Slavoj Zizek: Lenin Was a Radical Opportunist
Interview · Jacobin ·
published 2021-10-27 · 0:26:36 · 3,276 words
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Žižek argues that World War I must be understood as the foundational rupture that made the Russian Revolution intelligible, shattering the evolutionary optimism of European social democracy. He defends Lenin's 'radical opportunism', the capacity to seize a historically condensed moment against orthodox Marxist stage-logic, and contrasts this with Chomsky's liberal-left dismissal of the Bolsheviks as coup-makers. Along the way he traces Engels's prophetic letters, the British Opium War as an early model of free-trade imperialism, and the paradox by which Central European 'backwardness' produced an explosion of genius from Freud to Wittgenstein.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 10
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
The moment when virtually all European socialist parties voted for war credits in 1914, collapsing internationalism into nationalist war enthusiasm.
Žižek's ironic label for the British ideological justification for the Opium War: that prohibiting opium imports was a step into barbarism against the civilizational norm of free markets.
David Harvey's term, invoked by Žižek to broaden the Marxist concept of proletariat to include women, colonized peoples, and those whose environment is destroyed.
Implicit in Žižek's critique of Engels's failure to see Third World exploitation and women's unpaid labor as integral to capitalism, not secondary.
A moment when multiple historical antagonisms converge in one situation, creating a unique revolutionary opening that must be seized immediately.
as “non-contemporaneity of historical development”
Drawn from Hegel via Lenin: the idea that contradictions can condense in a 'less developed' location, making revolution possible out of sequence with orthodox historical phases.
Orthodox Marxist schema that history must pass through discrete phases (bourgeois revolution, then proletarian), which Lenin violated in 1917.
The social-democratic/Menshevik assumption that history progresses step by step through proper stages, which Lenin and Žižek both reject as politically paralyzing.
Žižek's phrase for Lenin's capacity to maintain revolutionary goals while seizing historically contingent openings, abandoning stage-logic without abandoning the goal.
Following Adorno: Central European relative underdevelopment blocked talented people from careers in economy or state, redirecting their energy into an explosion of intellectual and artistic innovation.
Stories he reaches for 4
Engels wrote to a journalist decades before WWI predicting an all-European war costing millions of lives, Germany's probable defeat, and even the likelihood of a second war roughly twenty years later, all of which came true.
“Engels wrote to a journalist that the way things look, in a couple of decades there will be an all-European war, the cost will be million lives, dead corpses.”
After the shock of social-democratic betrayal, Lenin did what every great leftist does in deepest crisis: he moved to a secluded place and began reading Hegel, which Balibar analyses as producing his non-dogmatic 'opportunism'.
“Lenin did what in the moment of deepest crisis and defeat every great leftist does. He moved to a secluded place, Switzerland, and started begin reading Hegel.”
Hitler and Wittgenstein attended the same high school in Linz, Austria, a biographical curiosity Žižek uses to illustrate the dark underside of Central European cultural density, noting the absurd theory that Hitler's antisemitism arose from envying Wittgenstein's genius.
“Hitler and Wittgenstein were visiting young Hitler and young Wittgenstein the same high school, Gymnasium, gymnasium there?”
Even Lenin's wife Nadezhda Krupskaya, alarmed by the April Theses, wrote to a leading psychiatrist asking whether Vladimir Ilyich was becoming confused, illustrating how radical even to his comrades Lenin's position appeared.
“his wife Nadezhda Krupskaya wrote to I don't know whom, is Vladimir Ilyich getting confused with leading psychiatrist and so on.”
Works invoked 2
Žižek references Lukács's book on Lenin written after History and Class Consciousness as correctly identifying Lenin's non-evolutionary thinking.
Class Warfare in France essay
Engels's preface to this Marx text is cited as the locus of his evolutionary mistake, suggesting German social democracy might win power peacefully through votes without revolution.
People invoked 17
Mentioned only to note that Serbia is reflexively associated with him, before Žižek corrects this by praising the Serb Social Democrats who voted against war credits in 1914.
Vladimir Lenin positive
Žižek strongly admires Lenin's effective non-dogmatism, radical opportunism, and capacity to seize the condensed contradictions of 1917 against orthodox Marxist stage-logic.
Georg Lukács positive
Žižek invokes Lukács's book on Lenin (post-History and Class Consciousness) as correctly identifying Lenin as a non-evolutionary thinker who grasped the unique historical chance.
Theodor W. Adorno positive
Žižek draws on Adorno's analysis of fin-de-siècle Vienna/Central Europe to explain how relative backwardness generated an explosion of intellectual genius.
Mentioned as having written to a psychiatrist questioning Lenin's mental state over the April Theses, used to illustrate how radical Lenin's position seemed even to his closest comrades.
Étienne Balibar positive
Žižek credits Balibar with a good analysis showing that what appears as Lenin's opportunism is actually his fidelity to the revolutionary goal.
David Harvey positive
Žižek uses Harvey's concept of 'non-valorized' labor to broaden the Marxist proletariat beyond Engels's narrow industrialist image.
Friedrich Engels positive
Žižek praises Engels's prophetic letters predicting WWI and a second war as a mark of genius, while also criticizing his late evolutionary optimism and his blind spot on colonial capitalism and Southern Slavs.
Mentioned as the dark underside of Central European cultural density, he attended the same school as Wittgenstein in Linz; used to complicate the 'backwardness as genius' thesis.
Walter Benjamin positive
Žižek aligns Lenin with Benjamin's obsession with getting rid of gradualist phase-logic in revolutionary thought.
Mentioned as having introduced retirement plans and social security in Germany during the pre-WWI period of relative reform.
Noam Chomsky negative
Žižek rejects Chomsky's liberal-left view that the Bolsheviks were a small group who staged a coup and that the Mensheviks represented true Marxism; calls him a 'typical liberal leftist' he otherwise respects.
Karl Marx positive
Referenced as the standard against which Engels is measured; Žižek notes Marx 'knew' the principle that backwardness can generate radical breakthrough.
Sigmund Freud positive
Named as one of the geniuses produced by Central European backwardness, alongside Einstein and Wittgenstein.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Hegel is central: Lenin turns to him in crisis; his concept of non-contemporaneity and contingency in historical development is Žižek's key explanatory resource for Lenin's April Theses.
Named among the geniuses produced by Central European backwardness.
Mentioned as attending the same Linz gymnasium as Hitler, and as an exemplar of the Central European genius explosion.
What it argues
World War I as civilizational rupture and precondition of the Russian RevolutionLenin's radical opportunism versus evolutionary stage-MarxismEngels's prophetic genius and his blind spots on colonial capitalism and Southern SlavsThe betrayal of European social democracy and the war credits voteBritish Opium War as free-trade imperialismCentral European backwardness as condition of intellectual explosionThe need for a new radical opportunism today
Dialectical moves 5
“Far from being an isolated madman, Lenin's April Theses got support from the base—there was so much desperate misery you couldn't tell people their time hadn't yet come.”
Reverses the standard image of Lenin as paranoid voluntarist: the 'madness' was actually a correct reading of mass popular pressure from below.
“What we usually perceive as Lenin's opportunism is actually his fidelity—the motto was not proletarian revolution but peace, land, and bread, yet this was the only way to be faithful to the revolutionary goal.”
Inverts the accusation of opportunism: abandoning Marxist slogans for popular demands was not betrayal but the only genuinely revolutionary move.
“Sometimes the true break comes precisely from the less developed part—as even Hegel hinted, German philosophy was the top movement precisely because Germany missed the French Revolution.”
Reverses the progressive assumption that revolution follows development: backwardness is itself a condition of radical breakthrough.
“The very apparent backwardness of Central European space was the condition of the explosion of geniuses—Freud, Einstein, Wittgenstein—because talented people had no proper space in economy or state.”
Converts a deficiency (underdevelopment) into its apparent opposite: the generative condition of intellectual and cultural innovation.
“Prohibiting the opium trade was labeled barbarism by Britain, while forcing it through war was civilization—so the true barbarism was dressed as civilization.”
The Opium War's ideological inversion: the aggressor cast itself as the defender of civilized norms while enacting civilizational destruction.
Claims 13
asserts
World War I was not an aberration but a civilizational break that ended the entire model of gradual social-democratic progress and class struggle.World War I / historical rupture
asserts
Engels was a prophetic genius whose letters in the 1880s predicted an all-European war costing millions of lives, Germany's defeat, and a subsequent second war roughly two decades later.Engels's predictive genius
asserts
Engels made a significant mistake late in life by entertaining the possibility of a peaceful, electoral road to socialism, a trap Žižek considers especially relevant today.Engels's evolutionary error
asserts
Engels failed to see Third World exploitation and women's unpaid labor as constitutive of capitalism, not peripheral to it.Engels's blind spots on colonial capitalism
asserts
The British Opium War was an early paradigm of free-trade imperialism: a colonial power forcing open a market by military violence under the ideological cover of 'civilization'.British imperialism / Opium War
asserts
Lenin's April Theses were not the delusion of an isolated madman but a correct reading of a historically condensed moment with mass popular support beneath it.Lenin's April Theses
rejects
Chomsky is wrong to dismiss the Bolsheviks as a small group who staged a coup; the Menshevik alternative merely deferred revolution indefinitely through stage-logic.Chomsky's liberal-left critique of the Bolsheviks
asserts
Lenin's greatest achievement was effective non-dogmatism: he violated virtually every article of official Marxist evolutionary doctrine when the situation required it.Lenin's non-dogmatic Marxism
asserts
What is needed today is a new 'radical opportunism'—maintaining radical goals while scanning for where contradictions are actually condensed and seizable.contemporary left strategy
asserts
Sometimes even conservative forces in the sense of old local traditions can serve as support for a radical break with the present, because capitalism is also destructive of traditional forms.role of tradition in radical politics
asserts
The decline of European communist regimes and the simultaneous collapse of social democracy / welfare state are parallel phenomena requiring the same strategic response.post-communist left strategy
asserts
Central European 'backwardness' under the Austro-Hungarian Empire was the condition of possibility for the explosion of genius (Freud, Einstein, modern painting, social theory) around 1900.sociology of fin-de-siècle Central European genius
asserts
The true revolutionary break sometimes comes from the less developed part of the world, not the most advanced, as Hegel hinted and Marx knew regarding German philosophy.uneven development and revolutionary possibility
Quotes 8
“Lenin did what in the moment of deepest crisis and defeat every great leftist does. He moved to a secluded place, Switzerland, and started begin reading Hegel.”Slavoj Žižek · Hegel as resource for revolutionary re-orientation in defeat
“The excuse was that free trade is the basis of civilization. So if you prohibit free trade, you make a step into barbarism and it's a duty of civilized nation by even by a war to bring you back into shared market.”Slavoj Žižek · free-trade ideology as cover for imperial violence
“We need a similar, I know the term is crazy, radical opportunism today. Radical in the sense of we don't abandon not by a bit our goal, but opportunism in the sense of you look around you see where contradictions are, you grab the situation.”Slavoj Žižek · radical opportunism as contemporary left strategy
“Sometimes the true break comes precisely from the less developed part, as even Hegel hinted and Marx knew. The top movement of philosophy years ago was Germany precisely because it missed the revolution.”Slavoj Žižek · backwardness as condition of radical breakthrough
“You couldn't tell them look guys your time didn't yet come, wait a little bit, it's in the next phase—Lenin was here already thinking at the level of Walter Benjamin.”Slavoj Žižek · Benjamin-Lenin convergence against stage-logic of history
“Engels was a genius in a letter... he wrote to a journalist that the way things look, in a couple of decades there will be an all-European war, the cost will be million lives, dead corpses.”Slavoj Žižek · Engels as prophetic empirical analyst
“Lenin saw clearly that there is a unique chance in Russia and that if they Bolsheviks miss that chance, the cause will be lost for decades, maybe years.”Slavoj Žižek · Lenin's sense of the unrepeatable revolutionary moment
“Precisely this contingency and non-contemporaneity of historical development. Yes there are phases but sometimes contradictions get condensed in one situation.”Slavoj Žižek · condensation of contradictions as the revolutionary opening
Transcript 6 turns
unknown
Slavoj, welcome to the show. I know that you have a lot to say about the Russian Revolution and I definitely want to specifically ask you about the period between February and October in a minute. But we were talking before the show and you mentioned that it's basically impossible of course to understand the events that we'll be talking about in a minute without talking about World War I. So when we're thinking about the Russian Revolution, where should we begin and why should we start with World War I? Because
Slavoj, welcome to the show. I know that you have a lot to say about the Russian Revolution and I definitely want to specifically ask you about the period between February and October in a minute. But we were talking before the show and you mentioned that it's basically impossible of course to understand the events that we'll be talking about in a minute without talking about World War I. So when we're thinking about the Russian Revolution, where should we begin and why should we start with World War I? Because
Slavoj Žižek
we tend to forget today obsessed as we are with Hitler, World War II, Holocaust and so on, that how important World War I was. Before World War I, only in Western Europe of course, there was for years a period of relative peace, progress, even gradual good reforms. Bismarck of all guys in Germany introduced first retirement plans, elements of social security, suffragettes, feminist movement in United Kingdom and so on. And the enigma even today for historians is how comes that then all of a sudden it exploded into tragedy. Of course this tragedy was preparing itself from before. But here things get complex. Do you know that for years before even more, everybody was talking about possible European conflict but nobody took the possibility seriously. It's kind of a, you know, rationally you see it may happen but you don't believe it really can happen. Although on the other hand there were some absolute geniuses and since usually people dismiss Engels as, you know, the poor stupid guy, Marx the true genius, one should emphasize here and maybe I even already mentioned this some previous shows here but because we the remaining half-Marxists, whatever you call us, like to, we are often reproached how, okay some interesting theories in Marx but usually they are a mess as far as we go into empirical predictions. Do you know what absolute genius Engels was in a letter from He wrote to a journalist that the way things look, in a couple of decades there will be an all-European war, the cost will be million lives, dead corpses. You know what's today the official number? million thousand. Then he said that in the war Germany will probably lose, and it will be France and United Kingdom against Germany and on the other side Russia against Germany and he said maybe the result will be Engels, a revolution in Russia. And then comes the true stroke of a genius. He adds that if Germany loses the war, it's a high probability that in around two decades there will be another [unintelligible]. It's breathtaking. Engels had an incredible practical sense. No, we Marxists are not the stupid guys who have our dreams and so on. It was so, all this even Lenin saw this clearly that there is a chance. He was nervous, although at the beginning we must admit Lenin was surprised. We all know the well-known story of the big betrayal of European social democracy. Apart of two parties: Russian Bolsheviks and one must say this because we all know when you say Serbia you think about Milošević and so on, and Serb Social Democrats were the only two social democracies which voted against war credits. Didn't fall into this patriotic torrent, whatever. So you know the story just to get it clear how what a surprise this was for Lenin that when Lenin got the German, he was already in Switzerland, I don't know where, the newspapers announcing the German social democracy voted for the war credits, he was sure that these were fake news that secret services printed these newspapers, it couldn't happen and so on and so on. But then Lenin did what in the moment of deepest crisis and defeat every great leftist does. He moved to a secluded place, Switzerland, and started begin reading Hegel, among other things, no? And Étienne Balibar in a good analysis demonstrated how what we, it's nice paradox, what we usually perceive as Hegel's, sorry as Lenin's opportunism, like we should never forget but we'll come to this later that Lenin knew how to analyze the situation and find big weak links, like for Lenin the motto was not proletarian revolution, the motto was peace and freedom, freedom and land to the farmers and so on, you know. So he saw an opportunity, Lenin. Especially he saw the big failure of the social of the social democracy. Namely, just to finish with this World War I, you know why this is important? Because we tend to forget today with all this focus and it is an indescribable horror of Holocaust, World War II, what horrors were nonetheless happening in the in the 19th century century when imperialism was fully blowing, progressing and so on. Like, sorry if I repeat myself here, but it's so important to know this, like when people say but never there were such mechanized mass murders and so on. Yeah but are we just aware if we look at them from today's perspective, are we aware of the indescribable horror, for example, of the Opium War in China? What people don't know, they usually think yeah China was a country in inertia, weakened already. No. In China was by far the strongest economy in the world. Not per capita, it was United Kingdom, but bruto altogether. And you know which was the second strongest economy in the world? India at that point. And then it was the result of colonization that first India went to ruin. It's also not true what some say but nonetheless British colonization to India brought organization and some [unintelligible]. No, in 19th century there were much stronger hungers and chaos under British colonization. They just learned did what they already learned in Ireland how to simply isolate the part where hunger is. But let's not lose time with this. What I want to say is that then it was a big business of exchange tea for opium. The British to be brutal didn't like Indian tea, sorry, didn't like English tea, they preferred the Chinese tea. To pay it they were selling opium to China. And it was an incredible human catastrophe. I mean millions of people addicted and so on. So then the Chinese Emperor, a relatively progressive young guy, wrote to Queen Victoria pleading her look my my society is destroyed. She even didn't answer him. So he just prohibited the import of opium. Declaration of war from England, some other countries. You know with what excuse? Now I'm coming to my joke, it's incredible. The excuse was that free trade is the basis of civilization. So if you prohibit free trade, you make a step into barbarism and it's a duty of civilized nation by even by a war to to bring you back into into shared market. Now you know what is the result of this? In years later around do you know that Chinese bruto product fell by two thirds? What was the strongest economy? What [unintelligible] was simply chaotic, impoverished and so on. Okay I will not go into details, just one more thing is worth mentioning here. Sorry I cannot resist saying this, it's a beautiful sarcasm. When people tell me but okay things were done like this at that point, you know, my answer is this one: But imagine, since humanitarians like to measure the humanitarian record of other countries with today's standard. Okay let's apply today's standards to United Kingdom and I like this dream. I once used this in Mexico, I got an applause. Today the big bad guy guys are cartels from Colum- Colombia and Mexico. What if they were to exert a force on their country to declare war on countries so that Mexico and Colombia would declare war on United States for trying to prevent the peaceful export of opium and and other drugs? That's what was done at that point. We when we are so focused on 20th century horrors, we tend to lose from sight the absolutely breathtaking horror of it. That's a and okay let's not get lost, but what I my point is this one: it wasn't just the war, it was the end of a certain model of development to which even Engels, now comes the relatively bad news on Engels, a trap into which even Engels got caught when in around towards the end of his life, he wrote a well-known pre- introduction I forgot to which text, I think Class Warfare in France, where he says maybe it was the time when German social democracy was winning votes, maybe there even we will even not need a revolution, maybe simply gradually we will win on by voting and there will be a peaceful tradition. Another mistake of Engels which is especially actual for us today is that he was obsessed with standard image of who is a proletarian. You know, that's an interesting analysis, in every epoch one one specific strata becomes the symbol of proletarian. At that time I would say it was either still workers or miners or something like that, like that's the true working class. And Engels didn't see enough how already at that point Third World exploitation and things like this were integral part of capitalism. The only way to understand capitalism is not not to focus on this most developed modern proletariat, but to include all those to use terms of David Harvey whose work is non-valorized. It's women, it's those whose whose environment is ruined and so on and so on. You know where this Engels mistake shows clearly? Like till the end of his life he was opposed, I don't care about it, I'm not a nationalist, but our enemies here use this all the time. Engels was opposed to too much freedom for Southern Slavs: Slovenes, Croats and so on. In a way he was right to to oppose it because he remem- all European left remember how without the interventions not so much of Russia as also of Croats, Slovenes who were on the Emperor's side, the revolution may even had a chance to succeed. But what Engels, so Engels thought as he wrote, I don't care about Southern Slavs, they are [unintelligible], I only worry about them so that they will not prevent the success of another revolution within Europe. For Engels the big point was the liberation self-emancipation of the working class. And I think all this traditional, one have to say has to say this, Marxist vision was also interrupted, disintegrated with World War I. It wasn't this is just an aberration then we will get that to the to the old sta- old class warfare and so on and so on. No, no. Everything changed. And I think Lenin clearly saw this. That the whole that it's not just a short break then we will return to old social democratic struggles and so on and so on. Lenin saw the fundamental change and what is so interesting in Lenin is that he didn't regress already the relatively early Lenin into some kind of a primitive anti-Eurocentric idea of Europe as such is corrupted. No. Even towards the end of his life when he saw the desperate situation in Russia, Lenin says let's not dream about building socialism, our task today is just to bring, he even says in Eurocentric terms, you know, a little bit more of haha European civilization and so on to to Russia and so on. But what Lenin clearly saw is that World War I was a break, that everything, everything changed. You know, and this is if I may slowly progress now to your question, this is what guys whom I otherwise respect even if they hate me like Noam Chomsky don't see. I remember listening to an interview by or even podcast by Chomsky who as typical liberal leftists, no, says Bolsheviks did just were a small group who did a coup d'état. The true Marxists were the Mensheviks who simply followed the official Marxist dogma which is this succession of stages, no? The idea was how can Russia do a more radical revolution when they are not even properly in the bourgeois revolution. So the situation is not yet ripe, the first revolution this meant February must be a bourgeois revolution, bourgeois democracy, develop capitalism, we need to create the proletariat and then we will do it. Lenin, first this is not incidentally this is not an adequate image. Read history precisely of those months and you see that yes on the one hand Lenin may appear as a madman who in his famous April Theses saw and advocated the possibility of a revolution. But he was but although even at some point the majority of the Bolshevik whatever it was called Politburo, Central Committee members, although they were Bolsheviks for revolution, they thought Lenin is going crazy. Even his wife Nadezhda Krupskaya wrote to I don't know whom, is Vladimir Ilyich getting confused with leading psychiatrist and so on, you know. But on the other hand it's not just this. There was a magic moment when Lenin far from being an isolated madman building his paranoia construct, the revolution got support from the base. There was so much desperate misery, people were so desperate that you couldn't tell them look guys your time didn't yet come, wait a little bit, it's in the next pha- you know. Lenin was here although he would probably never admit it, Lenin was here already thinking at the level of Walter Benjamin that the big thing is, this was Benjamin's big obsession, to get rid of this gradual phases of revolutionary movement. First this phase, then another phase. No, that's what Lenin learned in from Hegel who is usually dismissed as the great madman of everything conceptual. No, precisely this contingency and non-contemporaneity of philos- oh sorry of historical development. Yes there are phases but sometimes contradictions are get condensed in one situation and then Lenin in a way saw although I'm also very critical on Marx but Lenin also saw how if in the long term you want to promote proletarian revolution, if you want to be faithful to this, moments come where the only thing to do is to say no, another struggle is at this point crucial, more important than the proletarian struggle. And to cut short don't be afraid that I will go on and on, that's why what Lenin made mistakes we can talk about this later but what I admire about him at this point at the beginning before and then immediately after October Revolution is that he was not in this empty sense but effectively non-dogmatic. Do you know how many parts of the official Marxist evolutionary dogma he violated? He made a revolution again by appeals to slogans, peace, land reform and so on which even had nothing specifically Marxist about them. But he saw at that point that's how you that's how you mobilize people. So this is what I see, this great great in Lenin, this this was an immense achievement whatever whichever horror later took place on behalf of Lenin. A) this absolute distrust of simple evolutionary logic like you know, step by step. No. Lenin saw clearly what now some postcolonial big guys like to emphasize, that at some point at some point even conservative forces, not conservative in the bourgeois or feudal sense but in the sense of old local traditions can serve as a support for a radical break with the present. Because we should never forget that capitalism is not only trying to thwart every radical step forward but it's also immensely destructive as it were backwards towards traditional forms. Lenin saw it, Lenin saw clearly all this. So this insight against evolutionary logic and this incredible sense to grab an opportunity. Lenin was as Lukács who is also reproached for being dogmatic in his book after History and Class Consciousness, Lenin, points out, Lenin is precisely not this evolutionary thinker, general logic of history, let's do [unintelligible]. No, Lenin saw clearly that there is a unique chance in Russia and that if they Bolsheviks miss that chance, the cause will be lost for decades, maybe years and so on. I this is what I admire with Lenin and I will tell you why and then I will stop. Because I think something similar happened in in in Europe. The decline or disintegration of this European communist regimes, I had no sympathy for them, but remember that at the same time social democracy as we knew it, welfare state and and so on. And we need a similar, I know the term is crazy, radical opportunism today. Radical in the sense of we don't abandon not by a bit our goal, but opportunism in the sense of you look around you see where contradictions are, you grab the situation. That's the the incredible sense needed more than ever today of Lenin. Yeah and that that's what I always find striking is that, you know, he was both a this man of letters, this very, you know, well- well-read, well-spoken, well, you know, excellent writer, thinker, etc. but also a man of action, um, in a way that seems, um, almost totally impossible to imagine today. Like a man like that, a man that is both, um, you know, an intellectual for lack of a better term and also this kind of incredible man of action. That just seems like total anachronistic, uh, today, totally impossible. Um, you know, I I I just wonder like if you know why why was it possible back then and it's not now? Like why can't that kind of person exist now? I set my own almost a conspiracy theory, a mythic theory. You know that at that point, especially the middle of Europe, a little bit of Paris, Germany, Vienna, was, it's a primitive sociological theory, was a miraculous place. Adorno when he analyzes in some of his writings towards Vienna around and later and says precisely because of a relative backwardness of Austrian-Hungarian Empire, because intelligent active people didn't have a proper space in economy or in state apparatus to realize their potentials, you have this incredible explosion of geniuses there: Freud, modern painting, social theory, physics, Einstein and so on and so on. That it's again Lenin would have loved to do this analysis of how the very apparent backwardness of this Central European space, the backwardness
we tend to forget today obsessed as we are with Hitler, World War II, Holocaust and so on, that how important World War I was. Before World War I, only in Western Europe of course, there was for years a period of relative peace, progress, even gradual good reforms. Bismarck of all guys in Germany introduced first retirement plans, elements of social security, suffragettes, feminist movement in United Kingdom and so on. And the enigma even today for historians is how comes that then all of a sudden it exploded into tragedy. Of course this tragedy was preparing itself from before. But here things get complex. Do you know that for years before even more, everybody was talking about possible European conflict but nobody took the possibility seriously. It's kind of a, you know, rationally you see it may happen but you don't believe it really can happen. Although on the other hand there were some absolute geniuses and since usually people dismiss Engels as, you know, the poor stupid guy, Marx the true genius, one should emphasize here and maybe I even already mentioned this some previous shows here but because we the remaining half-Marxists, whatever you call us, like to, we are often reproached how, okay some interesting theories in Marx but usually they are a mess as far as we go into empirical predictions. Do you know what absolute genius Engels was in a letter from He wrote to a journalist that the way things look, in a couple of decades there will be an all-European war, the cost will be million lives, dead corpses. You know what's today the official number? million thousand. Then he said that in the war Germany will probably lose, and it will be France and United Kingdom against Germany and on the other side Russia against Germany and he said maybe the result will be Engels, a revolution in Russia. And then comes the true stroke of a genius. He adds that if Germany loses the war, it's a high probability that in around two decades there will be another [unintelligible]. It's breathtaking. Engels had an incredible practical sense. No, we Marxists are not the stupid guys who have our dreams and so on. It was so, all this even Lenin saw this clearly that there is a chance. He was nervous, although at the beginning we must admit Lenin was surprised. We all know the well-known story of the big betrayal of European social democracy. Apart of two parties: Russian Bolsheviks and one must say this because we all know when you say Serbia you think about Milošević and so on, and Serb Social Democrats were the only two social democracies which voted against war credits. Didn't fall into this patriotic torrent, whatever. So you know the story just to get it clear how what a surprise this was for Lenin that when Lenin got the German, he was already in Switzerland, I don't know where, the newspapers announcing the German social democracy voted for the war credits, he was sure that these were fake news that secret services printed these newspapers, it couldn't happen and so on and so on. But then Lenin did what in the moment of deepest crisis and defeat every great leftist does. He moved to a secluded place, Switzerland, and started begin reading Hegel, among other things, no? And Étienne Balibar in a good analysis demonstrated how what we, it's nice paradox, what we usually perceive as Hegel's, sorry as Lenin's opportunism, like we should never forget but we'll come to this later that Lenin knew how to analyze the situation and find big weak links, like for Lenin the motto was not proletarian revolution, the motto was peace and freedom, freedom and land to the farmers and so on, you know. So he saw an opportunity, Lenin. Especially he saw the big failure of the social of the social democracy. Namely, just to finish with this World War I, you know why this is important? Because we tend to forget today with all this focus and it is an indescribable horror of Holocaust, World War II, what horrors were nonetheless happening in the in the 19th century century when imperialism was fully blowing, progressing and so on. Like, sorry if I repeat myself here, but it's so important to know this, like when people say but never there were such mechanized mass murders and so on. Yeah but are we just aware if we look at them from today's perspective, are we aware of the indescribable horror, for example, of the Opium War in China? What people don't know, they usually think yeah China was a country in inertia, weakened already. No. In China was by far the strongest economy in the world. Not per capita, it was United Kingdom, but bruto altogether. And you know which was the second strongest economy in the world? India at that point. And then it was the result of colonization that first India went to ruin. It's also not true what some say but nonetheless British colonization to India brought organization and some [unintelligible]. No, in 19th century there were much stronger hungers and chaos under British colonization. They just learned did what they already learned in Ireland how to simply isolate the part where hunger is. But let's not lose time with this. What I want to say is that then it was a big business of exchange tea for opium. The British to be brutal didn't like Indian tea, sorry, didn't like English tea, they preferred the Chinese tea. To pay it they were selling opium to China. And it was an incredible human catastrophe. I mean millions of people addicted and so on. So then the Chinese Emperor, a relatively progressive young guy, wrote to Queen Victoria pleading her look my my society is destroyed. She even didn't answer him. So he just prohibited the import of opium. Declaration of war from England, some other countries. You know with what excuse? Now I'm coming to my joke, it's incredible. The excuse was that free trade is the basis of civilization. So if you prohibit free trade, you make a step into barbarism and it's a duty of civilized nation by even by a war to to bring you back into into shared market. Now you know what is the result of this? In years later around do you know that Chinese bruto product fell by two thirds? What was the strongest economy? What [unintelligible] was simply chaotic, impoverished and so on. Okay I will not go into details, just one more thing is worth mentioning here. Sorry I cannot resist saying this, it's a beautiful sarcasm. When people tell me but okay things were done like this at that point, you know, my answer is this one: But imagine, since humanitarians like to measure the humanitarian record of other countries with today's standard. Okay let's apply today's standards to United Kingdom and I like this dream. I once used this in Mexico, I got an applause. Today the big bad guy guys are cartels from Colum- Colombia and Mexico. What if they were to exert a force on their country to declare war on countries so that Mexico and Colombia would declare war on United States for trying to prevent the peaceful export of opium and and other drugs? That's what was done at that point. We when we are so focused on 20th century horrors, we tend to lose from sight the absolutely breathtaking horror of it. That's a and okay let's not get lost, but what I my point is this one: it wasn't just the war, it was the end of a certain model of development to which even Engels, now comes the relatively bad news on Engels, a trap into which even Engels got caught when in around towards the end of his life, he wrote a well-known pre- introduction I forgot to which text, I think Class Warfare in France, where he says maybe it was the time when German social democracy was winning votes, maybe there even we will even not need a revolution, maybe simply gradually we will win on by voting and there will be a peaceful tradition. Another mistake of Engels which is especially actual for us today is that he was obsessed with standard image of who is a proletarian. You know, that's an interesting analysis, in every epoch one one specific strata becomes the symbol of proletarian. At that time I would say it was either still workers or miners or something like that, like that's the true working class. And Engels didn't see enough how already at that point Third World exploitation and things like this were integral part of capitalism. The only way to understand capitalism is not not to focus on this most developed modern proletariat, but to include all those to use terms of David Harvey whose work is non-valorized. It's women, it's those whose whose environment is ruined and so on and so on. You know where this Engels mistake shows clearly? Like till the end of his life he was opposed, I don't care about it, I'm not a nationalist, but our enemies here use this all the time. Engels was opposed to too much freedom for Southern Slavs: Slovenes, Croats and so on. In a way he was right to to oppose it because he remem- all European left remember how without the interventions not so much of Russia as also of Croats, Slovenes who were on the Emperor's side, the revolution may even had a chance to succeed. But what Engels, so Engels thought as he wrote, I don't care about Southern Slavs, they are [unintelligible], I only worry about them so that they will not prevent the success of another revolution within Europe. For Engels the big point was the liberation self-emancipation of the working class. And I think all this traditional, one have to say has to say this, Marxist vision was also interrupted, disintegrated with World War I. It wasn't this is just an aberration then we will get that to the to the old sta- old class warfare and so on and so on. No, no. Everything changed. And I think Lenin clearly saw this. That the whole that it's not just a short break then we will return to old social democratic struggles and so on and so on. Lenin saw the fundamental change and what is so interesting in Lenin is that he didn't regress already the relatively early Lenin into some kind of a primitive anti-Eurocentric idea of Europe as such is corrupted. No. Even towards the end of his life when he saw the desperate situation in Russia, Lenin says let's not dream about building socialism, our task today is just to bring, he even says in Eurocentric terms, you know, a little bit more of haha European civilization and so on to to Russia and so on. But what Lenin clearly saw is that World War I was a break, that everything, everything changed. You know, and this is if I may slowly progress now to your question, this is what guys whom I otherwise respect even if they hate me like Noam Chomsky don't see. I remember listening to an interview by or even podcast by Chomsky who as typical liberal leftists, no, says Bolsheviks did just were a small group who did a coup d'état. The true Marxists were the Mensheviks who simply followed the official Marxist dogma which is this succession of stages, no? The idea was how can Russia do a more radical revolution when they are not even properly in the bourgeois revolution. So the situation is not yet ripe, the first revolution this meant February must be a bourgeois revolution, bourgeois democracy, develop capitalism, we need to create the proletariat and then we will do it. Lenin, first this is not incidentally this is not an adequate image. Read history precisely of those months and you see that yes on the one hand Lenin may appear as a madman who in his famous April Theses saw and advocated the possibility of a revolution. But he was but although even at some point the majority of the Bolshevik whatever it was called Politburo, Central Committee members, although they were Bolsheviks for revolution, they thought Lenin is going crazy. Even his wife Nadezhda Krupskaya wrote to I don't know whom, is Vladimir Ilyich getting confused with leading psychiatrist and so on, you know. But on the other hand it's not just this. There was a magic moment when Lenin far from being an isolated madman building his paranoia construct, the revolution got support from the base. There was so much desperate misery, people were so desperate that you couldn't tell them look guys your time didn't yet come, wait a little bit, it's in the next pha- you know. Lenin was here although he would probably never admit it, Lenin was here already thinking at the level of Walter Benjamin that the big thing is, this was Benjamin's big obsession, to get rid of this gradual phases of revolutionary movement. First this phase, then another phase. No, that's what Lenin learned in from Hegel who is usually dismissed as the great madman of everything conceptual. No, precisely this contingency and non-contemporaneity of philos- oh sorry of historical development. Yes there are phases but sometimes contradictions are get condensed in one situation and then Lenin in a way saw although I'm also very critical on Marx but Lenin also saw how if in the long term you want to promote proletarian revolution, if you want to be faithful to this, moments come where the only thing to do is to say no, another struggle is at this point crucial, more important than the proletarian struggle. And to cut short don't be afraid that I will go on and on, that's why what Lenin made mistakes we can talk about this later but what I admire about him at this point at the beginning before and then immediately after October Revolution is that he was not in this empty sense but effectively non-dogmatic. Do you know how many parts of the official Marxist evolutionary dogma he violated? He made a revolution again by appeals to slogans, peace, land reform and so on which even had nothing specifically Marxist about them. But he saw at that point that's how you that's how you mobilize people. So this is what I see, this great great in Lenin, this this was an immense achievement whatever whichever horror later took place on behalf of Lenin. A) this absolute distrust of simple evolutionary logic like you know, step by step. No. Lenin saw clearly what now some postcolonial big guys like to emphasize, that at some point at some point even conservative forces, not conservative in the bourgeois or feudal sense but in the sense of old local traditions can serve as a support for a radical break with the present. Because we should never forget that capitalism is not only trying to thwart every radical step forward but it's also immensely destructive as it were backwards towards traditional forms. Lenin saw it, Lenin saw clearly all this. So this insight against evolutionary logic and this incredible sense to grab an opportunity. Lenin was as Lukács who is also reproached for being dogmatic in his book after History and Class Consciousness, Lenin, points out, Lenin is precisely not this evolutionary thinker, general logic of history, let's do [unintelligible]. No, Lenin saw clearly that there is a unique chance in Russia and that if they Bolsheviks miss that chance, the cause will be lost for decades, maybe years and so on. I this is what I admire with Lenin and I will tell you why and then I will stop. Because I think something similar happened in in in Europe. The decline or disintegration of this European communist regimes, I had no sympathy for them, but remember that at the same time social democracy as we knew it, welfare state and and so on. And we need a similar, I know the term is crazy, radical opportunism today. Radical in the sense of we don't abandon not by a bit our goal, but opportunism in the sense of you look around you see where contradictions are, you grab the situation. That's the the incredible sense needed more than ever today of Lenin. Yeah and that that's what I always find striking is that, you know, he was both a this man of letters, this very, you know, well- well-read, well-spoken, well, you know, excellent writer, thinker, etc. but also a man of action, um, in a way that seems, um, almost totally impossible to imagine today. Like a man like that, a man that is both, um, you know, an intellectual for lack of a better term and also this kind of incredible man of action. That just seems like total anachronistic, uh, today, totally impossible. Um, you know, I I I just wonder like if you know why why was it possible back then and it's not now? Like why can't that kind of person exist now? I set my own almost a conspiracy theory, a mythic theory. You know that at that point, especially the middle of Europe, a little bit of Paris, Germany, Vienna, was, it's a primitive sociological theory, was a miraculous place. Adorno when he analyzes in some of his writings towards Vienna around and later and says precisely because of a relative backwardness of Austrian-Hungarian Empire, because intelligent active people didn't have a proper space in economy or in state apparatus to realize their potentials, you have this incredible explosion of geniuses there: Freud, modern painting, social theory, physics, Einstein and so on and so on. That it's again Lenin would have loved to do this analysis of how the very apparent backwardness of this Central European space, the backwardness
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which had its own traps of course, don't forget that Hitler is from this space. Don't forget that I learned this when I was in
which had its own traps of course, don't forget that Hitler is from this space. Don't forget that I learned this when I was in
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Linz in the middle of Austria. Do
Linz in the middle of Austria. Do
Slavoj Žižek
you know that Hitler and Wittgenstein were visiting young Hitler and young Wittgenstein the same high school, Gymnasium, gymnasium there? And there is even a stupid theory totally not right that Hitler saw what a genius Wittgenstein is and out of envy became antisemite or whatever, you know. But I think you are pointing in the right direction, you see that's the spirit of Lenin. Let's not say this is the progress of history, oh this is the most progressive part there thing will happen. No. Sometimes the true break comes precisely from the less developed part, as even Hegel hinted and Marx knew. The top movement of philosophy years ago was Germany precisely because it missed the revolution, French Revolution and so on. You know, that's that
you know that Hitler and Wittgenstein were visiting young Hitler and young Wittgenstein the same high school, Gymnasium, gymnasium there? And there is even a stupid theory totally not right that Hitler saw what a genius Wittgenstein is and out of envy became antisemite or whatever, you know. But I think you are pointing in the right direction, you see that's the spirit of Lenin. Let's not say this is the progress of history, oh this is the most progressive part there thing will happen. No. Sometimes the true break comes precisely from the less developed part, as even Hegel hinted and Marx knew. The top movement of philosophy years ago was Germany precisely because it missed the revolution, French Revolution and so on. You know, that's that
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was that was the spirit of Lenin.
was that was the spirit of Lenin.