Slavoj Zizek: Redeem the Jacobins!
Interview · Jacobin ·
2021-07-14 · 0:30:48 · 3,532 words
revolution-violencehistorycommunism-socialismideologygeopolitics-warrace-antisemitismecology-climate
Žižek defends the French Revolution against liberal critics by revisiting the historical record on Jacobin terror, arguing that the violence was less extreme than commonly portrayed and that key figures like Robespierre were guilty parties rather than victims of paranoia. He develops the argument that the Haitian Revolution was the true test and world-historical completion of the French Revolution, and draws lessons about counter-revolution and principled pragmatism from the Bolshevik and Bolivian experiences. The talk concludes by arguing that conditions of ecological and pandemic emergency will demand a reinvention of Jacobin-style radical measures.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 13
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
The revolutionary insistence on universal equality, invoked here as one of the four features Žižek says must be reinvented for emergency governance.
The Jacobin judicial body; Žižek argues that its conviction rate (~50%) demonstrates it was not a rubber-stamp instrument of terror but granted real procedural chances of acquittal.
The post-Jacobin reaction; Žižek argues that more people were guillotined in the first weeks of Thermidor than in nearly the entire preceding year of Jacobin terror, inverting the standard narrative.
Žižek defends the terror of the Jacobins as historically less extreme than portrayed, situating it as a rational political response to internal and external threats rather than arbitrary totalitarian violence.
The structural drift from republican revolutionary form to personal military dictatorship, which Robespierre and Saint-Just were aware of and consciously refused to enact even at the cost of their lives.
as “world historical event”
Žižek uses Hegel's category to argue that the French Revolution only attained genuine world-historical status through its repetition and extension in the Haitian Revolution.
Acting against market logic and without the cover of objective historical necessity to redirect production toward ecological or public-health goals; Žižek endorses this as a required posture for the left today.
Žižek's term for the necessary coercive element in emergency governance, not secret police, but the disciplined imposition of measures required to manage pandemics or ecological catastrophe.
More than electoral legitimacy, this means a state's capacity to rely on local self-organization in crisis; Žižek cites Vietnam's pandemic management as evidence of its effectiveness.
The antisemitic conspiracy theory promoted by Kolchak's White counter-revolutionary forces, which Žižek cites as evidence that the counter-revolution was ideologically more extreme than the Bolsheviks.
as “principled pragmatic stance”
A concept Žižek says he coined together with Álvaro García Linera: holding firmly to communist horizon as a principle while remaining tactically flexible and cautious in how you actualize that principle so as not to alienate potential allies.
The orthodox Marxist belief that history has predetermined phases and is 'on our side'; Žižek criticizes Lenin for holding this at the theoretical level even as his practice contradicted it.
Lenin's tactical retreat allowing small-scale private production; Žižek invokes it as a model of principled pragmatism, controlling capital while not destroying productive capacity.
Stories he reaches for 3
Bolivia under Morales and Linera doubled the real purchasing power of ordinary workers while controlling big capital without destroying productive capacity, demonstrating that radical left governance can succeed without 'screwing it up'.
“in Bolivia they did not screwed it up. The real purchase power of ordinary worker...more than redoubled. They succeeded in controlling the big capital but at the same time exploiting it.”
After the Civil War, Western corporate managers including Rockefeller visited Soviet Russia, and Lenin was fascinated by their organizational capacity, seeing in them an emancipatory potential for coordinating large factories.
“Lenin was fascinated with them. He saw in them masters of how to coordinate, organize large factories, all the complexity. He saw an emancipatory potential in them.”
Robespierre and Saint-Just debated whether to seize personal dictatorial power to save the revolution and concluded it was better to lose their physical heads than take that path, for Žižek one of history's most sublime ethical gestures.
“They concluded: 'No, sorry, it's better for us to lose our physical head than to take that path.'”
Works invoked 2
Philosophy of Right book
Žižek cites the footnote in which Hegel praises Haiti as a successful modern state, using it to show that even the supposedly conservative Hegel recognized the Haitian Revolution's world-historical importance.
The antisemitic forgery reprinted and distributed by Kolchak's White counter-revolutionary forces; cited as evidence that the counter-revolution was ideologically more extreme than the Bolsheviks.
People invoked 18
Vladimir Lenin positive
Žižek endorses Lenin's voluntarist practice and principled pragmatism (NEP, land to farmers) while criticizing his theoretical retention of historical determinism; says he is 'on Lenin's side.'
Luis Arce positive
Named alongside Morales and Linera as part of Bolivia's successful radical governance model.
Žižek argues, on the basis of British secret documents, that Danton was genuinely guilty of being bribed by the British government, justifying his execution rather than treating it as revolutionary madness.
Alexander Kolchak negative
The Siberian White counter-revolutionary leader; cited as responsible for mass killings, land restoration to former owners, and virulent antisemitic propaganda including reprinting the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Toussaint Louverture positive
The leader of the Haitian Revolution; Žižek regards his movement as the true world-historical completion of the French Revolution and the real test of its universalist promise.
Álvaro García Linera positive
Žižek describes him as a good friend (met twice); credits him as co-author of the term 'principled pragmatic stance' and cites Bolivia's success under him and Morales as the model of viable radical governance.
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just positive
Praised alongside Robespierre for their shared ethical refusal to become Bonaparte and for their non-determinist metaphor of revolution as navigation without maps.
Jean-Claude Milner positive
Described as Žižek's friend; cited for his argument that the American Revolution was never an authentic emancipatory event and always a compromise, in a polemic against Hannah Arendt.
Mentioned only in passing as a figure caricatured as a 'Jewish devil' in Kolchak's antisemitic propaganda.
Mentioned as the victim of Lenin Moreno's decision to hand him over to authorities, implying Žižek's sympathy for Assange.
Evo Morales positive
Cited as proof that radical left governance can succeed: under his presidency Bolivia more than doubled ordinary workers' real purchasing power while controlling capital.
Maximilien Robespierre positive
Žižek defends Robespierre against charges of totalitarianism, portraying him as procedurally liberal, aware of the danger of Bonapartism, and making one of history's most sublime ethical gestures by choosing defeat over dictatorship.
Napoleon negative
Represents the Bonapartist deviation from republican revolution into personal military dictatorship; condemned for ordering the extermination of Haitian slaves and reversing the revolution's universalist promise.
Lenín Moreno negative
The Ecuadorian president who delivered Julian Assange to authorities; Žižek jokes that he is the only Lenin he truly dislikes.
Hannah Arendt negative
Mentioned as a foil to Milner's argument; Milner develops his case for the American Revolution's inauthenticity as a 'nice polemic' against Arendt.
Karl Marx positive
Invoked through his statement 'I am not a Marxist,' which Žižek interprets as Marx distancing himself from the Mensheviks' orthodox evolutionary determinism.
Mentioned as evidence that even Lincoln's attempt to complete the American Revolution failed, leading to the Ku Klux Klan, illustrating the American Revolution's status as permanently unfinished.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Invoked for his Philosophy of Right footnote praising Haiti as a successful modern state; Žižek notes that the supposedly conservative Hegel was more progressive on Haiti than many ostensible radicals.
What it argues
rehabilitation of Jacobin terror against liberal historiographyHaiti as the world-historical completion of the French Revolutionprincipled pragmatism versus orthodox Marxist determinismcounter-revolution and its brutalityecological and pandemic emergency requiring radical voluntarismRobespierre's ethical choice against Bonapartismegalitarianism and trust in the people as revolutionary virtues
Dialectical moves 7
“Thermidor, the supposed end of terror, produced more executions in its first weeks than nearly the entire year of revolutionary terror that preceded it.”
The 'liberation' from terror was itself a more intense terror; the reaction reproduced the very thing it claimed to abolish.
“Far from being a totalitarian dictator, Robespierre was too procedural, too liberal—he was overthrown by a simple majority vote, not the way you overthrow a true totalitarian.”
The supposed totalitarian reveals himself as more committed to procedure than his liberal critics, inverting the standard accusation.
“The Haitian revolutionary decree to kill all white people was not the furthest radicalization of the revolution but the moment when it started to imitate the old power structure.”
What looks like the most extreme anti-white revolutionary gesture is actually a conservative move, a desire to occupy, not abolish, the position of the master.
“Haiti was more European than we Europeans, if by European we mean what is best in our legacy—equality and freedom.”
The colony that Europe sought to crush as an aberration was in fact more faithful to European Enlightenment ideals than Europe itself.
“European modernity was full of ideas of freedom against slavery, but they mostly meant slavery in a metaphorical sense—while literal slavery was exploding in early capitalism, they didn't write about it.”
The Enlightenment's most fundamental commitment (anti-slavery) was systematically avoided precisely where it was most literally relevant.
“It was not the Red Terror that caused the counter-revolution; the counter-revolution was already there, already more brutal, and the farmers eventually welcomed the Bolsheviks back because the White forces were worse.”
The standard causal sequence, Bolshevik excess provokes reaction, is inverted; the reaction preceded and exceeded the alleged cause.
“Lenin was at the theoretical level an idealist and historical determinist, but Robespierre and Saint-Just were more open—they said revolution is like being on a wild sea without maps or compasses.”
The supposedly more radical materialist (Lenin) is exposed as theoretically more naive than the bourgeois republican revolutionaries he superseded.
Claims 15
rejects
The Jacobin terror was significantly less brutal than Nazi or Stalinist terror, and the conviction rate of revolutionary tribunals (~50%) shows it was not a foregone formality.the standard liberal equation of Jacobin terror with totalitarian violence
asserts
Danton's execution was justified because British secret documents confirm he was systematically bribed by the British government.the Danton affair and the rationality of Jacobin purges
asserts
Thermidor produced more executions in its first weeks than the entire preceding year of Jacobin terror, and killed a different social class of victim.the Thermidorian reaction
rejects
Robespierre was not a totalitarian dictator; his decision to fight through speech in the National Assembly rather than organize a coup demonstrates his procedural liberalism.the characterization of Robespierre as a totalitarian
asserts
Robespierre and Saint-Just made an ethical choice to lose power—and their heads—rather than become the new Bonaparte, which Žižek regards as one of history's most sublime ethical gestures.the ethics of Robespierre and Saint-Just
asserts
The French Revolution only became a world-historical model through its repetition in Haiti, which was the real test of whether its universal emancipatory promise held beyond Western Europe.the world-historical significance of the Haitian Revolution
asserts
Napoleon's order to kill all Haitian slaves and replace them was motivated not just by pragmatics but by the recognition that Haiti set a dangerous precedent that had to be extinguished.Napoleon's counterrevolutionary campaign in Haiti
reframes
The Haitian revolutionary decree to kill all white people was not an extreme radicalization but a reactionary mimicry of the white power structure—an attempt to reproduce domination with a new ruling class.the post-independence Haitian violence against whites
asserts
The American Revolution was never a truly authentic emancipatory event and remains an unfinished revolution, unlike the French and Haitian revolutions.the American Revolution compared to the French and Haitian
rejects
The Bolshevik counter-revolutionary crisis was not caused by Red Terror provoking civil war; the White counter-revolution was already in motion with massive brutality, antisemitic propaganda, and land restoration to former owners.the claim that Bolshevik violence created counter-revolution
asserts
Lenin's principled pragmatism—controlling capital while allowing limited private production—succeeded; Bolivia under Morales/Linera/Arce proves that radical left governance can avoid the usual failure pattern.the viability of radical left governance
asserts
Robespierre and Saint-Just were theoretically superior to Lenin because they understood revolution as open improvisation without predetermined maps, while Lenin remained committed to historical determinism at the level of theory.Robespierre versus Lenin as revolutionary theorists
asserts
Ecological crisis and recurring pandemics mean we are approaching a permanent emergency state that will require voluntarism, egalitarianism, progressive terror, and trust in the people—a Jacobin-style reinvention.the contemporary relevance of Jacobin politics
rejects
Orthodox Marxist evolutionary logic—waiting for objective conditions to ripen before acting—is inadequate to the present conjuncture; we must act in a Leninist voluntarist spirit.Menshevik-style orthodox Marxist gradualism
asserts
Haiti has been historically punished—cursed with ongoing instability—for being the first to actualize the literal meaning of European Enlightenment freedom against actual slavery.Haiti's historical suffering as a consequence of its revolution
Quotes 11
“It's better for us to lose our physical head than to take that path.”Slavoj Žižek · Robespierre and Saint-Just's ethical refusal of Bonapartism
“Haiti was more European than we Europeans, if by European we mean what is best in our legacy—equality blah blah.”Slavoj Žižek · Haiti as the true heir of Enlightenment universalism
“The French Revolution only became a world historical event through its repetition in Haiti.”Slavoj Žižek · Haiti as the completion and test of the French Revolution
“That's not how you overthrow a true totalitarian dictator.”Slavoj Žižek · Robespierre's procedural liberalism as evidence against totalitarian label
“These four features: voluntarism, egalitarianism, terror in good sense, and trust in the people, these will be needed. This is needed in emergency states.”Slavoj Žižek · the four Jacobin virtues required for contemporary emergency governance
“There is no return to normality. We will need this type of radical measures.”Slavoj Žižek · permanent emergency requiring radical political reinvention
“The only Lenin I really don't like...is Lenin Moreno, the president of Ecuador, who delivered Assange to the...”Slavoj Žižek · Žižek's joke distinguishing Lenin the revolutionary from Lenin Moreno
“When Marx said, 'One thing is certain, I'm not a Marxist,' I think he precisely meant the Mensheviks.”Slavoj Žižek · Marx's disavowal of orthodox deterministic Marxism
“Revolution is like you are on wild sea on a boat and you don't have any maps, any compasses, orientation. You have to improvise.”Slavoj Žižek · Robespierre and Saint-Just's non-determinist, open conception of revolution
“You have a principled stance, we know communist horizon and so on. But then in how to actualize this principled stance you have to be very cautious, don't alienate people who are not really your enemies.”Slavoj Žižek · principled pragmatic stance as the correct revolutionary formula
“They were punished for years. Haiti is with us, this nation for being the first who took independence clearly.”Slavoj Žižek · Haiti's ongoing punishment for its revolutionary precedent
Transcript 5 turns
unknown
So, I want to start by, I guess, asking you what you see as the most important legacy of the French Revolution. I think lots of people kind of broadly know that, of course, the revolution toppled the French monarchy, laid the groundwork for liberal democracy in Europe, of course served as an inspiration for the Haitian Revolution, and then a little later, a partly an inspiration for the Russian Revolution. But I guess my question for you is: can we see the influence of the revolution anywhere unexpected? Or maybe another way of putting it is, what is something about the French Revolution that you wish more people on the left knew about?
So, I want to start by, I guess, asking you what you see as the most important legacy of the French Revolution. I think lots of people kind of broadly know that, of course, the revolution toppled the French monarchy, laid the groundwork for liberal democracy in Europe, of course served as an inspiration for the Haitian Revolution, and then a little later, a partly an inspiration for the Russian Revolution. But I guess my question for you is: can we see the influence of the revolution anywhere unexpected? Or maybe another way of putting it is, what is something about the French Revolution that you wish more people on the left knew about?
Slavoj Žižek
I will try to not only seduce those who are already convinced, but I think one should do this respectfully: seduce or at least confuse those who may be sincere liberals, but they are nonetheless kind of bombarded by this message. Yeah, maybe they meant well, but they got into a deadlock, absolute terror, indistinct killing, and so on. So it's nonetheless the root, the elementary form of Stalinist terror and so on and so on. I think they should be redeemed. I would even go as far as to say that some, in some things, we should even return to them, to the French revolutionaries, in comparison with even with Marxist experience. There was something unique about that moment. What first, my first advice, sorry if this will be a little bit boring, but my first advice to those benevolent skeptics, you know, like, yeah, they tried to do good things, egalitarianism, but look where they ended in terror and so on. It's: let's get, now I will talk like a good positivist, why not, let's get the facts straight. I spoke with some historians in France, in England, who told me, "Hey, terror. Listen, don't compare this with Nazi or Stalinist terror." When they had political trials, it was not as it is usually portrayed, it was just a formality, you were condemned in advance. When you were accused by a revolutionary tribunal, do you know that the percentage of how often you were found guilty was around So it was to You had a fair chance of surviving. Second point: many of these accusations, irrational and so on. Ask now honest, even liberal, not pro-Jacobin, British historians who had a look into, because the good thing about United Kingdom is they were never properly bombed, blah blah, they had most of their documents kept. The data about the interaction of English government with French revolutionaries, you know that for example the accusation against Danton and the killing of Danton is usually considered as the first moment of the great madness of revolutionary terror. Sorry, he was guilty. It is clear from the British secret documents, now they became accessible, that Danton was all the time systematically bribed by the British government. Second thing: the beheading of the king and queen. Sorry, they, the revolutionaries, wanted to give him a chance, but while he was not even in prison, just isolated in his castle, the king, the royal family, were constantly plotting with the enemies who were attacking France, of how to overthrow the French government. So they were simply guilty. Terror, numbers of terror: my God, according to some data, Thermidor, when oh, the terror was over, people were dancing on the streets and so on. No, in the first two, three weeks of the Thermidor terror, after Saint-Just and Robespierre were arrested and liquidated, more people were guillotined than almost in the entire year of the revolutionary terror before. You know what was the only difference? You should look upon it closely, who. Who was guillotined. The point is, of course, that under Jacobins it was the visible names, nobles and so on, what made them visible. We don't even hear or have precise statistics of the ordinary low people who were beheaded and so on and so on. The last thing, this is my ultimate argument against those who claim "Oh, it was a terrorist dictatorship." Sorry, but whatever you say about Robespierre, he was not an idiot. One should maybe find those documents which demonstrate this. I know they exist, some historians showed them to me. Do you know that Robespierre again and Saint-Just were not idiots? They saw it coming, the gradual organization in the Assemblee Nationale, National Assembly, of a new coalition to oust, to throw out the Jacobins. And they were, if anything, they were too procedural, liberal. They didn't want to do a simple coup d'etat to introduce direct terror. No, it was quite tragically naive in the days before Thermidor. Robespierre was seen walking along the river Seine in Paris just thinking about his speech. For him, the medium where he will win was not arrest the counter-revolutionaries and so on, it was a big speech in Assemblee Nationale. And it failed, he was overthrown by a simple majority of votes. I'm sorry, that's not how you overthrow a true totalitarian dictator and so on and so on. If anything, Robespierre was very moderate. He knew, he was aware of the danger of the terror exploding into madness. And his last writings were full of double fear or suspicion. One is how to gradually bring the terror to the end. And second, maybe his deepest insight, and here I see the proper greatness of Robespierre, of Saint-Just and some others. You know, they were not idiots. They were aware of what Marxists later conceptualized as the gradual shift from republican form to some form of personal dictatorship, Bonapartism. And they were aware that again this will in all probability happen. And they even debated this temptation: "Should we become the new Bonaparte and we will control the situation?" blah blah. And it's one of the most beautiful ethical gestures, my God. They concluded: "No, sorry, it's better for us to lose our physical head than to take that path." And the step from Robespierre to Napoleon is an important step. Let me give you just one proof, which is for me maybe the most sublime moment. You may know that my big fixation is Haiti revolution. I even have a theory, as you already mentioned it, that French Revolution only became a world historical model through its repetition in Haiti. That was the test, that a totally different race, cultural group, recognized itself in it. And here you measure who was truly progressive. For example, Hegel, who is supposed to be more conservative, in a wonderful footnote to his Philosophy of Right, I think, he praises Haiti as an example of how even a nation which is not part of Western European enlightened people can successfully establish a modern state. So for me the single most sublime moment is, you know the story, when still before Thermidor, Toussaint L’Ouverture, the ruling new circle in Haiti, sent a delegation to Assemblee Nationale. They were celebrated, immediately recognized as equals. Then things changed with Napoleon. Napoleon did something very nasty there. He sent the army, I think it was his brother Joseph, who was the head, the general, with the explicit goal of not only bringing order there, re-establish slavery, but as he said, Napoleon, "No, this is such a dangerous precedent that all the slaves there should be killed and new slaves brought." It's not enough just to control the situation. And now comes for me one of those every revolutionary should know them, incredibly moving moment. An important part of Napoleon's army were Polish soldiers. And they did something incredible. They were approaching the revolutionary black army. And when they approached it, they heard some singing. And they thought, "Oh, this must be some stupid tribal songs" and so on. And then when they approached more, they saw the rebels, the blacks, are singing "La Marseillaise." You know what happened? The French soldiers said, "Wait a minute, are we here fighting on the right side?" They changed sides, they joined the black. That's why, very interesting, that's why when later in I think, when the revolution deviated a little bit and the first king or whatever emperor after Toussaint L’Ouverture ordered kill all white people. I have two explanations here, not justifications but explanations. First is that nonetheless he explicitly exempted white people of Polish origins. He said, "They saved us, Poles should survive." Second thing, you know how I understand this "kill all white people"? This is exactly the moment when the black revolution started to imitate, they want to copy the white power structure. They wanted to be the new ruling class and so on and so on. So it's not oh, they went so far they wanted to kill all the white people. No, this was immanently revolutionary moment, an attempt to re-establish the old power structure only with them at the position of power. But I think now I will stop, but just this. Do you remember, my God, Haiti is with us, this nation for being the first who took independence clearly, for being, and that's where I'm wrongly accused of Eurocentrism, for being more European than we Europeans, if by European we mean what is best in our legacy, equality blah blah. They were, only through them again, French Revolution became a world historical event, which, here I follow my friend Jean-Claude Milner, who is not exactly a radical leftist, but here he is right, who says, "Sorry, American Revolution was never such an authentic emancipatory event." Even now it's an unfinished revolution. It drags on. That's why American Revolution, in a nice polemics against Hannah Arendt, Milner develops this, how American Revolution was always a compromise. Lincoln, again it didn't succeed, you had Ku Klux Klan and so on. So again, just to conclude, but you can then ask me more. What I would like to point out is that we live in an era, so it seems, where these are old romantic dreams, "Oh people gather," sorry, we live in a complex digitalized society, it's no longer time for such things. No, I think that today with the crisis that we are approaching, and now it's clear that COVID will not disappear, there will be other pandemics, global warming is becoming reality and so on and so on. We are approaching an emergency state. And sooner or later, it may take ten years, but then we will pay the price, it probably will take ten, fifteen years, something will have to happen. It's simply the only way out. First, voluntarism in a progressive sense, like we cannot justify measures of how to re-orient our production to fit the ecological goals, protecting environment. You cannot ground this in some objective necessity of productive forces. We simply should act even if it's against the market logic. Second point, egalitarianism. Even those in power have to pay now lip service to it. We fight pandemic, the goal should be not protected bubbles but universal health care. Then, I know what I'm saying here, elements of progressive terror. I don't mean secret police grabbing you, but when you have a pandemic, when you have nature in chaos, you have to control the situation. And fourth element, as a counterpoint to the third one, trust in the people, which means precisely more than this every four years you have election and then corruption takes on and so on and so on. It was already clear in fighting the pandemic that the best countries till now at least, the best in dealing with the pandemic were those where the state could rely on the people. For example, although now they have a little bit higher number, but the miracle till two months ago was Vietnam. They didn't have enough vaccines or whatever, they have excellent local self-organization. These four features: voluntarism, egalitarianism, terror in good sense, and trust in the people, these will be needed. This is needed in emergency states. So I think again that something like the way the Jacobins acted, of course in different conditions, but this basic logic will have to be reinvented if we mean it seriously coping with not just one catastrophe, pandemic, it will be another pandemic, it will be ecological catastrophe and so on. There is no return to normality. We will need this type of radical measures. I'm here on Lenin's side. People are often telling me, "But you are critical of Lenin sometimes." I say maybe, but the only Lenin I really don't like, and I hope you also, is Lenin Moreno, the president of Ecuador, who delivered Assange to the... no, I think that what has to be done now cannot be formulated in this, for my taste, a little bit too trustful standard Marxist notion, relations of production are the develop, sorry, forces of production will blah blah. No, we should act, not literally but in the spirit of what Lenin did. He saw out of all these standard evolutionary Marxist formulas an opportunity for the revolution. Remember that Mensheviks were not some bad guys. Okay, they were, but basically they were simply old-fashioned orthodox Marxists. When Marx said, you remember, when Marx said, "One thing is certain, I'm not a Marxist," I think he precisely Mensheviks. Their idea was: don't dream about revolution now, the situation is not yet ripe, we first has to have to enact the passage to bourgeois democracy in an orderly way and so on and so on. No, we cannot play this game today. We should act in a voluntarist way and a little bit faster. I've spoken too long, please, put on at least now, Eugene, put on your stupid black leather... Actually, I'm going to hand the leather over to Paul. So, and speaking of that, I mean, what do you think we can learn from about the nature of counter-revolution and reaction from the experience of the French Revolution and even the Haitian Revolution? What does it teach us about the nature of counter-revolution? First, the usual thing is to say that Jacobins were too radical, they should have been looking for a pact and so on. You know, it's the same as with October Revolution. It's often said that they could have predominated in a more peaceful organic way, that it is the red terror which caused them the counter-revolution, civil war. Look, it's not so simple. Can we even imagine today the tremendous pressure under which France was in early '93, and then Soviet Union in beginning of In both cases the central government controlled I think around only one seventh of the territory of the state. And this was not just like in Vendée some primitive farmers rebelling and so on. As concerns Soviet future Soviet Union, you know which book is the absolute one to read? It's difficult to get today. An English general joined Kolchak, the Siberian counter-revolutionary, the most dangerous one who covered till Ural all that big Asian part of Soviet Union. And he wrote his memoirs after the war, observations. And the image you get there is a terrifying one. Against these accusations of, you know, communists are usually anti-Semitic, sorry. The first thing Kolchak did in his domain was to start reprinting like crazy Protocols of Zion and claiming this is a Judeo-Bolshevik plot. At that point already it originates, you know, this caricature of Trotsky as a devil, Jewish devil, and so on and so on. And he, this British general, I'm so sorry I don't I forgot his name slipped out of my mind, he also described in detail what the white counter-revolutionaries did when they occupied a territory. Incredible purges, much more brutal than those of the Bolsheviks when they re-occupied at the end this territory. Massive killing, restoration of land to the previous owners and so on and so on. So it absolutely wasn't just the Bolshevik
I will try to not only seduce those who are already convinced, but I think one should do this respectfully: seduce or at least confuse those who may be sincere liberals, but they are nonetheless kind of bombarded by this message. Yeah, maybe they meant well, but they got into a deadlock, absolute terror, indistinct killing, and so on. So it's nonetheless the root, the elementary form of Stalinist terror and so on and so on. I think they should be redeemed. I would even go as far as to say that some, in some things, we should even return to them, to the French revolutionaries, in comparison with even with Marxist experience. There was something unique about that moment. What first, my first advice, sorry if this will be a little bit boring, but my first advice to those benevolent skeptics, you know, like, yeah, they tried to do good things, egalitarianism, but look where they ended in terror and so on. It's: let's get, now I will talk like a good positivist, why not, let's get the facts straight. I spoke with some historians in France, in England, who told me, "Hey, terror. Listen, don't compare this with Nazi or Stalinist terror." When they had political trials, it was not as it is usually portrayed, it was just a formality, you were condemned in advance. When you were accused by a revolutionary tribunal, do you know that the percentage of how often you were found guilty was around So it was to You had a fair chance of surviving. Second point: many of these accusations, irrational and so on. Ask now honest, even liberal, not pro-Jacobin, British historians who had a look into, because the good thing about United Kingdom is they were never properly bombed, blah blah, they had most of their documents kept. The data about the interaction of English government with French revolutionaries, you know that for example the accusation against Danton and the killing of Danton is usually considered as the first moment of the great madness of revolutionary terror. Sorry, he was guilty. It is clear from the British secret documents, now they became accessible, that Danton was all the time systematically bribed by the British government. Second thing: the beheading of the king and queen. Sorry, they, the revolutionaries, wanted to give him a chance, but while he was not even in prison, just isolated in his castle, the king, the royal family, were constantly plotting with the enemies who were attacking France, of how to overthrow the French government. So they were simply guilty. Terror, numbers of terror: my God, according to some data, Thermidor, when oh, the terror was over, people were dancing on the streets and so on. No, in the first two, three weeks of the Thermidor terror, after Saint-Just and Robespierre were arrested and liquidated, more people were guillotined than almost in the entire year of the revolutionary terror before. You know what was the only difference? You should look upon it closely, who. Who was guillotined. The point is, of course, that under Jacobins it was the visible names, nobles and so on, what made them visible. We don't even hear or have precise statistics of the ordinary low people who were beheaded and so on and so on. The last thing, this is my ultimate argument against those who claim "Oh, it was a terrorist dictatorship." Sorry, but whatever you say about Robespierre, he was not an idiot. One should maybe find those documents which demonstrate this. I know they exist, some historians showed them to me. Do you know that Robespierre again and Saint-Just were not idiots? They saw it coming, the gradual organization in the Assemblee Nationale, National Assembly, of a new coalition to oust, to throw out the Jacobins. And they were, if anything, they were too procedural, liberal. They didn't want to do a simple coup d'etat to introduce direct terror. No, it was quite tragically naive in the days before Thermidor. Robespierre was seen walking along the river Seine in Paris just thinking about his speech. For him, the medium where he will win was not arrest the counter-revolutionaries and so on, it was a big speech in Assemblee Nationale. And it failed, he was overthrown by a simple majority of votes. I'm sorry, that's not how you overthrow a true totalitarian dictator and so on and so on. If anything, Robespierre was very moderate. He knew, he was aware of the danger of the terror exploding into madness. And his last writings were full of double fear or suspicion. One is how to gradually bring the terror to the end. And second, maybe his deepest insight, and here I see the proper greatness of Robespierre, of Saint-Just and some others. You know, they were not idiots. They were aware of what Marxists later conceptualized as the gradual shift from republican form to some form of personal dictatorship, Bonapartism. And they were aware that again this will in all probability happen. And they even debated this temptation: "Should we become the new Bonaparte and we will control the situation?" blah blah. And it's one of the most beautiful ethical gestures, my God. They concluded: "No, sorry, it's better for us to lose our physical head than to take that path." And the step from Robespierre to Napoleon is an important step. Let me give you just one proof, which is for me maybe the most sublime moment. You may know that my big fixation is Haiti revolution. I even have a theory, as you already mentioned it, that French Revolution only became a world historical model through its repetition in Haiti. That was the test, that a totally different race, cultural group, recognized itself in it. And here you measure who was truly progressive. For example, Hegel, who is supposed to be more conservative, in a wonderful footnote to his Philosophy of Right, I think, he praises Haiti as an example of how even a nation which is not part of Western European enlightened people can successfully establish a modern state. So for me the single most sublime moment is, you know the story, when still before Thermidor, Toussaint L’Ouverture, the ruling new circle in Haiti, sent a delegation to Assemblee Nationale. They were celebrated, immediately recognized as equals. Then things changed with Napoleon. Napoleon did something very nasty there. He sent the army, I think it was his brother Joseph, who was the head, the general, with the explicit goal of not only bringing order there, re-establish slavery, but as he said, Napoleon, "No, this is such a dangerous precedent that all the slaves there should be killed and new slaves brought." It's not enough just to control the situation. And now comes for me one of those every revolutionary should know them, incredibly moving moment. An important part of Napoleon's army were Polish soldiers. And they did something incredible. They were approaching the revolutionary black army. And when they approached it, they heard some singing. And they thought, "Oh, this must be some stupid tribal songs" and so on. And then when they approached more, they saw the rebels, the blacks, are singing "La Marseillaise." You know what happened? The French soldiers said, "Wait a minute, are we here fighting on the right side?" They changed sides, they joined the black. That's why, very interesting, that's why when later in I think, when the revolution deviated a little bit and the first king or whatever emperor after Toussaint L’Ouverture ordered kill all white people. I have two explanations here, not justifications but explanations. First is that nonetheless he explicitly exempted white people of Polish origins. He said, "They saved us, Poles should survive." Second thing, you know how I understand this "kill all white people"? This is exactly the moment when the black revolution started to imitate, they want to copy the white power structure. They wanted to be the new ruling class and so on and so on. So it's not oh, they went so far they wanted to kill all the white people. No, this was immanently revolutionary moment, an attempt to re-establish the old power structure only with them at the position of power. But I think now I will stop, but just this. Do you remember, my God, Haiti is with us, this nation for being the first who took independence clearly, for being, and that's where I'm wrongly accused of Eurocentrism, for being more European than we Europeans, if by European we mean what is best in our legacy, equality blah blah. They were, only through them again, French Revolution became a world historical event, which, here I follow my friend Jean-Claude Milner, who is not exactly a radical leftist, but here he is right, who says, "Sorry, American Revolution was never such an authentic emancipatory event." Even now it's an unfinished revolution. It drags on. That's why American Revolution, in a nice polemics against Hannah Arendt, Milner develops this, how American Revolution was always a compromise. Lincoln, again it didn't succeed, you had Ku Klux Klan and so on. So again, just to conclude, but you can then ask me more. What I would like to point out is that we live in an era, so it seems, where these are old romantic dreams, "Oh people gather," sorry, we live in a complex digitalized society, it's no longer time for such things. No, I think that today with the crisis that we are approaching, and now it's clear that COVID will not disappear, there will be other pandemics, global warming is becoming reality and so on and so on. We are approaching an emergency state. And sooner or later, it may take ten years, but then we will pay the price, it probably will take ten, fifteen years, something will have to happen. It's simply the only way out. First, voluntarism in a progressive sense, like we cannot justify measures of how to re-orient our production to fit the ecological goals, protecting environment. You cannot ground this in some objective necessity of productive forces. We simply should act even if it's against the market logic. Second point, egalitarianism. Even those in power have to pay now lip service to it. We fight pandemic, the goal should be not protected bubbles but universal health care. Then, I know what I'm saying here, elements of progressive terror. I don't mean secret police grabbing you, but when you have a pandemic, when you have nature in chaos, you have to control the situation. And fourth element, as a counterpoint to the third one, trust in the people, which means precisely more than this every four years you have election and then corruption takes on and so on and so on. It was already clear in fighting the pandemic that the best countries till now at least, the best in dealing with the pandemic were those where the state could rely on the people. For example, although now they have a little bit higher number, but the miracle till two months ago was Vietnam. They didn't have enough vaccines or whatever, they have excellent local self-organization. These four features: voluntarism, egalitarianism, terror in good sense, and trust in the people, these will be needed. This is needed in emergency states. So I think again that something like the way the Jacobins acted, of course in different conditions, but this basic logic will have to be reinvented if we mean it seriously coping with not just one catastrophe, pandemic, it will be another pandemic, it will be ecological catastrophe and so on. There is no return to normality. We will need this type of radical measures. I'm here on Lenin's side. People are often telling me, "But you are critical of Lenin sometimes." I say maybe, but the only Lenin I really don't like, and I hope you also, is Lenin Moreno, the president of Ecuador, who delivered Assange to the... no, I think that what has to be done now cannot be formulated in this, for my taste, a little bit too trustful standard Marxist notion, relations of production are the develop, sorry, forces of production will blah blah. No, we should act, not literally but in the spirit of what Lenin did. He saw out of all these standard evolutionary Marxist formulas an opportunity for the revolution. Remember that Mensheviks were not some bad guys. Okay, they were, but basically they were simply old-fashioned orthodox Marxists. When Marx said, you remember, when Marx said, "One thing is certain, I'm not a Marxist," I think he precisely Mensheviks. Their idea was: don't dream about revolution now, the situation is not yet ripe, we first has to have to enact the passage to bourgeois democracy in an orderly way and so on and so on. No, we cannot play this game today. We should act in a voluntarist way and a little bit faster. I've spoken too long, please, put on at least now, Eugene, put on your stupid black leather... Actually, I'm going to hand the leather over to Paul. So, and speaking of that, I mean, what do you think we can learn from about the nature of counter-revolution and reaction from the experience of the French Revolution and even the Haitian Revolution? What does it teach us about the nature of counter-revolution? First, the usual thing is to say that Jacobins were too radical, they should have been looking for a pact and so on. You know, it's the same as with October Revolution. It's often said that they could have predominated in a more peaceful organic way, that it is the red terror which caused them the counter-revolution, civil war. Look, it's not so simple. Can we even imagine today the tremendous pressure under which France was in early '93, and then Soviet Union in beginning of In both cases the central government controlled I think around only one seventh of the territory of the state. And this was not just like in Vendée some primitive farmers rebelling and so on. As concerns Soviet future Soviet Union, you know which book is the absolute one to read? It's difficult to get today. An English general joined Kolchak, the Siberian counter-revolutionary, the most dangerous one who covered till Ural all that big Asian part of Soviet Union. And he wrote his memoirs after the war, observations. And the image you get there is a terrifying one. Against these accusations of, you know, communists are usually anti-Semitic, sorry. The first thing Kolchak did in his domain was to start reprinting like crazy Protocols of Zion and claiming this is a Judeo-Bolshevik plot. At that point already it originates, you know, this caricature of Trotsky as a devil, Jewish devil, and so on and so on. And he, this British general, I'm so sorry I don't I forgot his name slipped out of my mind, he also described in detail what the white counter-revolutionaries did when they occupied a territory. Incredible purges, much more brutal than those of the Bolsheviks when they re-occupied at the end this territory. Massive killing, restoration of land to the previous owners and so on and so on. So it absolutely wasn't just the Bolshevik
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brutality. No, it was much more complex.
brutality. No, it was much more complex.
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It was also that farmers, like okay say Bolsheviks we don't trust them, okay, let the white people let the counter-revolution come. And then the situation for them got much worse and they almost
It was also that farmers, like okay say Bolsheviks we don't trust them, okay, let the white people let the counter-revolution come. And then the situation for them got much worse and they almost
Slavoj Žižek
effectively welcomed back the Bolshevik land, the Bolshevik forces, because you know you should not forget that at that point Lenin's formula was not collectivization, it was land to the farmers. And Bolsheviks did that. It was an ingenious, an ingenious move. Lenin to the end of his life warned against the deadlock of too fast a privatization. You know who follows Lenin here? My good friend, I'm proud to say although we met only two times, my good friend Alvaro Garcia Linera, the Bolivian Vice President, who said, that Lenin, and the term we coined together in debate is "principled pragmatic stance." You have a principled stance, we know communist horizon and so on. But then in how to actualize this principled stance you have to be very cautious, don't alienate people who are not really your enemies. And Lenin was here incredibly open. I read some documents on how, you know, after the Civil War many Western high corporate managers, Rockefeller even I don't know who, came to visit Soviet Union. And Lenin was fascinated with them. He saw in them masters of how to coordinate, organize large factories, all the complexity. He saw an emancipatory potential in them. And the same miracle was accomplished by Morales, Linera and now Lucho Arce in Bolivia. They were radical, but in a very careful way. They didn't screw it up when people ask me, "Okay, whenever radical left came to power, they screwed it up." I'm very sorry, in Bolivia they did not screwed it up. The real purchase power of ordinary worker in the, how much was it, nine, ten years of Morales' first reign, more than redoubled. They succeeded in controlling the big capital but at the same time exploiting it, in the sense of making it work for them. It's this is very important for us today. And my, I think this is what we need today. And this is where Jacobins come. Why do I still prefer Jacobins a little bit over Lenin was that not in his practice, but in his theory, Lenin was for me a little bit too much of an idealist and at the same time historical determinist. You know, like in orthodox Marxism, he still thought history is on our side, there are phases of history, we just accomplish a task predetermined by history and so on. While Robespierre and Saint-Just used some wonderful metaphors here, when they say, "No, revolution is like you are on wild sea on a boat and you don't have any maps, any compasses, orientation. You have to improvise" and so on and so on. They were much more aware and we should be aware of this open situation. How to reorganize things we have to improvise and so on and so on. Lenin in his practice was fully was fully aware of this. So to answer to your question, I think there is and this is how great progressive revolutionaries ask: yes, ultimately you have to maintain power. No bullshitting here. But at the same time that you don't make compromises about who is in power and so on, you should not create unnecessary enemies. You should look at things rationally, like we have there some very efficient big corporations. How to control them but not ruin the production? How to make them work for us? Or as Lenin was aware, New Economic Policy, how to, he was well aware that state cannot provide this small-level production of consumerist goods, so let's use them. It can be controlled and so on and so on. That's I think how you really fight a counter-revolution by this mixture of on the one hand at the principle level no compromises. But you should nonetheless give those who are in principle your your opponents you should give them a chance, like obey our rules, contribute to the welfare of the nation and okay we tolerate a certain level of your wealth and so on and so on. It can be done. Again, of all the countries, Bolivia proved that it can be done. Now people tell me right-wingers, "But look at Haiti even now," you remember a week ago or when the Prime Minister killed and so on. That's the curse of Haiti. It's a nightmare how this country for just doing this at that point, making a revolution, and as some people deployed very nicely, all European modernity, that's its paradox, was filled in full of the ideas of freedom, freedom against slavery. But they mostly meant slavery in this metaphorical sense. As a worker you are just a slave, at home a woman maybe is a slave, blah blah. But at the same time they didn't write a lot about literal slavery, which was exploding in early stages of capitalism. And again, in Haiti they did this. That's why they had to be punished. And they were punished for years.
effectively welcomed back the Bolshevik land, the Bolshevik forces, because you know you should not forget that at that point Lenin's formula was not collectivization, it was land to the farmers. And Bolsheviks did that. It was an ingenious, an ingenious move. Lenin to the end of his life warned against the deadlock of too fast a privatization. You know who follows Lenin here? My good friend, I'm proud to say although we met only two times, my good friend Alvaro Garcia Linera, the Bolivian Vice President, who said, that Lenin, and the term we coined together in debate is "principled pragmatic stance." You have a principled stance, we know communist horizon and so on. But then in how to actualize this principled stance you have to be very cautious, don't alienate people who are not really your enemies. And Lenin was here incredibly open. I read some documents on how, you know, after the Civil War many Western high corporate managers, Rockefeller even I don't know who, came to visit Soviet Union. And Lenin was fascinated with them. He saw in them masters of how to coordinate, organize large factories, all the complexity. He saw an emancipatory potential in them. And the same miracle was accomplished by Morales, Linera and now Lucho Arce in Bolivia. They were radical, but in a very careful way. They didn't screw it up when people ask me, "Okay, whenever radical left came to power, they screwed it up." I'm very sorry, in Bolivia they did not screwed it up. The real purchase power of ordinary worker in the, how much was it, nine, ten years of Morales' first reign, more than redoubled. They succeeded in controlling the big capital but at the same time exploiting it, in the sense of making it work for them. It's this is very important for us today. And my, I think this is what we need today. And this is where Jacobins come. Why do I still prefer Jacobins a little bit over Lenin was that not in his practice, but in his theory, Lenin was for me a little bit too much of an idealist and at the same time historical determinist. You know, like in orthodox Marxism, he still thought history is on our side, there are phases of history, we just accomplish a task predetermined by history and so on. While Robespierre and Saint-Just used some wonderful metaphors here, when they say, "No, revolution is like you are on wild sea on a boat and you don't have any maps, any compasses, orientation. You have to improvise" and so on and so on. They were much more aware and we should be aware of this open situation. How to reorganize things we have to improvise and so on and so on. Lenin in his practice was fully was fully aware of this. So to answer to your question, I think there is and this is how great progressive revolutionaries ask: yes, ultimately you have to maintain power. No bullshitting here. But at the same time that you don't make compromises about who is in power and so on, you should not create unnecessary enemies. You should look at things rationally, like we have there some very efficient big corporations. How to control them but not ruin the production? How to make them work for us? Or as Lenin was aware, New Economic Policy, how to, he was well aware that state cannot provide this small-level production of consumerist goods, so let's use them. It can be controlled and so on and so on. That's I think how you really fight a counter-revolution by this mixture of on the one hand at the principle level no compromises. But you should nonetheless give those who are in principle your your opponents you should give them a chance, like obey our rules, contribute to the welfare of the nation and okay we tolerate a certain level of your wealth and so on and so on. It can be done. Again, of all the countries, Bolivia proved that it can be done. Now people tell me right-wingers, "But look at Haiti even now," you remember a week ago or when the Prime Minister killed and so on. That's the curse of Haiti. It's a nightmare how this country for just doing this at that point, making a revolution, and as some people deployed very nicely, all European modernity, that's its paradox, was filled in full of the ideas of freedom, freedom against slavery. But they mostly meant slavery in this metaphorical sense. As a worker you are just a slave, at home a woman maybe is a slave, blah blah. But at the same time they didn't write a lot about literal slavery, which was exploding in early stages of capitalism. And again, in Haiti they did this. That's why they had to be punished. And they were punished for years.