The Deadlock · žižek archive

The ideas in it 20

in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here

Stories he reaches for 3

coffee without cream / coffee without milk

A customer orders 'coffee without cream'; the waiter says they have no cream, only milk, so offers 'coffee without milk.' The joke opens onto the question: is the coming transformation communism without cream (old model) or communism without milk (new negation)?

“Do we want coffee communism without cream or without milk? That's the difficult thing.”

Lacan at May '68: you will get a new master

Reacting to the Paris 1968 protests, Lacan told students: 'What you aspire to as revolutionaries is a new master. You will get one.' Žižek invokes this as partly true of the Indignados while rejecting Lacan's liberal cynicism as a universal law.

“What you aspire to as revolutionaries is a new master. You will get one.”

Tom Sawyer / Huck Finn witnessing their own funeral

Children's fantasy of being dead and secretly watching one's own funeral; the ultimate form of fantasy is to witness the world as it exists without you.

“The ultimate form of fantasy is to look, to witness how the world is, as it were, without you.”

Works invoked 8

Ninotchka film

Ernst Lubitsch's anti-communist film; Žižek calls it 'still an interesting one, very respectful towards communism' and uses its coffee-without-cream joke as his concluding dialectical figure.

The Global Minotaur book

Varoufakis's book; Žižek draws on it extensively as his primary economic framework for the post-1971 crisis cycle, quoting it at length.

The World Without Us book

Popular science book imagining Earth without humans; Žižek values it for showing its cards, grounding the fantasy in Chernobyl/Pripyat as the real kernel of the utopia.

After the Empire book

Emmanuel Todd's book on US decline; Žižek calls it 'clearly one-sided' but finds in it a moment of truth about the US as non-productive predator.

Arcades Project book

Walter Benjamin's unfinished project; Žižek quotes the Monglond photosensitive plate passage to ground his concept of reading present signs as images from the future.

Tom Sawyer book

Mark Twain's novel; Žižek invokes the funeral-watching scene as the paradigmatic example of the fantasy of witnessing the world without oneself.

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us book

Daniel Pink's book; Žižek finds it 'wonderful' for demonstrating that social recognition and autonomy outperform money for creative work, used as evidence against the naturalization of capitalist competition.

Indignados manifesto other

The Spanish Indignados manifesto; Žižek deeply sympathizes with its spirit but argues its generic, apolitical demands could be endorsed by any honest fascist, revealing the limits of moralistic protest.

People invoked 27

André Monglond positive

French historian cited via Benjamin's Arcades Project for the photosensitive plate metaphor that Žižek uses to theorize reading signs from the future.

Bill Clinton negative

Žižek uses Clinton's response to Occupy ('I feel your pain, but translate this into concrete demands') as an example of the liberal clinch maneuver that neutralizes protest.

Richard Nixon

Žižek marks Nixon's abandonment of the gold standard as the decisive turn creating the Global Minotaur mechanism.

Mahatma Gandhi

Žižek quotes 'Be yourself the change you want to see happen' only to note that today's protesters don't even make this (would-be utopian) gesture, they still address a mysterious external authority.

Daniel Pink positive

Žižek cites Pink's 'Drive' to support his claim that capitalist competition is not natural, social recognition outperforms money as motivation in creative work.

Vladimir Lenin positive

Žižek references the old Leninist question 'What is to be done?' as the question the open-ended protest debates must eventually touch.

Jacques Lacan positive

Žižek quotes Lacan's famous May '68 provocation ('You will get a new master') approvingly as containing a grain of truth, while criticizing its liberal-cynical universalism.

G. K. Chesterton positive

Žižek quotes Chesterton's 'philosophical policeman' and his dictum about the open mind needing to shut on something solid, both to argue that emancipatory movements need determinate conclusions.

Francis Fukuyama positive

Žižek grants that Fukuyama 'may have been basically right' that liberal capitalism won, while noting Fukuyama himself now admits the dream is over and advocates stronger state regulation.

İdris Naim Şahin negative

Turkish Interior Minister whose speech claiming police imprisonment frees dissidents Žižek holds up as the purest specimen of ideological sophism, while extracting a grain of truth about legal limits structuring freedom.

Steve Jobs

Briefly mentioned as an example of US 'creative people,' with the ironic note that he is of Syrian ethnic origin, complicating War on Terror rhetoric.

Anne Applebaum negative

Žižek notes that even this liberal critic of Occupy Wall Street admitted contemporary capitalism cannot be controlled through existing democratic institutions.

Peter Mandelson

Cited for his frank admission that New Labour is Thatcherite in economics, Žižek credits New Labour with at least being honest about this.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn positive

Cited as an example of how Stalinist dissemination of classical Russian culture inadvertently produced its own dissident critics.

Bertolt Brecht positive

Žižek quotes Brecht's Herr Keuner story ('I am preparing my next mistake') to characterize the left's seductive poetry of failure, which he critiques.

Yanis Varoufakis positive

Žižek draws extensively on Varoufakis's 'The Global Minotaur' for his structural account of the post-1971 economic cycle and the Minotaur metaphor; presents him as offering the best account available.

Confucius negative

Žižek uses Confucian 'rectification of names' to critically describe the Indignados' demand for authentic political representation as a conservative restorationist fantasy.

Kostas Douzinas negative

Described as a personal friend from Birkbeck/Greece who ferociously attacks Žižek's demand for a positive program, accusing him of sabotage; Žižek describes his position (revolt first, revolution second) as insufficient.

Viktor Orbán negative

Žižek details Orbán's Fidesz party's constitutional manipulation, criminalization of opposition, and media control, while insisting the real critique must target the neoliberal conditions that produced Orbán.

Walter Benjamin positive

Žižek draws on Benjamin's Arcades Project (via André Monglond) to develop his concept of 'signs from the future' as a materialist-theological orientation.

Emmanuel Todd positive

Žižek cites Todd's 'After the Empire' as one-sided but containing a moment of truth about the US as non-productive predator in global order.

Max Horkheimer positive

Žižek cites Horkheimer's 1930s dictum, those who won't criticize capitalism should keep silent about fascism, as the template for his own claim about neoliberalism and Hungary.

Gáspár Miklós Tamás positive

Former Hungarian dissident imprisoned under socialism, now losing his job under Orbán; Žižek quotes his argument that citizens cannot be expected to defend liberal democracy if it comes packaged with impoverishing austerity.

Karl Marx positive

Žižek affirms Marx's critique of political economy as the indispensable starting point, invokes commodity fetishism and the base/superstructure distinction, and cites the 'freedom, equality and Bentham' formula.

Sigmund Freud positive

Briefly invoked for the psychoanalytic structure of fantasy when discussing the 'World Without Us' utopia.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive

Invoked via the Marxist-Hegelian notion of totality and the cunning of reason; also implicit in determinate negation.

Ronald Reagan

Cited for his joke about the national debt being 'old and big enough to take care of himself', used to illustrate the audacious US strategy of using deficits as leverage.

What it argues

structural crisis of global capitalism and the 'Global Minotaur' mechanismlimits and apolitical tone of contemporary protest movementsthe unacknowledged demand for a new master in the Indignados and Occupyneoliberal technocracy as replacement for democratic politicsHungary's right-wing drift as symptom of the neoliberal orderreading present signs as 'signs from the future' while keeping the future openthe problem of determinate negation: what positive order replaces capitalism?

Dialectical moves 8

“Instead of fighting the growing deficit, Nixon decided to do the opposite—to use it as a leverage, to boost it.”

What appeared as a crisis (US deficit) was inverted into a global mechanism of power: the structural inversion that created the Global Minotaur.

“Those who do not want to talk critically about capitalism should also keep silent about fascism; today: those who do not want to talk critically about the neoliberal world order should also keep silent about Hungary.”

Reverses the direction of critique, liberal condemnation of Orbán is exposed as implicated in the very conditions it condemns.

“The institutional limit to our freedoms is the very form of our freedom; what matters is how this limit is structured.”

The Turkish minister's sophism is corrected by turning the grain of truth against itself: acknowledging that law limits freedom does not justify presenting any particular legal form as freedom as such.

“By destroying you as well as what makes you talk, we are trying to make you free.”

The Turkish interior minister's self-refuting argument: repression is freedom; Žižek quotes this to expose the mad presuppositions of the legal order of power.

“The third story about Greece—ordinary Greeks as humanitarian victims—is arguably the most disgusting one, more so than either the German or the Greek nationalist story.”

What appears as sympathy (charitable victimhood narrative) is inverted into the most ideologically pernicious position because it obliterates the Greeks' active political struggle.

“Fukuyama may have been basically right—but the lesson is that the best managers of the new capitalism are ex-communists.”

The apparent defeat of communism (Fukuyama's end of history) is inverted: communist parties survive as capitalism's most efficient political guarantors.

“The point is not to decide what we do not want but what we do want—but wait, we should turn this around: the problem today is to decide what we don't want.”

Žižek performs a self-correction: the real difficulty is not specifying a positive program but discerning precisely which features of the existing order we are willing to abandon.

“It is not only their struggle but the struggle of us all—Greece is not an exception, it is a testing ground for a new model with universal claim.”

What appears as a peripheral national crisis is reframed as the universal template for depoliticized technocratic governance.

Claims 18

asserts The media's dominant reaction to the 2011 protests was War Nam Nihadan—killing their radical emancipatory potential and growing flowers over the buried corpse.media neutralization of emancipatory movements

asserts The ongoing economic crisis is not primarily about greed, reckless spending, or bad bank regulation but marks the end of the post-1971 'Global Minotaur' cycle.structural nature of the 2008 crisis

asserts The US has been an empire in decline since Nixon's era, functioning as a non-productive predator that must absorb a billion dollars daily from the rest of the world.US imperial decline

asserts The neo-Spartan world order—US as hegemon, Europe/Asia as industry, Global South as Helots—is the best metaphor for global capitalism, better than the Roman Empire analogy.structure of global capitalism

rejects Liberal criticism of Hungary's Orbán regime is false insofar as it avoids the question of how neoliberal world order produced right-wing nationalist populism in the first place.liberal condemnation of Orbán

rejects The Western critique of Hungary for abolishing central bank independence smuggles in the equation 'democracy = neoliberal austerity,' which must be rejected.conflation of democracy with neoliberal economic policy

asserts The Spanish Indignados manifesto's demands are so generic that any honest fascist could fully endorse them, revealing the limit of purely moralistic protest.insufficiency of apolitical protest

asserts Contemporary protests express a spirit of revolt without revolution: authentic rage not yet capable of a minimal positive program of socio-political change.limits of contemporary protest

asserts Insofar as protests remain at hysterical provocation of the master without a positive program, they effectively function as a disavowed call for a new master.unconscious demand for new master in protest movements

asserts The trend of replacing elected politicians with technocratic banker-governments is not an exception but the political form emerging from the logic of protest plus neoliberalism.technocratic depoliticization as systemic tendency

asserts Ex-communist parties where they hold power have become the best political force to guarantee contemporary capitalism—a beautiful cunning of reason.communist parties as capitalism's best managers

asserts Both 20th-century state socialism and welfare-state social democracy are exhausted as models; the left must find genuinely new forms.exhaustion of 20th-century left models

rejects Capitalist competition is not part of human nature; psychological experiments across cultures show social recognition outperforms monetary incentives for creative work.naturalization of capitalist competition

reframes The real difficult question today is not what we want but what we don't want—knowing precisely which features of capitalism we are willing to sacrifice.strategic orientation of the left

asserts Present-day emancipatory signs should function as regulative ideas from the future, but we must keep the future open and resist collapsing it into the existing ideological language.proper orientation toward utopia and the future

reframes Lacan's claim that revolutionaries will get a new master contains a grain of truth about current protests, even if it cannot be generalized to every revolutionary upheaval.Lacan's cynical reading of revolution

asserts Greece and Hungary are not exceptions but symptoms of the global capitalist totality, testing grounds for imposing depoliticized technocratic governance.peripheral states as systemic symptoms

asserts Those who do not want to talk critically about the neoliberal world order should also keep silent about Hungary.complicity of neoliberalism in right-wing populism

Quotes 15

“The media were killing the radical emancipatory potential of the events, or obfuscating their threat to democracy, and they were growing flowers over their buried corpse.”
Slavoj Žižek · media neutralization of protest

“If you want magical thinking, just go to Brussels and listen to experts there.”
Slavoj Žižek · EU technocratic ideology

“Those who do not want to talk critically about the neoliberal world order should also keep silent on Hungary.”
Slavoj Žižek · neoliberalism produces right-wing populism

“By destroying you as well as what makes you talk, we are trying to make you free. It's a very deep, very sophisticated job.”
Slavoj Žižek · ideology of freedom as repression

“They express an authentic rage, but a rage which is not yet able to transform itself into a minimal positive program of socio-political and economic change. They express a spirit of revolt without revolution.”
Slavoj Žižek · limits of contemporary protest

“What you aspire to as revolutionaries is a new master. You will get one.”
Slavoj Žižek · Lacan on revolution and the new master

“Merely having an opened mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.”
Slavoj Žižek · Chesterton on the need for determinate conclusions

“One should avoid the temptation of the narcissism of the lost cause and get lost in admiring the sublime beauty of uprisings which are doomed to fail.”
Slavoj Žižek · critique of the left's poetry of failure

“It is not only their struggle but the struggle of us all. Greece is one of the main testing grounds to impose a new social and economic model with universal claim.”
Slavoj Žižek · Greece as universal symptom of neoliberal governance

“The point is not to decide what we do not want, but what we do want—but maybe we should turn this around: the problem today is to decide what we don't want.”
Slavoj Žižek · dialectical reversal of the left's strategic problem

“If we come with detailed plans today, the only language that we can use is the language of the enemy, of the existing ideology.”
Slavoj Žižek · danger of premature positive utopian programs

“All genuine emancipatory movements were doing this. If you just say no, you get into this negative self-terror, you destroy yourself. If you become too brutally positive, you end up not only as social democracy but even as Stalin.”
Slavoj Žižek · dialectic of negation and positive program in emancipatory politics

“The only thing that interests me is afterwards. I'm sick and tired of this wonderful carnival, one million people all shouting the same slogan together. Fuck it, what interests me is what comes the day after.”
Slavoj Žižek · critique of protest as carnival without transformation

“Capitalism comes with many institutions. To really learn what part of this we are ready as it were to sacrifice—what we don't want—it's much more difficult.”
Slavoj Žižek · the difficulty of determinate negation of capitalism

“The United States are an empire in decline. Its growing negative trade balance demonstrates that the United States is the non-productive predator.”
Slavoj Žižek · US imperial decline

Talks thinking the same things

nearest by shared concepts

15% Signs from the Future 5 shared talks 12% 2011 as „The Year of Dreaming Dangerously“ 4 shared talks 11% The Empowerment of the Right and the Dissolution of the Left 4 shared talks 11% Dangerous Ideas – In Conversation with Will Self 3 shared talks 10% To Begin from The Beginning 4 shared talks 10% How are we embedded in Ideology? 4 shared talks 10% The Limits of Hegel: Rabble, War, Sex and Marriage 4 shared talks 10% Universality: Kant, Hegel, Lacan, Marx 3 shared talks 10% What is Reconciliation? Hegel Against Schiller 4 shared talks 9% On Hegel with Russell Sbriglia 3 shared talks

Transcript 3 turns

unknown
Now,

unknown
okay, just to warn you,

Slavoj Žižek
it will be a slightly more boring than usual serious talk, really and very naively about what the title announces, where are we today? There is a wonderful expression in Persian, so I was told in a book, it's called, correct me if some of you know it if I pronounce it wrongly, War Nam Nihadan, which is supposed to mean to murder somebody, bury his body, then grow flowers over the body to conceal it. In we were witnessing and participating in a series of shattering events, from the Arab Spring to the Occupy Wall Street movement, from the United Kingdom suburban protests to Breivik's ideological madness in Oslo. was thus the year of dreaming dangerously in both directions. There were emancipatory dreams mobilizing protesters in New York, on Tahrir Square, in London, Athens, Madrid, and so on, and there were the obscure destructive dreams propelling Breivik and racist populists all around Europe from Netherlands to Hungary. The primary task of the hegemonic ideology was to neutralize the true dimension of these events. Was the predominant reaction of the media not precisely a War Nam Nihadan? The media were killing the radical emancipatory potential of the events, or obfuscating their threat to democracy, and they were growing flowers over their buried corpse. This is why it is so important to set the record straight, to locate these events into the totality of global capitalism, which means to show how they relate to the central antagonisms of today's capitalism. As Marxists, we share the premise that Marx's critique of political economy remains the starting point of understanding our socio-political predicament. Where then to begin? The good old Marxist-Hegelian notion of totality gains its full right here. It is crucial to grasp the ongoing economic crisis in its totality, not to be blinded by its partial aspects. The first step towards this totality is maybe to focus on those singular moments which stick out as symptoms of our predicament. For example, are you aware that something, for me at least obviously mysterious, is happening on in this endless saga about saving the Greek economy? Everyone knows that the rescue package for Greece will not work, that the Greeks will absolutely never, because they cannot, I'm not blaming them, I'm for them, return this debt. But nonetheless, new rescue packages are enforced on Greece again and again. Are we aware that today if you want to exemplify the so-called magical thinking and so on, you don't have to go to some primitive tribes? There they are usually much more intelligent. I mean, go to these tribes, let's say you go to a tribe where they claim we all originate from an eagle or a snake, and I did this. When I was in Singapore, I went to Malaysia and as part for some of some tourist program, we were presented to people who thought something like that and I asked them, do you really believe that you originate? and they look at me like, are you stupid or what? I mean, they don't. But we, no no, if you want magical thinking, just go to Brussels and listen to experts there. Another approach to today's antagonism would have been the stories we read about the ongoing crisis in the media. As an old Marxist, but at the same time a Marxist which is not a vulgar Marxist who simply believes we should approach reality the way it is independently of ideology, this doesn't work and Marx knew this very well. That's why he developed towards the end the notion of commodity fetishism. Did you notice how commodity fetishism in a way undermines this clear distinction between ideological infrastructure base, sorry, economic infrastructure base and ideological superstructure? Because it is as if with commodity fetishism Marx encountered something which in a way clearly is ideology, but it's a weird ideology which plays a central role in the functioning of economic reality itself. So it's definitely not ideology in the sense of some secondary reflection whatever, which is interestingly why interestingly enough Marx never called it ideology. So again, I think that stories that are being told about events are important, not for what they tell but for what they do not tell, for the inconsistency between these stories. Did you notice, this is a very superficial insight, I'm sure you did notice it, that there are two main stories about the Greek crisis today in our public media. First is the German-European story, this irresponsible, lazy, free-spending, tax-dodging Greeks who have to be brought under control and taught like spoiled children financial discipline, and then there is the Greek predominant story, not the true one, there are intelligent Greeks, national sovereignty threatened by neoliberal technocracy from Brussels up to these ridiculous exaggerations comparing today's Brussels pressure on Greece to German occupation during World War II and so on and so on. These are the main two stories. But did you notice how lately, once it became impossible to ignore the plight of the ordinary Greek people, a third story is emerging gradually. Ordinary Greeks are more and more presented in our media as humanitarian victims in need of help, as if some natural catastrophe or war has hit the country. And if the things will go on the way they did, I think the same racist charity that we are usually used to see it with regard to, I don't know, some poor African countries, no? Like, you know, this really disgusting strategy, like you know, you see a photo of a Somalian kid with twisted lips and then you read, "For the price of I don't know two pounds, you can make a difference, you can change this child's life," that maybe soon we will get Greek children on a with photos and so on and so on, no? Now, while all these three stories are false, this last one I claim is arguably the most disgusting one. It obliterates the fact that the Greeks are not passive victims, they fight, they are at war with the European economic establishment. And what they need is solidarity in their struggle, not compassion, not charity, because why? Not out of some sympathy for the poor Greeks, but for another simple reason. It is not only their struggle but the struggle of us all. This means the following. Greece is not an exception. It is one of the main testing grounds to impose a new social and economic model with universal claim, the depoliticized technocratic model where bankers and other experts are allowed simply to overrun democracy. So again, what is happening here? What process is going on? I think that now from this latest crisis we can retroactively detect signs of where we are moving now already for years. For example, the Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis drew attention to the strange role of, they are much stronger in United States they hear but than here, but I read it's interesting to know, you know that more than even Microsoft or Apple, Walmart is the single greatest company in the United States. To be vulgar, the reason they are not so well known is because their wealth is they are breeding like rabbits to be vulgar. I mean, the people who own it, so it's dispersed among or whatever members. But the meaning of Walmart is what? Literally it is the first mass chain which openly mobilizes or takes into account class struggle into consumerism. It presents us with a new form of consumerism targeting the so-called lower classes. Walmart packages a new ideology of cheapness into a brand which is meant to appeal to the financially stressed American working and lower-middle classes. In conjunction with its fierce proscription of trade unions, Walmart became a bulwark of keeping prices low and of extending to its long-suffering working-class customer a sense of satisfaction for having shared in the exploitation of the mostly foreign producers of the goods in their shopping basket. And incidentally, I'm too stupid to analyze this in detail, but I always found fascinating, and I must say that personally I cannot resist entering them, this, you know, even lower than Walmart, you know, these stores like "Everything Pence" and so on. The point is that again, I regularly visit them. And at the end you say, "Okay, why not, I spend some tremendous amounts of ten pounds" when, and of course it's the irony is that you would have thought poor people who go there have to look for every penny, buy the essentials, but I don't know any place where whatever you buy is so totally worthless and useless. You know, the charming thing is that it's the cheapest, but it's pure consumerism in the sense of buying something absolutely unnecessary and so on. But, now a little bit more seriously, the key feature is I think that the ongoing crisis is not about reckless spending, greed, ineffectual bank regulations and so on and so on. I think there is way too much moralism even in the standard liberal left reaction. Greed? Come on, greed was here, I don't know, at least from the moment when as we learned from well-educated British scientist from 19th century from I think it's BC when God created the world. I mean, some bishop deduced the precise time and date, it was in the morning on I don't know what day, no. So, I think we should stop these stories, greedy bankers and so on and so on. What is basically happening and I'm not an economist, so I will simply present you the best account that I found on this and this is not rhetorical offer. When I say I'm open to your critical remarks, it's not a pseudo-critical way to say I'm open to your praise, but I will really want to see where I'm wrong. The idea is that an economic cycle I think is coming to an end today, a cycle which began in the early 1970s, the time when what this same guy to whom I already referred, Yanis Varoufakis, in his interesting book recently published in London, *The Global Minotaur*, where what he calls, again, the global, how do you pronounce it in English, Minotaur or Minotaur? Minotaur, okay, I did it correctly exceptionally, was born. The monstrous engine running the world economy from the early 1980s till That is to say, the late 1960s and the early 1970s were not just the times of oil crisis, stagflation and so on. Richard Nixon's decision to abandon the gold standard for the US dollar was the sign of a much more radical shift in the basic functioning of the global capitalist system. By the end of the 1960s, the US economy was no longer able to continue the recycling of its surplus products to Europe and Asia. Its surpluses had turned into deficits. In the US government responded to this decline with an audacious strategic move. Instead of fighting, tackling the nation's growing deficits, it decided to do the opposite. I think this was again maybe the crucial decision, ironically I'm tempted to say almost a Lacanian act. Instead of reacting in a panic, "Oh my God, the deficit is growing, what to do?" they said, "Wait a minute, why not use it as a leverage? Why not even boost the deficit?" This was remembered, this was marked in a quite memorable phrase by Ronald Reagan, I remember the time I was there I saw it on TV once a journalist asked him what about controlling, disciplining the American national debt. Okay, these are moments when you almost, I wouldn't say like Reagan, but kind of find it at least minimally funny. You know what was his answer? "Our debt is old and big enough, he can take care of himself, you know, we don't have to worry about it." So, and then who would pay for this deficits, for the debt? Well, the rest of the world. How? By means of a permanent transfer of capital that rushed ceaselessly across both oceans, Atlantic and Pacific, to finance America's deficits. I remember already years ago, I forgot who it, it wasn't Greenspan but some big guy of American banking said at some international conference something very simple. He said, "Let's make it clear, United States need at least billion dollar per day from the rest of the world to function." This deficits then started to operate, now I quote again Varoufakis, "to operate like a giant vacuum cleaner, absorbing other people's surplus goods and capital. While that arrangement was the embodiment of the grossest imbalance imaginable at a planetary scale, nonetheless it did give rise to something resembling global balance, an international system of rapidly accelerating asymmetrical financial and trade flows capable of putting on a semblance of stability and steady growth. Powered by these deficits, the world's leading surplus economies, Germany, Japan, and later China, kept churning out the goods while United States absorbed them. Almost percent of the profits made globally by these countries were transferred back to the United States in the form of the capital flow to Wall Street. And what did Wall Street do with it? It turned these capital inflows into direct investments, shares, new financial instruments, and so on and so on." End of quote. Although Emmanuel Todd's, the French sociologist and economist, vision of today's global order he deployed it in his book *After the Empire*, although this vision is I think clearly one-sided, it is difficult to deny the moment of truth contained in it. That from I claim Nixon era, the beginning of 70s at least, United States are an empire in decline. Its growing negative trade balance demonstrates that the United States is the non-productive predator. As I already said, it has to suck up one billion dollars daily influx from other nations to buy for its consumption and is as such the universal Keynesian consumer that keeps the world economy running. So much for the anti-Keynesian economic ideology that predominated at least till today. This influx, which is effectively like the tribute paid to Rome in antiquity or the gifts sacrificed to Minotaur by ancient Greeks, this influx relies on a complex economic mechanism. The United States are trusted as the safe and stable center so that all others, from the oil-producing Arab countries to Western Europe and Japan, now even Chinese, invest their surplus profit in the United States. But since this trust into the United States is primarily ideological and military, not economic one, the problem for the United States is how to justify its imperial role. It needs a permanent state of war or at least emergency, and so it the United States had to invent the War on Terror, offering itself as the universal protector of all other normal, not rogue, states. The entire globe thus tends to function as a universal Sparta. I think Sparta is better metaphor than Roman Empire, which is usually used for our global predicament. Sparta with its three classes now emerging as the first, second, and third world. A, the first one, the US as the military-political-ideological power, then Europe and parts of Asia and Latin America as the industrial manufacturing region, Germany, Japan, China, and the undeveloped rest, today's Helots in Sparta, you know the those without any rights and so on, the living dead. In other words, global capitalism brought about a new general trend to oligarchy, masked as the celebration of the diversity of cultures. Equality and universalism are more and more disappearing as actual political principles. However, even before it fully established itself, this Neo-Spartan world system is breaking down. In contrast to the world doesn't need the United States, it is the United States which needs the world today, much more. You know, I read some ten, no sorry, twenty years ago a book, I forgot the name sorry, which was supposed to be brutally realistic. The idea was and it's interesting why, I'm so sorry we don't have time to go into this ideological mechanism, why these fantasies are so popular today, these "what if" fantasies. What if the part of our world disappears? Like did you read the book and a documentary movie was also made, sorry I forgot the name of the book, maybe you know it, it was pretty popular two years ago or when, which simply explores in a serious, relatively serious scientific way, the hypothesis of what would have happened to our Earth if everything remains the same just all humans disappear. And it's in a way a wonderful dream of our big cities slowly grown over with new vegetation and so on and so on. It's a very interesting book, why? Because on the one hand, it's clearly a utopia, pure fantasy. Because you know, as we know from Freud, key the key feature of fantasy, and I can refer here to Danny who edited a book introducing Lacanian concepts, and my gratitude to at least a couple of my hosts here, Peter Thomas, I envy him for historical materialism one of the few good ones, and Danny you know, I know Danny twenty-thirty years ago when he was a nobody you know. Out of politeness when you met him on the street, "Yeah, yeah, that guy, yeah." Now I was told he is almost on the top here. I was told if you want to see anything that resembles those pieces of paper with Queen's image on it, be kind to Danny. Sorry, so let's go on, sorry. So, again, in the book on Lacanian concepts that you edited, I contributed a chapter on fantasy where I made this point clear that fantasy, the ultimate form of fantasy is to look, to witness how the world is, as it were, without you. Which is why the two, for example, which is one of the favorite fantasies of small children when you are furious at your parents? The Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn fantasy: you imagine yourself dead and then you know that famous scene, I think it's from Tom Sawyer not Huck Finn, where people think that they drowned on a trip along a river and then they secretly witness their own funerals and so on. Or the opposite fantasy, the fantasy of origins, to be there where when your father was doing certain things to your mother to organize your existence. Okay, so what I want to say is that the beauty of this book is what? It's that it's a fantasy of all this flourishing universe without us, but then and for this reason I like the book, and it openly shows its cards, you know what is the model? The only little bit of the real on which all the extrapolations are based. So, the place of utopia already existing today, the Chernobyl area. You can really see there you know, not so much the the plant itself with that sarcophag, but Pripyat I think it's the name, you know the city, which is totally abandoned, things overgrown and so on and so on. So, okay, the book I've read is about India in this sense. It's a very brutal book. It claimed, imagine for some whatever reason India disappears. And it even draws a nice map. It's just like you know, from Himalayas up you can practically jump into the sea down you know. No India and Pakistan, no? And what are then the consequences? Well, the thesis of the book is brutal, there are none, nothing. Basically the world simply goes on. I think that more and more the same is becoming true of the United States. Okay, they have a couple of so-called creative people like Steve Jobs and so on, who is, you know it's nice, you know what is Steve Jobs' main ethnic origins, what they are? He is a Syrian. Did you know this? It's good to know in the constellation of this war on terror and so on, no? Okay, but so let me go on. So against the background of this gigantic shadow, I think again that this is the mega shift. Forget about Greek debt and so on, the mega imbalance was this one. Against the background of this gigantic imbalance, our European struggles, German leaders furious with Greece, reluctant to throw hundreds of billions down the Greek black hole and so on and so on, cannot but appear petty and ridiculous. But there is nonetheless a lesson to be learned from this ridicule. For example, close to my country, Hungary, the story of the, it's a standard joke you know, their right-wing populist prime minister is Viktor Orbán, so not urbanization, you speak about "Orbanization." The Orbanization of Hungary is well known. Due to its overwhelming majority in the Hungarian parliament, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's Fidesz party has the power to amend the constitution and is now imposing new rules which will allow it basically to be permanently re-elected. It is using this power to its full extent, passing a whole series of new laws. For example, did you know that in Hungary recently they passed a law which brands the former Communist Party and its successors, organizational successors and individuals, members of those organizations, as criminal organizations, thus making the Hungarian Socialist Party and its leaders collectively and individually responsible for all criminal activities of the communist parties which existed in the past in Hungary? It's quite an interesting democratic mechanism that once you take power you can directly criminalize the opponent. Another wonderful thing. The new media law that they passed in Hungary creates a control body, all of the members of this body are of course appointed by the ruling party. So all media outlets will be required to register with this body to operate lawfully. The panel will be able to impose fines of up to euros on media for what? For insulting a particular group, violating public morality, and even for imbalanced news coverage. I found this wonderful because I remember from my communist youth, the trick of communist legislation was to have this safety measure, you know, like it's not enough to say it's prohibited to spread lies, because then you get involved in legal troubles like what if the other guy demonstrates to you that it's not a lie? So it's good to add an ambiguous paragraph which basically guarantees you that you can do whatever you want, no? And in my country it was that it's prohibited, punishable to print in public media anti-communist lies and then they added, "or similar news which which may which may disturb the public opinion." You got it? And of course if you are critical, you automatically do disturb the public opinion and so on. So we can go on with this horror show of the things they passed, the laws they passed there, up to changing the very name of the state. You know that Hungary is no longer the Republic of Hungary? They found this too European-secular, it's simply Hungary, like the ethnic thing itself. Now, these laws were widely criticized in and outside Hungary as a threat to European freedoms. However, the liberal smug satisfaction is false, I claim here, for a very precise reason. Beyond the easy condemnation of Orbán's rule in Hungary, we should ask a more fundamental question. Why this drift of post-communist Eastern Europe towards rightist nationalist populism? How can something like Hungary emerge out of the Fukuyamaist happy global liberal order? Back in the 1930s, Max Horkheimer retorted to easy critics of fascism. He wrote, "Those who do not want to talk critically about capitalism should also keep silent about fascism." Today we should say, those who do not want to talk critically about the neoliberal world order should also keep silent on Hungary. You know what I mean, like we are implicated in it. I claim we absolutely have no right to adopt this enlightened, democratic, tolerant Western view and mocking the stupid Hungarians and so on. The question to ask is why, precisely as a reaction to Hungary joining Western Europe, what was once, I remember in my youth, even in socialist times, probably the most secular, secular, tolerant of all communist countries, this tolerance, spirit of freedom, has even some very obscene consequences. Because of great degree of sexual freedom there, you know that immediately in the early 1990s, Hungary emerged as a European center of hardcore pornography. Okay, but so why did this happen? Why? Let me mention another law which was also endorsed recently by the Hungarian parliament. A law, and this is the ideological manipulation, a law which is usually listed, mentioned, as if it belongs to the same series with the other anti-democratic law. According to this new law when it will be implemented, the Central Bank will disappear as a separate institution and give the prime minister the power to name Central Bank's vice presidents and so on. This law also increases the number of political appointees to the monetary council which sets the country's interest rates and so on and so on. Does the critique of this law not strike an odd tone in the series of democratic reproaches? In the same way Marx ironically referred to the capitalist motto as freedom, equality and Bentham, you remember? Do Western liberal critics not want to impose on Hungary when they attack the regime there freedom, democracy and independent banks? The economic context of this critique of Hungary for canceling the independence of the National Bank is clear of course. Independent banks is a shorthand for complying with the austerity measures imposed by European Union and IMF. The impression thus created is that democratic rights and neoliberal economic policies are the two sides of the same coin, and the conclusion is not far that those who oppose neoliberal economic policy are in a way also a threat to freedom and democracy. Now one should unambiguously reject this logic. Not only are the two dimensions, authentic democracy and neoliberal economy, independent of each other, in today's precise conditions, democratic politics expresses itself precisely in the popular opposition to neutral, apparently apolitical, technocratic economic measures. Even at the level of state politics, the control of bank transactions often provided economically, often proved economically successful in controlling the destructive effects of financial crisis. This of course in no way justifies the Hungarian government's economic policy. But the point was nicely formulated by the Hungarian dissident, dissident once under socialism and dissident now. He was imprisoned under socialism, now it was worse, he lost his job. Gáspár Miklós Tamás, who wrote, quote, "If the protection of democratic institutions necessarily goes hand-in-hand with a continual impoverishment of the Hungarian people as the result of the austerity measures imposed by the EU and IMF, we must not be amazed that Hungarian citizens show little enthusiasm for restoring liberal democracy." End of quote. In other words, you cannot have it both ways, a democratic revival and the neoliberal politics of austerity. Another so again, the first conclusion here is that you know, do not adopt this faithful parallel when we are dealing with symptomal states in Europe. States where the which appear to be on the edges, but are really I claim symptoms of totality. Where things don't function either ethnic-nationalist-racist excesses like in Hungary, or economic troubles like in Greece. Typical European attitude is again to throw all this together and to impose this ideological vision again, as if neutral technocratic rule is simply the obverse of universal human rights and so on and so on. Another even harsher ridicule was displayed in a unique incident in Turkey. Now this is, I love this because this is ideology at its purest. When I recently visited Turkey, they showed me a passage from a speech by their Minister of Interior, İdris Naim Şahin. He made a speech worthy of what Chesterton called philosophical policeman, policeman who looks at things philosophically. He claimed that the Turkish police was imprisoning thousands of, especially Kurdish, resistance members without evidence and without trial, to convince them that they were indeed free prior to their trial. In short, his sophistic conclusion is the following one. These rebels against Turkey claim that there is no freedom in Turkey and now they complain that they were imprisoned. But wait a minute, why do they complain? This means that before they were free, but they don't admit this, so we are just trying to confront them with the pragmatic, what in philosophy of language we call pragmatic contradiction, no? Here is, if you think I'm bullshitting in the, no he is, not me. Here is the full quote. Please listen and admire it. Literal quote. I didn't even leave any passages out. "Freedom, what freedom are you talking about? Then don't complain when you are imprisoned. If there is no freedom outside, then the inside is no different. Why are you complaining? If you do, it means that there is a freedom outside. You even have a freedom to say: I want to divide this country. Freedom and autonomy that we get is not enough. I want to rebel, or whatever. You can't deny this. The only thing you deny is to speak the existing freedom. You deny being free. You deny accepting your freedom. You don't have the freedom to speak the fact of the freedom you live in because your head, your heart, your thought is mortgaged. You are not free to tell this." It's a wonderful philosophical argument that those who criticize freedom, the lack of freedom, deprive themselves of the freedom to accept the freedom that they enjoy. Quote goes on: "You don't have the freedom to tell that the existing freedoms that you have exist. By destroying you as well as what makes you talk, we are trying to make you free. To make you free as well as to make free your structure, separatists and their extensions. This is what we, the Turkish police, do. It's a very deep, very sophisticated job." End of quote. So, the very ridiculous madness of this argumentation I think is indicative of the mad presuppositions of the legal order of power as such. Its first premise is a simple one: if you claim there is no freedom in our society, then don't protest when you are deprived of freedom, since you cannot be deprived of what you don't have. More interesting nonetheless is the second premise. Since the existing legal order is the order of freedom, those who rebel against it are effectively enslaved, unable to accept their freedom. They deprive themselves of the basic freedom to accept the social space of freedom. So when police arrests you and destroys you, it is basically making you free, freeing you from self-imposed enslavement. Arresting suspect rebels, torturing them, whatever, thus becomes a very deep, very sophisticated job with a metaphysical dignity. Now, although this line of reasoning may appear to be based on a rather primitive sophism, it nonetheless contains a grain of truth. There effectively is no freedom outside the social order which, by way of limiting freedom, provides the space of freedom. But I claim this grain of truth is the best argument against this line of thinking precisely because the institutional limit to our freedoms is the very form of our freedom. It matters how this limit is structured. What is the concrete form of this limit? The trick of those in power, exemplified by the Turkish philosophical policeman, is to present their form, the form of this limit, as the form of freedom as such, so that any struggle against them is the struggle against society as such. And it's easy to make fun at the Turks. But you remember the reaction of the establishment to the unrests in the UK suburbs and so on? Did you notice how the UK Cameron government came pretty close to this to this reasoning already? So there is, to conclude, there is a long road ahead. Soon we will have to address the truly difficult questions. Questions not about what we do not want, but about what we do want. What social organization can replace the existing capitalism? And other more unpleasant questions like what type of new leaders we need, what organs, including the organs of control and repression? The 20th century alternatives obviously did not work. While it is thrilling to enjoy the pleasures of the horizontal organization of protesting crowds with egalitarian solidarity and open-ended free debates and so on, we should also bear in mind what Gilbert Keith Chesterton wrote. Quote: "Merely having an opened mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid." End of quote. This holds also for politics in times of uncertainty. The open-ended debates will have to touch firm ground, not only in some new master signifier, but also in concrete answers to the old Leninist question, what is to be done? What do I mean by this? One should avoid the temptation of the narcissism of the lost cause and get lost in admiring the sublime beauty of uprisings which are doomed to fail. The poetry of failure finds its clearest expression in Brecht's note on one of his heroes of short thoughts, Herr Keuner, Mr. Keuner. A quote. "What are you working on? Mr. Keuner was asked. Mr. Keuner replied: I am having a hard time. I am preparing my next mistake." End of quote. However, I think that the left is way too much in love with this poetry of failure, you know, we fail, this like false reference to Beckett, we fail but we fail better and better and so on. What we should focus on are the results left behind our failures. In today's left, the problem of determinate negation returns with a vengeance. What new positive order should replace the old one the day after, when the sublime enthusiasm of the uprising is over? It is at this crucial point that we encounter what I see as the fatal weakness of the ongoing protests. They express an authentic rage, but a rage which is not yet able to transform itself into a minimal positive program of socio-political and economic change. They express a spirit of revolt without revolution. Let me give you an example. If we take a closer look at the well-known manifesto of the Spanish Indignados, the angry ones, we are in for some surprise. The first thing that strikes the eye is the pointedly apolitical tone of this manifesto. Here is a quote: "Some of us consider ourselves progressive, others conservative. Some of us are believers, some not. Some of us have clearly defined ideologies, others are apolitical. But we are all concerned and angry about the political, economic and social outlook which we see around us, corruption among politicians, businessmen, bankers leaving us helpless without a voice." End of quote. They voice, these protesters, their protest on behalf of, again a quote, "the inalienable truth that we should abide by in our society, the right to housing, employment, culture, health, education, political participation, free personal development and consumer rights for a healthy and happy life." End of quote. Rejecting violence, they call for an ethical revolution. Quote again: "Instead of placing money above human beings, we should put it back to our service. We are people not products. I am not a product of what I buy, why I buy and who I buy from." End of quote. Now, my extremely evil comment to this. I deeply sympathize with this, but just make a brutal mental experiment. I claim that every honest fascist would fully agree with all of these demands. First, placing money above human beings. Now I am a fascist reacting to it. Yes of course, placing money above human being, of course not. This is what Jewish bankers are doing. Money should be subordinated to people. Corruption among politicians, businessmen, bankers leaving us helpless. Yes, we need honest capitalists with a vision to serve their nation, not Jewish profiteers. We are people not products. Yes, we are people whose place is the living bond of one's nation, not the market, and so on and so on. Next you know, this is the limit of this pure moralistic protest. Then let's go on. Who will be the agent of this ethical revolution they demand? While the entire political class, right and left, is dismissed as corrupted, controlled by the lust for power, the manifesto nonetheless consists of a series of demands addressed at, and this is for me the mystery, addressed at whom? Not the people themselves. The protesters in Spain do not dare to make this gesture which of course would have been utopian today of saying, like in a pathetic way, you know, there is no one else to do it for us, or to quote Gandhi, "be yourself the change you want to see happen," like we will do it, no. They still address someone. I claim, who is this X? It's a dangerous game they are playing. Incidentally, during a public debate in Brussels when I developed this idea, a member of the Indignados rejected my critique, claiming that they know precisely what they want. Okay, I ask him, okay, fuck you, tell me what you want. Here was his answer: "We want simply an honest and clear political representation in elections where left will stand for real left and right for real right." So this is for me a kind of Confucian strategy. You know, Confucius, this is what Confucius called rectification of names. Restoring order means things should be really what their name suggests that they should be, like if authority is in decline, then father should be the real father, a pupil a real pupil. This is how in China they explain to me their policy now literally. They told me, we no longer talk about communism, we talk now about harmonious society. I ask them, okay, what do you mean by harmonious society? And they told me this: "It's a society where everyone is at his, her, their own place. Leader is a good leader, worker a good worker, a wife a good wife, pupil a good pupil." And I exploded. I said, "Wonderful, we don't have any this bullshitting multicultural disagreements, I know exactly what you are talking about, in Europe we call this corporate fascism, so we know where we are." No, but you know what I you know what I mean. When a system is in obviously in decay, even defenders of liberal democracy like Anne Applebaum, who made fun of Occupy Wall Street protesters, even she conceded that this protests react to a fact, which again strangely she admits it a fact, that contemporary global capitalism cannot be controlled through existing nation state existing democratic institutions. And so I think all these games of "let's return to some more authentic form of what we have" is not enough. So, let me quote Jacques Lacan. Reacting to the Paris protests of Lacan said, it's a famous phrase: "What you aspire to as revolutionaries is a new master. You will get one." It's a famous Lacan. Although this diagnostic or prognostic should be rejected as a universal statement about every revolutionary upheaval, I don't agree with there is an element of liberal cynicism here in Lacan. You know, like haha you want freedom, ha you will get the new master and so on. But it contains a grain of truth. It seems that Lacan's remark found its target in Indignados and many of other protesters today. Insofar as their protest remains at the level of a hysterical provocation of the master, without a positive program for the new order to replace the old one, it effectively functions as a disavowed of course call for a new master. This is the one, the absent addressee of, for example, the Spanish Indignados. It's a call for a new master. And effectively we will get it. Lacan was right. We got the first glimpse of this new master already in Greece and Italy. As if ironically answering the lack of expert programs of the protesters, the trend is now to replace politicians in the government with a neutral government of depoliticized technocrats, mostly bankers. And I like this poetry because remember, bankers were precisely those who brought us into this crisis, no? This trend is clearly moving towards a permanent emergency state and the suspension of political democracy. Do you remember that unique moment when, of course it was part of a complex double play of bluffing but nonetheless when, you remember the Papandreou government, Papandreou proposed referendum, democracy, and the game lasted for one week. Simply Brussels bureaucracy decided no democracy. The situation in Greece may look more promising than the Spanish one. But nonetheless, I think even in Greece the protest movement seemed to reach its peak in people's self-organization. Namely, my Greek friends are all the time telling me, but you don't see the unique magic of what is happening in Greece. Thousands of people, new form of direct democracy, they all gather and it's totally egalitarian democratic debate, everyone can speak. The only rule is you can speak only for five minutes, no longer. Then I cynically told them, okay, let's imagine that there is some kind of a global confusion and that the state collapses, you will have to take over. So what will you do then? You will call a great gathering and everyone of you will speak for five minutes or what, what to do? No, I think for a brief moment when a year ago I think the Greek state seemed almost to collapse, there were some dreams maybe we will take over. But now they even decided the protesters not to form the coalition party, sorry, not to not to go for a radical change and not to form their own party even, but simply to remain a civil society pressure on political existing political parties. Now, while this can appear a very honest thing to do, but isn't it sad, on the one hand as you hinted, on the one hand it's exploding of all this emancipatory movement and so on and so on. And let me share with you a totally sincere shock. Whenever I am in Greece or here at my other place, Birkbeck, debating with my haha friend Costas Douzinas who is from Greece, no? And I ask him, but what do you want? Like what's the program? I get from him, we are still personally friends, ferocious attacks in the style of "this is sabotaging what you are doing," like "don't pressure us now, now the movement is." Once he even went into the line of thinking of he told me, listen, "first there is revolt then is revolution. First we have to destroy the order then to create a new one. You are asking too quickly the question of like, you know like to put it in Stalinist terms, two stages in construction of socialism and I am sabotaging it by asking too early the question." No, I think I think precisely I am not asking it, because I claim that in spite of all these protests today's left did not yet find really, so did not yet really get rid of the 20th century. Of the main models. I'm not rejecting 20th century left in its totality. Even in worst Stalinism there was a work of culture done like, for example, I'm still fascinated in spite of all Stalinist manipulations. You know that when in Soviet Union '35 or '36, it was some anniversary of Pushkin's, I don't don't ask me birth of death, but you know they published the complete works of Pushkin, their greatest poet, in kind of incredible, like I think million copies and so on. So there was no, don't it's not something to laugh about because I claim it's a very nice irony of how without this widely spread classical Russian 19th century culture there would not have been the later dissidents. I think that inadvertently they provided Stalinist the cultural foundation for later the dissidents. Solzhenitsyn is clearly part of this line and so on and so on. But in spite of all of this, let's make it clear. Basically the 20th century state socialism nonetheless ended up as a catastrophe. Communists still do play a role, but I love this. Which role do they play? Here you have a nice example of what Hegel called the cunning of reason. Fukuyama may have been basically right. Fukuyama, end of history thesis. I say may have been basically right, you know why? Because he himself is not totally dishonest and admits now that with the new element things happening today, from economic crisis to biogenetics and so on, he is honest, he is no longer a Fukuyamaist. He openly says the dream is over. It doesn't work. He is now for almost a kind of a Keynesian, for a much stronger state regulation and so on and so on. But what I'm saying is that if we accept strategically, okay in some sense Fukuyama won, liberal democratic capitalism won. Yeah, but isn't the lesson of this crisis of that okay, they won, but the best managers of this new capitalism are ex-communists where they are in power. It's a beautiful irony. I even have here a parallel that was imposed on me between today's China and maybe England in the early modernity. Marx and some others already noted where England was relatively in capitalist terms lucky. That the English bourgeoisie was intelligent enough to see that for it to take over directly the political power would have meant that all their factional struggles would sabotage the smooth functioning of the state and it would not be in the interest of the capitalist class as a whole. So Marx said it was kind of intelligent move to claim, let's leave to aristocracy political power, in the long term it will be even better for our economic power. What if something like this goes on in today's China? That the new capitalists got it that maybe it's better for their economic power to leave to the communists the political power, you know? This is what the 20th century communist parties where they ended up. As the best political as the best political force to guarantee today's capitalism, no? That's a wonderful irony. But nonetheless it's over. Then also the standard welfare state it's over. With all my sympathies for the social democratic dream of the 50s and 60s. And why not, we should up to a point admire it. My God, it was a time where average people lived compared to all other epochs relatively sorry, yeah yeah yeah, I saw the castrating now. No, castration should be at beginning, now you put it at the end, okay yeah. What I'm saying is that you know, I never agreed with that simplistic critique of the new labour, I'm critical towards it, but "you betrayed the old British Labour party." No, they didn't betray it. It was exhausted. Let's admit it. One thing you have to admit about the new labour. I'm critical of them, but at least they don't cheat. They openly said, like Peter Mandelson, you remember: "In economy we are all Thatcherites. The point is to manipulate a little bit differently in blah blah blah all that support or whatever there is." Okay, so this is over. And I think, I wonder if you would agree that, here I think we have to play a very precise game today. On the one and with this poetic thought I will conclude, on the one hand you know it may appear a contradictory strategy, but I think it's really the only consistent one. On the one hand, yes, we should desperately look at all possible model traces of the future in the present. And I'm here quite open to utopias. For example, please don't laugh, I recently read the book by Daniel Pink, *Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us*. It appears a purely postmodern capitalist technocratic book, but it's wonderful what this book demonstrates. That when you have a collective, creative collective, working, research institute, even ordinary factory, when you get over a certain level of financial satisfaction, when basically your needs of survival are satisfied, financial motivation not only does not help any, like if people are relatively still modestly well paid and then when their existence is safe and so on, they they made psychological this is very interesting attempts. They did this. They separated two groups of people, it's so simple but there is a moment of truth for me in it. One group they simply tried to achieve higher results with more money, no? You get it, you will be paid triple blah blah blah. The other group the rule was no, you don't get anything more, it's just that you will be recognized, you will get more more space for work if you engage in your own creativity. Not only was the second group much more successful, that is to say that simple social recognition works much better than money, but even more. At a certain level of creative communities, like these proverbial I hate them you know all these young freaks joining in Microsoft or whatever, money was counter-productive. Let's say we are a group of relatively still well-paid workers working on a new product. If we are given free space to collaborate, we will do very well. If the boss comes, that's the beauty, and tells us, "On the top of it for each invention you will get more money," the result decline even. Because money involved a certain vulgar competitiveness which squashed creativity. Then the researchers did something wonderful. They said as good multiculturalists, "what if this goes only for the Protestant whatever West?" No, they repeated the experiment in Indonesia, in India, and so on. All the time the result was the same. I'm not saying this is the end of the world. What I'm nonetheless saying is that at least it demonstrates that we should reject that stupid idea, you know we are utopians, we don't see that it's really about money and competition. No, it's not true that capitalist competition is part of our nature. It's as simple as that. So, from here to there, we should just look for the signs. I call this what? You remember now I'm got your no sorry, you did it in a different way message. You know that Walter Benjamin in his Arcades Project has this famous quote from the French historian André Monglond. Quote: "The past has left images of itself in literary texts, images comparable to those which are imprinted by light on a photosensitive plate. The future alone possesses developers active enough to scan such surfaces perfectly." No, I'm not a religious mystic, but I think maybe all these signs, from this non-commercial creativity of groups up to Tahrir Square, this protest, those. Here I'm a kind of a materialist mystical theologist. We should look at them as signs from the future. They may be refracted, distorted, but it is as if you know, a good historical materialist to quote Benjamin, should be ready not just to study the past but to look at the signs from the future which are already here inscribed. So we should do this, but at the same time and that's the difficult thing to do, at the same time we should nonetheless avoid these signs from the future should remain, okay maybe I can use Kantian terminology, regulative. We should drop this simple pseudo-Marxist determinism as if we can simply deduce now how the future will look or whatever. And with this I want to conclude correcting myself. When I said before, you remember, the point is not to decide what we don't want but what we do want. Maybe we should turn this around. The problem today is not to decide what we do want. Probably most of us would agree, some kind of a genuinely democratic, prosperous whatever post-capitalist society. But the really catchy question is to decide what we don't want. It's not so easy to know what we don't want. It seems easy, we don't want this wild capitalism blah blah blah. Yeah, but it's not as simple as that. Capitalism comes with many institutions, this type of democracy, this type of private property, that. You know, to really learn what part of this we are ready as it were to sacrifice. What we don't want, it's much more difficult. So really to conclude, you see this dialectic of multiple levels of conclusion, no? To really conclude, I want to conclude with an old joke I'm repeating all the time now. This is great Marxist dialectics in Hollywood, Ernst Lubitsch, *Ninotchka*. It's an anti-communist film but still an interesting one, very respectful towards relatively towards communism but nonetheless, there is a wonderful joke there that you must have heard it where the guy enters a cafeteria and says, "A coffee but without cream please." And the waiter answers, "Sorry, I cannot give you that because we run out of cream, we only have milk, so can I give you coffee without milk?" You know, like do we want coffee communism without cream or without milk? That's that's the difficult thing. So, in other words, you know, while being open to these signs of the future, nonetheless we should drop this simple determinism. I think really that this apparently contradictory urgency is the most difficult to sustain because as I emphasized apropos of Wall Street and so on, of course I'm not saying I'm not repeating the stupid counter-argument of falsely sympathetic liberals like Bill Clinton, who Bill Clinton immediately reacted to Wall Street, you remember? Of course what he did of course it was its nature to do, he felt the pain of the protesters [unintelligible]. And then he said, "But we have to translate this into concrete demands, what do you want?" and so on. No, as I emphasized, precisely at this point we should avoid clinching. You know what is clinching in boxing? When you are beating the enemy, one defense is the enemy embraces you so that it's too close to you so that you cannot hit back. No, we should we should maybe keep our silence because the danger is that whatever utopian plans we produce today, the only language that we can use is the language of the enemy, of the existing ideology. So if we come with detailed plans today, of course we cannot. When I'm criticizing these protesters, I'm not doing in this technocratic way, "Where are your exact plans how to?" But nonetheless we should leave the space open, but at the same time looking for the signs of the future. And there is nothing contradictory mystical in this. All genuine emancipatory movements were doing this. If you just say no, you get into this negative self-terror, you destroy yourself. If you become too brutally positive, you end up not only as social democracy but even as Stalin, you you just basically at a deeper level repeat the existing order. The art is again to to to look for signs from the future but to keep the future open. It is needed today. Afterwards, believe me or not, okay symbolically I do this to signal that I'm really at the end. Afterwards, I hope we share, please don't misunderstand me because I'm so often attacked here, I hope we share the same dream a fear, sorry. My fear is this one. That all these protests will pass and then you know what will happen. Like I meet with you Peter and you Danny, ten years, twenty years from now in a some expensive version of Starbucks, no? And we talk about my God, do you remember what nice time we had demonstrating here there, no? And then we talk for a break and then your cell phone rings, oh I have already a business meeting in my bank and so on your whatever, but you can already play this role now as a boss you are on the no but you see what I mean. I hate this false leftist nostalgia where all that will remain of is this that we meet once a year and have a drink, "My God, wasn't it wonderful, hundreds of thousands of us on the street." No, this doesn't interest me. The only thing that interests me is afterwards. It's not this I'm sick and tired of this wonderful carnival, one million people all shouting the same slogan together. Fuck it, what interests me is what comes the day after. What of this is translated into the new order of being? If we don't succeed in at least starting to think in this way, then all these protests will become what the French like to say, you know French conservatives have this saying, we all have the heart on our left side but the wallet in our right pocket. So it's good to have an outburst every twenty years so that then we feel good. Like as you probably know all great right-wing politicians today in France say with pride, "You know that on '68 I was on the barricades, no?" I want to avoid this. Thank you very much for your patience and in my infinite goodness I allowed you now three minutes for debate. Thank you very much.