admire hypocrisy is that it opens up to victims a place for criticism you can say but you are a hypocrite look you are violating your own rules so let's no now I think human rights are violated there in such an open way we have as many people said in Gaza the first case in history of an open okay the term genocide is a little bit problematic but basically it is genocide going on there a first open genocide we see it every day on TV and so on and I think so I think that while some leftists think okay wonderful we see the Western discourse of human rights is over I wouldn't be so glad about it because okay the alternative is BRICS you know what I don't like in BRICS isn't that often in BRICS what you get is a kind of opportunistic coexistence in the sense of I tolerate your crimes you tolerate my crimes for me as I often repeat the model of BRICS is how Taliban taking over in Afghanistan and China immediately made a deal the deal was we Taliban tolerate how you are oppressing Muslims in that Uygur Uygur in that area we China will ignore what you are doing with women and so on blah blah in in Afghanistan what I am afraid is that since today we live in a global era what we are doing sorry the problems we are facing are by global warming immigration problems and so on are global problems which cannot be solved at the level of local sovereign state and my approach to non-Western countries who often as a rule in a justified way criticize the hypocrisy of Western legacy is that now many of them are copying imitating what I found in today's situation the worst part of Western legacy which is a strong nation state maybe you can correct me here I'm wrong but your commander Narendra Modi with his idea to change the name of India to Bharat with his more exclusive emphasis on on Hinduism and so on I see in this a tendency towards homogenizing India into pure this that's the catch he is not returning to Indian tradition the tradition was much more plural mixed and so on he is doing something in a bad sense Western he is the great Westernizer Erdogan is doing the same in Turkey even in China now the they are oppressing Uighurs Tibetans more even China is now becoming moving towards a Western style of nation state so that's what I see as a dark prospect a strong ideologically strong nationalist nation state but which leave the global market totally undisturbed if I know it correctly under Modi India is more than ever part of international market other country even ah in Slovenia we have our maybe I think even the biggest single company in Slovenia it's called Krka the name of a river it's a pharmaceutical company producing mostly pills blah blah other medical stuff and they want now to open up a factory in India and even Indians are buying things here so he is the model for me here Modi the model of this the new global market free flow of capital but to guarantee we all know that global capital is destructive of local cultural heritage etc. but to try to counteract here with stronger local nationalism emphasis on local traditions and so on and in this sense only things are more complex I never liked the leftists who use all too quickly the term fascism you know basically we often think use today the term fascism in a non-thinking way which is there is something slightly authoritarian that you don't like oh let's call it fascism no no but if we use the term fascism in a more general sense what is fascism at its minimum it's as they call it conservative modernization you want to enjoy the fruits of modernity technological development free market but you are aware that this can destroy destroy the homogeneity stability of social life so to control this you impose some cultural political hegemony based on traditional values which are always as it is always with traditions invented now you know this if we call in general sense this country's fascist it's not Naziism they are not necessarily expansionist I'm just talking about free market capitalism controlled by some traditional national sense of unity this is why although I wish the Chinese all the best this is what I see that effectively China is moving to after Deng Xiaoping reforms it moves not in any bad sense it moves from hardline Mao communism to fascism fascism in the sense that market functions with moderate often also very rational state interventions but with a state control imposing cultural unity trying to limit foreign influence and so on and so on this is I think where we even moving and I think I will conclude my god I gave a whole speech I think that even Trump if he wins United States will become another BRICS country because Trump was always for free capitalism but stronger America stronger local cultural identities and so on and so on I think this is a catastrophe a mega catastrophe because if the only thing that unites us is the free flow of capital and otherwise we have full national cultural and so on sovereignty how will we cope with the problems that we have? Ecology. No, you cannot say you in India now in some parts where in the south usually you know in the city how it is called now which was once called Madras I think yeah it's it's called Chennai now yeah yeah Chennai yeah yeah didn't you have there a couple of times a terrible drought in summer and so on okay but and flood and flood in... yeah yeah that's the paradox today you have both yes but you know my god this is not Indian problem the whole the whole circulation of air what we are doing with the sea and so on and so on we have to approach this globally and even I hope the developed countries ultra-developed discovered this for example my eternal example you remember three years ago northwest of United States southwest of Canada Seattle Vancouver at that point that area in the summer two and a half years ago when was warmer than India and Emirates for some time but again you shouldn't blame them locally they had a relatively good ecological measures it's that the whole circulation of air around the northern pole is disturbed so and the same it is with immigration that's why I don't see as a solution in contrast to Western liberals let's just open the borders we are guilty no if you do this you will get what is already happening in Europe in in Italy in Sweden and elsewhere the anti-immigrant right is taking over the same may happen in France Marine Le Pen maybe even in Germany and so on so I think we should now not in some imaginary future address the problem but why are people immigrating here what because and also how this immigration proceeds you know that immigration is a big business of half immigrant organizations which exploit poor immigrants like it's well known from Turkey to Europe the price is I think euros and so on so we had we have to change the whole set of economic interaction relations and so on people tell me but this is utopia I tell them okay but then Europe will become neo-fascist in this sense of focused of on national autonomy or or that's the paradox if you want to keep borders relatively open you will have to limit democracy like we all hate Orban the Hungarian president but what can you tell him how can you reject him as a if you're a democrat when he and in Poland also want to organize a big referendum asking people do we have to go on allowing immigrants to arrive into our country this is the sad thing the majority is against so right wing anti-immigrant populists have a point when they say millions of foreigners arriving to our country this is a big decision so the majority has nothing to say about it or whatever you know what I mean here a Leninist spirit is required this rethinking without any prejudices the new constellation even in India my sympathies there were where where of course as expected from me pretty radical I admire individuals like Arundhati Roy I even have I don't plan to go to India now so I hope I'll not be arrested do you know that I had a certain contact with Maoists in Nepal and with Naxalite guys in your country although unfortunately my problem with Naxalite is that I don't think they have the potential to become a really predominant power they are a limited movement and the big problem is if Modi will succeed in his relatively relatively you should tell me this if this is true but is he nonetheless although poverty persists and so on I know but economically in abstract terms in abstract terms it doesn't matter if people are dying there but in overall statistic India is developing modernizing itself what can the left do here it's a serious problem the left is today effectively de facto the left has two facets now I'm not talking about India I don't know enough I'm talking about so-called developed Western countries the left on the one hand is still in love with old social democratic ideas like let's try to save whatever possible of the welfare state sorry that's not enough this is why incidentally Biden's inauguration was a fake Biden's victory over Trump was pure conservative nostalgia not conservative in the political sense but conservative in the sense of let's return to a glorious past before that monster Trump appeared no my answer is Trump is secondary no he's extremely dangerous but we should never forget that Trump emerged because of the failure of the predominant relatively progressive American welfare state project and so on you know so one and second element this so-called cancel culture woke left this culturalization of economic class issues I totally support feminist struggles LGBT and so on and so on I'm just saying that if they are not closely linked with other social struggles they de facto became an element of the ruling class to keep under control the poor for example in United States they will not tell you publicly but I noticed immediately the hidden class dimension of political correctness it's usually always the poor Mexicans and so on who are not enough feminist and so on and so forth while the big corporations oh like political correctness you know you fire one of the big managers because he made an inappropriate remark socially you change nothing but you can sell yourself as progressive cut me off you don't play your game of being my domina with a black whip go on we you know you know a guy in Slovenia attacked me in a totally correct way he said how do you make a long one hour interview with Zizek you ask him one question you know let's try not to follow this model totally please counterattack what is I want to learn from you I apart from this general sympathy for parts of India for example I was in Kerala and there okay we can debate are they radical enough but there this very moderate part of the establishment communists did a relatively good job relatively one can debate it wasn't it the same even in Bengal till now communists were for a long time in power there also until yeah yeah but and but isn't it that they didn't do it so bad that almost for the first time in history I read under communist rule Bengal became self-sufficient in producing food but then I was told that communists as they always are became too obsessed with progress progress for them means socialize abolishing small farms larger farms and so you had thousands of suicides of small farmers it was it was a tragedy also I read another detail can you tell me yes or no an Indian friend told me this fascinated me that that it was part of the Congress party politics because Congress party practically never controlled Kolkata the old Calcutta that that's why they tolerated there Mother Teresa it fitted them that Kolkata became the symbol of Indian misery because it was not their Congress party you know that and I incidentally I don't know how you do it but I follow here the line of Christopher Hitchens and other knowing enough about Mother Teresa I tend to agree that she was a largely negative evil person if you ask me where do you disagree with me here please I think yeah there are a couple of points but I would pick up on the fascism thing I think you began by saying that we should not use the fascism word loosely which I completely agree with but then you went on and say that the Deng period was fascism because there was this kind of a combination of perhaps or a toleration of of market and some kind of state action but I think fascism it's it's hard to understand fascism if you just look at the political economy because if you look at Germany in the 1930s Germany's Naziism it's different I think unfortunately sorry to interrupt you you can also have a sorry for this obscene expression a soft fascism which doesn't need anti-semitism I don't mean just Jews here I mean a a foreign intruder group on which you can project the cause of disorder look at the Portugal look even up to a point Franco's dictatorship at least for till early mid 50s was extremely brutal look even at Mussolini so first we shouldn't put all the fascisms together you can have a relatively modern fascism but I agree with you that maybe another name should be invented no authoritarian capitalism is too abstract what would you say okay I'm asking you you are a couple of thousand miles closer to the place I know it's very specific why Singapore is such an economic success because precisely it became a nodal point for the undeveloped area around but Singapore would have fit my definition of a very broad definition and I want to overcome the term of fascism because it's again economically liberal efficient but politics is controlled they are obsessed I know I was there I spoke with some people close to the government they are obsessed with preventing any kind of public political debate for example I almost like this you have there a Chinese Confucianists Hindus blah blah and I was told that it's not only prohibited in the public media to attack other religions it's even prohibited to write long in public popular media long texts advocating your religion because in their view this may provoke an answer all you can do in big public media is set tomorrow in that church in that temple there will be this ritual but it's a kind of a thing which functions I I am not saying we should follow it because it function only with a relative stability of international global market and so on and so on but okay then I will tell you ask you another thing and that's what makes me sad look at Latin America and Africa show me one example I have one or two where the left really succeeded one case would have would have been Lula it's modest left but I spoke with radical leftists who said but he did many things which worked for example a beautiful paradox you know their slums in big cities Rio de Janeiro favelas do you know that he under Lula they invested so much in making life conditions better in favelas water electricity you know what's the result? some of the favelas are now so gentrified that they are too expensive for the poor you know but nonetheless he did it then the only authentic miracle that I see is Bolivia whatever you say about Evo Morales especially people around him Alvaro Garcia Linera his vice president and Lucho Arce who is now president they did an authentic economic miracle production grew standard of the ordinary people really went up and they did it in an intelligent way with pressures but not oppression so to prevent the flight of the capital outside but unfortunately I think that in Venezuela Nicaragua and Cuba they really screwed it up this cannot be a model so you know what I expect from the left is not just this nostalgia for welfare state and at the same time this obsession with cultural issues like I look it already happened to me I know I just had I didn't look really at the woman it just appeared because I had tears in my eyes I wasn't able to see clearly I was accused of visual rape just looking at I'm not saying all this should be spoken addressed to openly but I think the whole point of Me Too had and probably it was totally different in India in the west had this class dimension would you agree or not with this that a typical scene about which Me Too debated all the time is this famous only yes means yes woman somebody wants to have sex with a woman what kind of pressure he puts on her is it is it direct or indirect financial or because of his position of domination pressure and so on and so on but this for me means that the typical situation they describe is what I called a date in a public place in a bar you know you mingle there and so on and so on I the first thing I would do I would have done is to to expand the region of women's suffering why talk about this young free women who okay they had sex once under pressure but then you can get out what about in Mexico friends drew my attention to this what about imagine a woman in her mid-forties to use a male chauvinist language losing a little bit of her sexual attraction for a simple reason because in a marriage she has three children works all the time and the husband is losing interest in her she doesn't have a job what can she do? that's true despair she had nowhere to go what hope is there in her life? this is the true despair of millions my god you know so I would just broaden the scope not of this typically upper middle class problems she put his arm on my his hand on my arm wasn't this already a pressure? yeah I agree with all of this but my god let's look at millions of people who women who actually suffer and so on so I would like to know what goes on here I don't know in India because for example I discovered that in South Korea they had years ago a strong Me Too movement but totally different from the European and American one these were hundreds of thousands of women protesting
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on the street it was focused on on some phenomenon which I find really disgusting there was a whole fashion in a bad sense in South Korea of men let's say you have a girlfriend you take some intimate photos of her and then these photos were circulating on Facebook or whatever and so on it was a mass movement and what I like about Mexican feminism is that they don't play this sexually conservative game how for a woman to defend herself which brings the
on the street it was focused on on some phenomenon which I find really disgusting there was a whole fashion in a bad sense in South Korea of men let's say you have a girlfriend you take some intimate photos of her and then these photos were circulating on Facebook or whatever and so on it was a mass movement and what I like about Mexican feminism is that they don't play this sexually conservative game how for a woman to defend herself which brings the
Slavoj Žižek
impression as if women really don't want sex only exceptionally sex is always pressure I read wonderful Spanish from Mexico text where they approach a much more refined difficult problem which is sorry but women also want to fuck why not and it's much more dangerous and humiliating for a woman how to enact her desire without appearing a cheap whore or what you know it is as if this is the silent presupposition shared by some of the politically correct Me Too people and the conservatives that the role of the woman is to be passive the ultimate obscenity is a woman who you know we all protest against men objectifying women you know this is totally wrong lesson because first male sexuality is much more aggressive and humiliating you don't want just to objectify a woman when you exert pressure on her you want at the same time for her to feel humiliated which is a subjective feeling no because one of the way I spoke with many women who were victims they told me that when they were raped they simply ah okay fuck me I don't care and didn't even move the guy beat them even more the guy said no I want you at least to resist I want you to be alive you know this so we shouldn't be afraid of all and I would love to know the situation in India about all this you know because I know that in the western press when we write about India or whatever we often were how to put it it's often in a maybe not openly but nonetheless between the lines racist patronizing way it's very comfortable for us to depict oppression of women there would you agree or not what really shocked me is you remember some when visit more than five years ago ten young woman was raped by five people publicly in a bus in New Delhi oh yeah and all the people were shocked it was reported in all our media but then an Indian leftist friend told me wait a minute you missed the key point she was a middle class girl by mistake finding herself there in a bus usually for lower class people so that people ignored that the horror was also that of the middle class attacked by lower classes and they I was told that much worse things are happening regularly in Mumbai that you have there the whole agencies who organize from poor parents farmers desolate in northern India in Nepal you buy five six years old children boys girls as slaves from the family and sell them and so on so you see what is reported as horrible case is often reported but the whole set of unwritten rules censorship is at work so when I am critical about Me Too it's not they go too far no they don't go far enough there is a lot of everyday violence which is simply taken as a part of life listen we will have to finish so give me another question at least yeah I had so many questions like but probably just to keep I think this as a segment and we can then later on take a break let's do it again in two months or whatever if you want no problem so yeah so just to keep things in in a more compact manner probably I think so the Leninist influence I think is pretty clear insofar as you want some sort of order and there is sort of a you know desire to think through about how a society should look like but then I also see in you almost if not cynicism a skepticism in in popular social movements which is in so many ways very anti-Leninist I mean you can say post post-revolution Lenin would be much more cynical instrumentalistically because he would call for order but then pre-revolutionary Lenin would be very very pro-social movements in fact part of fascination with Lenin instead of Trotsky in the global South is because Lenin was always more optimistic in the actions of small peasants which unfortunately Trotsky was not as much Trotsky was much more dogmatic in his in his belief that they are driven by this cultural obscurantism and so on and so forth but Lenin was wholeheartedly he thought that there are pathways of revolution through small peasantry and so on and so forth I can notice just just to conclude just to conclude would you say then that your cynicism is a is an effect of the Frankfurt School or even the France post-structuralist theorists who are often very to my reading at least and you can correct me and there are exceptions like I would say Marcuse was much more action-oriented I see much more cynicism in Adorno for instance so would you say your cynicism to social movements and actions is partly because of your influence from Frankfurt School and post-structuralism no no no I am I am deeply you know where I am deeply critical on Frankfurt School at two levels first did you notice how Frankfurt School is obsessed by fascism neo-fascism anti-semitism and so on but they almost totally ignore Eastern European communism Stalinism and so on they there is a short book by Marcuse Soviet Marxism which doesn't do the job it's just the analysis of the effects of Khrushchev's speech but why did they totally ignore let's call it Stalinism because Stalinism is a true example of what they call dialectic of enlightenment how an emancipatory project of enlightenment can go wrong that's my first problem with them my second problem with them is one incredible not contradiction but gap at the level of general theory they see our world as moving towards what what Marcuse called one-dimensional man of what Adorno and Horkheimer called verwaltete Welt administered world world totally technologically manipulated with people still free but nonetheless it's a apparent freedom totally controlled manipulated so on the one hand they accept this let me call it almost teleology the whole point of dialectic of enlightenment is that humanity as such already Adorno and Horkheimer speak there about first superstitious acts like if we burn this if we kill a victim or an animal sacrifice then there will be rain you know so their idea is that from the very beginning so-called primitive society there is this dimension of manipulating things to profit from manipulation and that this arrives at an extreme in the in today's one-dimensional world but at the same time which is very important I agree with you with the exception of Marcuse who did show sympathy even with Vietnam opposed American expansion in Vietnam and so on all others nonetheless whenever there was a concrete anti-imperialist movement in the third world they took side of the developed world for example when Max Horkheimer was in invited by students to participate in Frankfurt in demonstrations against US army you know what was his answer it's preserved the depicted no whenever US army intervenes it brings freedom and progress Adorno was even more gave even a more ridiculous excuse he said I wouldn't feel well because I'm old and fat and I would appear stupid to be there so you see this paradox generally you think our society is the lowest point one-dimensional blah blah this that at the same time when there is any threat towards this society you choose this society it's a I think for example a friend told me a friend who read all that Habermas wrote Habermas who is now de facto let's say it the state philosopher of Western Europe he you would never have guessed from his old writings that there are two Germanies East and West Germany they and the excuse I get from Frankfurt School partisans is that they didn't want to criticize the East European communism because in this way they would appear to be engaged in the Western Cold War no this is too simple and stupid an excuse as to your second point I follow here a formula of Horkheimer which I like which is a pessimist in theory optimist in
impression as if women really don't want sex only exceptionally sex is always pressure I read wonderful Spanish from Mexico text where they approach a much more refined difficult problem which is sorry but women also want to fuck why not and it's much more dangerous and humiliating for a woman how to enact her desire without appearing a cheap whore or what you know it is as if this is the silent presupposition shared by some of the politically correct Me Too people and the conservatives that the role of the woman is to be passive the ultimate obscenity is a woman who you know we all protest against men objectifying women you know this is totally wrong lesson because first male sexuality is much more aggressive and humiliating you don't want just to objectify a woman when you exert pressure on her you want at the same time for her to feel humiliated which is a subjective feeling no because one of the way I spoke with many women who were victims they told me that when they were raped they simply ah okay fuck me I don't care and didn't even move the guy beat them even more the guy said no I want you at least to resist I want you to be alive you know this so we shouldn't be afraid of all and I would love to know the situation in India about all this you know because I know that in the western press when we write about India or whatever we often were how to put it it's often in a maybe not openly but nonetheless between the lines racist patronizing way it's very comfortable for us to depict oppression of women there would you agree or not what really shocked me is you remember some when visit more than five years ago ten young woman was raped by five people publicly in a bus in New Delhi oh yeah and all the people were shocked it was reported in all our media but then an Indian leftist friend told me wait a minute you missed the key point she was a middle class girl by mistake finding herself there in a bus usually for lower class people so that people ignored that the horror was also that of the middle class attacked by lower classes and they I was told that much worse things are happening regularly in Mumbai that you have there the whole agencies who organize from poor parents farmers desolate in northern India in Nepal you buy five six years old children boys girls as slaves from the family and sell them and so on so you see what is reported as horrible case is often reported but the whole set of unwritten rules censorship is at work so when I am critical about Me Too it's not they go too far no they don't go far enough there is a lot of everyday violence which is simply taken as a part of life listen we will have to finish so give me another question at least yeah I had so many questions like but probably just to keep I think this as a segment and we can then later on take a break let's do it again in two months or whatever if you want no problem so yeah so just to keep things in in a more compact manner probably I think so the Leninist influence I think is pretty clear insofar as you want some sort of order and there is sort of a you know desire to think through about how a society should look like but then I also see in you almost if not cynicism a skepticism in in popular social movements which is in so many ways very anti-Leninist I mean you can say post post-revolution Lenin would be much more cynical instrumentalistically because he would call for order but then pre-revolutionary Lenin would be very very pro-social movements in fact part of fascination with Lenin instead of Trotsky in the global South is because Lenin was always more optimistic in the actions of small peasants which unfortunately Trotsky was not as much Trotsky was much more dogmatic in his in his belief that they are driven by this cultural obscurantism and so on and so forth but Lenin was wholeheartedly he thought that there are pathways of revolution through small peasantry and so on and so forth I can notice just just to conclude just to conclude would you say then that your cynicism is a is an effect of the Frankfurt School or even the France post-structuralist theorists who are often very to my reading at least and you can correct me and there are exceptions like I would say Marcuse was much more action-oriented I see much more cynicism in Adorno for instance so would you say your cynicism to social movements and actions is partly because of your influence from Frankfurt School and post-structuralism no no no I am I am deeply you know where I am deeply critical on Frankfurt School at two levels first did you notice how Frankfurt School is obsessed by fascism neo-fascism anti-semitism and so on but they almost totally ignore Eastern European communism Stalinism and so on they there is a short book by Marcuse Soviet Marxism which doesn't do the job it's just the analysis of the effects of Khrushchev's speech but why did they totally ignore let's call it Stalinism because Stalinism is a true example of what they call dialectic of enlightenment how an emancipatory project of enlightenment can go wrong that's my first problem with them my second problem with them is one incredible not contradiction but gap at the level of general theory they see our world as moving towards what what Marcuse called one-dimensional man of what Adorno and Horkheimer called verwaltete Welt administered world world totally technologically manipulated with people still free but nonetheless it's a apparent freedom totally controlled manipulated so on the one hand they accept this let me call it almost teleology the whole point of dialectic of enlightenment is that humanity as such already Adorno and Horkheimer speak there about first superstitious acts like if we burn this if we kill a victim or an animal sacrifice then there will be rain you know so their idea is that from the very beginning so-called primitive society there is this dimension of manipulating things to profit from manipulation and that this arrives at an extreme in the in today's one-dimensional world but at the same time which is very important I agree with you with the exception of Marcuse who did show sympathy even with Vietnam opposed American expansion in Vietnam and so on all others nonetheless whenever there was a concrete anti-imperialist movement in the third world they took side of the developed world for example when Max Horkheimer was in invited by students to participate in Frankfurt in demonstrations against US army you know what was his answer it's preserved the depicted no whenever US army intervenes it brings freedom and progress Adorno was even more gave even a more ridiculous excuse he said I wouldn't feel well because I'm old and fat and I would appear stupid to be there so you see this paradox generally you think our society is the lowest point one-dimensional blah blah this that at the same time when there is any threat towards this society you choose this society it's a I think for example a friend told me a friend who read all that Habermas wrote Habermas who is now de facto let's say it the state philosopher of Western Europe he you would never have guessed from his old writings that there are two Germanies East and West Germany they and the excuse I get from Frankfurt School partisans is that they didn't want to criticize the East European communism because in this way they would appear to be engaged in the Western Cold War no this is too simple and stupid an excuse as to your second point I follow here a formula of Horkheimer which I like which is a pessimist in theory optimist in
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practice I like to be generally I think this was the this was originally an idea of Romain Rolland and I might be wrong and then Gramsci also picked up and Horkheimer oh I didn't know yeah yeah yeah no my idea is this one that whenever there is a concrete situation with all the risk that it involves of an actual movement one should engage in it because even if the movement fails in its immediate goals it leaves a trace you know like democratic socialists so-called in America I don't idealize them but it's clear that you remember that that Occupy Wall Street movement it failed but without that movement there wouldn't have been democratic socialists today which are marginal but not so absolutely marginal they did something Bernie Sanders and so on incredible for the United States they rehabilitate the word socialism till that point socialism was excluded so let me give you some examples I actively intervened and I was even pretty popular on state TV I somehow managed to read speeches in support of all these elections in in Chile when how it is
practice I like to be generally I think this was the this was originally an idea of Romain Rolland and I might be wrong and then Gramsci also picked up and Horkheimer oh I didn't know yeah yeah yeah no my idea is this one that whenever there is a concrete situation with all the risk that it involves of an actual movement one should engage in it because even if the movement fails in its immediate goals it leaves a trace you know like democratic socialists so-called in America I don't idealize them but it's clear that you remember that that Occupy Wall Street movement it failed but without that movement there wouldn't have been democratic socialists today which are marginal but not so absolutely marginal they did something Bernie Sanders and so on incredible for the United States they rehabilitate the word socialism till that point socialism was excluded so let me give you some examples I actively intervened and I was even pretty popular on state TV I somehow managed to read speeches in support of all these elections in in Chile when how it is
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called Gabriel Gabriel Boric the president of Croat origins when he won I was totally engaged I said I was engaged for Lucho Arce to win when
called Gabriel Gabriel Boric the president of Croat origins when he won I was totally engaged I said I was engaged for Lucho Arce to win when
Slavoj Žižek
Morales Morales people got reelected I was
Morales Morales people got reelected I was
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engaged
engaged
Slavoj Žižek
in Colombia when I forgot his name this new guy Petro when the left won there I was engaged even people forget for Aristide in Haiti if there is a mega tragedy colonialism at its worst is Haiti even now the West did not pardon Haiti to be the first successful slave rebellion a rebellion which was worse which was not some oh let's return to our primitive roots no French revolution they were the anti-hypocrites they said we also want to be and here you see like French revolutionaries and here you see the truth about French only Jacobins fully supported them immediately recognizing them as equal Napoleon we know what he did he said kill them all he even said it's not enough to defeat them but kill them all and bring new slaves and you know who also didn't show his nice face here the so much celebrated most democratic figure of American War of Independence Thomas Jefferson he said to Toussaint Louverture (Zizek says Saint Louverture) half animal no business so and then not to mention Syriza I suspected I wrote about it that they will fail but it was a miraculous event nonetheless Syriza you know in what sense it was not an ordinary political party it was a party which organically grew out of dozens of feminist consumerist farmers local movements the tragedy was that when they had to make a compromise with Europe they themselves destroyed their own basis even using police against it this is a mega tragedy but it was like they were not extremists here Varoufakis convinced me when he was finance minister he was very careful in economic matters he didn't spend money like crazy and so on and so forth he was very pragmatic nonetheless it was too much so again no whenever concretely something happened I fully engaged myself in oh another place India no sorry Kurdistan Kurds I even wrote a speech praising Öcalan their leader who now not only renounced violence but in prison discovered feminism
in Colombia when I forgot his name this new guy Petro when the left won there I was engaged even people forget for Aristide in Haiti if there is a mega tragedy colonialism at its worst is Haiti even now the West did not pardon Haiti to be the first successful slave rebellion a rebellion which was worse which was not some oh let's return to our primitive roots no French revolution they were the anti-hypocrites they said we also want to be and here you see like French revolutionaries and here you see the truth about French only Jacobins fully supported them immediately recognizing them as equal Napoleon we know what he did he said kill them all he even said it's not enough to defeat them but kill them all and bring new slaves and you know who also didn't show his nice face here the so much celebrated most democratic figure of American War of Independence Thomas Jefferson he said to Toussaint Louverture (Zizek says Saint Louverture) half animal no business so and then not to mention Syriza I suspected I wrote about it that they will fail but it was a miraculous event nonetheless Syriza you know in what sense it was not an ordinary political party it was a party which organically grew out of dozens of feminist consumerist farmers local movements the tragedy was that when they had to make a compromise with Europe they themselves destroyed their own basis even using police against it this is a mega tragedy but it was like they were not extremists here Varoufakis convinced me when he was finance minister he was very careful in economic matters he didn't spend money like crazy and so on and so forth he was very pragmatic nonetheless it was too much so again no whenever concretely something happened I fully engaged myself in oh another place India no sorry Kurdistan Kurds I even wrote a speech praising Öcalan their leader who now not only renounced violence but in prison discovered feminism
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postmodern
postmodern
Slavoj Žižek
theory and so on I learned that he reads me it's crazy then do you know that in Philippines I have influence there are some leftist movements who I will try to go next summer there so I prefer this
theory and so on I learned that he reads me it's crazy then do you know that in Philippines I have influence there are some leftist movements who I will try to go next summer there so I prefer this
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position
position
Slavoj Žižek
again of generally be pessimist but not in a religious sense expect
again of generally be pessimist but not in a religious sense expect
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miracles miracles happen like Syriza who would have expected something like
miracles miracles happen like Syriza who would have expected something like
Slavoj Žižek
that a genuine born out of civil society political movement won so-called free elections and so on so there are problems there are no easy long-term solutions but I am not saying you know I put it like this my good friend now I don't have such good relations with him Alain Badiou that was my conflict with him because he is for me too much what I call not in Leninist sense principled opportunism whenever there was an actual movement his idea was no this is not the real thing they will fail we have to wait for real revolutions that's why for example he was against Syriza he said this is nothing ignore them and so on no my idea is wherever something moves support it even if you fail I believe in historical not explicit memory but efficiency even the great defeats leave a trace so as Rosa Luxemburg said there is never the right time for a revolution by acting too early in a wrong way you create the conditions maybe for a right moment I just don't want this cheap optimism you know no under the proviso of my idea is this one to say things will probably go wrong but probably there is a space for a miracle maybe not and from that we should engage ourselves unconditionally sorry I have to stop now I will collapse but please contact me in like a month or two I promise you we do it again hi my name is Ayushman I along with Jyotishman have started this platform the last two years we have tried to build content for the left and progressive forces we have interviewed economists historians political commentators and activists so far if you have liked our content so far and want us to build an archive for the left I have two requests for you please do consider donating for the cause link is in the description below also if you are not able to do so don't feel sad you can always like our videos and share our videos to your comrades finally don't forget
that a genuine born out of civil society political movement won so-called free elections and so on so there are problems there are no easy long-term solutions but I am not saying you know I put it like this my good friend now I don't have such good relations with him Alain Badiou that was my conflict with him because he is for me too much what I call not in Leninist sense principled opportunism whenever there was an actual movement his idea was no this is not the real thing they will fail we have to wait for real revolutions that's why for example he was against Syriza he said this is nothing ignore them and so on no my idea is wherever something moves support it even if you fail I believe in historical not explicit memory but efficiency even the great defeats leave a trace so as Rosa Luxemburg said there is never the right time for a revolution by acting too early in a wrong way you create the conditions maybe for a right moment I just don't want this cheap optimism you know no under the proviso of my idea is this one to say things will probably go wrong but probably there is a space for a miracle maybe not and from that we should engage ourselves unconditionally sorry I have to stop now I will collapse but please contact me in like a month or two I promise you we do it again hi my name is Ayushman I along with Jyotishman have started this platform the last two years we have tried to build content for the left and progressive forces we have interviewed economists historians political commentators and activists so far if you have liked our content so far and want us to build an archive for the left I have two requests for you please do consider donating for the cause link is in the description below also if you are not able to do so don't feel sad you can always like our videos and share our videos to your comrades finally don't forget
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