The Fate of the Commons: A Trotzkyite View
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2018-12-22 · 1:45:43 · 13,750 words
with Chris Simmons
capitalismcommunism-socialismideologypsychoanalysishegel-dialecticsecology-climatesexuality-genderliberalism-political-correctnessdemocracyrevolution-violencetechnology-ai-cyberspacegeopolitics-warfascism-populismhistorysubjectivitylanguage
Žižek delivers a public lecture on the contemporary relevance of Marx, arguing that global capitalism has vindicated Marx's analysis even as it has dissolved the classical proletariat. He examines ideology under conditions of cynical disbelief, the rise of authoritarian capitalism (especially in China), the inadequacy of left populism and social democracy alone, and the need for radical, but carefully calibrated, political interventions including control over digital infrastructure. The Q&A shifts into dense Lacanian theoretical exchange about the four discourses, hysteria versus perversion, the logic of sexuation, and the limits of Lacan's own late work.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 23
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
The moment Marx's analysis becomes fully valid (global capitalism realizing all his predictions) is simultaneously the moment its political-revolutionary dimension collapses, triumph coincides with defeat.
as “new corporate organic intellectuals”
Žižek's ironic label for tech billionaires (Gates, Musk) who adopt 'socialism' rhetoric and champion transgender rights while leaving capitalist structures untouched.
as “the plus in LGBT+”
Žižek proposes that '+' is not merely an empirical open list but can designate a specific identity, the direct embodiment of the open subject position, closest to subjectivity as such, with women privileged as its exemplar.
Hysteria, the question 'why am I what you say I am?', is redefined as the most elementary form of ideological critique and as constitutive of subjectivity itself.
as “perversion as the hidden obverse of power”
Against the 1968 fashion of privileging perversion as subversive, Žižek argues (following Lacan) that perverts are ultimately on the side of power; only hysterical questioning genuinely undermines authority.
as “cynical ideology”
The dominant ideological mode today in which subjects do not sincerely believe the ruling ideology yet reproduce it through their practice, disbelief is a positive condition for ideology's functioning.
Implicit in Žižek's account of commodity fetishism: the abstraction is not merely in our heads but operative in the actual social practice of exchange.
Žižek insists Marx's commodity fetishism is not naïve illusion but an illusion embodied in social practice: you can be cynically disbelieving yet still act as if you believe in the market's magic.
as “ideology that kills hope”
Žižek's redefinition of ideology's primary function: not to justify the status quo but to foreclose the possibility of change by agreeing that catastrophe is inevitable and nothing can be done.
as “the new opiums of the people”
Updating Marx's 'religion as opium', Žižek identifies literal pharmaceuticals (Xanax, antidepressants) and left populism as today's two new opiates that pacify political discontent.
Žižek's dismissive label for the left's adoption of right-wing populist form ('we can have our populism too'), arguing it cannot work because populism requires a personalized enemy that the systemic left cannot honestly construct.
Being a proletarian for Marx is an existential condition of being stripped of all objective content, which paradoxically enables emergence as a free subject, a link Žižek says is now fracturing.
Laclau's concept invoked to show the difficulty of uniting feminist, gay, immigrant, third-world, and ecological struggles into a single hegemonic bloc in contemporary conditions.
as “authoritarian capitalism”
The successful model combining wild capitalist dynamics with strong authoritarian political control, exemplified by China, which Žižek sees as a global trend.
as “everyday life ecology as ideology”
Recycling and personal green choices function as ideology by making individuals personally responsible for systemic problems while providing a commodified outlet (e.g., Starbucks charity cappuccino) that precludes systemic critique.
as “master's discourse”
Žižek controversially rehabilitates the master's discourse, arguing contemporary left politics needs a new figure of the enabling master rather than retreating from authority altogether.
as “enabling master”
A true master who does not prescribe what subjects want but authorizes them to act ('yes, you can do it'), then steps back to be superseded, distinguished from the authoritarian master.
Žižek identifies Derrida/deconstruction with the university discourse, endless deferral of analysis, never reaching a stopping point, contrasted with Lacan's finitude of analysis.
as “alienation (rehabilitated)”
Rather than opposing alienation, Žižek argues for more alienation, the experience of not knowing or understanding everyone around you, as the precondition for genuine tolerance and urban coexistence.
Raised by a questioner as Lacan's late solution to the impossibility of the sexual relation, Žižek acknowledges Lacan's late seminars as a tragic open failure rather than a secret final wisdom.
Lacan's logical formula for the feminine side of sexuation, debated in the Q&A: Žižek (with Chris Simmons) stresses it does NOT mean 'something remains outside' but 'there is no constitutive exception'.
as “communism as capitalism without its obstacle”
Žižek argues Marx fantasized communism as releasing capitalist dynamics from their capitalist fetters, but the obstacle (surplus enjoyment / constitutive lack) is internal, not external, remove it and you lose the dynamic itself.
as “surplus enjoyment (plus-de-jouir)”
Used in the closing exchange to argue that the constitutive obstacle (capitalist form) is not external to the dynamic it limits but internal to it, removing it destroys the thing itself.
Stories he reaches for 6
Niels Bohr had a horseshoe above his cottage door; a friend asked why, since he's a scientist who doesn't believe in superstition. Bohr replied: 'I was told it works even if you don't believe in it.' Žižek deploys this as the perfect image of cynical ideology, belief is externalized into practice.
“I'm a scientist, of course I'm not stupid, I don't believe in it... Because I was told that it works even if you don't believe in it.”
Starbucks charges a premium with the promise that part of the purchase goes to Guatemala/Somalia. The ideological trick: your ecological/humanitarian duty is commodified, you fulfill it not by changing behavior but by consuming more, at a slight surcharge.
“Your ecological duty itself is commodified. It's included into the price. That's the ultimate ideology.”
Scientists connect a rat's brain to a computer and can direct its movement remotely, the rat continues to think it is acting freely. Žižek extends this to humans: the terrifying result is that brain control would not feel like external domination but like ordinary free will, dissolving the inside/outside boundary.
“It's not that all of a sudden a foreign force takes over, no I will still think that I'm acting freely. This I think changes everything.”
A listener asks if it's true Jew Rabinovich won a new car in a lottery; Radio Yerevan answers: in principle yes, only it wasn't a new car but an old bicycle, and he didn't win it, it was stolen from him. Žižek applies this to Marx: in principle yes his theory is still valid, but with multiple qualifications that gut the original claim.
“In principle yes, it's true, only it wasn't a new car but an old bicycle and he didn't win it but it was stolen from him.”
Žižek subverts the reassuring proverb 'there is a light at the end of the tunnel' by adding: of course there is, it's another train coming towards us. Used to reject cheap optimism while not endorsing total pessimism.
“Of course there is a light at the end of the tunnel, it's another train moving towards us.”
When Merkel opened borders to Syrian refugees in 2015 and Žižek argued for regulated acceptance, Germans asked 'are you a democrat or not?', revealing that open-border solidarity may require overriding democratic majorities, posing the question of who votes on global migration.
“The only way to do this is to somehow violate the will of the majority... are you a democrat or not?”
Works invoked 5
Communist Manifesto book
Quoted for the passage on the bourgeoisie putting an end to all feudal patriarchal idyllic relations, used against critics who treat patriarchy as a current hegemonic form.
Blade Runner film
Described as 'not as bad as many people claim'; Žižek uses it as the first serious exploration of post-human capitalism, the hypothesis that humanity as we know it may end while capitalism survives.
Kill All Normies book
Angela Nagle's book on the alt-right; Žižek calls it a 'very profound insight' for showing the alt-right's appropriation of the left's old subversive, provocative attitude.
Enlightenment Now book
Steven Pinker's optimistic case for progress; Žižek acknowledges some data are correct but disputes the overall conclusion by drawing the pre-WWI parallel.
Curzio Malaparte's 1931 analysis of the Bolshevik revolution; Žižek calls it 'wonderful and correct' for revealing Trotsky's strategy of seizing technical infrastructure.
People invoked 36
Žižek notes he was accused of supporting her in a harassment controversy; he clarifies he didn't really support her but criticized how the accuser's love letters mixed with career cynicism were treated as irrelevant.
Chris Simmons positive
Interlocutor in the Q&A who engages in sophisticated Lacanian debate; Žižek concurs with his reading of non-all (pas-tout) as 'there is no exception' rather than 'something remains outside.'
Mentioned as an example of an academic named as a 'Lacanian power-holder' by a critic, though Cornell is openly Derridean and anti-Lacanian, used to illustrate academic bad faith.
Domenico Losurdo negative
Recently deceased Italian Marxist who tried to rehabilitate Stalin and Mao and claimed contemporary China is still socialist; Žižek disagrees with his conclusions.
Jacques Derrida negative
Identified with the university discourse, endless deferral, infinite analysis, work never done, contrasted unfavorably with Lacan's finitude of analysis.
Vladimir Lenin positive
Invoked twice: as a strategic mind who initially favored traditional crowd revolution before Trotsky's conversion, and for his mockery of German Social Democrats buying platform tickets before revolting.
Mentioned in the context of China's capitalist reforms launched under his leadership that produced China's economic triumph.
Jacques Lacan positive
Extensively invoked throughout: for the four discourses, the non-all of sexuation, perversion vs hysteria, surplus enjoyment, and the analyst discourse. Žižek also critically notes Lacan's late failure with knots and admits to being 'critical of Lacan in some sense.'
Cited as an example of direct brain-computer interface already working: Hawking's wheelchair moved by thought alone in his final years.
Steven Pinker negative
'Enlightenment Now' is cited: Žižek concedes Pinker's data on declining violence and obesity vs hunger are correct but argues the progressive picture masks the pre-WWI parallel, prosperity before catastrophe.
Žižek calls him 'a nightmare' but also a symptom of liberal democratic failure and, ambivalently, a demonstration that breaking implicit norms is politically effective; the left should learn his daring.
Álvaro García Linera positive
'Half my friend, I admire him', cited as an example of cautious progressive politics (Bolivia) that achieved genuine social progress without drastically disturbing capital.
Will Self negative
English writer who at a London debate over-agreed with Žižek's catastrophism and concluded nothing can be done, used as the exemplar of ideology-as-killing-hope.
Alain Badiou positive
Called 'my friend Alain Badiou'; cited for the formulation that ideology's function is to kill hope, and for the parallel between today and the pre-WWI era rather than the 1930s.
John Bolton negative
Cited as threatening the International Criminal Court, used to illustrate that European institutions' worth can paradoxically be inferred from the vehemence of their enemies.
Curzio Malaparte positive
Italian author (first fascist, then leftist) whose 1931 book on the technique of the revolutionary coup d'état is called 'wonderful and correct'; used for the analysis of Trotsky's seizure of technical infrastructure.
Elon Musk negative
Grouped with Gates as 'truly dangerous ones' who adopt socialism rhetoric without threatening capital.
Leon Trotsky positive
Described as the true genius of the October Revolution for devising the strategy of seizing technical infrastructure rather than crowd-storming; Žižek uses him as a model for thinking about digital networks today.
Friedrich Engels positive
Cited alongside Marx for the Communist Manifesto passage on capitalism abolishing patriarchal relations.
Bernie Sanders positive
Žižek supports Sanders and the Democratic Socialist movement but notes his positions are modest by mid-20th-century Scandinavian standards, illustrating the rightward shift of the political center.
Julian Assange positive
Mentioned, along with WikiLeaks, as an example of the kind of actor needed for the struggle over digital networks, despite his mistakes.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva positive
Mentioned as an example of a progressive leader who confronted the problem of how much to disturb capitalism's smooth functioning.
Peter Sloterdijk positive
Called 'my friend who is otherwise a right-winger but an intelligent one'; cited for his observation that our entire ethics is an ethics of war and sacrifice, which must be overcome in the global ecological era.
Ernesto Laclau negative
Identified as 'the theoretical father of today's political populism'; Žižek accepts Laclau's analysis of populism (it requires a personalized enemy and chain of equivalences) but argues left populism fails because global capitalism cannot be thus personalized.
Used as an example of Trump's willingness to break implicit political customs in judicial nominations.
Angela Nagle positive
Her book 'Kill All Normies' cited as a 'very profound insight' for showing how the alt-right appropriated the left's old subversive, provocative attitude.
Bill Gates negative
Cited as one of the 'truly dangerous' new corporate organic intellectuals who declare support for socialism and transgender rights while leaving capitalism untouched.
Gerald Cohen positive
Cited as 'English so-called analytic Marxist' for his four-feature enumeration of the classical proletariat, used to frame the problem of the working class's dissolution.
Cited for briefly opening German borders to Syrian refugees in 2015 when German public supported it, contrasted with current anti-immigrant mood.
Cited as someone who could have nominated someone like Kavanaugh earlier but was held back by implicit norms of political decorum, contrasted with Trump's norm-breaking.
Vladimir Putin negative
Cited as systematically working to undermine European Union, supporting Catalonian secession, Brexit, and anti-NATO movements in Macedonia.
Cited alongside Lula as an example of a progressive leader elected with enthusiasm who then faced the constraint of not disturbing capitalism.
Plato positive
Cited to illustrate that the greatest work of a thinker is often not their last: 'Parmenides' is Plato's greatest because it gets into a total mess, not the later attempts to restore order.
Karl Marx positive
Central figure of the lecture; Žižek argues Marx's analysis of capitalist dynamics is more valid than ever but must be dialectically qualified, Marx was right in ways he didn't expect, which is also his limitation.
Sigmund Freud positive
Cited for the claim that 'perverts do openly what hysterics only talk about', a position Žižek partly agrees with and partly inverts via Lacan.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Invoked repeatedly as the framework for dialectical analysis; also cited via Sloterdijk for his conceptualization of war as the ultimate ethical act and for the claim that the greatest Hegel is not the last Hegel.
What it argues
Marx's legacy and dialectical obsolescence-as-fulfillmentCynical ideology and commodity fetishism todayThe dissolution of the classical proletariat and new political subjectsAuthoritarian capitalism: China as successful but disturbing modelEcology as a challenge exceeding nation-state and individual responsibilityDigital networks as the new terrain of political struggleHysteria versus perversion as competing modes of subjectivity and resistance
Dialectical moves 9
“At the very moment of Marx's full actuality, a limitation has to appear. The moment of triumph is that of defeat.”
The dialectical paradox that the completion of Marx's historical analysis coincides with the collapse of its political-revolutionary dimension.
“Marx was not simply wrong. He was right, but he was wrong because he was right more literally than he himself expected to be.”
A Hegelian self-negation: being too right is itself a form of being wrong, because reality exceeded the theory's own predictions in ways that undercut its political conclusions.
“Today's celebration of minorities and marginals is the predominant majority position.”
What presents itself as counter-hegemonic or marginal (identity politics) has become the hegemonic mainstream, inverting the categories of dominant and marginal.
“The true utopia is the belief that things can go on as they are; radical change is the only realism.”
The standard accusation of 'utopianism' leveled at radicals should be reversed: maintaining the status quo is the real fantasy.
“Perversion is not subversive. Perversion is just the hidden obverse of every edifice of power. The only thing really undermining power is hysterical questioning.”
The apparent transgressive radicalism of perversion is revealed as complicit with power; the seemingly timid hysterical doubt is the truly subversive act.
“Ideology functions today not by making you believe but precisely by NOT making you believe; cynical disbelief is the condition of ideology working.”
The enlightened subject who thinks they see through ideology is already captured by it, the fetishistic disavowal ('I know very well, but…') is ideology's operating mode.
“Marx's communism is capitalism without its obstacle — but the obstacle is constitutive; remove it and you lose the thing itself.”
The communist fantasy of liberating capitalist productive forces from capitalist fetters misunderstands the obstacle as external rather than as constitutive of the dynamic.
“The only way to defeat Trump in the long term is to change the liberal-democratic consensus that produced him — he is the symptom of its failure, not its cause.”
Opposing Trump as an individual misses that he is the product of liberal democratic disintegration; the real struggle must be against the conditions that enabled him.
“Anti-authoritarian communes always end up generating a terrorizing master figure — the strongest authoritarianism emerges from the purest anti-authoritarianism.”
The attempt to abolish the master within small self-governing communities paradoxically produces an informal, more oppressive master who acts in the name of preventing authoritarianism.
Claims 19
asserts
Marx's analysis of capitalist dynamics has become fully valid only today with global capitalism, but this moment of triumph is simultaneously the moment of its political limitation.Marx's contemporary relevance
asserts
The four classic features of the Marxist proletariat no longer hold together in a single agent today, so the conditions for classical Marxist revolution have dissolved.Marxist theory of the working class
asserts
Today's gender and sexual identity politics — including transgender rights — is strictly part of global capitalist dynamics and is compatible with corporate interests, not opposed to them.identity politics and capitalism
asserts
Ideology today does not require sincere belief; cynical disbelief is itself a positive condition for ideology's functioning, as shown by Marx's theory of commodity fetishism.contemporary ideology
reframes
The primary function of ideology today is not to justify the status quo but to kill hope — to convince people that nothing can be done.function of ideology
rejects
Left populism cannot work because it adopts the form of right-wing populism (a personalized enemy) while the true enemy — global capitalism as system — cannot be personalized.left populism (Laclau/Mouffe model)
asserts
China's authoritarian capitalism is a genuine economic triumph that cannot be dismissed, and the world is unfortunately moving toward this model of combining capitalist dynamics with authoritarian political control.China and authoritarian capitalism
rejects
Ecological and other global crises cannot be solved at the level of individual consumer responsibility (recycling, organic food) or even nation-states — they require transnational bodies with strong executive power.individual-level ecology / nation-state solutions
asserts
Today's real political struggle will be fought over control of digital networks, just as the Bolshevik revolution was won by seizing technical infrastructure (railways, electricity, post) rather than storming parliaments.digital networks and political power
rejects
The true utopia today is the belief that global capitalism with a human face — modest social democracy plus greenwashing — will solve our fundamental problems; it will not.social democracy as sufficient solution
reframes
Hysteria is the most elementary and genuine form of critique of ideology; perversion is not subversive but is the hidden obverse of every edifice of power.hysteria versus perversion
asserts
The left needs to rediscover the strong state and transnational state-like organizations, because local self-management and community organizing are insufficient against global capital.the left's relationship to state power
reframes
Marx's idea of communism is a fantasy of capitalism without its constitutive obstacle; removing that obstacle would not liberate the dynamic but destroy it.Marx's concept of communism
reframes
Trump's significance is as a sign that change is possible and as a demonstration that breaking implicit conformist norms — while following explicit laws — can be politically effective; the left should learn this lesson.Trump and left political strategy
asserts
Sanders's positions, far from being radical, are modest by the standards of mid-20th-century Scandinavian social democracy, illustrating how far the political center has moved rightward.Bernie Sanders and the political center
asserts
To defeat Trump in the long term, the left must introduce radical changes to the liberal-democratic consensus, not merely oppose him electorally, because Trump filled the gap left by liberal democratic failure.anti-Trump strategy
rejects
Deconstruction (Derrida) exemplifies the university discourse — analysis is always deferred, work is never done — whereas Lacan's finitude of analysis is preferable.Derrida / deconstruction
asserts
Lacan's late seminars (knots, Sinthome) represent a tragic failure and conceded defeat, not a secret final wisdom; the greatest thinkers are usually not their last incarnations.Lacan's late work
asserts
Without an element of healthy alienation, local self-democratic communities always end up producing a violent master figure — anti-authoritarianism paradoxically generates authoritarianism.local self-organization and communes
Quotes 18
“At this very moment of full actuality, a limitation has to appear. The moment of triumph is that of defeat. Therein resides the properly dialectical paradox.”Slavoj Žižek · dialectical reversal of Marx's triumph
“Marx was not simply wrong. He was right, but he was wrong because he was right more literally than he himself expected to be.”Slavoj Žižek · Marx's excess of correctness as limitation
“Today's celebration of minorities and marginals is the predominant majority position.”Slavoj Žižek · hegemony of anti-hegemonic politics
“Because I was told that it works even if you don't believe in it. That's ideology today.”Slavoj Žižek · cynical ideology / Bohr horseshoe
“The function basic function of ideology is not to destroy opposition or actual resistance, police others do this, it's to kill hope.”Slavoj Žižek · ideology as hope-killer
“Your ecological duty itself is commodified. It's included into the price. That's the ultimate ideology.”Slavoj Žižek · commodification of ecological conscience
“Hysteria is the most elementary form of critique of ideology... a certain question: you are telling me I am this — but why am I what you are saying that I am?”Slavoj Žižek · hysteria as ideological critique
“Perversion is not subversive. Perversion is just the hidden obverse of every edifice of power. The only thing really undermining power is hysterical questioning.”Slavoj Žižek · perversion vs hysteria as modes of resistance
“The only true utopia today is the utopia that if we just go on like this somehow we will manage. No we will not manage. Radical changes will be necessary.”Slavoj Žižek · status quo as the real utopia
“Of course there is a light at the end of the tunnel, it's another train moving towards us.”Slavoj Žižek · rejection of cheap optimism
“Follow the law, but break, violate the implicit conformist rules of how you practice the law. And here we should absolutely learn from Trump.”Slavoj Žižek · radical strategy: exploit formal rules against implicit norms
“The name of this machine it's no longer railway this that, it's simply the digital network. This is why I think today we also need narrow fanatic highly specialized units.”Slavoj Žižek · digital infrastructure as new revolutionary terrain
“True tolerance for me is not the tolerance of a neighbor whom you love and know. It's the tolerance of a neighbor whom you don't understand maybe even despise.”Slavoj Žižek · alienation as basis of genuine tolerance
“Marxian notion of communism is nonetheless a dream of keeping capitalism without the capitalist object.”Slavoj Žižek · communism as capitalist fantasy
“The only way to analyst discourse is through hysterization. It's not through perversion, it's not through master.”Slavoj Žižek · Lacanian path to analyst discourse via hysteria
“When you try to sit between two chairs you usually fall down in the hole.”Slavoj Žižek · self-deprecating admission of talk's incoherence (Slovenian proverb)
“The greatest Hegel is not the last Hegel. The greatest Plato is not the last Plato.”Slavoj Žižek · thinkers' best work precedes their late synthesis
“A true master does not tell you what you want, a true master — yes you have the right to rebel. That's a true gesture of the master.”Slavoj Žižek · enabling master
Transcript 38 turns
Slavoj Žižek
Glad to be here again. Hope it will not be too boring because I will really talk about what the title says, what to do with Marx today, what are the chances of some emancipatory radical change. So let me begin. There is an old delicious Soviet joke about Radio Yerevan. A listener asks, is it true that the Jew Rabinovich, this is a standard figure in Soviet jokes, won a new car on lottery? The radio answers, in principle yes, it's true, only it wasn't a new car but an old bicycle and he didn't win it but it was stolen from him. Does exactly the same not hold for Marx's legacy today? Let's ask Radio Yerevan, is Marx's theory still actual today? We can guess the answer. In principle yes, he describes wonderfully the mad dance of capitalist dynamics which reached its peak only today, more than a century and a half after Marx. But the English so-called analytic Marxist Gerald Cohen enumerated four features of the classic Marxist notion of the working class. First, it constitutes the majority of society. Second, it produces the wealth of society. Three, it consists of the exploited members of society and four, its members are the needy people in society. When these four features are combined, they generate two further features. Five, the working class has nothing to lose, so they are ready to do revolution, and six, it can and will engage for this reason in a revolutionary transformation of society. The problem is that none of the first four features applies to today's working class, which is why features five and six also cannot be generated. Even if some of the features continue to apply to parts of today's society, they are no longer united in a single agent. The needy people in society are no longer the workers and so on and so on. The question of the continuing relevance of Marx's work in our era of global capitalism has to be answered in a properly dialectical way. Not only is Marx's critique of political economy, his outline of the capitalist dynamics, still fully actual, one should even make a step further and claim that it is only today with global capitalism that Marx's analysis became fully valid. However, a properly dialectical reversal intervenes here. At this very moment of full actuality, a limitation has to appear. The moment of triumph is that of defeat. Therein resides the properly dialectical paradox. Marx was not simply wrong. He was right, but he was wrong because he was right more literally than he himself expected to be. For example, Marx couldn't have imagined that the capitalist dynamics of dissolving all particular identities would affect also ethnic and sexual identities. Also sexual one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible. Also concerning sexual practices, all that is solid melts into air and all that is holy is profaned, so that capitalism tends to replace the standard normative heterosexuality with a proliferation of unstable shifting identities or orientations. Today's celebration of minorities and marginals is the predominant majority position. Even old rightists who complain about the terror of liberal political correctness present themselves as protectors of an endangered minority. Or take those critics of patriarchy who attack it as if it is still a predominant hegemonic position, ignoring what Marx and Engels wrote more than years ago in the first chapter of the Communist Manifesto. I quote, the bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal patriarchal idyllic relations, end of quote. What becomes of patriarchal family, family values, when a child can sue his parents for neglect and abuse, when family and parenthood itself are de jure reduced to a temporary and dissolvable contract between independent individuals? So this is my first claim to provoke you. I think that this ongoing struggle between alt-right conservatives and so on and transgender, gay rights, feminist radicals, it's an important struggle but is for me at least strictly part of today's global capitalist dynamics. I think I was not shocked when with that just before Trump was elected, when this was the big topic, transgender toilets, special toilets or not, that you look at the list of who is who in if not in the entire modern corporate America, but in what I call with all the irony the new corporate organic intellectuals, those who are even fashionably for socialism today. Bill Gates said we need socialism, Elon Musk said we need socialism, they are the truly dangerous ones I claim. But how without any problem they all stood up for transgender. So I have nothing against transgender, on the contrary, I think that to be authentically transgender is to be an extremely painful symptomatic but the most radical position imaginable. And to improvise a little bit in a very Marxist-Hegelian way, you know what's my problem with LGBT+? My reason of critiquing it but also of fanatically supporting it. It's the plus. Usually people take this plus as an empirical plus. The idea is this one: not just binary opposition male-female, there are other sexual identities and we cannot ever be sure that the list is complete. So let's be open and always add a plus like in the sense of empirical sense of our list is not complete, it's possible that there will be other identities and so on and so on. My theory, and this is just to rise your curiosity, I will not develop it here, my theory is that one can also be directly a plus as such. Plus is a specific identity which is maybe the closest to what subjectivity is. And I think women are privileged here, in this sense, not in the sense of old biological binary, I believe in feminine subjectivity as paradigmatic form of subjectivity. What do I mean by this? You know this, what women are: hysterical. Don't misunderstand me, this is for me and for all good Freudians the highest praise that you can give on them. What is hysteria? Hysteria is the most elementary form of critique of ideology. Hysteria is a certain question like you, by you I mean ideology, ideological hegemony, social authority, paternal authority, you are telling me I am this, whatever: woman, teacher, mother, or to men: worker, whatever. Hysteria is this basic doubt: but why am I what you are saying that I am? This fundamental disbelief in social identification. That's why, but this is another topic, we don't have time for it today, that's why I think that this was the dangerous moment, I know it I was there, of '68 so-called revolution. At that point it was fashionable to mock hysteria and to be for perversion. Like hysterics are not really subversive, you provoke a little bit a master but it's really a call for a better master, while perverts go to the end. As even Freud unfortunately says somewhere, perverts do openly what hysterics only talk about and dream about. I think the situation is the opposite one and Lacan has shown this clearly, that perversion is not subversive. Perversion is just the hidden obverse of every edifice of power. Perverts are ultimately on the side of power. The only thing really undermining power is hysterical questioning. And it's not just a questioning in the sense of objective doubt, you say this but is it really this? It's subjective doubt, is it what am I? Am I really what you are saying that I am? And I claim this doubt is constitutive of subjectivity. Okay. Back to my main line so that I don't get totally lost. How does ideology function in these conditions? In these conditions of fluidity and so on and you should first the first thing I advise you is that always be attentive to the form. Take alt-right. They are really for me very dangerous subversive radicals. They are not really what they claim to be. They are the wrong perverts as it were. They are something radically happening and did you read that book, I'm sorry if I will pronounce the name incorrectly, Angela Nagle, Kill All Normies. I think it's a very profound insight in that book, namely the insight that today things almost enact almost a reversal with regard to when I was young, '60s, '70s when, you know, we young leftists were provocative using dirty words, irony and so on to unsettle, undermine the dignity, social stability of authority. No, today it's the alt-right which assumed, which adopted, which almost so successfully re-appropriated this old leftist marginal subversive mocking of every authority attitude and the counterpoint is the counterpoint is of course political correctness. We don't have time to go into it. I want what's the general just let me focus on one thing. What's the mode of ideology at work here? My answer is very simple: cynical ideology of course. And I'm sorry if I will now repeat some old jokes but they are crucial. I think the way ideology functions today is that not only you don't have to seriously believe in ruling ideology, I suspect that it's even a positive condition for an ideology to function not to take it seriously, not to believe in it. Here Marx can help us. Where? Now I will repeat a point that I repeat again and again but it's crucial. Here Marx's theory of commodity fetishism fully works only today. What is Marx saying there? Not what you think. Marx is not saying in actual life we are doing one thing but we live in a fetishist illusion, we don't know what we are doing, we live in idealist nightmare whatever. No, Marx is saying almost the exact opposite. What he calls commodity fetishism is an illusion but an illusion which is embodied in the social practice of what we are doing. This is the beauty of Marx. Like you may be cynical, not taking it seriously, but in your social practice you act as if you believe. If I may repeat an old joke, you're not obliged to laugh because I think that even in this room I already used it two or three times, that old Niels Bohr story. You know when a friend reproached him why do you have that horseshoe above the entrance to your country cottage? In Europe this is a superstitious object. A horseshoe above the entrance to your house is meant to keep evil spirits out. Niels Bohr gave a perfect answer. He says, I'm a scientist, of course I'm not stupid, I don't believe in it. Then the friend repeated the question, but if you don't believe in it, why do you have it there? Bohr says, because I was told that it works even if you don't believe in it. That's ideology today. You know, so again ideology is in what things are doing. That's what Marx calls commodity fetishism. Average capitalist is cynical realist, he doesn't believe in any magic of commodities, but he acts as if he believes in commodity exchange and so on and so on. So again cynical disbelief is the way things work. Second point, that's a now I'm trying to give you some arguments about why do I think that ideology is if anything more alive than ever today. Second thing, the function of ideology is not to justify the existing state of things, to paint an ideal image like, oh nonetheless we live in a basically good just society. It's as my friend Alain Badiou put it, the function basic function of ideology is not to destroy opposition or actual resistance, police others do this, it's to kill hope. This is why you know where I encountered ideology at its purest? And I was too confused to answer it properly. I had about a year ago, year and a half ago, in London a debate with the English writer Will Self who when I painted the dark picture you know, ecological exploitation, ecological catastrophe, the destruction of natural resources in Africa and so on and so on, he over-agreed with me. He said yes of course in years we are all doomed, there will be the end of civilization, of course no problem, no problem. Just he said we can do anything, all attempts to change things will just make things worse. I think this is maybe the most efficient ideology today. They don't try to convince you in, I know it's not so bad, global warming is exaggerated and so on. They agree with everything, just they go to the end. And incidentally, if I understood correctly the latest news from your beloved president, he is already now slowly adopting this line. I think that one of his latest tweets about global warming, it's no longer it's not happening, but it's already happened, it's too late to do anything or whatever you know. This is ideology, to kill hope. Second thing, again we should re-actualize Marx's old formula of religion as the opium of the people. But with a specific twist, we have to move further from Marx here. I think that apart from some ridiculous fundamentalisms, Muslim, Christian or whichever, which obviously function as the opium of the people, in the sense that they enable us to experience today's global capitalism as meaningful through this illusory religious politics. But I think that as Marxists we should realize that today we have two other new opiums of the people. You can guess which are they: opium and the people. Exactly. First, opium. Are you aware to what extent, if you read statistics, our daily lives, especially of us here, degenerate middle class academic intellectuals whatever, most of us, the majority is already taking Xanax or some kind of drugs? So I mean here opium in all the scope of the word, from a calmative you take here and there to depressants, anti-depressants to real hard drugs. And it's a wonderful contradictory functioning of these drugs like if you are overexcited, first you take drugs to calm you down and then you take drugs to re-excite you again so that you are not depressive. But the sad thing is again the extent to which really for our normal, normal, regular stable relatively social reproduction we already have to rely on biochemistry. It's part of our daily life. And the second opium of the people again is opium itself in the sense even some left unfortunately is playing this game. I don't know how you look at this but in Europe now the formula of left populism is regaining popularity. The idea is I call it in a very vicious way a wrong perverted MeToo. Like the right wingers have populism and as if the left is saying MeToo, why not we also have our own populism? I think that unfortunately this does not work. Why? And here okay first for theoretical reasons. I know this is not popular to say but populism works with clearly designated enemies. You know populism means as Ernesto Laclau, the theoretical father of today's political populism, knew very well, populism is not just popular mobilization, it's a mobilization of people against an enemy of the people. And this enemy has to be constructed in a pseudo-concrete personalized way: bankers, immigrants, whoever you want. They can also be combined. Modern populism is doing miracles today. For example in Europe, so I'm not involved in cheap America bashing, we Europeans in spite of your Trump are worse than you I think. In Europe you have now a new right-wing racist theory which is incredible, which goes so far as to claim that the struggle between Palestinians and Israelis is a false struggle, just made to distract us, to obfuscate the fact that they are working together to destroy Christian Europe. That's why they say that immigrants penetrating Europe are not Jews and they are right you know, I never trusted this simple leftist formula Nazis had Jews we have now Muslim immigrants. No there is one big difference. Jews were invisible, that was for the Nazis their horror. Invisible in the sense of you never know where they are, they look like us. While the problem with immigrants is on the contrary that they are all too visible everywhere. The complaint is all the time among European racists, you cannot even walk on the street to see a covered woman and whatever you want. But this is the latest fashion now to claim that how is this happening? This cannot be spontaneous. Muslim immigrants entering Europe is part of a plot. Who is behind it? Jews, Soros and so on. They are in reality working together. I think that the tragedy today for authentic, not cheap populist, radical leftist politics and I'm not blaming here Sanders and his followers, he is not in any meaningful way a real populist for me, is that I will try to improvise but to be as precise as possible, it's that we can play a political game against enemies and so on and so on. But the true enemy, the ultimate thing that we fight, not that I blame it as a work of the devil, is nonetheless the global capitalist system as such. And the problem is that precisely you cannot personalize it into an enemy in this way. Look at your situation. Of course the enemy is Trump. But a true leftist should never forget that Trump just filled in the gap of the failure, disintegration of the liberal democratic hegemony. So if you want really in the long term to defeat Trump, we have to introduce at least some radical changes into the predominant left-liberal consensus. That's what Trump got it. A further theoretical point here, I hope I'll be clear enough in formulating it, is that the further problem, no the basic problem is that you know Marx in his idea of proletarian experience. Being a proletarian for Marx is not just an objective determination, you are the lowest exploited and so on. No, to be a proletarian for Marx means a certain almost why not existential experience of void of subjectivity, everything is taken for you, but at the same time this very being deprived of all objective content allows you to emerge as a free subject. So I don't have time to go onto it now but this is another aspect of Marx that I appreciate more than ever today. Marx would have been and I think, you may protest, Marx would have been abhorred by the idea that in fighting global imperialism we should return to some basic primitive local experiences like some of my Brazilian friends are telling me literally, I'm not kidding, you know up the Amazon there is a tribe where they have some wonderful rituals of tribal meetings which can be used for our postmodern democracy and so on and so on. No, the only way Marx always insisted on this that the capitalist destruction of all traditional stable forms is absolutely the condition of freedom, we have to pass through it. The problem is this one. Marx still counted that this that majority potentially at least of the people who go through this proletarian experience, the more I work the more I'm poor, the more I'm deprived what we call usually alienation or whatever, that this is a point at which the highest theory, in this case for Marx his own Marxism, the vision of proletarian revolution, finds an echo or can be rooted in the most concrete existential experience. Marx counted on this link as it were between his historical materialist theory which talks about proletarianization, proletarian revolution, and concrete experience of impoverished people. I claim that this exactly is what is getting more and more complex today. Unfortunately, and this I consider maybe the greatest danger, the problems we are dealing with today, for example take ecology, can only in a limited way be transformed or be grounded in our immediate life experience. Okay, you will say nonetheless people feel drought. Yes, but not as part of a global capitalism and so on and so on. It gets dispersed. It's typical that it took even long time ordinary people to take ecological topic as a serious problem. I'm old enough I remember in the in the 1970s, '80s when we became aware of ecological problems, for example I know because I live not in Germany but close to it, the majority of Western European especially German trade unions were ferociously opposed to ecology. They even claimed that ecology, this idea of we have to limit our exploitation of nature, that it's a plot of the ruling classes to limit social progress. So you see what I mean? I mean that problems we are facing, biogenetic, financial I mean madness of financial speculations, ecology and so on, also flow of immigrants if this is a problem for you. The point is that it's more and more difficult to ground radical progressive politics in all these levels in concrete life experience. If you ask me, the first result, even if now Trump recognizes, which I doubt but nonetheless, the seriousness of ecological situation, I claim that the first reaction will be America First, or China First, or Turkey First, or Russia First, or whatever. It will simply be: okay, it's happening out there, there is a drought in Africa, who cares? Let's isolate ourselves and so on. It will be isolation. It will be the same the same with with the flows of immigrants and so on. The idea would be: the world outside of our borders is a mess, let's isolate ourselves. In Europe I can see this. A couple of years ago Europe was much more open towards the flow of immigrants. At some point when Angela Merkel did open for a short period of time the borders allowing one million Middle East immigrants to enter Germany, people of the population supported it. Today no longer. So I always in a brutal cynical way I ask my leftist friends who are telling me we should open the borders to immigrants, I told them: okay so are you for abolishing democracy or what? Because it's this was when I was included in debates in Germany and I basically of course advocated just in a more regulated way the arrival of immigrants with the basic argument not humanitarian one but a more radical one that my God we are responsible for it. The flow of Middle East immigrants is basically the result of American intervention in Iraq, of the intervention international intervention in Syria, of how international community screwed it up in Libya and so on and so on. So the only way to do this is to somehow violate the will of the majority. And people in Germany told me, are you a democrat or not? Should we not ask the German people, do they want immigrants or not? Then when I said okay but maybe why should only Germans vote and so on and so on, they told me then what kind of a vote would you organize? Who should vote them? Should the immigrants also vote? Should also I mean what I'm just saying is that there is no longer this let's call it long-term transparency that people can be manipulated but nonetheless in the long term what will prevail is a kind of a global solidarity to use Ernesto Laclau's terms that we can successfully build a chain of equivalences: women's rights, gay rights, religious rights, immigrants, third world poverty, all these struggles should be combined into one big struggle. Well it's easy to say it's more and more difficult I claim to do it. Let me just not to go into details here. I just want to focus on one problem. This is why and I see I wonder to provoke you if you will agree with it or not, this is why the big what is beneath all this is for me nonetheless, not that I demonize it, the problem of capitalism. What is our typical story? You get a progressive leader like Lula in Brazil, like Mandela in South Africa, elected, people are enthusiastic, everything works. Then after a couple of years if not earlier you confront the real problem: how much do you dare to disturb the smooth functioning of capitalism? Capitalism doesn't care about gay rights, transgender, you can have toilets in a row it doesn't they will even say fine nice investment nice new investments and so on. No the problem is how much do you dare to do this and here I don't blame only liberal left, I blame the left itself. We should here go to the end. I know there are no direct answers now. I know it would be unproductive and crazy to demand now precisely what kind of a new society do we want. But nonetheless what makes me sad is one fact and before I conclude I would like to dwell a little bit on this fact which is very sad for me. That when people claim communism failed. Ah there is one example of communist power which was economically a mega undoubted triumph: it's of course China. Are we because okay you will say capitalism, yes but it's capitalism under a tight control of the Communist Party, political control. And here I disagree with my liberal friends who claim, oh what would have happened if the Communist Party of China would have decided at that point of Deng Xiaoping reforms to make just a step further and allow also political democracy. I'm here terribly sad and resigned, I claim no, in all probability it would have been worse. We would not have this type of economic triumph that we have in China. And at least till the time being this triumph don't underestimate it, this triumph is real is real. Are you aware what is happening? Never in history of humanity was there such a tremendous explosion of new wealth created in just years. And the sad thing is that it's precisely and now the story is repeated already at least in Vietnam I was told. Are you aware that and that's the saddest thing that this economic triumph is the result of what? We leftists like to no we hate two things of modernity. On the one hand this wild exploitative capitalism its brutal dynamics and so on. On the other hand strong authoritarian power. Isn't it the sad that the most successful model today precisely combines these two features? And it works perfectly. And it's not just China. I see the world unfortunately moving in this direction. I think not only in China but all around we have this move towards more authoritarian capitalism. And what I want to say is that it's interesting that some Marxist like the one who recently died unfortunately the Italian Marxist Domenico Losurdo, along these lines they even tried to rehabilitate Stalin and Mao and China today. They claim that what is happening now in China, China is still socialism because Communist Party is in power, they allowed a degree of capitalism but Communist Party controls it so he claims I don't agree with him of course on behalf of the people so that capitalism is also productive for the people. And he claims that the Cold War going is going on, it's today between China and United States and for the first time in history the socialist camp, that is to say China, has chances of winning. Okay I will not go into details here the paradoxes that I see here. I'm just saying that that all this should give us all this should really give us to think. In the sense of what are the options today? What can we count on? No wonder that and this makes me really sad. No wonder that many of my leftist radical leftist friends, they don't tell this publicly but privately all the time I'm hearing this rumor that the only thing that can save us is a big catastrophe. And with some of them of course I will not name them not to embarrass them. Some of them even think maybe we should risk and hire some terrorist to organize a mega catastrophe like a nuclear plant exploding whatever, millions dead. This will then awaken people. Unfortunately I think that such an such an approach is in itself a catastrophe. So is the situation lost? What can we do? It's a serious problem because the obvious solution would have been the only thing that works is modest social democracy. Look at Latin America. He is half my friend I admire him, Alvaro Garcia Linera, the vice president of Bolivia who what they are really doing is a much more cautious progressive politics not disturbing the capital too much but nonetheless using it, collaborating, social progress. They they succeeded before there was practically an illegal coup against him and his successor. Lula in Brazil did it and so on and so on. Or with you with here in the States with Sanders and so on. Well I wish all the best to him, I totally support not only him but the entire Democratic Socialist movement. I'm just saying that two things. First are you aware how modest are really his positions? This is not a criticism of Bernie Sanders, this is just an indication of how our entire political map its center point moved to the right. If you look at what Bernie Sanders wants to do and compare it to a moderate European social democracy half a century ago, especially Scandinavian ones they were much more radical. So again we live in times where a relatively modest social democracy is already decried as capitalist even communist madness and so on and so on. So I am all for it. Let's try. But it's our duty nonetheless to claim that this will not solve the entire problem how should I put it? At a certain point we will have to change things more and more and more. Why? As I already mentioned, the problems we have today, for example ecology, I don't think they can be solved at this level of nation state or even local communities recycling their stuff and so on and so on. No this is all part of ideological strategy. If you want to see ideology at its purest today, I claim it's this everyday life ecology. Did you recycle your cans? Did you put aside old newspaper? Why? Instead of asking systematic questions, it is addressing you as personally responsible but what did you you know this is typically in Europe, for example you demand radical changes and they tell you, but what about you? Do you know you have all those metals in your iPhone? Are you aware that you contributed to exploiting Africans and so on? So this is how today's ideology works. It makes you personally responsible, like what did you do for it? At the same time it's offering you an easy way out. Recycle, do this, buy organic fruits whatever and you contribute to it. That's for me ideology at its perfect. Incidentally you must know already some of you at least my old jokes, that's why when people ask me which is the main ideological apparatus today, I think although now it's no longer truth I like to answer Starbucks. Because it's really ideological genius behind it. You know now it's no longer so much but you remember years ago when you entered a Starbucks you had this buy our cappuccino goes for some stupid Guatemala children whatever and so on. Or they buy they were selling some stupid water where again goes for some resources in Somalia. Why do I make fun of it? Not because I make fun of Guatemala and Somalia. But when already the mathematics is so ridiculous they charge you half a dollar more for those which go there. But you know what's the operation? You worry about ecology and they make it possible for you not that you can fight for ecology welfare of third world countries not by changing your life but by consuming even more because the message is buy buy for example buy our cappuccino and you are at the same time helping also third world countries so that and that's a true genius that your ecological duty itself is commodified. It's included into the price. That's the ultimate ideology. But what I want to say is so should then the answer be simply and that's the big dilemma, the only serious dilemma it's not even specifically a Marxist dilemma today. Should we be satisfied by this modest social democracy? The system more or less works, let's just take care of okay let's call it global capitalism with a human face in the same way once we fought for socialism with a human face you know. Helping the third world countries and ecology, feminism all that you include, is this enough? That's why I remain some kind of a more radical communist. Not because I want a dark plot of killing. No, what I'm simply saying is that we cannot cope with our problems in this way. Take again ecology. As I already mentioned I think a larger transnational actions, bodies that can implement this are necessary. It's clear that we can confront ecological challenges only through large international cooperation. It's the same with the other thing with which I am obsessed almost although it appears marginal today, new forms of control, digital controls and brain control. I think that it's no longer science fiction. I have I'm a dark guy you know don't underestimate it. I have connections with some dark laboratories through strange personal links who work for the army and so on even in China I have friends who have and what I learn is terrifying. That the big obsession of the army laboratories today is what you just learn a little bit around, it's direct wiring of our brain. Like they are already it's still very primitive but the path is clear. In an elementary way it already works that my brain can be somehow it's still clumsy but it works connected with a digital network and then on the one hand it's beautiful, I become almost like God, I think about something it happens. I learn from a friend in Cambridge that in the last years of his life Stephen Hawking was already functioning like this, he no longer even needed his finger, he thought and his wheelchair moved forward and so on. Of course we see what's the problem. The problem is that what goes out comes back in. That is to say that computer can also read our mind and so on and it's already progressing tremendously with all these nightmarish things that for example they can already control neurons which gives orders to move to our hands or feet and for example I maybe you even hear this story I repeat it all the time, rat can be connected her brain to a computer, you press a button and rat changes into a remote control car you can direct it. And then as my friends told me ah they are doing going a step further, they are already discreetly doing such experiments on humans asking the key question, how will you as a human experience this being controlled? And the answer is very sad. Let's say I am your rat, one of you has a box press the button I walk freely around all of a sudden you control my movements. The result is very sad and dangerous. It's not that all of a sudden a foreign force takes over, no I will still think that I'm acting freely. This I think changes everything because our basic human identity and experience of freedom is that of the distinction between inside and outside. I am here in my mind, for example a vulgar example but very pertinent, I can think about you the most politically incorrect dirty sexual things and so on but I'm in here. There is a gap and this gap is the gap of normal communication of freedom. If this gap disappears who knows what will happen? I'm not necessarily a cultural pessimist here. I'm just saying that I take pretty seriously this term post-humanity. Something new is emerging. And what I'm afraid and in this I see an important lesson of a film which was not as bad as many people claim, Blade Runner It's a first film about this hypothesis of how we can have post-human capitalism. Maybe humanity the way we know it will come to an end but capitalism can survive. So again by this problem: ecology, brain control, refugees and so on. More radical changes will be needed. In what direction? I now cannot give you a revolutionary recipe or whatever. But to conclude so that I if you allow me another five ten minutes so that I return or at least not return I never was there to the title of my talk. You know I read a fascinating book, I don't think it's in print now but you can download it from I don't even know YouTube or whatever. Curzio Malaparte, an Italian author, first a fascist then he moved to the left later in his life, in '31 he wrote a book about Technique of Revolutionary Coup d'Etat, something like that. A wonderful and I think correct analysis of Bolshevik revolution. He went there and it was just before full onslaught of Stalinism so he was able to talk with all the people and so on and so on. And he came to this result that the true genius of the revolution was even more Trotsky than Lenin. Why? Now this may sound eccentric because it's not the Trotsky you maybe heard about. Lenin was in between when he was Lenin was a strategic genius he saw a brief opportunity we can grab power now of the revolution. But basically till Trotsky convinced him, converted him, Lenin remained a traditional revolutionary. His idea was gather thousands of workers and soldiers attack parliament, imperial castle, whatever big centers of power. Trotsky had an absolutely ingenious idea and he did it. He says but wait a minute, look at a modern state how it functions. Forget about all that bullshits, the crowd confronting police and blah blah. A modern state functions through just some eight, nine, ten knots centers of technical centers of power: railways, post office, phone, electricity, water supply and so on. Before you play all those revolutionary games of storming parliament or whatever, in a discreet quick operation you should take control of this and you don't need tens of thousands of people, we even know exact numbers. Trotsky said I need less than one thousand people dispersed organized in groups of twenty with soldiers, I mean people ready to fight, and especially good technicians. And it's incredible what was this is the true unknown story of October Revolution what was happening weeks before the revolution when they were getting ready. The government, Kerensky, all them, none of them expected this and this for example every morning in front of the central post office groups of Bolsheviks came and run up and down the stairs and so on and people simply didn't know see it they thought are they crazy or whatever. The same for electricity and so on and so on. So in the night before the October Revolution, Trotsky did it, it was over in one night. All these knots of power were under his control and the game was over. Then all that you know storming Winter Palace blah blah that was that was a comedy. I mean Kerensky and the army they knew revolution is coming, it was an incredible event October Revolution because they knew and they were still getting ready for the traditional confrontation: gather the army here, people here to protect the parliament. Trotsky just ignored that said who cares about that, control this and everything else will be thrown into disarray. Why am I mentioning this? You can guess. Because I think that today the situation is even more like that one and the name of this machine it's no longer railway this that, it's simply the digital network. This is why I think today we not only need political organizations like parties maybe a new form, we not only need mass crowd mobilization, we also need, I use with all the danger this implies this term, narrow fanatic highly specialized units because everybody knows, especially those in power know it, that our societies function the life the everyday exchange of our societies, electricity, water, food supply everything is to such an extent mediated through digital networks that the one who controls that controls everything. And those in power are getting ready of it. They are in China and so on it's clear, but you know I don't like to mention China too much because we are doing the same thing we just project it onto China as the evil one and so on. So I think that that's why we need with all the mistakes he made people like Julian Assange, WikiLeaks and all that. The real struggle will take place at this. If we don't somehow regain control over the digital network, those in power will still have the possibility to block, to sabotage any kind of public disorder and so on and so on. One of the absolutely crucial struggles is this one. I'm not saying it is the exclusive struggle. I'm saying that more and more it's no longer I even suspect that all that obsession with you know new nuclear arms race and so on and so on they are not really doing that. We are now you should know this in the middle of the new arms race. It's not only that Trump wants to step out of it, they are all for a for a decade already in it. But it's not so much nuclear arms, it's their obsessed with new supercomputers, digital control and so on and so on. And so again they know those in power know that even if you have a big mass upheaval, if you suspend if you sabotage block the digital network, people are isolated you can block it. So we have to prepare also for the struggle at this level. I don't know how, I don't have precise answer, I'm only saying that I'm at the same time a pessimist and an optimist. Pessimist in the sense that the true utopia is to think that things can go on the way they go on now, you know. A little bit more Bill Gates approach, distribute help to third world, be friendly towards refugees and we will somehow manage it. No we will not. This is why following my friend again Alain Badiou I don't like this parallel between now and the big 30's fascism. I think a much better parallel is between today's era and the decades before World War I. I read with interest this so-called new enlightenment optimists, you know Steven Pinker Enlightenment Now and so on. And many of their data are correct. For example Steven Pinker insists never in history of humanity were there so little wars as now. For the first time in history of humanity obesity is a greater problem than hunger and so on. All this is true but what moment are we approaching? Okay first this story of progress is not as simple as it appears. Because look, Pinker likes this statistic, compare the state of thing between now and then. Okay let's take the Jews. Their position is now incredibly better than years ago. years ago anti-semitism was legal, you could publish all the books also in the west that you want. Now anti-semitism at least in the western countries is prohibited. Jews have their own state and so on and so on. Okay but unfortunately in the middle it was something called Holocaust no and none of this progress without Holocaust. But something else interest me, that exactly the same situation there was like today's position of rational optimists, this new enlightenment, was among the majority of the people in let's say or They say but wait a minute, for over half a century we have more or less peace in Europe. Incredible progress. You know what happened in the second half of 19th century? General election, the right to vote expanded, suffragette movement, women to vote, trade unions recognized, religious freedoms it was an incredible progress. But nonetheless World War I happened. And I think unfortunately we are in a similar situation today where our and isn't this clear? It's exactly like that time. All the big powers are in some sense preparing for war. And the tragedy is this one: at that time you could still adopt a brutal Leninist attitude and say, okay let's have a war it will enable the revolution. Now we cannot any longer it's the war will be too horrible for that. We can only hope that some kind of a it's no longer let's have war, war will enable the revolution. No, it's only some kind of revolution that will prevent war. So what will happen? Don't lose hope. I think that no, lose hope. I don't like cheap hope in the sense of you know you know my old joke that I use eternally also in my new book. I hate this proverb: the situation is not so bad, there is a light at the other at the end of the tunnel. You know my joke: of course there is a light at the end of the tunnel, it's another train moving towards us. But I think that I simply I believe that gradually through more ecological catastrophes, even hopefully they will not be so radical, or refugee problems, or people being aware how they are manipulated through biogenetics, digital media, that some kind of resistance will emerge. I'm not totally a pessimist here. Now you will say but Trump and so on. Trump is for me precisely a preemptive strike, a sign that things are changing, that change is possible. Now I will not conclude with any praising of Trump, be serious he is a nightmare. But nonetheless I will be open, one thing I almost admire in Trump, how he knows how to dare and break the rules. I had a talk in Switzerland with an American diplomat quite by chance who was anti-Trump and he told me what Trump knows to do. You know in every political process you have explicit rules, laws, what Congress can do, this that. But these laws are only alive, they only work with implicit rules, unwritten customs. You do this like this, you are factically Trump is a master in breaking these implicit customs. The way he you see like nominating Kavanaugh or whatever. Obama could have done it already. But he was too considerate. He was convinced by the idea by those who claim, no you cannot proceed too fast, you are it's not done like that and so on and so on. For me the predominant left today is still afraid to take risks. I'm not saying break the law. I'm saying follow the law, and this is much more radical often, follow the law but break violate the implicit conformist rules of how you practice the law. And here we should absolutely learn for from Trump. Be more daring, risk it. In politics you don't proceed here I like Lenin who mocked German Social Democrats, he wrote that, I don't know how it is here but in Germany even when I was young, to enter a train station you had to buy something it was called a platform ticket or what. Even if you didn't want to board the train, just to wait for somebody no? And he said Lenin that social democrats if they want to make a revolution and occupy the train station they will be take care of first buying the platform tickets to be no? Don't think like that. In successful radical acts create their own success in the sense that they are risky, but if they succeed they retroactively legitimize themselves. If and you take a now you will say but what if it doesn't work? Eh, you have to take a risk you know. And this again will be more and more needed. The only true utopia today is the utopia that if we just go on as already said like this somehow we will manage. No we will not manage. Radical changes will be necessary. Don't be afraid of them. I'm sorry if I was ten minutes too long but that's life. Thank you very much. Now I was told I barely see I was told that there are two microphones there and okay since people accuse me of being a right-winger I will proceed like this and I will begin on the right. So one one if it's okay with you, one one one one please. The blue blue sweater bearded guy. Yeah. Um so you were talking about some of these like long-term issues like ecological problems which the negative effects are you know years or years down the line. Um what kind of social changes do you think or political changes do you think would be needed to for us to be able to keep those in mind or to be able to have an effect on those because capitalist systems you know they care about things on the quarter-by-quarter level or election-by-election level and that doesn't really work with these longer-term issues that kind of have like a big impact. It's a difficult question because I don't have concrete answer. All I can say is that now I will say something horrible which you may consider doubtful but you mentioned this quarter-by-quarter or election-by-election. I think that even a new form of mobilization international will have to be found which will not be immediately depending on our today's sense of logic of parliamentary democracy. I'm not playing don't be afraid any Stalinist game of true people's democracy. I'm just saying this: are you aware that an effectively functioning democracy is only possible against the background of a certain basic ideological homogeneity? We must agreed on many basic procedures. That's why I think if you ask me even you in the United States here if you are from here I don't know are in a dangerous moment this split now between let's say Bernie Sanders and Trump is too strong to be contained in a simple electoral process. Why? Because ultimately there is no compromise here, one side has to win. It's the struggle is much stronger. So what I am saying is that some kind of transnational bodies with a strong executive power to prevent this false ecology which is ecology of protecting just ourselves. For example I was a couple of years ago in how do you pronounce it, Island or Iceland, the country whose capital is Reykjavik is... Iceland, okay anyway sure and they they had a big movement about they want to build some phosphate whatever phosphate metal metal manipulation elaboration factory which would be bad for their coast which is otherwise extremely clean and so on. They said no. And I told them but their ecologists I attack them in a TV debate they invited me. I told them ah so for you it's okay to build it somewhere else you know, just no we want our island there clean and so on. This attitude of we no it's not enough to say we don't want it here, it's we don't want it in general or where how do we do we need to learn a global approach. Let me give you another example of this ethical revolution, I've written about it. My friend who is otherwise a right-winger but an intelligent one, Peter Sloterdijk, the German guy, he said that are we aware to what extent till now our entire ethics is an ethics of war, of sacrifice? We live our ordinary lives, earn money, pleasures but the true ethical test is war. Are you ready to sacrifice your life for your country? This is the ultimate ethical act. So and Hegel consequently conceptualized this, he said this is the paradox that our entire ethical life within the country has at its foundation as the ultimate ethical act war, which is internationally return to barbarism. In today's global society with ecological dangers whatever, we have some how to overcome this ethics. And the only way I see it is just through gradual awareness because I don't think incidentally we have half a century if you ask me, I think less. It will be you know maybe it's already even happening we are just not aware of it. These gradual changes look forget about drought in Africa look what's happening in Northeastern Siberia where that permafrost is melting and you know that more of this what are those bad gases that out of car fumes they come carbon dioxide? Carbon dioxide. Yeah you know that from that melting of permafrost more this dioxide is already going into the air than all the cars combined and so on. We are already in such tremendous changes, so I think that literally some kind of global emergency state will be needed. It will come I don't worry about will it come or not, I just worry that maybe it will come too fast. But you know what literally demoralizes me? How the rich people are already aware of it. I have a friend in New Zealand who told me you know how many rich people are already buying properties in New Zealand? Because they think if it's a global ecological catastrophe they are even far away three hours flight south even from Australia it's the safest place and so on. So again I think that it's not just more democracy. It is more democracy but also something horrible to say a more a stronger even more authoritarian state power. It's I don't have an easy answer here. Sorry for. Okay I move to the left is there anybody there yes here please. Um so the Treaty of the European Union states very vaguely security measures and I was wondering if you think that the EU has the capacity to form a united military or if it's more probable that it will devolve into either state factions or supra-nationalist... No I'm you are asking me about European Union? Yes. I must tell you openly my big skepticism about it. I don't have any illusions about it. European Union is so impotent look how it miserably failed in all the tests: refugees, Catalonia crisis and so on it's un... what what gives me hope is that it's still to such an incredible extent the target of all others. It's almost an obsession of Putin and Trump combined to ruin European Union. Whenever there is something that will weaken European Union Putin is at it, Catalonia Putin supported secession, Brexit Putin supported Brexit. Even now in Macedonia, you know it was very sad event. They have this long conflict for the name of the state. Greece doesn't want to allow Macedonians to be called Macedonians because they claim this is an ancient Greek name. Macedonians are also too arrogant they try to re-appropriate the historical legacy which is effectively Greek and not theirs. Because the Greek ancient Macedonians Alexander the Great and so on they were ethnically not today's Macedonians who are Slavs who arrived later and so if you go to Skopje you have there a big statue of Alexander the Great big statue of Philip the Great it's okay finally they arrived at a solution that it's a stupid one but a compromise acceptable that Macedonia should be called Northern Macedonia. And Russia puts all its machinery in Macedonia and in Greece against it for very egoist reason because if this happens then probably Macedonia will can join now it was blocked by Greece European Union and that's bad news for Russia. But what I'm saying is this absolute almost obsession with with with the danger of United Europe. Even for example John Bolton your greatest strategist. You notice how he threatened the many of my friends dismiss the Hague Criminal Court as just another imperialist blah blah. Wait a minute Trump and John Bolton they hate it, John Bolton threatened again we don't recognize it we are ready to attack it if it imprisons any Americans and so on. So this negative reason that European Union is so hated is what gives me a little bit of a hope that maybe maybe although I doubt something will happen. No it's more an ideal of what could have happened. I have no illusions here than the actually existing Europe. So uh again. Hi. Um I've heard you second time now talking against Lacan and again Lacan, yes. And what he said about hysterics, yes. I reminded you that there are three discourses that serve the master: the master's discourse, the perverted discourse and the hysteric's discourse, actually capitalism discourse is very much hysteric. I was wondering... Where did you find this? Oh in seminar that you're walking away from. And I just wanted to ask you that maybe if you dropped your Hegelianism and humanism, you would not end up supporting for example you know hysteric masters like Avital Ronell, you know and maybe you would become Lacanian again or even Althusserian. What do you think about that and and do you think that it's time to kind of balance the hysteric and pervert's discourse because that's where the analyst discourse is? There. No, no, no, I have in my new book again a lot of it but I think that no, no, no, where did you find this? It's absolutely clear that Lacan even precisely in his
Glad to be here again. Hope it will not be too boring because I will really talk about what the title says, what to do with Marx today, what are the chances of some emancipatory radical change. So let me begin. There is an old delicious Soviet joke about Radio Yerevan. A listener asks, is it true that the Jew Rabinovich, this is a standard figure in Soviet jokes, won a new car on lottery? The radio answers, in principle yes, it's true, only it wasn't a new car but an old bicycle and he didn't win it but it was stolen from him. Does exactly the same not hold for Marx's legacy today? Let's ask Radio Yerevan, is Marx's theory still actual today? We can guess the answer. In principle yes, he describes wonderfully the mad dance of capitalist dynamics which reached its peak only today, more than a century and a half after Marx. But the English so-called analytic Marxist Gerald Cohen enumerated four features of the classic Marxist notion of the working class. First, it constitutes the majority of society. Second, it produces the wealth of society. Three, it consists of the exploited members of society and four, its members are the needy people in society. When these four features are combined, they generate two further features. Five, the working class has nothing to lose, so they are ready to do revolution, and six, it can and will engage for this reason in a revolutionary transformation of society. The problem is that none of the first four features applies to today's working class, which is why features five and six also cannot be generated. Even if some of the features continue to apply to parts of today's society, they are no longer united in a single agent. The needy people in society are no longer the workers and so on and so on. The question of the continuing relevance of Marx's work in our era of global capitalism has to be answered in a properly dialectical way. Not only is Marx's critique of political economy, his outline of the capitalist dynamics, still fully actual, one should even make a step further and claim that it is only today with global capitalism that Marx's analysis became fully valid. However, a properly dialectical reversal intervenes here. At this very moment of full actuality, a limitation has to appear. The moment of triumph is that of defeat. Therein resides the properly dialectical paradox. Marx was not simply wrong. He was right, but he was wrong because he was right more literally than he himself expected to be. For example, Marx couldn't have imagined that the capitalist dynamics of dissolving all particular identities would affect also ethnic and sexual identities. Also sexual one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible. Also concerning sexual practices, all that is solid melts into air and all that is holy is profaned, so that capitalism tends to replace the standard normative heterosexuality with a proliferation of unstable shifting identities or orientations. Today's celebration of minorities and marginals is the predominant majority position. Even old rightists who complain about the terror of liberal political correctness present themselves as protectors of an endangered minority. Or take those critics of patriarchy who attack it as if it is still a predominant hegemonic position, ignoring what Marx and Engels wrote more than years ago in the first chapter of the Communist Manifesto. I quote, the bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal patriarchal idyllic relations, end of quote. What becomes of patriarchal family, family values, when a child can sue his parents for neglect and abuse, when family and parenthood itself are de jure reduced to a temporary and dissolvable contract between independent individuals? So this is my first claim to provoke you. I think that this ongoing struggle between alt-right conservatives and so on and transgender, gay rights, feminist radicals, it's an important struggle but is for me at least strictly part of today's global capitalist dynamics. I think I was not shocked when with that just before Trump was elected, when this was the big topic, transgender toilets, special toilets or not, that you look at the list of who is who in if not in the entire modern corporate America, but in what I call with all the irony the new corporate organic intellectuals, those who are even fashionably for socialism today. Bill Gates said we need socialism, Elon Musk said we need socialism, they are the truly dangerous ones I claim. But how without any problem they all stood up for transgender. So I have nothing against transgender, on the contrary, I think that to be authentically transgender is to be an extremely painful symptomatic but the most radical position imaginable. And to improvise a little bit in a very Marxist-Hegelian way, you know what's my problem with LGBT+? My reason of critiquing it but also of fanatically supporting it. It's the plus. Usually people take this plus as an empirical plus. The idea is this one: not just binary opposition male-female, there are other sexual identities and we cannot ever be sure that the list is complete. So let's be open and always add a plus like in the sense of empirical sense of our list is not complete, it's possible that there will be other identities and so on and so on. My theory, and this is just to rise your curiosity, I will not develop it here, my theory is that one can also be directly a plus as such. Plus is a specific identity which is maybe the closest to what subjectivity is. And I think women are privileged here, in this sense, not in the sense of old biological binary, I believe in feminine subjectivity as paradigmatic form of subjectivity. What do I mean by this? You know this, what women are: hysterical. Don't misunderstand me, this is for me and for all good Freudians the highest praise that you can give on them. What is hysteria? Hysteria is the most elementary form of critique of ideology. Hysteria is a certain question like you, by you I mean ideology, ideological hegemony, social authority, paternal authority, you are telling me I am this, whatever: woman, teacher, mother, or to men: worker, whatever. Hysteria is this basic doubt: but why am I what you are saying that I am? This fundamental disbelief in social identification. That's why, but this is another topic, we don't have time for it today, that's why I think that this was the dangerous moment, I know it I was there, of '68 so-called revolution. At that point it was fashionable to mock hysteria and to be for perversion. Like hysterics are not really subversive, you provoke a little bit a master but it's really a call for a better master, while perverts go to the end. As even Freud unfortunately says somewhere, perverts do openly what hysterics only talk about and dream about. I think the situation is the opposite one and Lacan has shown this clearly, that perversion is not subversive. Perversion is just the hidden obverse of every edifice of power. Perverts are ultimately on the side of power. The only thing really undermining power is hysterical questioning. And it's not just a questioning in the sense of objective doubt, you say this but is it really this? It's subjective doubt, is it what am I? Am I really what you are saying that I am? And I claim this doubt is constitutive of subjectivity. Okay. Back to my main line so that I don't get totally lost. How does ideology function in these conditions? In these conditions of fluidity and so on and you should first the first thing I advise you is that always be attentive to the form. Take alt-right. They are really for me very dangerous subversive radicals. They are not really what they claim to be. They are the wrong perverts as it were. They are something radically happening and did you read that book, I'm sorry if I will pronounce the name incorrectly, Angela Nagle, Kill All Normies. I think it's a very profound insight in that book, namely the insight that today things almost enact almost a reversal with regard to when I was young, '60s, '70s when, you know, we young leftists were provocative using dirty words, irony and so on to unsettle, undermine the dignity, social stability of authority. No, today it's the alt-right which assumed, which adopted, which almost so successfully re-appropriated this old leftist marginal subversive mocking of every authority attitude and the counterpoint is the counterpoint is of course political correctness. We don't have time to go into it. I want what's the general just let me focus on one thing. What's the mode of ideology at work here? My answer is very simple: cynical ideology of course. And I'm sorry if I will now repeat some old jokes but they are crucial. I think the way ideology functions today is that not only you don't have to seriously believe in ruling ideology, I suspect that it's even a positive condition for an ideology to function not to take it seriously, not to believe in it. Here Marx can help us. Where? Now I will repeat a point that I repeat again and again but it's crucial. Here Marx's theory of commodity fetishism fully works only today. What is Marx saying there? Not what you think. Marx is not saying in actual life we are doing one thing but we live in a fetishist illusion, we don't know what we are doing, we live in idealist nightmare whatever. No, Marx is saying almost the exact opposite. What he calls commodity fetishism is an illusion but an illusion which is embodied in the social practice of what we are doing. This is the beauty of Marx. Like you may be cynical, not taking it seriously, but in your social practice you act as if you believe. If I may repeat an old joke, you're not obliged to laugh because I think that even in this room I already used it two or three times, that old Niels Bohr story. You know when a friend reproached him why do you have that horseshoe above the entrance to your country cottage? In Europe this is a superstitious object. A horseshoe above the entrance to your house is meant to keep evil spirits out. Niels Bohr gave a perfect answer. He says, I'm a scientist, of course I'm not stupid, I don't believe in it. Then the friend repeated the question, but if you don't believe in it, why do you have it there? Bohr says, because I was told that it works even if you don't believe in it. That's ideology today. You know, so again ideology is in what things are doing. That's what Marx calls commodity fetishism. Average capitalist is cynical realist, he doesn't believe in any magic of commodities, but he acts as if he believes in commodity exchange and so on and so on. So again cynical disbelief is the way things work. Second point, that's a now I'm trying to give you some arguments about why do I think that ideology is if anything more alive than ever today. Second thing, the function of ideology is not to justify the existing state of things, to paint an ideal image like, oh nonetheless we live in a basically good just society. It's as my friend Alain Badiou put it, the function basic function of ideology is not to destroy opposition or actual resistance, police others do this, it's to kill hope. This is why you know where I encountered ideology at its purest? And I was too confused to answer it properly. I had about a year ago, year and a half ago, in London a debate with the English writer Will Self who when I painted the dark picture you know, ecological exploitation, ecological catastrophe, the destruction of natural resources in Africa and so on and so on, he over-agreed with me. He said yes of course in years we are all doomed, there will be the end of civilization, of course no problem, no problem. Just he said we can do anything, all attempts to change things will just make things worse. I think this is maybe the most efficient ideology today. They don't try to convince you in, I know it's not so bad, global warming is exaggerated and so on. They agree with everything, just they go to the end. And incidentally, if I understood correctly the latest news from your beloved president, he is already now slowly adopting this line. I think that one of his latest tweets about global warming, it's no longer it's not happening, but it's already happened, it's too late to do anything or whatever you know. This is ideology, to kill hope. Second thing, again we should re-actualize Marx's old formula of religion as the opium of the people. But with a specific twist, we have to move further from Marx here. I think that apart from some ridiculous fundamentalisms, Muslim, Christian or whichever, which obviously function as the opium of the people, in the sense that they enable us to experience today's global capitalism as meaningful through this illusory religious politics. But I think that as Marxists we should realize that today we have two other new opiums of the people. You can guess which are they: opium and the people. Exactly. First, opium. Are you aware to what extent, if you read statistics, our daily lives, especially of us here, degenerate middle class academic intellectuals whatever, most of us, the majority is already taking Xanax or some kind of drugs? So I mean here opium in all the scope of the word, from a calmative you take here and there to depressants, anti-depressants to real hard drugs. And it's a wonderful contradictory functioning of these drugs like if you are overexcited, first you take drugs to calm you down and then you take drugs to re-excite you again so that you are not depressive. But the sad thing is again the extent to which really for our normal, normal, regular stable relatively social reproduction we already have to rely on biochemistry. It's part of our daily life. And the second opium of the people again is opium itself in the sense even some left unfortunately is playing this game. I don't know how you look at this but in Europe now the formula of left populism is regaining popularity. The idea is I call it in a very vicious way a wrong perverted MeToo. Like the right wingers have populism and as if the left is saying MeToo, why not we also have our own populism? I think that unfortunately this does not work. Why? And here okay first for theoretical reasons. I know this is not popular to say but populism works with clearly designated enemies. You know populism means as Ernesto Laclau, the theoretical father of today's political populism, knew very well, populism is not just popular mobilization, it's a mobilization of people against an enemy of the people. And this enemy has to be constructed in a pseudo-concrete personalized way: bankers, immigrants, whoever you want. They can also be combined. Modern populism is doing miracles today. For example in Europe, so I'm not involved in cheap America bashing, we Europeans in spite of your Trump are worse than you I think. In Europe you have now a new right-wing racist theory which is incredible, which goes so far as to claim that the struggle between Palestinians and Israelis is a false struggle, just made to distract us, to obfuscate the fact that they are working together to destroy Christian Europe. That's why they say that immigrants penetrating Europe are not Jews and they are right you know, I never trusted this simple leftist formula Nazis had Jews we have now Muslim immigrants. No there is one big difference. Jews were invisible, that was for the Nazis their horror. Invisible in the sense of you never know where they are, they look like us. While the problem with immigrants is on the contrary that they are all too visible everywhere. The complaint is all the time among European racists, you cannot even walk on the street to see a covered woman and whatever you want. But this is the latest fashion now to claim that how is this happening? This cannot be spontaneous. Muslim immigrants entering Europe is part of a plot. Who is behind it? Jews, Soros and so on. They are in reality working together. I think that the tragedy today for authentic, not cheap populist, radical leftist politics and I'm not blaming here Sanders and his followers, he is not in any meaningful way a real populist for me, is that I will try to improvise but to be as precise as possible, it's that we can play a political game against enemies and so on and so on. But the true enemy, the ultimate thing that we fight, not that I blame it as a work of the devil, is nonetheless the global capitalist system as such. And the problem is that precisely you cannot personalize it into an enemy in this way. Look at your situation. Of course the enemy is Trump. But a true leftist should never forget that Trump just filled in the gap of the failure, disintegration of the liberal democratic hegemony. So if you want really in the long term to defeat Trump, we have to introduce at least some radical changes into the predominant left-liberal consensus. That's what Trump got it. A further theoretical point here, I hope I'll be clear enough in formulating it, is that the further problem, no the basic problem is that you know Marx in his idea of proletarian experience. Being a proletarian for Marx is not just an objective determination, you are the lowest exploited and so on. No, to be a proletarian for Marx means a certain almost why not existential experience of void of subjectivity, everything is taken for you, but at the same time this very being deprived of all objective content allows you to emerge as a free subject. So I don't have time to go onto it now but this is another aspect of Marx that I appreciate more than ever today. Marx would have been and I think, you may protest, Marx would have been abhorred by the idea that in fighting global imperialism we should return to some basic primitive local experiences like some of my Brazilian friends are telling me literally, I'm not kidding, you know up the Amazon there is a tribe where they have some wonderful rituals of tribal meetings which can be used for our postmodern democracy and so on and so on. No, the only way Marx always insisted on this that the capitalist destruction of all traditional stable forms is absolutely the condition of freedom, we have to pass through it. The problem is this one. Marx still counted that this that majority potentially at least of the people who go through this proletarian experience, the more I work the more I'm poor, the more I'm deprived what we call usually alienation or whatever, that this is a point at which the highest theory, in this case for Marx his own Marxism, the vision of proletarian revolution, finds an echo or can be rooted in the most concrete existential experience. Marx counted on this link as it were between his historical materialist theory which talks about proletarianization, proletarian revolution, and concrete experience of impoverished people. I claim that this exactly is what is getting more and more complex today. Unfortunately, and this I consider maybe the greatest danger, the problems we are dealing with today, for example take ecology, can only in a limited way be transformed or be grounded in our immediate life experience. Okay, you will say nonetheless people feel drought. Yes, but not as part of a global capitalism and so on and so on. It gets dispersed. It's typical that it took even long time ordinary people to take ecological topic as a serious problem. I'm old enough I remember in the in the 1970s, '80s when we became aware of ecological problems, for example I know because I live not in Germany but close to it, the majority of Western European especially German trade unions were ferociously opposed to ecology. They even claimed that ecology, this idea of we have to limit our exploitation of nature, that it's a plot of the ruling classes to limit social progress. So you see what I mean? I mean that problems we are facing, biogenetic, financial I mean madness of financial speculations, ecology and so on, also flow of immigrants if this is a problem for you. The point is that it's more and more difficult to ground radical progressive politics in all these levels in concrete life experience. If you ask me, the first result, even if now Trump recognizes, which I doubt but nonetheless, the seriousness of ecological situation, I claim that the first reaction will be America First, or China First, or Turkey First, or Russia First, or whatever. It will simply be: okay, it's happening out there, there is a drought in Africa, who cares? Let's isolate ourselves and so on. It will be isolation. It will be the same the same with with the flows of immigrants and so on. The idea would be: the world outside of our borders is a mess, let's isolate ourselves. In Europe I can see this. A couple of years ago Europe was much more open towards the flow of immigrants. At some point when Angela Merkel did open for a short period of time the borders allowing one million Middle East immigrants to enter Germany, people of the population supported it. Today no longer. So I always in a brutal cynical way I ask my leftist friends who are telling me we should open the borders to immigrants, I told them: okay so are you for abolishing democracy or what? Because it's this was when I was included in debates in Germany and I basically of course advocated just in a more regulated way the arrival of immigrants with the basic argument not humanitarian one but a more radical one that my God we are responsible for it. The flow of Middle East immigrants is basically the result of American intervention in Iraq, of the intervention international intervention in Syria, of how international community screwed it up in Libya and so on and so on. So the only way to do this is to somehow violate the will of the majority. And people in Germany told me, are you a democrat or not? Should we not ask the German people, do they want immigrants or not? Then when I said okay but maybe why should only Germans vote and so on and so on, they told me then what kind of a vote would you organize? Who should vote them? Should the immigrants also vote? Should also I mean what I'm just saying is that there is no longer this let's call it long-term transparency that people can be manipulated but nonetheless in the long term what will prevail is a kind of a global solidarity to use Ernesto Laclau's terms that we can successfully build a chain of equivalences: women's rights, gay rights, religious rights, immigrants, third world poverty, all these struggles should be combined into one big struggle. Well it's easy to say it's more and more difficult I claim to do it. Let me just not to go into details here. I just want to focus on one problem. This is why and I see I wonder to provoke you if you will agree with it or not, this is why the big what is beneath all this is for me nonetheless, not that I demonize it, the problem of capitalism. What is our typical story? You get a progressive leader like Lula in Brazil, like Mandela in South Africa, elected, people are enthusiastic, everything works. Then after a couple of years if not earlier you confront the real problem: how much do you dare to disturb the smooth functioning of capitalism? Capitalism doesn't care about gay rights, transgender, you can have toilets in a row it doesn't they will even say fine nice investment nice new investments and so on. No the problem is how much do you dare to do this and here I don't blame only liberal left, I blame the left itself. We should here go to the end. I know there are no direct answers now. I know it would be unproductive and crazy to demand now precisely what kind of a new society do we want. But nonetheless what makes me sad is one fact and before I conclude I would like to dwell a little bit on this fact which is very sad for me. That when people claim communism failed. Ah there is one example of communist power which was economically a mega undoubted triumph: it's of course China. Are we because okay you will say capitalism, yes but it's capitalism under a tight control of the Communist Party, political control. And here I disagree with my liberal friends who claim, oh what would have happened if the Communist Party of China would have decided at that point of Deng Xiaoping reforms to make just a step further and allow also political democracy. I'm here terribly sad and resigned, I claim no, in all probability it would have been worse. We would not have this type of economic triumph that we have in China. And at least till the time being this triumph don't underestimate it, this triumph is real is real. Are you aware what is happening? Never in history of humanity was there such a tremendous explosion of new wealth created in just years. And the sad thing is that it's precisely and now the story is repeated already at least in Vietnam I was told. Are you aware that and that's the saddest thing that this economic triumph is the result of what? We leftists like to no we hate two things of modernity. On the one hand this wild exploitative capitalism its brutal dynamics and so on. On the other hand strong authoritarian power. Isn't it the sad that the most successful model today precisely combines these two features? And it works perfectly. And it's not just China. I see the world unfortunately moving in this direction. I think not only in China but all around we have this move towards more authoritarian capitalism. And what I want to say is that it's interesting that some Marxist like the one who recently died unfortunately the Italian Marxist Domenico Losurdo, along these lines they even tried to rehabilitate Stalin and Mao and China today. They claim that what is happening now in China, China is still socialism because Communist Party is in power, they allowed a degree of capitalism but Communist Party controls it so he claims I don't agree with him of course on behalf of the people so that capitalism is also productive for the people. And he claims that the Cold War going is going on, it's today between China and United States and for the first time in history the socialist camp, that is to say China, has chances of winning. Okay I will not go into details here the paradoxes that I see here. I'm just saying that that all this should give us all this should really give us to think. In the sense of what are the options today? What can we count on? No wonder that and this makes me really sad. No wonder that many of my leftist radical leftist friends, they don't tell this publicly but privately all the time I'm hearing this rumor that the only thing that can save us is a big catastrophe. And with some of them of course I will not name them not to embarrass them. Some of them even think maybe we should risk and hire some terrorist to organize a mega catastrophe like a nuclear plant exploding whatever, millions dead. This will then awaken people. Unfortunately I think that such an such an approach is in itself a catastrophe. So is the situation lost? What can we do? It's a serious problem because the obvious solution would have been the only thing that works is modest social democracy. Look at Latin America. He is half my friend I admire him, Alvaro Garcia Linera, the vice president of Bolivia who what they are really doing is a much more cautious progressive politics not disturbing the capital too much but nonetheless using it, collaborating, social progress. They they succeeded before there was practically an illegal coup against him and his successor. Lula in Brazil did it and so on and so on. Or with you with here in the States with Sanders and so on. Well I wish all the best to him, I totally support not only him but the entire Democratic Socialist movement. I'm just saying that two things. First are you aware how modest are really his positions? This is not a criticism of Bernie Sanders, this is just an indication of how our entire political map its center point moved to the right. If you look at what Bernie Sanders wants to do and compare it to a moderate European social democracy half a century ago, especially Scandinavian ones they were much more radical. So again we live in times where a relatively modest social democracy is already decried as capitalist even communist madness and so on and so on. So I am all for it. Let's try. But it's our duty nonetheless to claim that this will not solve the entire problem how should I put it? At a certain point we will have to change things more and more and more. Why? As I already mentioned, the problems we have today, for example ecology, I don't think they can be solved at this level of nation state or even local communities recycling their stuff and so on and so on. No this is all part of ideological strategy. If you want to see ideology at its purest today, I claim it's this everyday life ecology. Did you recycle your cans? Did you put aside old newspaper? Why? Instead of asking systematic questions, it is addressing you as personally responsible but what did you you know this is typically in Europe, for example you demand radical changes and they tell you, but what about you? Do you know you have all those metals in your iPhone? Are you aware that you contributed to exploiting Africans and so on? So this is how today's ideology works. It makes you personally responsible, like what did you do for it? At the same time it's offering you an easy way out. Recycle, do this, buy organic fruits whatever and you contribute to it. That's for me ideology at its perfect. Incidentally you must know already some of you at least my old jokes, that's why when people ask me which is the main ideological apparatus today, I think although now it's no longer truth I like to answer Starbucks. Because it's really ideological genius behind it. You know now it's no longer so much but you remember years ago when you entered a Starbucks you had this buy our cappuccino goes for some stupid Guatemala children whatever and so on. Or they buy they were selling some stupid water where again goes for some resources in Somalia. Why do I make fun of it? Not because I make fun of Guatemala and Somalia. But when already the mathematics is so ridiculous they charge you half a dollar more for those which go there. But you know what's the operation? You worry about ecology and they make it possible for you not that you can fight for ecology welfare of third world countries not by changing your life but by consuming even more because the message is buy buy for example buy our cappuccino and you are at the same time helping also third world countries so that and that's a true genius that your ecological duty itself is commodified. It's included into the price. That's the ultimate ideology. But what I want to say is so should then the answer be simply and that's the big dilemma, the only serious dilemma it's not even specifically a Marxist dilemma today. Should we be satisfied by this modest social democracy? The system more or less works, let's just take care of okay let's call it global capitalism with a human face in the same way once we fought for socialism with a human face you know. Helping the third world countries and ecology, feminism all that you include, is this enough? That's why I remain some kind of a more radical communist. Not because I want a dark plot of killing. No, what I'm simply saying is that we cannot cope with our problems in this way. Take again ecology. As I already mentioned I think a larger transnational actions, bodies that can implement this are necessary. It's clear that we can confront ecological challenges only through large international cooperation. It's the same with the other thing with which I am obsessed almost although it appears marginal today, new forms of control, digital controls and brain control. I think that it's no longer science fiction. I have I'm a dark guy you know don't underestimate it. I have connections with some dark laboratories through strange personal links who work for the army and so on even in China I have friends who have and what I learn is terrifying. That the big obsession of the army laboratories today is what you just learn a little bit around, it's direct wiring of our brain. Like they are already it's still very primitive but the path is clear. In an elementary way it already works that my brain can be somehow it's still clumsy but it works connected with a digital network and then on the one hand it's beautiful, I become almost like God, I think about something it happens. I learn from a friend in Cambridge that in the last years of his life Stephen Hawking was already functioning like this, he no longer even needed his finger, he thought and his wheelchair moved forward and so on. Of course we see what's the problem. The problem is that what goes out comes back in. That is to say that computer can also read our mind and so on and it's already progressing tremendously with all these nightmarish things that for example they can already control neurons which gives orders to move to our hands or feet and for example I maybe you even hear this story I repeat it all the time, rat can be connected her brain to a computer, you press a button and rat changes into a remote control car you can direct it. And then as my friends told me ah they are doing going a step further, they are already discreetly doing such experiments on humans asking the key question, how will you as a human experience this being controlled? And the answer is very sad. Let's say I am your rat, one of you has a box press the button I walk freely around all of a sudden you control my movements. The result is very sad and dangerous. It's not that all of a sudden a foreign force takes over, no I will still think that I'm acting freely. This I think changes everything because our basic human identity and experience of freedom is that of the distinction between inside and outside. I am here in my mind, for example a vulgar example but very pertinent, I can think about you the most politically incorrect dirty sexual things and so on but I'm in here. There is a gap and this gap is the gap of normal communication of freedom. If this gap disappears who knows what will happen? I'm not necessarily a cultural pessimist here. I'm just saying that I take pretty seriously this term post-humanity. Something new is emerging. And what I'm afraid and in this I see an important lesson of a film which was not as bad as many people claim, Blade Runner It's a first film about this hypothesis of how we can have post-human capitalism. Maybe humanity the way we know it will come to an end but capitalism can survive. So again by this problem: ecology, brain control, refugees and so on. More radical changes will be needed. In what direction? I now cannot give you a revolutionary recipe or whatever. But to conclude so that I if you allow me another five ten minutes so that I return or at least not return I never was there to the title of my talk. You know I read a fascinating book, I don't think it's in print now but you can download it from I don't even know YouTube or whatever. Curzio Malaparte, an Italian author, first a fascist then he moved to the left later in his life, in '31 he wrote a book about Technique of Revolutionary Coup d'Etat, something like that. A wonderful and I think correct analysis of Bolshevik revolution. He went there and it was just before full onslaught of Stalinism so he was able to talk with all the people and so on and so on. And he came to this result that the true genius of the revolution was even more Trotsky than Lenin. Why? Now this may sound eccentric because it's not the Trotsky you maybe heard about. Lenin was in between when he was Lenin was a strategic genius he saw a brief opportunity we can grab power now of the revolution. But basically till Trotsky convinced him, converted him, Lenin remained a traditional revolutionary. His idea was gather thousands of workers and soldiers attack parliament, imperial castle, whatever big centers of power. Trotsky had an absolutely ingenious idea and he did it. He says but wait a minute, look at a modern state how it functions. Forget about all that bullshits, the crowd confronting police and blah blah. A modern state functions through just some eight, nine, ten knots centers of technical centers of power: railways, post office, phone, electricity, water supply and so on. Before you play all those revolutionary games of storming parliament or whatever, in a discreet quick operation you should take control of this and you don't need tens of thousands of people, we even know exact numbers. Trotsky said I need less than one thousand people dispersed organized in groups of twenty with soldiers, I mean people ready to fight, and especially good technicians. And it's incredible what was this is the true unknown story of October Revolution what was happening weeks before the revolution when they were getting ready. The government, Kerensky, all them, none of them expected this and this for example every morning in front of the central post office groups of Bolsheviks came and run up and down the stairs and so on and people simply didn't know see it they thought are they crazy or whatever. The same for electricity and so on and so on. So in the night before the October Revolution, Trotsky did it, it was over in one night. All these knots of power were under his control and the game was over. Then all that you know storming Winter Palace blah blah that was that was a comedy. I mean Kerensky and the army they knew revolution is coming, it was an incredible event October Revolution because they knew and they were still getting ready for the traditional confrontation: gather the army here, people here to protect the parliament. Trotsky just ignored that said who cares about that, control this and everything else will be thrown into disarray. Why am I mentioning this? You can guess. Because I think that today the situation is even more like that one and the name of this machine it's no longer railway this that, it's simply the digital network. This is why I think today we not only need political organizations like parties maybe a new form, we not only need mass crowd mobilization, we also need, I use with all the danger this implies this term, narrow fanatic highly specialized units because everybody knows, especially those in power know it, that our societies function the life the everyday exchange of our societies, electricity, water, food supply everything is to such an extent mediated through digital networks that the one who controls that controls everything. And those in power are getting ready of it. They are in China and so on it's clear, but you know I don't like to mention China too much because we are doing the same thing we just project it onto China as the evil one and so on. So I think that that's why we need with all the mistakes he made people like Julian Assange, WikiLeaks and all that. The real struggle will take place at this. If we don't somehow regain control over the digital network, those in power will still have the possibility to block, to sabotage any kind of public disorder and so on and so on. One of the absolutely crucial struggles is this one. I'm not saying it is the exclusive struggle. I'm saying that more and more it's no longer I even suspect that all that obsession with you know new nuclear arms race and so on and so on they are not really doing that. We are now you should know this in the middle of the new arms race. It's not only that Trump wants to step out of it, they are all for a for a decade already in it. But it's not so much nuclear arms, it's their obsessed with new supercomputers, digital control and so on and so on. And so again they know those in power know that even if you have a big mass upheaval, if you suspend if you sabotage block the digital network, people are isolated you can block it. So we have to prepare also for the struggle at this level. I don't know how, I don't have precise answer, I'm only saying that I'm at the same time a pessimist and an optimist. Pessimist in the sense that the true utopia is to think that things can go on the way they go on now, you know. A little bit more Bill Gates approach, distribute help to third world, be friendly towards refugees and we will somehow manage it. No we will not. This is why following my friend again Alain Badiou I don't like this parallel between now and the big 30's fascism. I think a much better parallel is between today's era and the decades before World War I. I read with interest this so-called new enlightenment optimists, you know Steven Pinker Enlightenment Now and so on. And many of their data are correct. For example Steven Pinker insists never in history of humanity were there so little wars as now. For the first time in history of humanity obesity is a greater problem than hunger and so on. All this is true but what moment are we approaching? Okay first this story of progress is not as simple as it appears. Because look, Pinker likes this statistic, compare the state of thing between now and then. Okay let's take the Jews. Their position is now incredibly better than years ago. years ago anti-semitism was legal, you could publish all the books also in the west that you want. Now anti-semitism at least in the western countries is prohibited. Jews have their own state and so on and so on. Okay but unfortunately in the middle it was something called Holocaust no and none of this progress without Holocaust. But something else interest me, that exactly the same situation there was like today's position of rational optimists, this new enlightenment, was among the majority of the people in let's say or They say but wait a minute, for over half a century we have more or less peace in Europe. Incredible progress. You know what happened in the second half of 19th century? General election, the right to vote expanded, suffragette movement, women to vote, trade unions recognized, religious freedoms it was an incredible progress. But nonetheless World War I happened. And I think unfortunately we are in a similar situation today where our and isn't this clear? It's exactly like that time. All the big powers are in some sense preparing for war. And the tragedy is this one: at that time you could still adopt a brutal Leninist attitude and say, okay let's have a war it will enable the revolution. Now we cannot any longer it's the war will be too horrible for that. We can only hope that some kind of a it's no longer let's have war, war will enable the revolution. No, it's only some kind of revolution that will prevent war. So what will happen? Don't lose hope. I think that no, lose hope. I don't like cheap hope in the sense of you know you know my old joke that I use eternally also in my new book. I hate this proverb: the situation is not so bad, there is a light at the other at the end of the tunnel. You know my joke: of course there is a light at the end of the tunnel, it's another train moving towards us. But I think that I simply I believe that gradually through more ecological catastrophes, even hopefully they will not be so radical, or refugee problems, or people being aware how they are manipulated through biogenetics, digital media, that some kind of resistance will emerge. I'm not totally a pessimist here. Now you will say but Trump and so on. Trump is for me precisely a preemptive strike, a sign that things are changing, that change is possible. Now I will not conclude with any praising of Trump, be serious he is a nightmare. But nonetheless I will be open, one thing I almost admire in Trump, how he knows how to dare and break the rules. I had a talk in Switzerland with an American diplomat quite by chance who was anti-Trump and he told me what Trump knows to do. You know in every political process you have explicit rules, laws, what Congress can do, this that. But these laws are only alive, they only work with implicit rules, unwritten customs. You do this like this, you are factically Trump is a master in breaking these implicit customs. The way he you see like nominating Kavanaugh or whatever. Obama could have done it already. But he was too considerate. He was convinced by the idea by those who claim, no you cannot proceed too fast, you are it's not done like that and so on and so on. For me the predominant left today is still afraid to take risks. I'm not saying break the law. I'm saying follow the law, and this is much more radical often, follow the law but break violate the implicit conformist rules of how you practice the law. And here we should absolutely learn for from Trump. Be more daring, risk it. In politics you don't proceed here I like Lenin who mocked German Social Democrats, he wrote that, I don't know how it is here but in Germany even when I was young, to enter a train station you had to buy something it was called a platform ticket or what. Even if you didn't want to board the train, just to wait for somebody no? And he said Lenin that social democrats if they want to make a revolution and occupy the train station they will be take care of first buying the platform tickets to be no? Don't think like that. In successful radical acts create their own success in the sense that they are risky, but if they succeed they retroactively legitimize themselves. If and you take a now you will say but what if it doesn't work? Eh, you have to take a risk you know. And this again will be more and more needed. The only true utopia today is the utopia that if we just go on as already said like this somehow we will manage. No we will not manage. Radical changes will be necessary. Don't be afraid of them. I'm sorry if I was ten minutes too long but that's life. Thank you very much. Now I was told I barely see I was told that there are two microphones there and okay since people accuse me of being a right-winger I will proceed like this and I will begin on the right. So one one if it's okay with you, one one one one please. The blue blue sweater bearded guy. Yeah. Um so you were talking about some of these like long-term issues like ecological problems which the negative effects are you know years or years down the line. Um what kind of social changes do you think or political changes do you think would be needed to for us to be able to keep those in mind or to be able to have an effect on those because capitalist systems you know they care about things on the quarter-by-quarter level or election-by-election level and that doesn't really work with these longer-term issues that kind of have like a big impact. It's a difficult question because I don't have concrete answer. All I can say is that now I will say something horrible which you may consider doubtful but you mentioned this quarter-by-quarter or election-by-election. I think that even a new form of mobilization international will have to be found which will not be immediately depending on our today's sense of logic of parliamentary democracy. I'm not playing don't be afraid any Stalinist game of true people's democracy. I'm just saying this: are you aware that an effectively functioning democracy is only possible against the background of a certain basic ideological homogeneity? We must agreed on many basic procedures. That's why I think if you ask me even you in the United States here if you are from here I don't know are in a dangerous moment this split now between let's say Bernie Sanders and Trump is too strong to be contained in a simple electoral process. Why? Because ultimately there is no compromise here, one side has to win. It's the struggle is much stronger. So what I am saying is that some kind of transnational bodies with a strong executive power to prevent this false ecology which is ecology of protecting just ourselves. For example I was a couple of years ago in how do you pronounce it, Island or Iceland, the country whose capital is Reykjavik is... Iceland, okay anyway sure and they they had a big movement about they want to build some phosphate whatever phosphate metal metal manipulation elaboration factory which would be bad for their coast which is otherwise extremely clean and so on. They said no. And I told them but their ecologists I attack them in a TV debate they invited me. I told them ah so for you it's okay to build it somewhere else you know, just no we want our island there clean and so on. This attitude of we no it's not enough to say we don't want it here, it's we don't want it in general or where how do we do we need to learn a global approach. Let me give you another example of this ethical revolution, I've written about it. My friend who is otherwise a right-winger but an intelligent one, Peter Sloterdijk, the German guy, he said that are we aware to what extent till now our entire ethics is an ethics of war, of sacrifice? We live our ordinary lives, earn money, pleasures but the true ethical test is war. Are you ready to sacrifice your life for your country? This is the ultimate ethical act. So and Hegel consequently conceptualized this, he said this is the paradox that our entire ethical life within the country has at its foundation as the ultimate ethical act war, which is internationally return to barbarism. In today's global society with ecological dangers whatever, we have some how to overcome this ethics. And the only way I see it is just through gradual awareness because I don't think incidentally we have half a century if you ask me, I think less. It will be you know maybe it's already even happening we are just not aware of it. These gradual changes look forget about drought in Africa look what's happening in Northeastern Siberia where that permafrost is melting and you know that more of this what are those bad gases that out of car fumes they come carbon dioxide? Carbon dioxide. Yeah you know that from that melting of permafrost more this dioxide is already going into the air than all the cars combined and so on. We are already in such tremendous changes, so I think that literally some kind of global emergency state will be needed. It will come I don't worry about will it come or not, I just worry that maybe it will come too fast. But you know what literally demoralizes me? How the rich people are already aware of it. I have a friend in New Zealand who told me you know how many rich people are already buying properties in New Zealand? Because they think if it's a global ecological catastrophe they are even far away three hours flight south even from Australia it's the safest place and so on. So again I think that it's not just more democracy. It is more democracy but also something horrible to say a more a stronger even more authoritarian state power. It's I don't have an easy answer here. Sorry for. Okay I move to the left is there anybody there yes here please. Um so the Treaty of the European Union states very vaguely security measures and I was wondering if you think that the EU has the capacity to form a united military or if it's more probable that it will devolve into either state factions or supra-nationalist... No I'm you are asking me about European Union? Yes. I must tell you openly my big skepticism about it. I don't have any illusions about it. European Union is so impotent look how it miserably failed in all the tests: refugees, Catalonia crisis and so on it's un... what what gives me hope is that it's still to such an incredible extent the target of all others. It's almost an obsession of Putin and Trump combined to ruin European Union. Whenever there is something that will weaken European Union Putin is at it, Catalonia Putin supported secession, Brexit Putin supported Brexit. Even now in Macedonia, you know it was very sad event. They have this long conflict for the name of the state. Greece doesn't want to allow Macedonians to be called Macedonians because they claim this is an ancient Greek name. Macedonians are also too arrogant they try to re-appropriate the historical legacy which is effectively Greek and not theirs. Because the Greek ancient Macedonians Alexander the Great and so on they were ethnically not today's Macedonians who are Slavs who arrived later and so if you go to Skopje you have there a big statue of Alexander the Great big statue of Philip the Great it's okay finally they arrived at a solution that it's a stupid one but a compromise acceptable that Macedonia should be called Northern Macedonia. And Russia puts all its machinery in Macedonia and in Greece against it for very egoist reason because if this happens then probably Macedonia will can join now it was blocked by Greece European Union and that's bad news for Russia. But what I'm saying is this absolute almost obsession with with with the danger of United Europe. Even for example John Bolton your greatest strategist. You notice how he threatened the many of my friends dismiss the Hague Criminal Court as just another imperialist blah blah. Wait a minute Trump and John Bolton they hate it, John Bolton threatened again we don't recognize it we are ready to attack it if it imprisons any Americans and so on. So this negative reason that European Union is so hated is what gives me a little bit of a hope that maybe maybe although I doubt something will happen. No it's more an ideal of what could have happened. I have no illusions here than the actually existing Europe. So uh again. Hi. Um I've heard you second time now talking against Lacan and again Lacan, yes. And what he said about hysterics, yes. I reminded you that there are three discourses that serve the master: the master's discourse, the perverted discourse and the hysteric's discourse, actually capitalism discourse is very much hysteric. I was wondering... Where did you find this? Oh in seminar that you're walking away from. And I just wanted to ask you that maybe if you dropped your Hegelianism and humanism, you would not end up supporting for example you know hysteric masters like Avital Ronell, you know and maybe you would become Lacanian again or even Althusserian. What do you think about that and and do you think that it's time to kind of balance the hysteric and pervert's discourse because that's where the analyst discourse is? There. No, no, no, I have in my new book again a lot of it but I think that no, no, no, where did you find this? It's absolutely clear that Lacan even precisely in his
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seminar and so on, he emphasizes all scientific inventions are hysterical in that nature. Hysteria is... Scientific, I mean. Sorry? No he is not very like liking of that high scientific hysteria. Oh no, wait a minute no, no Lacan is not a postmodernist. He absolutely believes science touches the real and so on. From analytic dialectical
seminar and so on, he emphasizes all scientific inventions are hysterical in that nature. Hysteria is... Scientific, I mean. Sorry? No he is not very like liking of that high scientific hysteria. Oh no, wait a minute no, no Lacan is not a postmodernist. He absolutely believes science touches the real and so on. From analytic dialectical
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discourse, not from a hysteric discourse. No, okay, I would love to enter this but nonetheless again... Hold the cup. Which
discourse, not from a hysteric discourse. No, okay, I would love to enter this but nonetheless again... Hold the cup. Which
Slavoj Žižek
is for you then the good discourse, the analyst? Analyst, yes. Yeah but the only way to analyst discourse is through hysterization. It's not through perversion, it's not through master. Analyst discourse is I think it's clear a twist in the hysteric's discourse. It's based on that because... Or quarter turn in pervert's discourse. Sorry? Or quarter turn, quarter turn, quarter turn in pervert's discourse. It gets you both ways it gets you to analyst. No, no but if you read Lacan clinically closely, he says that to even begin analyzing a pervert, you should you should hysterize him. Lacan follows here Freud who says in a beautiful way because many people think that perversion is like your unconscious is out there in the open you do everything. But Lacan follows Freud who says that nowhere is the unconscious so inaccessible as in perversion. Perversion is repression at its worst. What I tend to rehabilitate a little bit is master's discourse. If you ask me. I think that today to horrify you again... Hold the cup. We and Lacan was aware of this, we need a new figure of a master. And master is not don't confuse master with the one who knows better what is good for us and so on. Master is for me the enabling master, a true master does not tell you what you want, a true master, I'm aware of all Lacan all Mao's horrors but you know when Mao says yes you have the right to rebel. That's a true gesture of the master. The master's message is yes you can do it. And at the end then you get rid of the master. A proper master waits to be killed and so on then. But what I'm saying I'm so sad we don't have to go further into this because no I'm not afraid to answer what you briefly hinted at at the end about supporting Avital and so on. Didn't you notice that I didn't really support her? I wrote in my third installment or what she made a serious mistake blah blah. What really annoyed me is just how I just say let's look at all of it. Letters between him, her and so on all the exchange and see what's happening there. And again and again I get the answer no it doesn't matter she was his master that's decide everything and so on and so on. And and the other thing that annoys me a little bit is look what the guy was doing to her. Writing passionate love letters while at the same time mocking her. And when confronted with why are you doing it he says it was necessary for my career. No fuck off. I don't accept this that you simply accept this. And as I wrote there, I will not tell the names, I found something like this again and again in American academia my God. I quote I will not give you the name of who it is. Once I had a debate with a feminist big not even feminist gender theorist who attacked me in the usual way: you Lacanians are part of the ruling patriarchal discourse where we are the truly subversive. I told him look at all the posts of strong academic power that you hold, show me one Lacanian in the United States who has some serious academic power. The answer of this guy was Drusilla Cornell. Then I said listen but because at that point I was at a certain conference where Drusilla Cornell ferociously attacked Lacan from Derridean standpoint. I said but Drusilla Cornell I appreciate her but she is openly Derridean attacking Lacan. And the reply was no it doesn't mean anything she just has to do this for her career. Okay, the first irony was how now the first claim is that we Lacanians are establishment and then you have to pretend to be a Derridean and disavow... But you sound like a Derridean with your hysteric discourse. Sorry? You sound like a Derridean yourself. Derridean? No I think that Derrida is a perfect university discourse. Because this is the basic decon- this is what I reproach deconstruction with: the work is never done, analyze more, go on go on. What I like in Lacan is precisely the idea analysis is not an infinite process. At a certain point you say stop, it's over. It's finite. It's not this infinite you know also in the interpretation
is for you then the good discourse, the analyst? Analyst, yes. Yeah but the only way to analyst discourse is through hysterization. It's not through perversion, it's not through master. Analyst discourse is I think it's clear a twist in the hysteric's discourse. It's based on that because... Or quarter turn in pervert's discourse. Sorry? Or quarter turn, quarter turn, quarter turn in pervert's discourse. It gets you both ways it gets you to analyst. No, no but if you read Lacan clinically closely, he says that to even begin analyzing a pervert, you should you should hysterize him. Lacan follows here Freud who says in a beautiful way because many people think that perversion is like your unconscious is out there in the open you do everything. But Lacan follows Freud who says that nowhere is the unconscious so inaccessible as in perversion. Perversion is repression at its worst. What I tend to rehabilitate a little bit is master's discourse. If you ask me. I think that today to horrify you again... Hold the cup. We and Lacan was aware of this, we need a new figure of a master. And master is not don't confuse master with the one who knows better what is good for us and so on. Master is for me the enabling master, a true master does not tell you what you want, a true master, I'm aware of all Lacan all Mao's horrors but you know when Mao says yes you have the right to rebel. That's a true gesture of the master. The master's message is yes you can do it. And at the end then you get rid of the master. A proper master waits to be killed and so on then. But what I'm saying I'm so sad we don't have to go further into this because no I'm not afraid to answer what you briefly hinted at at the end about supporting Avital and so on. Didn't you notice that I didn't really support her? I wrote in my third installment or what she made a serious mistake blah blah. What really annoyed me is just how I just say let's look at all of it. Letters between him, her and so on all the exchange and see what's happening there. And again and again I get the answer no it doesn't matter she was his master that's decide everything and so on and so on. And and the other thing that annoys me a little bit is look what the guy was doing to her. Writing passionate love letters while at the same time mocking her. And when confronted with why are you doing it he says it was necessary for my career. No fuck off. I don't accept this that you simply accept this. And as I wrote there, I will not tell the names, I found something like this again and again in American academia my God. I quote I will not give you the name of who it is. Once I had a debate with a feminist big not even feminist gender theorist who attacked me in the usual way: you Lacanians are part of the ruling patriarchal discourse where we are the truly subversive. I told him look at all the posts of strong academic power that you hold, show me one Lacanian in the United States who has some serious academic power. The answer of this guy was Drusilla Cornell. Then I said listen but because at that point I was at a certain conference where Drusilla Cornell ferociously attacked Lacan from Derridean standpoint. I said but Drusilla Cornell I appreciate her but she is openly Derridean attacking Lacan. And the reply was no it doesn't mean anything she just has to do this for her career. Okay, the first irony was how now the first claim is that we Lacanians are establishment and then you have to pretend to be a Derridean and disavow... But you sound like a Derridean with your hysteric discourse. Sorry? You sound like a Derridean yourself. Derridean? No I think that Derrida is a perfect university discourse. Because this is the basic decon- this is what I reproach deconstruction with: the work is never done, analyze more, go on go on. What I like in Lacan is precisely the idea analysis is not an infinite process. At a certain point you say stop, it's over. It's finite. It's not this infinite you know also in the interpretation
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of the works of art I hate this professionally, oh Joyce you can read it for hundreds of years and so on and so on. That's why I hate Joyce and I prefer Beckett but that's another story. I
of the works of art I hate this professionally, oh Joyce you can read it for hundreds of years and so on and so on. That's why I hate Joyce and I prefer Beckett but that's another story. I
Slavoj Žižek
mean I would very much like to go I'm sorry okay left wingers again. I'm not going to pretend I understood all of that but if um if paranoia is knowledge... But can I tell you something to your own good? It's nice that you say this because many of my critics pretend that they understand but they don't. Okay, thank you. Um but if paranoia is a form of knowledge as I as I believe Lacan says then uh I have become very paranoid by this uh talk today. Um in a in a good sense I hope. Um now I I want to ask about uh agriculture uh because I think that that's something that we don't talk about and it sounds like a bit of a kind of folk politics uh notion idea. Uh but uh I think agriculture is maybe the repressed today in our political discourse because agriculture um is in some sense the very fuel on which our our society is based more or less. And yet um and to create a direct homology between between a Marxist and the bourgeois political economy, the bourgeois both of both of them were structured by urbanization more or less if I'm not incorrect. Um and and so I think in some sense the the move towards urbanization away from the feudal state uh based on agricultural production was what fueled capitalism, fueled the rise of capitalism. But we're now moving away from the production of agriculture and moving away from the consideration of agriculture as a as a critical problem today in our in our culture and in our political discourse. And um just to bring it to today's politics in a sense you might say that the conservative right, the alt-right who have been left behind are directly related to the to the to the ones part of our agricultural society that is no longer agricultural today. No, I got it. Sorry, leave him, my God. Yeah, I apologize. Yeah so so I guess that's that's more or less my... Yeah you know yeah no, no, no but my answer may surprise you. I think that first unfortunately
mean I would very much like to go I'm sorry okay left wingers again. I'm not going to pretend I understood all of that but if um if paranoia is knowledge... But can I tell you something to your own good? It's nice that you say this because many of my critics pretend that they understand but they don't. Okay, thank you. Um but if paranoia is a form of knowledge as I as I believe Lacan says then uh I have become very paranoid by this uh talk today. Um in a in a good sense I hope. Um now I I want to ask about uh agriculture uh because I think that that's something that we don't talk about and it sounds like a bit of a kind of folk politics uh notion idea. Uh but uh I think agriculture is maybe the repressed today in our political discourse because agriculture um is in some sense the very fuel on which our our society is based more or less. And yet um and to create a direct homology between between a Marxist and the bourgeois political economy, the bourgeois both of both of them were structured by urbanization more or less if I'm not incorrect. Um and and so I think in some sense the the move towards urbanization away from the feudal state uh based on agricultural production was what fueled capitalism, fueled the rise of capitalism. But we're now moving away from the production of agriculture and moving away from the consideration of agriculture as a as a critical problem today in our in our culture and in our political discourse. And um just to bring it to today's politics in a sense you might say that the conservative right, the alt-right who have been left behind are directly related to the to the to the ones part of our agricultural society that is no longer agricultural today. No, I got it. Sorry, leave him, my God. Yeah, I apologize. Yeah so so I guess that's that's more or less my... Yeah you know yeah no, no, no but my answer may surprise you. I think that first unfortunately
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we are so deep into this industrialization that in the present state of thing without killing half the population on the earth and so on, any return direct to ancient agriculture will mean catastrophe. For example a friend from Bangladesh explained to me why do they have such floodings there? Because people up there in Bhutan and so on stick to old agriculture but with modern healthcare there are too many of them, they are cutting too many woods and so on and so on. But another point that I want to make. I spoke recently with a German ecologist who convinced me in a totally crazy idea. That from the standpoint of earth pollution and so on, the best thing the worst thing that can happen to us is
we are so deep into this industrialization that in the present state of thing without killing half the population on the earth and so on, any return direct to ancient agriculture will mean catastrophe. For example a friend from Bangladesh explained to me why do they have such floodings there? Because people up there in Bhutan and so on stick to old agriculture but with modern healthcare there are too many of them, they are cutting too many woods and so on and so on. But another point that I want to make. I spoke recently with a German ecologist who convinced me in a totally crazy idea. That from the standpoint of earth pollution and so on, the best thing the worst thing that can happen to us is
Slavoj Žižek
if we all move to live in individual houses in the countryside and so on and so on. Ecologically the best thing is that as many of us as possible should be concentrated in big dirty cities where we are polluting each other and
if we all move to live in individual houses in the countryside and so on and so on. Ecologically the best thing is that as many of us as possible should be concentrated in big dirty cities where we are polluting each other and
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allow like this is basically some friends
allow like this is basically some friends
Slavoj Žižek
explained to me and allow the majority of nature to be relatively
explained to me and allow the majority of nature to be relatively
unknown
unpolluted. I was told for example that this is the Japanese
unpolluted. I was told for example that this is the Japanese
Slavoj Žižek
formula. They have of land this gigantic mega cities around Tokyo around around Yokohama and so on or Osaka But the they keep it very much under control. It's nature, small farmers, forests and so on and so on. So as a short-term solution if you ask me I'm almost for this: more alienation in
formula. They have of land this gigantic mega cities around Tokyo around around Yokohama and so on or Osaka But the they keep it very much under control. It's nature, small farmers, forests and so on and so on. So as a short-term solution if you ask me I'm almost for this: more alienation in
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between in that's for me today the
between in that's for me today the
Slavoj Žižek
only way to save some kind of a peaceful natural reproduction because again I'm always horrified by this idea move to the countryside and build a sustainable house there. As some architects explained to me, those famous sustainable houses to build them you spend more energy, you pollute more and so on and so on. I I see it's a real problem what you are saying. I'm just think I just think that and it's maybe a too tragic view, you can convert me, that the natural that the our earth is already so much polluted destabilized through industrial corruption and so on that I don't see any direct way back. Without... I I I agree with you for the most part. And so what would be your solution? Would you accept this: let's concentrate people in big dirty cities? I think that that is almost the reigning ideology of our time because that's that's mainly what we've been doing is concentrating in big urban centers whereas the urban centers are what's taking up most of the resources themselves. That's where most people are concentrated. Yeah but do you imagine nonetheless if you have a big urban center you know you spend it's very vulgar what I will say now you spend much less on heating on all that because we are much it's much more expensive to to organize our level of standard in isolated country houses. I absolutely agree with you. But a dispersion of of of social organization is what I think needs to be considered and we often we think of one or the other. I agree but still I would emphasize also some higher level concentration of power because I think again that maybe with future ecological catastrophes again you will have to have larger larger international we will have to move hundreds of millions of people I think. Thank you. Sorry let's yes. Last question. That's it. I'm sorry okay okay it's terror it's terror but okay please. How you doing tonight Slavoj? No woman has spoken tonight. You know what, you're right. Hey, sorry absolutely. I didn't get what happened now. They want a woman to speak. Yeah. What so I'm going to no woman has spoken so I'm going to hysterize a bit if you don't mind. Sorry, you will? I'm going to hysterize a bit if you don't mind. Can you speak do you have... hysterize... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, make sure you get my good side. So we already got the thing about the hysteric's discourse versus analyst's discourse and also there's no Sinthome which is very important I think in really bringing everything together. Isn't that really like Lacan's solution, the Sinthome? You know, he talks about from Seminar implicitly onwards until he starts playing with knots you know. Um but I think one of the other things that that I want to talk about is social democracy which you seem to like but not like, um which all of us do. But there is the thing that you don't talk about which really as a Lacanian, why don't you? The drive. The capitalist drive for money. Capital is the object a, is what we're supposed to be driving towards and we can never ever get it. So it's a logic of capital that we need to get rid of and it's not just simply replacing a state with another state you know the Leninist model, in the Cultural Revolution which I think we see I'm sure Badiou and Lazarus and people like that agree with the moving from the politics from the objective, the state and history combined
only way to save some kind of a peaceful natural reproduction because again I'm always horrified by this idea move to the countryside and build a sustainable house there. As some architects explained to me, those famous sustainable houses to build them you spend more energy, you pollute more and so on and so on. I I see it's a real problem what you are saying. I'm just think I just think that and it's maybe a too tragic view, you can convert me, that the natural that the our earth is already so much polluted destabilized through industrial corruption and so on that I don't see any direct way back. Without... I I I agree with you for the most part. And so what would be your solution? Would you accept this: let's concentrate people in big dirty cities? I think that that is almost the reigning ideology of our time because that's that's mainly what we've been doing is concentrating in big urban centers whereas the urban centers are what's taking up most of the resources themselves. That's where most people are concentrated. Yeah but do you imagine nonetheless if you have a big urban center you know you spend it's very vulgar what I will say now you spend much less on heating on all that because we are much it's much more expensive to to organize our level of standard in isolated country houses. I absolutely agree with you. But a dispersion of of of social organization is what I think needs to be considered and we often we think of one or the other. I agree but still I would emphasize also some higher level concentration of power because I think again that maybe with future ecological catastrophes again you will have to have larger larger international we will have to move hundreds of millions of people I think. Thank you. Sorry let's yes. Last question. That's it. I'm sorry okay okay it's terror it's terror but okay please. How you doing tonight Slavoj? No woman has spoken tonight. You know what, you're right. Hey, sorry absolutely. I didn't get what happened now. They want a woman to speak. Yeah. What so I'm going to no woman has spoken so I'm going to hysterize a bit if you don't mind. Sorry, you will? I'm going to hysterize a bit if you don't mind. Can you speak do you have... hysterize... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, make sure you get my good side. So we already got the thing about the hysteric's discourse versus analyst's discourse and also there's no Sinthome which is very important I think in really bringing everything together. Isn't that really like Lacan's solution, the Sinthome? You know, he talks about from Seminar implicitly onwards until he starts playing with knots you know. Um but I think one of the other things that that I want to talk about is social democracy which you seem to like but not like, um which all of us do. But there is the thing that you don't talk about which really as a Lacanian, why don't you? The drive. The capitalist drive for money. Capital is the object a, is what we're supposed to be driving towards and we can never ever get it. So it's a logic of capital that we need to get rid of and it's not just simply replacing a state with another state you know the Leninist model, in the Cultural Revolution which I think we see I'm sure Badiou and Lazarus and people like that agree with the moving from the politics from the objective, the state and history combined
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together in exteriority with um politics in command, politics as the subjective, as thought of the
together in exteriority with um politics in command, politics as the subjective, as thought of the
Slavoj Žižek
people. So what do you think about all that? Give me this is a nice formula but can you just give me a
people. So what do you think about all that? Give me this is a nice formula but can you just give me a
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little bit of a hint, an example of how this is done? Because I'm afraid of these principled formulas then I cannot translate them into... The revolution in the Philippines. The New People's Army, the Communist Party of the Philippines. In the red zones, they've been providing medical help for the peasants in the liberated zones. Um they issue divorces which is illegal in the Philippines, the red zones are the only places with divorces, so they're pushing together progressive women's rights, land reform, gay rights because a lot of the members of the Philippines of the Communist Party and the New People's Army are gay or you know LGBTQ+ Okay. No I am all for this but I again the problem I see is how people always give me in ten years ago it was fashionable to mention Chiapas in Mexico and so on and I always saying yes this works at a certain level. Can it take over all of society? Well not whole... and this is not a rhetorical question, I I think that no I will just formulate my position now clearly. I think I think that if anything it's horrible what I will say now I know. The the left should rediscover the state,
little bit of a hint, an example of how this is done? Because I'm afraid of these principled formulas then I cannot translate them into... The revolution in the Philippines. The New People's Army, the Communist Party of the Philippines. In the red zones, they've been providing medical help for the peasants in the liberated zones. Um they issue divorces which is illegal in the Philippines, the red zones are the only places with divorces, so they're pushing together progressive women's rights, land reform, gay rights because a lot of the members of the Philippines of the Communist Party and the New People's Army are gay or you know LGBTQ+ Okay. No I am all for this but I again the problem I see is how people always give me in ten years ago it was fashionable to mention Chiapas in Mexico and so on and I always saying yes this works at a certain level. Can it take over all of society? Well not whole... and this is not a rhetorical question, I I think that no I will just formulate my position now clearly. I think I think that if anything it's horrible what I will say now I know. The the left should rediscover the state,
Slavoj Žižek
a strong state. Why? Sorry? Why? Because the only thing that can save us is a strong state or even trans-state organization. I don't believe in these local organizations, self-management when people organize themselves. This goes up to a certain level. So if we think of it dialectically... Sorry? If we if we think of it dialectically, if we have a term and a term in its place, the state is the place of the term, the state is the bourgeois society, it's the local, the locality of capitalism existing, of the locality of the logic of capital, so if we continue to have a state we continue to have this place where bourgeois society is. Okay but wait a minute, you know my first reproach again would have been that all this attempt at whatever you call them, let's call it maybe I'm misreading you, local self-organization where people organize themselves to cover for their needs and so on. I think that this is what fascinates me in modern society. I want to again I will say now a thing which is even more horrible maybe for you. I want to rehabilitate alienation. Alienation in the sense of I want to live in a world where I don't know everybody. Three thirds of the people fuck off the way you live and so on. I and I think this is our only reality, it would be a nightmare to live for me in a closed society where we understand each other. True tolerance for me is not the tolerance of a neighbor whom you love and know. It's the tolerance of a neighbor whom you don't understand maybe even despise it horrifies you and so on and so on. So I think that your model works for certain works up to a certain point as it were. So and you know who also tried this? It shocked me. Look I supported them publicly I love them: Podemos in Spain. That was their great motto: forget about big ideologies they are bullshit, listen to concrete people to their worries
a strong state. Why? Sorry? Why? Because the only thing that can save us is a strong state or even trans-state organization. I don't believe in these local organizations, self-management when people organize themselves. This goes up to a certain level. So if we think of it dialectically... Sorry? If we if we think of it dialectically, if we have a term and a term in its place, the state is the place of the term, the state is the bourgeois society, it's the local, the locality of capitalism existing, of the locality of the logic of capital, so if we continue to have a state we continue to have this place where bourgeois society is. Okay but wait a minute, you know my first reproach again would have been that all this attempt at whatever you call them, let's call it maybe I'm misreading you, local self-organization where people organize themselves to cover for their needs and so on. I think that this is what fascinates me in modern society. I want to again I will say now a thing which is even more horrible maybe for you. I want to rehabilitate alienation. Alienation in the sense of I want to live in a world where I don't know everybody. Three thirds of the people fuck off the way you live and so on. I and I think this is our only reality, it would be a nightmare to live for me in a closed society where we understand each other. True tolerance for me is not the tolerance of a neighbor whom you love and know. It's the tolerance of a neighbor whom you don't understand maybe even despise it horrifies you and so on and so on. So I think that your model works for certain works up to a certain point as it were. So and you know who also tried this? It shocked me. Look I supported them publicly I love them: Podemos in Spain. That was their great motto: forget about big ideologies they are bullshit, listen to concrete people to their worries
unknown
and so on and so on. And then when they come close to power they somehow disintegrated. They somehow their electoral manifesto was a very modest social democracy. In other
and so on and so on. And then when they come close to power they somehow disintegrated. They somehow their electoral manifesto was a very modest social democracy. In other
Slavoj Žižek
words, what I would like to hear from you is obviously this small this communities that's wonderful they do divorce all that up and down. What kind of a state do they demand or can they survive without a state? You know I think that even Marxism is here a little bit too a little bit too fast in its theory. Marxism I think simply doesn't have a theory of the
words, what I would like to hear from you is obviously this small this communities that's wonderful they do divorce all that up and down. What kind of a state do they demand or can they survive without a state? You know I think that even Marxism is here a little bit too a little bit too fast in its theory. Marxism I think simply doesn't have a theory of the
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state. And if you want to be Lacanian here, look at the ambiguity of Lacan here. He is even too Lacan formulates the problem how to
state. And if you want to be Lacanian here, look at the ambiguity of Lacan here. He is even too Lacan formulates the problem how to
Slavoj Žižek
break out of the logic of capital, but his only consistent answer is the position of a saint. He literally mentions this in seminar and later, that the only one who effectively saint of course not in the moral sense, but in this saint and the saint at the same time
break out of the logic of capital, but his only consistent answer is the position of a saint. He literally mentions this in seminar and later, that the only one who effectively saint of course not in the moral sense, but in this saint and the saint at the same time
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excrement and so on madman... No, sorry, just to
excrement and so on madman... No, sorry, just to
Slavoj Žižek
finish and then I will give you. My problem
finish and then I will give you. My problem
Chris Simmons
with with this abstract with this my problem is that when you have this self-local democracy movement, I claim that whatever you call it, I claim that without an element of healthy alienation it always leads at the end to the violent return of a certain figure of a master. And not the master I would like. This is my experience already that's what horrified me in for example all those communes. I'm old enough to not to live in them but to see them in the late sixties you know. They were very anti-authoritarian. But then if you look closely at them you always discover that there is one guy or a couple of guys who terrorized all the others on behalf of: we really should prevent any authoritarianism and so on and so on. No, no, no what what interests me is how do your communities where they organize their life the way you described, I don't believe that you can simply say then this the dream is that these communities then collaborate, participate, build larger communities and so on and so on. That's not strong enough for today. The world is so united today with global market and so on that you have to the only way to combat global market is to fight it also at a global level.
with with this abstract with this my problem is that when you have this self-local democracy movement, I claim that whatever you call it, I claim that without an element of healthy alienation it always leads at the end to the violent return of a certain figure of a master. And not the master I would like. This is my experience already that's what horrified me in for example all those communes. I'm old enough to not to live in them but to see them in the late sixties you know. They were very anti-authoritarian. But then if you look closely at them you always discover that there is one guy or a couple of guys who terrorized all the others on behalf of: we really should prevent any authoritarianism and so on and so on. No, no, no what what interests me is how do your communities where they organize their life the way you described, I don't believe that you can simply say then this the dream is that these communities then collaborate, participate, build larger communities and so on and so on. That's not strong enough for today. The world is so united today with global market and so on that you have to the only way to combat global market is to fight it also at a global level.
Slavoj Žižek
But is it not all united? I think that's one of the key points in Lacan's logic in sexuation: non-all. In Lacan's logic of sexuation non-all. I would love to go in this direction. Sorry if I don't follow this
But is it not all united? I think that's one of the key points in Lacan's logic in sexuation: non-all. In Lacan's logic of sexuation non-all. I would love to go in this direction. Sorry if I don't follow this
Chris Simmons
but for me now me and my friends wrote books on it. When you say non-all, but non-all for Lacan does not mean that there is something outside. Non-all means there is no exception. Lacan is very clear here. Lacan's non-all, the second part of non-all is there is no exception. And I think this is the whole point, that's
but for me now me and my friends wrote books on it. When you say non-all, but non-all for Lacan does not mean that there is something outside. Non-all means there is no exception. Lacan is very clear here. Lacan's non-all, the second part of non-all is there is no exception. And I think this is the whole point, that's
Slavoj Žižek
why for example when Lacan speaks about feminine sexuality he is totally misread as if non-all of women means women are not totally integrated into symbolic, part of them remains outside and so on and so on. So we
why for example when Lacan speaks about feminine sexuality he is totally misread as if non-all of women means women are not totally integrated into symbolic, part of them remains outside and so on and so on. So we
Chris Simmons
would have to go very deep into this and
would have to go very deep into this and
Slavoj Žižek
it's very
it's very
Chris Simmons
contested
contested
Slavoj Žižek
topic. What did Lacan exactly mean by non-all? And here if you want the other guy mentioned this, yes I am in some
topic. What did Lacan exactly mean by non-all? And here if you want the other guy mentioned this, yes I am in some
Chris Simmons
sense critical of Lacan in the sense that and he admits it if you really read closely his last seminars, very last where the whole seminar is five pages or what. It's clear that he concedes a defeat. He reaches a certain limit around "Encore" and then he looks for a different ways
sense critical of Lacan in the sense that and he admits it if you really read closely his last seminars, very last where the whole seminar is five pages or what. It's clear that he concedes a defeat. He reaches a certain limit around "Encore" and then he looks for a different ways
Slavoj Žižek
out, for example knots all those graphs and so on and at the end in a very tragic way he admits a failure. So Lacan is a very unfinished in the sense that tragically open thinker. This is why I disagree with those Lacanians who are looking in last Lacan for some secret you know, what did he whisper when he was dying? Was there some final wisdom? No, it's much more tragic it was not. And I think backward if you look at great philosophers, I think that this is the fate of most of them. The greatest Hegel is not the last Hegel. The greatest Plato is not the last Plato. The greatest Plato is "Parmenides" where he gets into a total mess and then after "Parmenides" he just tries to bring some order but failed. I'm sorry we cannot go into it but it's a wonderful topic because... Can I just point out just one little thing you said because I love puns and Lacan... Sorry because I love puns and Lacan said you said the thing Lacan left is Lacan's knot. Okay yes but but you know you know that in the his last seminars he precisely denounced knots as a false way. He totally rejects it in at the very end. And I think the whole problem is first even to formulate what was Lacan struggling with in the last years of his life. But that's okay. Sorry, sorry. I would love to go into this dogmatic Lacanian direction although I have problems there because of my Hegelian descent. Okay so... Slavoj I'm sorry thank you so very much I think we're going to have to leave it there but thank you very much for this... No I'm grateful to you and I would love to... Sorry but seriously you know what was the problem here? And this is my usual mistake. I should have made it clear: is it more politics, Marx, and even with Marx we can talk about Marx at a much higher conceptual level and so on. Because I think that the more fundamental problem of Marx and Lacan was aware of it is that Marxian notion of communism is nonetheless a dream of keeping capitalism without the capitalist object. Marx sees clearly that capitalism introduces a certain dynamic. But then his idea is that then this dynamic is thwarted by the obstacle: capitalist form appropriation of surplus value.
out, for example knots all those graphs and so on and at the end in a very tragic way he admits a failure. So Lacan is a very unfinished in the sense that tragically open thinker. This is why I disagree with those Lacanians who are looking in last Lacan for some secret you know, what did he whisper when he was dying? Was there some final wisdom? No, it's much more tragic it was not. And I think backward if you look at great philosophers, I think that this is the fate of most of them. The greatest Hegel is not the last Hegel. The greatest Plato is not the last Plato. The greatest Plato is "Parmenides" where he gets into a total mess and then after "Parmenides" he just tries to bring some order but failed. I'm sorry we cannot go into it but it's a wonderful topic because... Can I just point out just one little thing you said because I love puns and Lacan... Sorry because I love puns and Lacan said you said the thing Lacan left is Lacan's knot. Okay yes but but you know you know that in the his last seminars he precisely denounced knots as a false way. He totally rejects it in at the very end. And I think the whole problem is first even to formulate what was Lacan struggling with in the last years of his life. But that's okay. Sorry, sorry. I would love to go into this dogmatic Lacanian direction although I have problems there because of my Hegelian descent. Okay so... Slavoj I'm sorry thank you so very much I think we're going to have to leave it there but thank you very much for this... No I'm grateful to you and I would love to... Sorry but seriously you know what was the problem here? And this is my usual mistake. I should have made it clear: is it more politics, Marx, and even with Marx we can talk about Marx at a much higher conceptual level and so on. Because I think that the more fundamental problem of Marx and Lacan was aware of it is that Marxian notion of communism is nonetheless a dream of keeping capitalism without the capitalist object. Marx sees clearly that capitalism introduces a certain dynamic. But then his idea is that then this dynamic is thwarted by the obstacle: capitalist form appropriation of surplus value.
unknown
But then Marx's conclusion
But then Marx's conclusion
Slavoj Žižek
is if we drop this capitalist form, we get an even more explosive pure development. We don't get it I think. I think that that Marx should have been more radical and that the way he Marx imagined communism is capitalism without its obstacle. Communism what Marx imagined as capitalism is I think it's a communist fantasy. It's a fantasy of communism without its without its obstacle. And this is for me the absolutely crucial element of what Marx calls sorry what Lacan calls "plus-de-jouir", surplus enjoyment. That is the constitutive it's the constitutive obstacle. It's something that apparently is an obstacle but you take away the obstacle and you lose the thing itself. Okay this is very speculative I'm sorry we don't have time but I I must I will not be bluffing now. I want sincerely to apologize of this a little bit of confusion in my talk. You know too political in the false sense of bad politics, too concrete, and at the same time this escapades into pure theory but I
is if we drop this capitalist form, we get an even more explosive pure development. We don't get it I think. I think that that Marx should have been more radical and that the way he Marx imagined communism is capitalism without its obstacle. Communism what Marx imagined as capitalism is I think it's a communist fantasy. It's a fantasy of communism without its without its obstacle. And this is for me the absolutely crucial element of what Marx calls sorry what Lacan calls "plus-de-jouir", surplus enjoyment. That is the constitutive it's the constitutive obstacle. It's something that apparently is an obstacle but you take away the obstacle and you lose the thing itself. Okay this is very speculative I'm sorry we don't have time but I I must I will not be bluffing now. I want sincerely to apologize of this a little bit of confusion in my talk. You know too political in the false sense of bad politics, too concrete, and at the same time this escapades into pure theory but I
unknown
did
did
Slavoj Žižek
so what I did is I tried as we say cynically in Slovene we have a proverb, when you try to sit between two chairs you usually fall down in the hole. You know so I hope to meet you again and maybe we can risk a little bit more of a theory. I'm grateful to you. Thank you.
so what I did is I tried as we say cynically in Slovene we have a proverb, when you try to sit between two chairs you usually fall down in the hole. You know so I hope to meet you again and maybe we can risk a little bit more of a theory. I'm grateful to you. Thank you.