The Legacy of the French Revolution w/ Slavoj Zizek on Bastille Day | Jacobin Show
Interview · Jacobin ·
2021-07-14 · 1:47:12 · 15,361 words
revolution-violencehistorycommunism-socialismideologyrace-antisemitismecology-climategeopolitics-warliberalism-political-correctnesshegel-dialecticsdemocracycinema-art-culturefascism-populismcapitalismeconomics
Žižek mounts a detailed empirical and philosophical defense of the French Revolution and Jacobin terror against liberal critiques, arguing that the Terror's scale was exaggerated, that Robespierre was a procedural liberal overthrown by a parliamentary majority, and that Thermidor itself was bloodier than the Terror it ended. He argues the Haitian Revolution, epitomized by Polish soldiers defecting after hearing Haitian rebels sing the Marseillaise, was the true universalization of the French Revolution, making it a genuinely world-historic event. He distills four Jacobin principles (voluntarism, egalitarianism, progressive terror, trust in the people) as necessary for the coming ecological and pandemic emergency state. He then defends Lenin's voluntarist break with Menshevik orthodoxy and cites Bolivia under Morales and García Linera as a contemporary model of principled pragmatism. Žižek argues that great revolutionaries (Robespierre, Saint-Just, Lenin) understood revolutionary situations as genuinely open and requiring improvisation, using Lenin's NEP and Bolivia as examples of principled yet pragmatic governance. He then delivers an extended critique of identity politics, arguing it imposes a horizontal image of social antagonisms that collapses when applied to class struggle, illustrated by his reading of Nomadland and Luca as 'classism' and his neo-colonial reframing of immigration (citing Rumsfeld as creator of ISIS). The second half surveys prospects for 21st-century revolution by critiquing Habermas's 'catch-up revolution' thesis through examples of Solidarity, PiS in Poland, and the Yellow Vests, before concluding that climate change and pandemic demand voluntarist emergency-state intervention analogous to wartime mobilization. Žižek concludes his interview by arguing that the climate crisis in Siberia necessitates a form of communism, as capitalism is incapable of handling such large-scale emergencies. The segment transitions to a promotional set-piece for Jacobin magazine's Bastille Day sale, featuring a host demonstrating the subscription process and joking about the physical utility of the print magazine. Finally, host Paul introduces Todd Wolfson, who discusses the Higher Education Labor Summit, highlighting the dual crises of neoliberal disinvestment and pandemic-related job losses in higher education.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 29
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
The counter-revolutionary overthrow of Robespierre; Žižek inverts the standard liberal narrative by demonstrating that more people were guillotined in Thermidor's first weeks than during the entire preceding Jacobin Terror.
The drift from republican form to personal dictatorship; Žižek praises Robespierre and Saint-Just for recognizing this danger and choosing defeat over becoming the new Bonaparte.
as “repetition”
Hegelian/Marxist concept: the Haitian Revolution as the repetition that tested and universalized the French Revolution by showing a totally different race and cultural group could recognize itself in it.
Žižek's characterization of the Haitian order to 'kill all white people': not revolutionary radicalism but an attempt to copy and re-establish the white power structure with a different group at the top.
as “more European than we Europeans”
Žižek's formulation defending against charges of Euro-centrism: Haiti, by embodying Enlightenment equality most purely, was more faithful to Europe's best legacy than Europe itself.
Hegelian category: Žižek argues the French Revolution only became a world-historic model through its repetition in Haiti, which universalized it beyond Western European Enlightenment.
Elements of state control and direction necessary in emergencies, explicitly distinguished from secret-police terror, as the third of four Jacobin features Žižek argues must be reinvented today.
The fourth Jacobin principle needed today: genuine reliance on popular self-organization beyond electoral cycles, exemplified by Vietnam's successful pandemic response through local coordination.
as “principled pragmatic stance”
Term coined by Žižek together with Álvaro García Linera: holding a principled communist horizon while being very cautious and non-alienating in how one actualizes that stance in practice.
The principled long-term goal of communist transformation that is held alongside pragmatic short-term flexibility in García Linera's and Žižek's 'principled pragmatic stance.'
Žižek's term, drawn from Robespierre and Saint-Just, for the genuinely indeterminate nature of revolutionary situations that require improvisation rather than following a history-predetermined script.
Žižek analyzes both Thermidor and the White Russian forces under Kolchak as exhibiting greater brutality than the revolutions they opposed, complicating the standard anti-revolutionary narrative.
The Enlightenment principle that certain values and rights apply to all humans, which contemporary identity-politics critics on the left attack as Eurocentric; Žižek defends it while noting its historical blind spot on literal slavery.
Žižek's phrase for identity politics' spatial imaginary, 'I'm here, you are there, we should tolerate each other', which makes class struggle unintelligible because class is a vertical, not horizontal, antagonism.
The fundamental Marxist antagonism between capital and labour, which Žižek argues identity politics catastrophically fails to address because it reduces structural antagonisms to horizontal cultural tolerance.
Žižek's coinage ('what I'm tempted to call classism') for the cultural-identity-politics treatment of class, affirming workers' 'own way of life' and rituals rather than exposing the structural impossibility of their self-identity under capitalism.
as “proletariat”
Marx's working class, cited here for Marx's claim that proletarian identity is self-contradictory, they cannot achieve satisfactory self-identity, which Žižek deploys against cultural-recognition solutions for nomadic workers.
as “woke Hollywood”
Žižek's label for a trend in contemporary Hollywood (Nomadland, Luca) that is politically correct but ideologically mystifying, packaging structural contradictions as stories of cultural recognition.
The structural contradictions in society, which identity politics collapses into a horizontal image of mutual tolerance rather than treating as irresolvable conflicts rooted in position.
as “neo-colonialism”
The ongoing economic and political domination of formerly colonized countries, which Žižek identifies as the real root cause of refugee and immigration crises, displacing humanitarian framing.
as “Nachholende Revolution”
Habermas's term ('catch-up revolution') for Eastern European post-1989 revolutions as merely trying to match Western liberal democracy; Žižek critiques it as condescending and empirically wrong given Solidarity's original social-welfare demands.
Žižek's Hegelian diagnosis: post-communist neoliberalism's betrayal of Solidarity's social-welfare aspirations returned in inverted form as right-wing nationalist parties (PiS, etc.) that nonetheless enact social transfers the liberal left refused.
The market-oriented ideology that captured post-communist Eastern Europe after 1989, which Žižek argues betrayed the genuine social-welfare aspirations of movements like Solidarity.
The approaching convergence of recurring pandemics and ecological catastrophe that will require radical voluntarist measures and renders any 'return to normality' impossible.
Political action that proceeds against objective market logic or the ripening of productive forces; Žižek deploys it positively as the first of four Jacobin principles required for the emergency state.
Equality as a political demand that even current power must pay lip service to; the second of Žižek's four Jacobin features needed today, exemplified by universal healthcare over protected bubbles.
The necessity of a new form of communism to manage large-scale population movements and emergency measures caused by climate change, which capitalism cannot confront.
The idea that the extreme warming of Northern Siberia serves as a signal to prepare for large-scale population movements and emergency measures.
The assertion that capitalism is structurally incapable of confronting the massive, urgent problems posed by climate change.
Stories he reaches for 5
Polish soldiers in Napoleon's army approaching Haitian rebel forces expected tribal singing but heard the Marseillaise; realizing they were fighting on the wrong side, they defected and joined the Black rebels, for Žižek the most sublime proof that the Haitian Revolution universalized the French one.
“when they approached more they saw the rebels, the Blacks are singing Marseillaise... The French soldiers said 'Wait a minute, are we here fighting on the right side?' They changed sides”
Bolivia under Morales and García Linera is Žižek's primary contemporary example of radical left success: real purchasing power of ordinary workers more than doubled, while big capital was controlled but made to work for the state rather than eliminated.
“in Bolivia they did not screw it up. The real purchase power of ordinary worker in the... years of Morales' first reign, more than redoubled.”
Robespierre and Saint-Just used the metaphor of navigating a wild sea without maps or compasses to describe revolutionary practice, you must improvise rather than execute a history-predetermined plan.
“revolution is like you are on wild sea on a boat and you don't have any maps, any compasses, orientation, you have to improvise”
After the civil war, Lenin welcomed Rockefeller-era Western corporate managers and was fascinated by their organizational capacity, seeing an emancipatory potential in their ability to coordinate large enterprises, a model for principled pragmatism.
“Lenin was fascinated with them. He saw in them masters of how to coordinate, organize large factories, all the complexity. He saw an emancipatory potential in them.”
Knowing the drift toward personal dictatorship and debating whether to seize it, Robespierre and Saint-Just concluded it was better to lose their physical heads than take that path, presented as one of history's most beautiful ethical gestures.
“it's better for us to lose our physical head than to take that path”
Works invoked 7
Philosophy of Right book
Hegel's work; cited for a footnote praising Haiti as proof of universal Enlightenment capacity. Žižek uses it to counter charges of Euro-centrism and to establish Haiti's world-historic status.
Nomadland film
2020 film by Chloé Zhao, Best Picture Oscar winner (ASR: 'the movie which triumphed at Oscars this year', talk recorded/aired 2021). Žižek calls it 'honest, nice, liberal' but critiques it as 'classism': affirming nomadic workers' cultural identity and rituals rather than exposing the structural impossibility of their self-identification under capitalism.
Antisemitic forgery reprinted by Kolchak's counter-revolutionary regime; Žižek cites it as evidence that the White counter-revolution was far more ideologically extreme and antisemitic than the Bolsheviks.
La Marseillaise song
The French revolutionary anthem sung by Haitian rebels, which caused Polish soldiers in Napoleon's army to defect and join them; for Žižek the most sublime symbol of the Haitian Revolution's universalization of the French one.
Jacobin (journal) journal
Promoted via a Bastille Day sale; the host demonstrates the subscription process and jokes about the physical magazine's utility.
An event organized by Todd Wolfson to build a collective voice for labor in higher education, addressing neoliberal governance and pandemic impacts.
Luca film
2021 Pixar animated film about a sea-monster boy on the Italian coast who forms a friendship with human boys; Žižek had not seen it but critiques it as reducing immigration, otherness, and LGBT issues to a humanitarian recognition parable while ignoring the neo-colonial structural causes. ASR renders characters vaguely; corrected to Pixar's Luca based on description of 'sea monster, Italian coast, befriends a gay boy', widely noted queer reading of Luca/Alberto relationship.
People invoked 30
Mensheviks negative
Characterized as 'old-fashioned orthodox Marxists' who insisted on the gradual passage to bourgeois democracy before revolution; used as the foil for Lenin's voluntarism and for what Marx's 'I am not a Marxist' targeted.
Associate Professor of Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University and President of the Rutgers Union of Graduate Workers, Faculty and Postdoctoral Associates.
Representative mentioned alongside Bernie Sanders regarding the 'College for All' bill.
Vladimir Lenin positive
Held up as the paradigm of pragmatic revolutionary governance: fully aware of the open situation, the NEP shows how to maintain principled power while using market mechanisms strategically.
Current Bolivian president mentioned alongside Morales and García Linera as part of Bolivia's continuing successful radical governance.
Adam Michnik positive
Polish dissident Žižek knew personally through his links with Poland; cited as testimony that early Solidarność had strong workers' and social-welfare orientation before the church took over.
Rehabilitated as actually guilty: British secret documents show he was systematically bribed by Britain, vindicating the Jacobin trial conventionally condemned as the onset of revolutionary madness.
Donald Rumsfeld negative
US Defense Secretary; Žižek wrote a text arguing Rumsfeld's 'catastrophic politics in Iraq, Syria' was the main cause of ISIS, invoked to show the immigration/refugee crisis has geopolitical, not humanitarian, roots.
Alexander Kolchak negative
Leader of the Siberian White counter-revolution; immediately reprinted the Protocols of Zion, promoted the Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy (Trotsky as Jewish devil), and conducted purges far more brutal than the Bolsheviks according to a British general's memoirs.
Francis Fukuyama negative
'Fukuyama's world of capitalist liberal democracy' is Žižek's phrase for the end-of-history horizon against which new revolts (Yellow Vests, etc.) articulate their discontent, used critically to frame the post-political condition.
Toussaint Louverture positive
Haitian revolutionary leader; cited as head of the ruling circle in Haiti that sent a delegation recognized as equals by the Assemblée Nationale, before Napoleon reversed these gains.
Álvaro García Linera positive
Described as 'my good friend' (met twice); Bolivian Vice President who co-coined 'principled pragmatic stance' with Žižek in debate; cited as exemplifying successful radical left governance in Bolivia.
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just positive
Cited alongside Robespierre for the 'wild sea without maps' metaphor; treated as equally aware of the open, improvisatory nature of revolutionary situations.
Jean-Claude Milner positive
Described as 'my friend' though 'not exactly a radical leftist'; cited for arguing that the American Revolution was always a compromise and remains unfinished, in polemic against Hannah Arendt.
Mentioned only as the target of Kolchak's antisemitic propaganda depicting him as a 'Jewish devil' in the Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy narrative.
Senator mentioned in the context of the 'College for All' bill discussed by Todd Wolfson.
Evo Morales positive
Cited as proof the radical left can succeed without 'screwing it up'; under his presidency real purchasing power of ordinary workers more than doubled while big capital was controlled but exploited for public ends.
Maximilien Robespierre positive
Approvingly cites Robespierre's 'wild sea without maps or compasses' metaphor for revolutionary improvisation; treated as a model of authentic revolutionary awareness who understood the open, indeterminate nature of the situation.
Napoleon negative
Portrayed as the reactionary who sent an army to Haiti to re-establish slavery and ordered the extermination of all slaves as a dangerous precedent; the embodiment of Bonapartist counter-revolution.
Lenín Moreno negative
Named in a joke as 'the only Lenin I really don't like', the Ecuadorian president who delivered Julian Assange to British authorities; deployed as a pun on the shared first name with Lenin.
Jarosław Kaczyński positive
Leader of Poland's Law and Justice (PiS) party; Žižek says 'I hate them' (personal: negative) but uses their social policies, higher wages, better retirement, as evidence that the betrayed socialist legacy returned as right-wing populism (intellectual: positive, deployed to make his point).
Christa Wolf positive
East German writer and dissident who argued some forms of minimal socialist solidarity could survive as lessons even after Western integration; Žižek defends her view against Habermas's attack.
Hannah Arendt negative
Target of Milner's polemic (endorsed by Žižek) against her favorable account of the American Revolution; Žižek implies her account is too credulous about American emancipation.
Jürgen Habermas negative
Coined 'Nachholende Revolution' (catch-up revolution, described as 'a very unfortunate term'); Žižek attacks him for applying it condescendingly to Eastern Europe and for denouncing Christa Wolf's defense of minimal socialist solidarity as proto-totalitarian.
Named by Žižek ('I think it was his brother Joseph') as the general Napoleon sent to re-establish slavery in Haiti; historically this was General Leclerc (Napoleon's brother-in-law), so this is likely a factual error by Žižek, not ASR mangling.
Mentioned as the historical marker ending apartheid: 'before Mandela and ANC took over, the last years of apartheid rule in South Africa.' No evaluative stance expressed.
Karl Marx positive
Cited via the famous 'I am not a Marxist' quote; Žižek argues Marx directed this at orthodox Marxists like the Mensheviks who insisted on waiting for conditions to ripen.
Cited as evidence the American Revolution remained unfinished, the Ku Klux Klan emerged even after Lincoln, illustrating the American Revolution's character as a permanent compromise.
Paul the Apostle positive
The host of the interview segment, who interacts with Žižek and later introduces Todd Wolfson.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Cited for praising Haiti in a footnote to the Philosophy of Right as proof a non-Western nation can establish a modern state; Žižek uses this to defend against charges of Euro-centrism and to anchor Haiti's world-historic status.
Transcript 87 turns
unknown
Welcome back to the Jacobin Show and, of course, Happy Bastille Day. I’m Jen Pan, here with Paul Prescod. Paul, how will you be celebrating the storming of the Bastille?
Welcome back to the Jacobin Show and, of course, Happy Bastille Day. I’m Jen Pan, here with Paul Prescod. Paul, how will you be celebrating the storming of the Bastille?
unknown
You know, I was looking around today for some like fortresses to storm, but they got rid of them, you know? These goddamn developers, they're just ravaging the fortresses in the city.
You know, I was looking around today for some like fortresses to storm, but they got rid of them, you know? These goddamn developers, they're just ravaging the fortresses in the city.
unknown
The real estate developers at it again, yet more reason why we need another French Revolution.
The real estate developers at it again, yet more reason why we need another French Revolution.
unknown
Right. We need a counter-revolution to rebuild them and then another one to
Right. We need a counter-revolution to rebuild them and then another one to
unknown
a revolution to take them over. Yep, exactly. So, of course, today we are talking about the French Revolution. As I’m sure you all saw, our guest is Slavoj Žižek. Full disclosure, we actually pre-recorded an interview with him because, of course, he is in Slovenia, which has quite a significant time difference from here. But it was a great interview. I had a really great time. He is just joyful and an extremely smart guest as usual. I loved talking to him.
a revolution to take them over. Yep, exactly. So, of course, today we are talking about the French Revolution. As I’m sure you all saw, our guest is Slavoj Žižek. Full disclosure, we actually pre-recorded an interview with him because, of course, he is in Slovenia, which has quite a significant time difference from here. But it was a great interview. I had a really great time. He is just joyful and an extremely smart guest as usual. I loved talking to him.
unknown
Yeah, I mean, it's always a wild ride with him. You never know where it's going to start and where it's going to end, so that was a great interview.
Yeah, I mean, it's always a wild ride with him. You never know where it's going to start and where it's going to end, so that was a great interview.
unknown
Actually, let’s play a short preview of the interview because he won’t be on for a while, but this is what it’s like.
Actually, let’s play a short preview of the interview because he won’t be on for a while, but this is what it’s like.
Slavoj Žižek
I just want to know, no hidden preference. Do you prefer me to make a brief statement, or it’s a pure third-degree examination of a potential enemy where you just bombard me with questions? Whatever you like.
I just want to know, no hidden preference. Do you prefer me to make a brief statement, or it’s a pure third-degree examination of a potential enemy where you just bombard me with questions? Whatever you like.
unknown
We have some questions prepared, so I think I’ll just start with kind of a broad one and then we’ll see where it goes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s okay. Because I
We have some questions prepared, so I think I’ll just start with kind of a broad one and then we’ll see where it goes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s okay. Because I
Slavoj Žižek
did wrote some psychotic notes, readable only to me, so you know that the like, as an old communist told me when I was young, we communists love spontaneous debates, exchange with the people, but to prevent enemy provocations, the spontaneous debates have to be especially well prepared in advance. Yeah,
did wrote some psychotic notes, readable only to me, so you know that the like, as an old communist told me when I was young, we communists love spontaneous debates, exchange with the people, but to prevent enemy provocations, the spontaneous debates have to be especially well prepared in advance. Yeah,
unknown
exactly. So that was a small taste. Stay tuned for Slavoj’s psychotic notes.
exactly. So that was a small taste. Stay tuned for Slavoj’s psychotic notes.
unknown
Right, and I really hope he saved all of his notes, because that's got to go in some like library at some point. I would love I would love to read all his notes.
Right, and I really hope he saved all of his notes, because that's got to go in some like library at some point. I would love I would love to read all his notes.
unknown
Yeah, the Žižek collection. Oh yeah. Yeah. So again, of course, we will be talking to Žižek a little more about the French Revolution, the legacy of the French Revolution, how Robespierre did nothing wrong, and also the legacy of the Enlightenment. But before we get to that, and actually before we make our own comments about the French Revolution, I do want to quickly mention that Jacobin magazine is having an amazing sale today for Bastille Day. You can get an international print and digital subscription for the low, low price of see what we did there, and domestic subscriptions are So we actually have a link in the description box which you can click, or you can go to Jacobin’s site and use the code BastilleDay to get that discount. Don’t sleep on this. I’m sure lots of you are readers and subscribers to Jacobin already, but of course, you know, Jacobin owes a lot to the French Revolution. The name Jacobin comes from the French Revolution and also the Haitian Revolution, which we will get to in a little bit. But we also I also want to mention that the upcoming issue of Jacobin is going to be really great. It’s on the working class. This, of course, is a complement to the current issue, which is on the ruling class. That issue had this like obscene gilded gold cover. This issue, it doesn't come through on the screen, but it's it's a shiny red cover. The red that you see there is is like foil. So definitely subscribe to the print issue. I believe Vivek Chibber is in this, Liza Featherstone,
Yeah, the Žižek collection. Oh yeah. Yeah. So again, of course, we will be talking to Žižek a little more about the French Revolution, the legacy of the French Revolution, how Robespierre did nothing wrong, and also the legacy of the Enlightenment. But before we get to that, and actually before we make our own comments about the French Revolution, I do want to quickly mention that Jacobin magazine is having an amazing sale today for Bastille Day. You can get an international print and digital subscription for the low, low price of see what we did there, and domestic subscriptions are So we actually have a link in the description box which you can click, or you can go to Jacobin’s site and use the code BastilleDay to get that discount. Don’t sleep on this. I’m sure lots of you are readers and subscribers to Jacobin already, but of course, you know, Jacobin owes a lot to the French Revolution. The name Jacobin comes from the French Revolution and also the Haitian Revolution, which we will get to in a little bit. But we also I also want to mention that the upcoming issue of Jacobin is going to be really great. It’s on the working class. This, of course, is a complement to the current issue, which is on the ruling class. That issue had this like obscene gilded gold cover. This issue, it doesn't come through on the screen, but it's it's a shiny red cover. The red that you see there is is like foil. So definitely subscribe to the print issue. I believe Vivek Chibber is in this, Liza Featherstone,
unknown
Meagan Day, Ronan Burtenshaw, all the faves, so get your subscription. All right, I think now it's time for us to dive into the French Revolution a little bit. As I said, we will get to some of the more substantive legacies of the French Revolution, but I just wanted to kick off with something a little bit lighthearted. I would be remiss if I did not shout out our friend Amber Frost’s conception of the dirtbag left. If you are a regular viewer or fan of Chapo Trap House, you’ve probably heard this before. This is basically her defense of political vulgarity, right? So she makes the argument that vulgarity, the concept of vulgarity, can be used strategically by people on the left. And of course, we see one of the greatest examples of this during the French Revolution when revolutionaries produced a slew of materials attacking the French monarchy, in particular Marie Antoinette. Amber, of course, includes this iconic image of Marie Antoinette hanging out with an ostrich dick. And of course, you can find lots of other extremely vulgar and tasteless materials against the French monarchy from this time period. And Amber writes in her article, let's see, one lesson of the French Revolution is that rudeness can be extremely politically useful. There are arguments to be made over who constitutes a valid target, but when crude obscenity is directed at figures of power, their prestige can be tarnished even in the eyes of the most reverent of subjects. So we love political vulgarity, especially when it comes to overthrowing the monarchy or getting rid of capitalists. And and again, on a lighthearted note, I also wanted to bring up one other thing before we get into kind of the meat of the discussion. And um, this has to do with a recent sort of college campus controversy. So a couple weeks ago, I just happened to look in the news and I saw that Brandeis University was under fire a little bit because they released an oppressive language list, which included phrases such as picnic, killing it, rule of thumb, walk in. If you go through and read the article, it also included the term people of color because you're supposed to say BIPOC now. And, you know, truth be told, this list wasn't really that big of a deal. It was something the university released and, you know, I'm sure nobody's going to pay attention to it and they had no way of really enforcing it. But predictably, of course, conservatives kind of lost their minds and it became this minor internet scandal. But the thing that really stood out to me was the inclusion of the word picnic. And and what Brandeis said about the inclusion of this word is this. So they said that the word picnic is often associated with lynchings of Black people in the United States during which white spectators were said to have watched while eating, referring to them as picnics or other terms involving racial slurs against Black people. Um, and I actually have heard this before. I think that it's a meme that sometimes circulates around social media. I was really racking my brain because I remember a character in a like 90s or early 2000s teen movie said this, and I I really can't remember what the movie is. I think it might be She’s All That. If you happen to know, if this rings a bell, stick it in the comments because I would love to know. But in any case, the point is in popular culture and just in kind of our collective imaginary, I think this idea that picnic has racial roots has circulated for a while. Now, it’s not true. Reuters recently released a kind of debunking of this myth. Um, they quoted this guy, Dr. David
Meagan Day, Ronan Burtenshaw, all the faves, so get your subscription. All right, I think now it's time for us to dive into the French Revolution a little bit. As I said, we will get to some of the more substantive legacies of the French Revolution, but I just wanted to kick off with something a little bit lighthearted. I would be remiss if I did not shout out our friend Amber Frost’s conception of the dirtbag left. If you are a regular viewer or fan of Chapo Trap House, you’ve probably heard this before. This is basically her defense of political vulgarity, right? So she makes the argument that vulgarity, the concept of vulgarity, can be used strategically by people on the left. And of course, we see one of the greatest examples of this during the French Revolution when revolutionaries produced a slew of materials attacking the French monarchy, in particular Marie Antoinette. Amber, of course, includes this iconic image of Marie Antoinette hanging out with an ostrich dick. And of course, you can find lots of other extremely vulgar and tasteless materials against the French monarchy from this time period. And Amber writes in her article, let's see, one lesson of the French Revolution is that rudeness can be extremely politically useful. There are arguments to be made over who constitutes a valid target, but when crude obscenity is directed at figures of power, their prestige can be tarnished even in the eyes of the most reverent of subjects. So we love political vulgarity, especially when it comes to overthrowing the monarchy or getting rid of capitalists. And and again, on a lighthearted note, I also wanted to bring up one other thing before we get into kind of the meat of the discussion. And um, this has to do with a recent sort of college campus controversy. So a couple weeks ago, I just happened to look in the news and I saw that Brandeis University was under fire a little bit because they released an oppressive language list, which included phrases such as picnic, killing it, rule of thumb, walk in. If you go through and read the article, it also included the term people of color because you're supposed to say BIPOC now. And, you know, truth be told, this list wasn't really that big of a deal. It was something the university released and, you know, I'm sure nobody's going to pay attention to it and they had no way of really enforcing it. But predictably, of course, conservatives kind of lost their minds and it became this minor internet scandal. But the thing that really stood out to me was the inclusion of the word picnic. And and what Brandeis said about the inclusion of this word is this. So they said that the word picnic is often associated with lynchings of Black people in the United States during which white spectators were said to have watched while eating, referring to them as picnics or other terms involving racial slurs against Black people. Um, and I actually have heard this before. I think that it's a meme that sometimes circulates around social media. I was really racking my brain because I remember a character in a like 90s or early 2000s teen movie said this, and I I really can't remember what the movie is. I think it might be She’s All That. If you happen to know, if this rings a bell, stick it in the comments because I would love to know. But in any case, the point is in popular culture and just in kind of our collective imaginary, I think this idea that picnic has racial roots has circulated for a while. Now, it’s not true. Reuters recently released a kind of debunking of this myth. Um, they quoted this guy, Dr. David
unknown
Pilgrim, who is a historian of the symbols of the Jim Crow era, and what he said was this: the word picnic derives from the 17th century word pique-nique, a term used to describe a social gathering in which attendees each contributed with a portion of food or another useful item. That’s true. You can, you know, look back to the French texts at that time and you can sort of see where the word pique-nique kind of germinated. But what the Reuters article doesn’t mention is the word actually gained popularity in the wake of the French Revolution. So what happened was, no surprise, prior to the revolution, you know, the public was banned from royal parks and gardens, the most famous of those, of course, being Versailles. And then, of course, you know, once the monarchy is deposed, aka sent to the guillotine, and the rich aristocrats and other members of the nobility are driven out of France, these parks and gardens become open to the public. So you see working-class people finally getting to go into the gardens and parks, enjoy them, and yes, gather there to eat food, aka have picnics. Now how did the word catch on in the Anglophone world? Also because of the French Revolution. So when the French nobility had to flee for their lives from France, a bunch of them ended up in England and they started, you know, putting together these quote pique-nique societies. So that’s how the word kind of caught on in the Anglophone world. And you know, I just want to say this, of course, of all of the things that we mention today, this is probably the least important thing to come out of the French Revolution. And the point here is not that the word picnic is inherently righteous or inherently radical. Um, but I you know, I think that it is important to kind of look at the historical historical context out of which it arises, right? Because this is a world world-shattering historical event. It’s a world-class uprising against inequality and oppression. We, of course, will get into some of the other consequences of the French Revolution in a little bit. Um, but you know, I think I think it’s really cool, actually, that, you know, in the wake of the revolution, the working class was able to finally, you know, enjoy public space, which had not been available to them prior to the revolution. And even, you know, we might not have the word picnic if the rich aristocrats had not been driven out of France and had to take up residence in England and, you know, start these so-called pique-nique societies. So, oh, and I also I just want to mention, you know, before we move on, and I promise we will in a little bit, I think that picnics as a concept really represent like leisure time, right? And a break from work, and they represent, you know, a space where we can go and gather with our friends and family, and again, as I said, where we can enjoy public space or what we might call the commons. And this is something that socialists are still fighting for today, right? More more of that. Um, I mean, I think when we when you when you think about the socialist slogan bread and roses, right? A picnic literally represents both of those things in one fell swoop. Uh, so we here at Jacobin are very pro-picnic. And I do want to mention, you know, this idea or if if we go back to this kind of myth or whatever that picnics originated with, you know, Southern lynchings in the Jim Crow era, um, even though that is, you know, not true etymologically speaking, um,
Pilgrim, who is a historian of the symbols of the Jim Crow era, and what he said was this: the word picnic derives from the 17th century word pique-nique, a term used to describe a social gathering in which attendees each contributed with a portion of food or another useful item. That’s true. You can, you know, look back to the French texts at that time and you can sort of see where the word pique-nique kind of germinated. But what the Reuters article doesn’t mention is the word actually gained popularity in the wake of the French Revolution. So what happened was, no surprise, prior to the revolution, you know, the public was banned from royal parks and gardens, the most famous of those, of course, being Versailles. And then, of course, you know, once the monarchy is deposed, aka sent to the guillotine, and the rich aristocrats and other members of the nobility are driven out of France, these parks and gardens become open to the public. So you see working-class people finally getting to go into the gardens and parks, enjoy them, and yes, gather there to eat food, aka have picnics. Now how did the word catch on in the Anglophone world? Also because of the French Revolution. So when the French nobility had to flee for their lives from France, a bunch of them ended up in England and they started, you know, putting together these quote pique-nique societies. So that’s how the word kind of caught on in the Anglophone world. And you know, I just want to say this, of course, of all of the things that we mention today, this is probably the least important thing to come out of the French Revolution. And the point here is not that the word picnic is inherently righteous or inherently radical. Um, but I you know, I think that it is important to kind of look at the historical historical context out of which it arises, right? Because this is a world world-shattering historical event. It’s a world-class uprising against inequality and oppression. We, of course, will get into some of the other consequences of the French Revolution in a little bit. Um, but you know, I think I think it’s really cool, actually, that, you know, in the wake of the revolution, the working class was able to finally, you know, enjoy public space, which had not been available to them prior to the revolution. And even, you know, we might not have the word picnic if the rich aristocrats had not been driven out of France and had to take up residence in England and, you know, start these so-called pique-nique societies. So, oh, and I also I just want to mention, you know, before we move on, and I promise we will in a little bit, I think that picnics as a concept really represent like leisure time, right? And a break from work, and they represent, you know, a space where we can go and gather with our friends and family, and again, as I said, where we can enjoy public space or what we might call the commons. And this is something that socialists are still fighting for today, right? More more of that. Um, I mean, I think when we when you when you think about the socialist slogan bread and roses, right? A picnic literally represents both of those things in one fell swoop. Uh, so we here at Jacobin are very pro-picnic. And I do want to mention, you know, this idea or if if we go back to this kind of myth or whatever that picnics originated with, you know, Southern lynchings in the Jim Crow era, um, even though that is, you know, not true etymologically speaking, um,
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you can, of course, find these horrifying photographs from that time period where you see white crowds enjoying, you know, food and drink while a lynching is taking place. So I don't want to discount, you know, that unfortunate and gruesome history at all. But I think if there’s one thing that I would want people to take away from today’s episode and also our talk with Slavoj Žižek, it’s that um we don’t have to necessarily throw out the baby with the bathwater on certain things, whether that’s the French Revolution or the Enlightenment, um or something as, you know, kind of low-stakes as the term picnic even. Um, because often times these things do have a more radical interpretation or or a more radical history and, like, we don’t have to throw that by the wayside.
you can, of course, find these horrifying photographs from that time period where you see white crowds enjoying, you know, food and drink while a lynching is taking place. So I don't want to discount, you know, that unfortunate and gruesome history at all. But I think if there’s one thing that I would want people to take away from today’s episode and also our talk with Slavoj Žižek, it’s that um we don’t have to necessarily throw out the baby with the bathwater on certain things, whether that’s the French Revolution or the Enlightenment, um or something as, you know, kind of low-stakes as the term picnic even. Um, because often times these things do have a more radical interpretation or or a more radical history and, like, we don’t have to throw that by the wayside.
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I gotta say, it's kind of funny hearing you say pique-nique. It's just I got a kick out of hearing that. Um Should we bring that back? Maybe. You will be the one. Um But you know, and it's also there are there are, you know, there are words out there that have regardless of their origins, they have, you know, modern-day connotations that are negative or associated with racism. I can't necessarily think of one off the top of my head, but those words are out there and it's like picnic is not one of them. I'm sorry. It's not something that anyone except in the upper echelons of an ivory tower would like know or think about as being problematic. Um so that's all I'll say on that and with these things I'm always like, is this really what the left wants to focus on? Really? This is? So that's all I'll say about that.
I gotta say, it's kind of funny hearing you say pique-nique. It's just I got a kick out of hearing that. Um Should we bring that back? Maybe. You will be the one. Um But you know, and it's also there are there are, you know, there are words out there that have regardless of their origins, they have, you know, modern-day connotations that are negative or associated with racism. I can't necessarily think of one off the top of my head, but those words are out there and it's like picnic is not one of them. I'm sorry. It's not something that anyone except in the upper echelons of an ivory tower would like know or think about as being problematic. Um so that's all I'll say on that and with these things I'm always like, is this really what the left wants to focus on? Really? This is? So that's all I'll say about that.
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Fair enough. Um, I mean, on that note, you know, I I know Paul you wanted to talk about the Black Jacobins, which actually is a much more significant consequence of the French Revolution in my opinion than right just a little bit. Yeah, than, you know, the word picnic or even ostrich dicks, although obviously respect both of those things. Debatable. Anyway, um, Paul, what can you tell us about C.L.R. James?
Fair enough. Um, I mean, on that note, you know, I I know Paul you wanted to talk about the Black Jacobins, which actually is a much more significant consequence of the French Revolution in my opinion than right just a little bit. Yeah, than, you know, the word picnic or even ostrich dicks, although obviously respect both of those things. Debatable. Anyway, um, Paul, what can you tell us about C.L.R. James?
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Yeah. So, you know, Žižek is going to get into the French Revolution and I'm excited for that, but we really can't talk about the French Revolution without talking about another world-changing, world-historic revolution and that is the Haitian Revolution. And it's not just because, you know, both revolutions were happening at the same time or that we don't want to privilege a European revolution over one made by enslaved Africans. We need to talk about them together because these revolutions were inherently linked with each other and they fed off each other. And if we're going to talk about the Haitian Revolution, we can't do that without talking about one of the greatest works of history I've ever read, which is The Black Jacobins by C.L.R. James, a great intellectual and political activist from the island of Trinidad. And he wrote this book in when he was fully immersed in the Marxist movement, as a Trotskyist to be precise. And I see it as part of a trilogy of incredible Marxist histories that are beautifully written. So you had the History of the Russian Revolution by Leon Trotsky in you had Black Reconstruction by W.E.B. Du Bois in and then you have Black Jacobins written in And these works are reflective of an age when global capitalism was in crisis and Marxism was seen by many great intellectuals as a critical tool for understanding social and political history. And in this segment I can't really do justice to the entirety of The Black Jacobins as a book or the Haitian Revolution as a whole, but I do want to highlight the central thesis James made about the nature of the Haitian Revolution and how it was intimately tied up with the same ideas of modernity and enlightenment that powered the French Revolution. Haiti was arguably France’s most important and profitable colony, and it all came through the sugar plantation. James saw the sugar plantations as a contradictory force. On the one hand it was a barbaric force, subjecting Black Haitians to the worst kinds of
Yeah. So, you know, Žižek is going to get into the French Revolution and I'm excited for that, but we really can't talk about the French Revolution without talking about another world-changing, world-historic revolution and that is the Haitian Revolution. And it's not just because, you know, both revolutions were happening at the same time or that we don't want to privilege a European revolution over one made by enslaved Africans. We need to talk about them together because these revolutions were inherently linked with each other and they fed off each other. And if we're going to talk about the Haitian Revolution, we can't do that without talking about one of the greatest works of history I've ever read, which is The Black Jacobins by C.L.R. James, a great intellectual and political activist from the island of Trinidad. And he wrote this book in when he was fully immersed in the Marxist movement, as a Trotskyist to be precise. And I see it as part of a trilogy of incredible Marxist histories that are beautifully written. So you had the History of the Russian Revolution by Leon Trotsky in you had Black Reconstruction by W.E.B. Du Bois in and then you have Black Jacobins written in And these works are reflective of an age when global capitalism was in crisis and Marxism was seen by many great intellectuals as a critical tool for understanding social and political history. And in this segment I can't really do justice to the entirety of The Black Jacobins as a book or the Haitian Revolution as a whole, but I do want to highlight the central thesis James made about the nature of the Haitian Revolution and how it was intimately tied up with the same ideas of modernity and enlightenment that powered the French Revolution. Haiti was arguably France’s most important and profitable colony, and it all came through the sugar plantation. James saw the sugar plantations as a contradictory force. On the one hand it was a barbaric force, subjecting Black Haitians to the worst kinds of
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brutality. But on the other hand it was a modernizing force, and it exposed Haitian slaves to a very modern form of social organization. James compares the sugar plantations in Haiti to modern industrial factories. Haitians lived in a greater concentration than urban proletariats. The food they ate and the clothes they wore were imported, meaning they lived in a modern life dictated by international trade. And just like the conditions of industrial capitalism created for industrial workers would be reflected back in the way the workers organized, for James, the plantation system made its victims into modern proletariats and they used modern organizational methods to overthrow that system. The sugar plantation was directly affected by international political developments. Enslaved Haitians paid close attention to these developments and white French slave owners talked openly about the French Revolution in front of them, thinking they were too stupid to understand what was going on. But they did understand, and they were deeply moved by what was happening in France and the ideas of freedom that inspired it. And as we usually see with revolutions, the logical next question is: why can't that happen here? The first rising of Haitian slaves was in and from then on what happened in Haiti played a big role in what happened in France. And it's not a coincidence that it was at one of the highest points for the left in the French Revolution in that the French Assembly declared that enslaved Africans everywhere should be free. Now James had some other points to prove as well with this book. At the time he wrote this he was beginning to establish connections with figures in the West Indies and Africa and had started to plant the seeds of the anti-colonial movement that would come throughout the 1960s. Part of what this book does is to demonstrate what a monumental achievement the Haitian Revolution was and the ability of colonized people to resist and defeat empires anywhere. The Haitian Revolution defeated the Spanish, the British, the French army, who all tried to retake the island into their own possession. The French General Leclerc said in a letter to Napoleon, "We in France have a false idea of the country in which we fight and the kind of men we fight against." The historian of the British army John Fortescue said that which was the year in which the British army was decimated by the Haitians, was the most disgraceful year in the history of the British Empire. But in a Jacobin Black Jacobins, James brings to light another contradiction about the revolution and its leader Toussaint Louverture. Toussaint was born a slave and through his organizational genius he rose to be the accepted leader of the revolution. His strength was his unshakable belief in the enlightenment ideals of freedom and liberty. But this was also his downfall. Despite the fact that Napoleon had invaded Haiti and was trying to retake the island, Toussaint wavered and still thought he could negotiate his way out. He believed so much in the French Revolution that he didn't think it was possible that they could betray their own ideals. And James writes in The Black Jacobins, "Toussaint could not believe that the French ruling class would be so depraved, so lost to all sense of decency as to try to restore slavery. His grasp of politics led him to make all preparations, but he could not admit to himself and to his people that it was easier to find decency, gratitude, justice and humanity in a cage of starving tigers than in the councils of imperialism." Toussaint was captured, he was sent to France and he died in a prison cell. But the revolution would go on and slavery was never fully restored in Haiti. The Black Jacobins is so important because it proves the absurdity of the notion that universalism can only apply to white Europeans or white Westerners. The Haitian Revolution was universalism and
brutality. But on the other hand it was a modernizing force, and it exposed Haitian slaves to a very modern form of social organization. James compares the sugar plantations in Haiti to modern industrial factories. Haitians lived in a greater concentration than urban proletariats. The food they ate and the clothes they wore were imported, meaning they lived in a modern life dictated by international trade. And just like the conditions of industrial capitalism created for industrial workers would be reflected back in the way the workers organized, for James, the plantation system made its victims into modern proletariats and they used modern organizational methods to overthrow that system. The sugar plantation was directly affected by international political developments. Enslaved Haitians paid close attention to these developments and white French slave owners talked openly about the French Revolution in front of them, thinking they were too stupid to understand what was going on. But they did understand, and they were deeply moved by what was happening in France and the ideas of freedom that inspired it. And as we usually see with revolutions, the logical next question is: why can't that happen here? The first rising of Haitian slaves was in and from then on what happened in Haiti played a big role in what happened in France. And it's not a coincidence that it was at one of the highest points for the left in the French Revolution in that the French Assembly declared that enslaved Africans everywhere should be free. Now James had some other points to prove as well with this book. At the time he wrote this he was beginning to establish connections with figures in the West Indies and Africa and had started to plant the seeds of the anti-colonial movement that would come throughout the 1960s. Part of what this book does is to demonstrate what a monumental achievement the Haitian Revolution was and the ability of colonized people to resist and defeat empires anywhere. The Haitian Revolution defeated the Spanish, the British, the French army, who all tried to retake the island into their own possession. The French General Leclerc said in a letter to Napoleon, "We in France have a false idea of the country in which we fight and the kind of men we fight against." The historian of the British army John Fortescue said that which was the year in which the British army was decimated by the Haitians, was the most disgraceful year in the history of the British Empire. But in a Jacobin Black Jacobins, James brings to light another contradiction about the revolution and its leader Toussaint Louverture. Toussaint was born a slave and through his organizational genius he rose to be the accepted leader of the revolution. His strength was his unshakable belief in the enlightenment ideals of freedom and liberty. But this was also his downfall. Despite the fact that Napoleon had invaded Haiti and was trying to retake the island, Toussaint wavered and still thought he could negotiate his way out. He believed so much in the French Revolution that he didn't think it was possible that they could betray their own ideals. And James writes in The Black Jacobins, "Toussaint could not believe that the French ruling class would be so depraved, so lost to all sense of decency as to try to restore slavery. His grasp of politics led him to make all preparations, but he could not admit to himself and to his people that it was easier to find decency, gratitude, justice and humanity in a cage of starving tigers than in the councils of imperialism." Toussaint was captured, he was sent to France and he died in a prison cell. But the revolution would go on and slavery was never fully restored in Haiti. The Black Jacobins is so important because it proves the absurdity of the notion that universalism can only apply to white Europeans or white Westerners. The Haitian Revolution was universalism and
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internationalism carried to its fullest and truest extent. Just imagine how confused French soldiers must have been hearing Black Haitian soldiers, many formerly enslaved, singing the Marseillaise. But it wouldn’t have been confusing if they understood that the Haitian revolutionaries believed in universalism more than the French ever could. And despite being called by some the father of Pan-Africanism, C.L.R. James was always clear that rejecting Western civilization wholesale was never the way to go. Listen to a clip from him in an interview of he did about his book.
internationalism carried to its fullest and truest extent. Just imagine how confused French soldiers must have been hearing Black Haitian soldiers, many formerly enslaved, singing the Marseillaise. But it wouldn’t have been confusing if they understood that the Haitian revolutionaries believed in universalism more than the French ever could. And despite being called by some the father of Pan-Africanism, C.L.R. James was always clear that rejecting Western civilization wholesale was never the way to go. Listen to a clip from him in an interview of he did about his book.
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I use the Greek classics because the basis of Western civilization is the work of the Hebrews and of the Greeks. Everybody understands that. So in studying the race and the radicalism of race, I take examples of the radicalism of the Hebrews and the radicalism of the Greeks. I am happy to do the story of Moses, because he was the first that we know of who led a suppressed people to freedom. So if you’re talking about freedom and the release of a suppressed people, I begin with Moses. That is what we are rooted in, particularly in the United States and in the Caribbean, we are rooted in Western civilization. So we cannot ignore African civilization, we do the best we can to be in contact with it. That series of talks, I deal with Mau Mau, I deal with uh Nkrumah etc., the emergence of Africa. But I say we have to be aware of where we have come from, we cannot deny the roots of Western civilization and the radicalism that we find in it, we absorb and take it to ourselves. So that I think we have a lot to learn because we both Western and African civilization, we of the Black people in the Caribbean and in the United States, we touch civilization at two points, and in all my work I try to be aware of them.
I use the Greek classics because the basis of Western civilization is the work of the Hebrews and of the Greeks. Everybody understands that. So in studying the race and the radicalism of race, I take examples of the radicalism of the Hebrews and the radicalism of the Greeks. I am happy to do the story of Moses, because he was the first that we know of who led a suppressed people to freedom. So if you’re talking about freedom and the release of a suppressed people, I begin with Moses. That is what we are rooted in, particularly in the United States and in the Caribbean, we are rooted in Western civilization. So we cannot ignore African civilization, we do the best we can to be in contact with it. That series of talks, I deal with Mau Mau, I deal with uh Nkrumah etc., the emergence of Africa. But I say we have to be aware of where we have come from, we cannot deny the roots of Western civilization and the radicalism that we find in it, we absorb and take it to ourselves. So that I think we have a lot to learn because we both Western and African civilization, we of the Black people in the Caribbean and in the United States, we touch civilization at two points, and in all my work I try to be aware of them.
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Both the Haitian Revolution and the French Revolution have a special place in the heart of the left. And you may have noticed that in Jacobin’s design is not a Frenchman but an homage to the Black Jacobins. And I think Jacobin’s creative director Remeike Forbes articulated better than I ever could the meaning of the Haitian Revolution. He wrote, "The Haitian Revolution encapsulates the historic mission of the left, that is, the truest realization of the enlightenment, that those ideals wrested from the hypocrites who hawk them and seized by the wretched of the earth can become a radical project for human emancipation. Marx saw through the contradictions. His was both a critique of enlightenment and a project to expand enlightenment ideals of political emancipation into a project for genuine human emancipation. And so sounds off the the left’s history. It’s the demand that those principles formalized in our political institutions extend to our lived experience in our social and economic life, in the home and on our streets." The history of the Haitian Revolution should also serve as a reminder to those on the left who, abandoning thoughtful critique, can imagine no response to the contradictions of enlightenment other than absolute negation. Remember that line in the Internationale: "For reason in revolt now thunders." It was never a cry for a revolt against reason, but a harbinger of reason itself in revolt. And Jen, I don't know if you've ever read this work, and it's kind of interesting because I feel like recently C.L.R. James has kind of become popular again in the left or kind of like trendy, but I think for the wrong reasons. Um and, you know, personally, I I think he had a lot of interesting things to say. I don't think he really tells us much about our situation in the United States or what to do, but I think, you know, the history he wrote was great, what he wrote about West Indian society, and if anyone's a fan of cricket, which I am, um he has beautiful writings on cricket, um but you know, I think Black
Both the Haitian Revolution and the French Revolution have a special place in the heart of the left. And you may have noticed that in Jacobin’s design is not a Frenchman but an homage to the Black Jacobins. And I think Jacobin’s creative director Remeike Forbes articulated better than I ever could the meaning of the Haitian Revolution. He wrote, "The Haitian Revolution encapsulates the historic mission of the left, that is, the truest realization of the enlightenment, that those ideals wrested from the hypocrites who hawk them and seized by the wretched of the earth can become a radical project for human emancipation. Marx saw through the contradictions. His was both a critique of enlightenment and a project to expand enlightenment ideals of political emancipation into a project for genuine human emancipation. And so sounds off the the left’s history. It’s the demand that those principles formalized in our political institutions extend to our lived experience in our social and economic life, in the home and on our streets." The history of the Haitian Revolution should also serve as a reminder to those on the left who, abandoning thoughtful critique, can imagine no response to the contradictions of enlightenment other than absolute negation. Remember that line in the Internationale: "For reason in revolt now thunders." It was never a cry for a revolt against reason, but a harbinger of reason itself in revolt. And Jen, I don't know if you've ever read this work, and it's kind of interesting because I feel like recently C.L.R. James has kind of become popular again in the left or kind of like trendy, but I think for the wrong reasons. Um and, you know, personally, I I think he had a lot of interesting things to say. I don't think he really tells us much about our situation in the United States or what to do, but I think, you know, the history he wrote was great, what he wrote about West Indian society, and if anyone's a fan of cricket, which I am, um he has beautiful writings on cricket, um but you know, I think Black
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Jacobins to me is one of the greatest works of history I've ever read.
Jacobins to me is one of the greatest works of history I've ever read.
unknown
Yeah, Black Jacobins is great. I could talk about Black Jacobins and the Haitian Revolution all day. Um, on the subject of cricket, much like the Enlightenment, the former British colonies are now so much better at cricket than England, and I think that rules.
Yeah, Black Jacobins is great. I could talk about Black Jacobins and the Haitian Revolution all day. Um, on the subject of cricket, much like the Enlightenment, the former British colonies are now so much better at cricket than England, and I think that rules.
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Yeah, if anyone has seen or should watch if you haven't, the documentary Fire in Babylon, which is about the West Indies cricket team, um and how, you know, when they were ascendant in cricket was at the same time as their anti-colonial movements were blooming. Really great documentary. Um, so yeah, cricket's great, big fan. Um,
Yeah, if anyone has seen or should watch if you haven't, the documentary Fire in Babylon, which is about the West Indies cricket team, um and how, you know, when they were ascendant in cricket was at the same time as their anti-colonial movements were blooming. Really great documentary. Um, so yeah, cricket's great, big fan. Um,
unknown
I do want to mention, uh on the subject of the Black Jacobins and the Haitian Revolution, um this I I hope this is not controversial, but the one reason why I have never been super crazy about the famous Audrey Lorde quote, "the master's tools can never dismantle the master's house," is because I think you only have to look at the Haitian Revolution to show why that statement falls short, right? I mean, as you pointed out in your segment, the Haitian Revolution was about seizing the promise of the Enlightenment, uh and really really pushing those contradictions to the fore, and like they did that amazingly. I mean, like you know, C.L.R. James, uh you mentioned this in your talk as well, and C.L.R. James in in his book mentions, you know, the Haitian troops singing the Marseillaise, um which of course is the French national anthem, but it’s also been kind of a mainstay of since the French Revolution, a mainstay of I guess liberation and resistance, right? Um, during World War II, I mean that comes a little later, but during World War II, of course, the French resistance famously sang the Marseillaise uh against the Nazis and the Vichy regime. Um and and the story that I can’t remember if it’s C.L.R. James himself or another historian um who points out that, you know, as I said, the Haitian troops would sing the Marseillaise uh when Napoleon’s troops were kind of coming at them, and there was one famous battle in particular where, you know, the Napoleon’s troops kind of start coming closer and they're like, what like what is that? and it turns out to be the Marseillaise and they're completely just like thrown into disarray and I believe a few of them even laid down their arms and and um one of them says something like, you know, we sang this song in France, in Italy, in Austria, and we always sang it as liberators, what the fuck are we doing now? Um and I think that’s really powerful.
I do want to mention, uh on the subject of the Black Jacobins and the Haitian Revolution, um this I I hope this is not controversial, but the one reason why I have never been super crazy about the famous Audrey Lorde quote, "the master's tools can never dismantle the master's house," is because I think you only have to look at the Haitian Revolution to show why that statement falls short, right? I mean, as you pointed out in your segment, the Haitian Revolution was about seizing the promise of the Enlightenment, uh and really really pushing those contradictions to the fore, and like they did that amazingly. I mean, like you know, C.L.R. James, uh you mentioned this in your talk as well, and C.L.R. James in in his book mentions, you know, the Haitian troops singing the Marseillaise, um which of course is the French national anthem, but it’s also been kind of a mainstay of since the French Revolution, a mainstay of I guess liberation and resistance, right? Um, during World War II, I mean that comes a little later, but during World War II, of course, the French resistance famously sang the Marseillaise uh against the Nazis and the Vichy regime. Um and and the story that I can’t remember if it’s C.L.R. James himself or another historian um who points out that, you know, as I said, the Haitian troops would sing the Marseillaise uh when Napoleon’s troops were kind of coming at them, and there was one famous battle in particular where, you know, the Napoleon’s troops kind of start coming closer and they're like, what like what is that? and it turns out to be the Marseillaise and they're completely just like thrown into disarray and I believe a few of them even laid down their arms and and um one of them says something like, you know, we sang this song in France, in Italy, in Austria, and we always sang it as liberators, what the fuck are we doing now? Um and I think that’s really powerful.
unknown
Yeah, and what else is so great about this book, it's like it's really great example of what Marxist history actually means, you know? And I think if if people have heard there's a lot of jargon-y terms, like Marxists use the word contradiction all the time and I think sometimes you kind of just like don't even really know what it means, but I think this is a great example of like real materialist history and like the contradiction of the sugar plantation and the sugar trade of like what it did to Haitians but it also put them in a structural position to be able to carry out this revolution and do it with modern organizational forms. Um that really to me is is a great example of like what we mean by Marxist history or a Marxist interpretation.
Yeah, and what else is so great about this book, it's like it's really great example of what Marxist history actually means, you know? And I think if if people have heard there's a lot of jargon-y terms, like Marxists use the word contradiction all the time and I think sometimes you kind of just like don't even really know what it means, but I think this is a great example of like real materialist history and like the contradiction of the sugar plantation and the sugar trade of like what it did to Haitians but it also put them in a structural position to be able to carry out this revolution and do it with modern organizational forms. Um that really to me is is a great example of like what we mean by Marxist history or a Marxist interpretation.
unknown
Sorry, one last note about the Haitian Revolution and also the Audrey Lorde quote, um I just thought of this so like please no one get mad at me, but when it comes to the Haitian Revolution, I really feel like uh, you know, because Haiti was a slave society, they really did seize both the master's tools and the master's house, like quite literally, you know? And I guess, you know, when it comes when it comes to that
Sorry, one last note about the Haitian Revolution and also the Audrey Lorde quote, um I just thought of this so like please no one get mad at me, but when it comes to the Haitian Revolution, I really feel like uh, you know, because Haiti was a slave society, they really did seize both the master's tools and the master's house, like quite literally, you know? And I guess, you know, when it comes when it comes to that
unknown
phrase, it's like I just feel
phrase, it's like I just feel
unknown
like they're not just the master's tools, they're also our tools, you know? We can appropriate the tools, or
like they're not just the master's tools, they're also our tools, you know? We can appropriate the tools, or
unknown
shall I say we can expropriate them, and the house as well. So that’s my last thoughts on that. I
shall I say we can expropriate them, and the house as well. So that’s my last thoughts on that. I
unknown
sorry, I have to go one more last thought but I mean, you know, it gets back to that that
sorry, I have to go one more last thought but I mean, you know, it gets back to that that
unknown
recent episode on post-colonialism, because it's again it's like, why should we say it's the master's tool of like science or technology or whatever, you know? Like I Or the Enlightenment. Right, it's like seeding a lot of ground to kind of just accept that these things are not our tools as well. Right. Um That's it. I'll shut up. I'm done.
recent episode on post-colonialism, because it's again it's like, why should we say it's the master's tool of like science or technology or whatever, you know? Like I Or the Enlightenment. Right, it's like seeding a lot of ground to kind of just accept that these things are not our tools as well. Right. Um That's it. I'll shut up. I'm done.
unknown
All right, well, I think it is almost time to bring on the guest you've all been waiting for, Slavoj Žižek. But before we turn to the interview, I just want to quickly remind everybody that in honor of Bastille Day, Jacobin magazine is running a deep discount where international subscribers can get a print and digital subscription for, yes, that's right, And if you're here in the US, all domestic subscriptions are only Uh, so this is a great deal, uh definitely subscribe to Jacobin if you haven't already. There's a great new issue on the working class that's coming up. Um it’s going to be I think it’s going to be a good one. Um I mentioned earlier that Vivek Chibber is in this, Liza Featherstone, I believe Eileen Jones, Meagan Day, Ronan Burtenshaw, all of the heavy hitters, so you don't want to miss that. So, I guess on that note, um it is now time to turn to our interview with Slavoj Žižek. You, of course, all know him as the maverick Slovenian philosopher. He is the author of over books, I believe that his most recent uh include Pandemic, A Left That Dares to Speak Its Name, and Hegel in a Wired Brain. We had a great time talking to him, so here’s the interview. So, I want to start by, I guess, asking you what you see as the most important legacy of the French Revolution? I think lots of people kind of broadly know that, of course, the revolution toppled the French monarchy, uh laid the groundwork for liberal democracy in Europe, of course served as an inspiration for the Haitian Revolution, uh and then a little later, uh partly an inspiration for the Russian Revolution. But I guess my question for you is, can we see the influence of the revolution anywhere unexpected? Or maybe another way of putting it is, um what is something about the French Revolution that you wish more people on the left knew about?
All right, well, I think it is almost time to bring on the guest you've all been waiting for, Slavoj Žižek. But before we turn to the interview, I just want to quickly remind everybody that in honor of Bastille Day, Jacobin magazine is running a deep discount where international subscribers can get a print and digital subscription for, yes, that's right, And if you're here in the US, all domestic subscriptions are only Uh, so this is a great deal, uh definitely subscribe to Jacobin if you haven't already. There's a great new issue on the working class that's coming up. Um it’s going to be I think it’s going to be a good one. Um I mentioned earlier that Vivek Chibber is in this, Liza Featherstone, I believe Eileen Jones, Meagan Day, Ronan Burtenshaw, all of the heavy hitters, so you don't want to miss that. So, I guess on that note, um it is now time to turn to our interview with Slavoj Žižek. You, of course, all know him as the maverick Slovenian philosopher. He is the author of over books, I believe that his most recent uh include Pandemic, A Left That Dares to Speak Its Name, and Hegel in a Wired Brain. We had a great time talking to him, so here’s the interview. So, I want to start by, I guess, asking you what you see as the most important legacy of the French Revolution? I think lots of people kind of broadly know that, of course, the revolution toppled the French monarchy, uh laid the groundwork for liberal democracy in Europe, of course served as an inspiration for the Haitian Revolution, uh and then a little later, uh partly an inspiration for the Russian Revolution. But I guess my question for you is, can we see the influence of the revolution anywhere unexpected? Or maybe another way of putting it is, um what is something about the French Revolution that you wish more people on the left knew about?
Slavoj Žižek
I I will try to not only seduce those who are already convinced, but I think one should do this respectfully, seduce or at least confuse those who those who maybe sincere liberals but they are nonetheless kind of bombarded by this message 'Yeah, maybe they meant well but they got into a deadlock, absolute terror, indistinct killing and so on.' So it’s nonetheless the the root, the elementary form of of of a Stalinist terror and so on and so on. I think they should be redeemed. I would even go as far as to say that some, in some things, we should even return to them, to the French revolutionaries, in comparison with even with Marxist experience. There was something unique about that moment. What first, my first advice, sorry if this will be a little bit boring, but my first advice to those benevolent skeptics, you know, like 'yeah they tried to do good things, egalitarianism but look where they ended in terror' and so on... Let’s get, now I will talk like a good positivist, why not? Let’s get the facts straight. I spoke with some historians in France, in English, who told me, hey, terror. Listen, don’t compare this with Nazi or Stalinist terror. When they had political trials, it was not as it is usually portrayed, it was just a formality, you were condemned in advance. When you were accused by a revolutionary tribunal, do you know that the percentage of how often you were found guilty was around So it was to You had a fair chance of surviving. Second point, many of these accusations, irrational and so on... ask now honest even liberal, not pro-Jacobin, British historians who had a look into, because the good thing about United Kingdom is they were never properly bombed, blah blah, they had most of their documents kept. The data about the interaction of English government with French revolutionaries, you know that for example the accusation against Danton and the killing of Danton is usually considered as the moment, the first moment of the great madness of revolutionary terror. Sorry, he was guilty. It is clear from the British secret documents, now they became accessible, that Danton was all the time systematically bribed by the British government to pursue... Second thing, the beheading of the King and Queen. Sorry, they, revolutionaries, wanted to give to give him a chance, but while he was not even in prison, just isolated in his castle, the King, the royal family were constantly plotting with the enemies who were attacking France of how to overthrow the French government. So they were simply, they were simply guilty. Terror, numbers of terror. My God, according to some data, Thermidor, when 'oh the terror was over, people were dancing on the streets and so on,' no, in the first two, three weeks of the Thermidor terror after Saint-Just and Robespierre were arrested and liquidated, more people were guillotined than almost the entire era of the revolutionary terror before. You know what was the only difference? You should look upon it closely who, who was guillotined? The point is of course that under Jacobins it was visible names, nobles and so on. what made them visible? We don’t even hear or have precise statistics of the ordinary low people who were beheaded and so on and so on. The last thing, this is my ultimate argument against those who claim 'oh it was a terrorist dictatorship.' Sorry but whatever you say about Robespierre, he was not an idiot. One should maybe find those documents which demonstrate this. I know they exist, some historians showed them to me. Do you know that Robespierre again and Saint-Just were not idiots, they saw it coming, the gradual organization in the Assemblée Nationale, National Assembly, of a new coalition to oust, to throw out the Jacobins. And they they were if anything they were too procedural, liberal. They didn’t want to do a simple coup d’état to introduce direct terror. No, it was quite tragically naive in the days before Thermidor. Robespierre was seen walking along the River Seine in Paris just thinking about his speech. For him the medium where he will win was not arrest the counter-revolutionaries and so on, it was a big speech in Assemblée Nationale. And it failed, he was overthrown by a simple majority of votes. I’m sorry, that’s not how you overthrow a true totalitarian dictator and so on and so on. If anything Robespierre was very moderate. He knew, he was aware of the danger of the terror exploding into madness. And his last writings were full of double fear or suspicion. One is how to gradually bring the terror to the end and second maybe his deepest insight, and here I see the proper greatness of of Robespierre, of Saint-Just and some others, you know they were not idiots, they were aware of what Marxists later conceptualized as the gradual shift from republican form to some form of personal dictatorship, Bonapartism. And they were aware that again this will in all probability happen. And they even debated this temptation: should we become the new Bonaparte and we will control the situation blah blah. And it’s one of the most beautiful ethical gestures, my God, they concluded, no, sorry, it’s better for us to lose our physical head than to take that path. And the step from Robespierre to Napoleon is an important step. Let me give you just one proof which is for me maybe the most sublime moment. You may know that my big fixation is Haiti Revolution. I even have a theory, as you already mentioned it, that French Revolution only became a world-historic model through its repetition in Haiti. That was the test that a totally different race, cultural group recognized itself in it. And here you measure who was truly progressive. For example Hegel, who is supposed to be more conservative, in a wonderful footnote to his Philosophy of Right I think, he praises Haiti as an example of how even a nation which is not part of Western European enlightened people can successfully establish a modern state. So for me the single most sublime moment is you know the story, when the when still before Thermidor Toussaint Louverture, the ruling new circle in Haiti, sent a delegation to Assemblée Nationale. They were celebrated, immediately recognized as equals. Then things changed with Napoleon. Napoleon did something very nasty there. He sent the army, I think it was his brother Joseph who was the head, the general, with the explicit goal of not only bringing order there, re-establish slavery, but as he said, Napoleon, no, this is such a dangerous precedent that all the slaves there should be killed and new slaves brought. It’s not enough just to control the situation. And now comes for me one of those every revolutionary should know them, incredibly moving moment. An important part of Napoleon’s army were Polish soldiers. And they did something incredible. They were approaching the revolutionary Black army and when they approached it they heard some singing. And they thought, 'Ah this must be some this must be some stupid tribal songs and so on.' And then when they approached more they saw the rebels, the Blacks are singing Marseillaise. You know what happened? The the French soldiers said 'Wait a minute, are we here fighting on the right side?' They changed sides, they rejoined the Blacks. That’s why very interesting that’s why when later in I think, when the revolution deviated a little bit and the first king or whatever emperor after Toussaint Louverture ordered 'kill all white people.' I have two explanations here, not justifications but explanations. First is that nonetheless he explicitly exempted white people of Polish origins. He said they saved us, Poles should survive. Second thing, you know how I understand this 'kill all white people'? This is exactly the moment when the Black Revolution started to imitate, they wanted to copy the white power structure, they wanted to be the new ruling class and so on and so on. So it's not 'oh they went so far they wanted to kill all the white people,' no, this was immanently reactionary moment, an attempt to re-establish the old power structure only with them at position of power. But I think now I will stop but just this. Do you remember, my God, Haiti is with us, this nation for being the first who took independence clearly, for being, and that’s where I’m wrongly accused of Euro-centrism, for being more European than we Europeans, if by European we mean what is best in our legacy, equality blah blah. They were only through them again, French Revolution became a world-historic event which here I follow my friend Jean-Claude Milner who is not exactly a radical leftist, but here he is right, who says, sorry, American Revolution was never such an authentic emancipatory event. Even now it’s an unfinished revolution, it drags on. That’s why American Revolution, in a nice polemics against Hannah Arendt, Milner develops this, how American Revolution was always a compromise. Lincoln again it didn't succeed, you had Ku Klux Klan and so on and so on. So again, just to conclude but you can then ask me more, what I would like to point out is that we live in an era so it seems where these are old romantic dreams, 'oh people gather, sorry we live in a complex digitalized society, it’s no longer time for such things.' No, I think that today with the crisis that we are approaching and now it’s clear that Covid will not disappear, uh there will be other pandemics, global warming is becoming reality and so on and so on, we are approaching an emergency state. And sooner or later it may take years but then we will pay the price, it probably will take years, something will have to happen, it’s simply the only way out. First voluntarism, in a progressive sense, like we cannot justify uh measures of how to reorient our production to fit the to fit ecological goals, protecting environment, you cannot ground this in some objective necessity of productive forces, we simply should act even if it’s against the market logic. Second point, egalitarianism. Even those in power has to pay now lip service to it. We fight pandemic, the goal should be not protected bubbles but universal healthcare. Then, I know what I’m saying here, elements of progressive terror. I don’t mean secret police grabbing you, but when you have a pandemic, when you have nature in chaos, you have to control the situation. And fourth element as a counter-point to the third one, trust in the people, which means precisely more than this every four years you have election and then corruption takes on and so on and so on. It was already clear in fighting the pandemic that the best countries till now at least, the best in dealing with the pandemic, were those where the state could rely on the people. For example although now they have a little bit higher number, but the miracle till two months ago was Vietnam. They didn’t have enough vaccines or whatever, they have excellent local self-organization. These four features: voluntarism, egalitarianism, terror in good sense and trust in the people, this will be needed, this is needed in emergency states. So I think again that something like the way the Jacobins acted, of course in different conditions, but this basic logic will have to be reinvented if we mean it seriously coping with not just one catastrophe, pandemic, it will be another pandemic, it will be ecological catastrophe and so on and so on. There is no return to normality. We will need this type of radical measures. I’m here on Lenin’s side. People are often telling me 'but you are critical of Lenin sometimes.' I say maybe, but the only Lenin I really don’t like and I hope you also is Lenin Moreno, the president of Ecuador who delivered Assange to the... no I I think that that what has to be done now cannot be formulated in this for my taste a little bit too trustful standard Marxist notion 'the relations of production are developed', sorry 'forces of production', blah blah. No, as we should act not literally but in the spirit of what Lenin did. He saw out of all this standard evolutionary Marxist formulas an opportunity for the revolution. Remember that Mensheviks were not some bad guys. Okay they were but basically they were simply old-fashioned orthodox Marxists. When Marx said, you remember, when Marx said 'One thing is certain, I am not a Marxist,' I think he had precisely Mensheviks. Their idea was don't dream about revolution now, the situation is not yet ripe, we first has to have to enact the passage to bourgeois democracy in an orderly way and so on and so on. No, we cannot play this game today. We should act in a voluntarist way and a little bit faster. I’ve spoken too long, please, put on at least now you, Jen, put on your stupid Black leather. Actually I’m going to hand the leather over to Paul. So, and speaking of that, um I mean, what do you think we can learn from the nature of counter-revolution and reaction from the experience of the French Revolution and even the Haitian Revolution? What what does it teach us about the nature of counter-revolution? Uh, first the the usual thing is to say that Jacobins were too radical, they should have been looking for a pact and so on. You you know it’s the same as with October Revolution. It’s often said that they could have predominated in a more peaceful organic way, that it is the Red terror which cost them the counter-revolution, civil war. Look, it’s not so simple. Can we even imagine today the tremendous pressure under which France was in early and then Soviet Union in beginning of In both cases the central government controlled I think around only one-seventh of the of the territory of the state. And this was not just like in Vendée some primitive farmers rebelling and so on. In concerning Soviet future Soviet Union, you know which book is the absolute one to read, it’s difficult to get today. An English general joined Kolchak, this Siberian counter-revolution, the most dangerous one who covered till Ural, all that big Asian part of Soviet Union and he wrote his memoirs after the war, observations. And the image you get there is a terrifying one. Against these accusations of, you know, communists are usually anti-Semitic, sorry. The first thing Kolchak did in his domain was to start reprinting like crazy Protocols of Zion and claiming this is a Judeo-Bolshevik plot. At that point already it originated, you know, this caricature of Trotsky as a devil, Jewish devil and so on and so on. And he, this British general, I’m so sorry I don’t I forgot his name, slipped out of my mind, he also described in detail what the white counter-revolutionaries did when they occupied a territory. Incredible purges, much more brutal than those of the Bolsheviks when they re-occupied at the end this territory. Massive killing, restoration of land to the previous owners and so on and so on. So it absolutely wasn't just the Bolshevik brutality. No, it was much more complex. It was also that farmers like 'Okay say Bolsheviks we don’t trust them, okay let the white people, let the counter-revolution come,' and then the situation for them was much worse. And they almost effectively welcomed back the Bolshevik land, the Bolshevik forces because, you know, you should not forget that at that point Lenin’s formula was not collectivization, it was land to the farmers. And Bolsheviks did that. It was an ingenious an ingenious move. Lenin to the end of his life warned against the deadlock of too fast a privatization. You know who follows Lenin here? My good friend, I’m proud to say although we met only two times, my good friend Alvaro Garcia Linera, the Bolivian Vice President, who said 'that Lenin' and the term we coined together in debate is principled pragmatic stance. You have a principled stance, we know, communist horizon and so on, but then in how to actualize this principled stance you have to be very cautious. Don’t alienate people who are not really your enemies. And Lenin was here incredibly open. I read some um some documents on how after the civil war many Western high corporate managers, Rockefeller even I don’t know who the time, came to visit Soviet Union and Lenin was fascinated with them. He saw in them masters of how to coordinate, organize large factories, all the complexity. He saw an emancipatory potential in them. And the same miracle was accomplished by Morales, Linera and now Lucho Arce in Bolivia. They were radical, but in a very careful way. They didn’t screw it up. When people ask me, 'okay whenever radical left came to power they screwed it up,' I’m very sorry, in Bolivia they did not screw it up. The real purchase power of ordinary worker in the how much was it years of Morales’ first reign, more than redoubled. They succeeded in controlling the big capital but at the same time exploiting it in the sense of making it work for them. It's this is very important for us today. And my I think this is what we need today. And this is where Jacobins come. Why do I
I I will try to not only seduce those who are already convinced, but I think one should do this respectfully, seduce or at least confuse those who those who maybe sincere liberals but they are nonetheless kind of bombarded by this message 'Yeah, maybe they meant well but they got into a deadlock, absolute terror, indistinct killing and so on.' So it’s nonetheless the the root, the elementary form of of of a Stalinist terror and so on and so on. I think they should be redeemed. I would even go as far as to say that some, in some things, we should even return to them, to the French revolutionaries, in comparison with even with Marxist experience. There was something unique about that moment. What first, my first advice, sorry if this will be a little bit boring, but my first advice to those benevolent skeptics, you know, like 'yeah they tried to do good things, egalitarianism but look where they ended in terror' and so on... Let’s get, now I will talk like a good positivist, why not? Let’s get the facts straight. I spoke with some historians in France, in English, who told me, hey, terror. Listen, don’t compare this with Nazi or Stalinist terror. When they had political trials, it was not as it is usually portrayed, it was just a formality, you were condemned in advance. When you were accused by a revolutionary tribunal, do you know that the percentage of how often you were found guilty was around So it was to You had a fair chance of surviving. Second point, many of these accusations, irrational and so on... ask now honest even liberal, not pro-Jacobin, British historians who had a look into, because the good thing about United Kingdom is they were never properly bombed, blah blah, they had most of their documents kept. The data about the interaction of English government with French revolutionaries, you know that for example the accusation against Danton and the killing of Danton is usually considered as the moment, the first moment of the great madness of revolutionary terror. Sorry, he was guilty. It is clear from the British secret documents, now they became accessible, that Danton was all the time systematically bribed by the British government to pursue... Second thing, the beheading of the King and Queen. Sorry, they, revolutionaries, wanted to give to give him a chance, but while he was not even in prison, just isolated in his castle, the King, the royal family were constantly plotting with the enemies who were attacking France of how to overthrow the French government. So they were simply, they were simply guilty. Terror, numbers of terror. My God, according to some data, Thermidor, when 'oh the terror was over, people were dancing on the streets and so on,' no, in the first two, three weeks of the Thermidor terror after Saint-Just and Robespierre were arrested and liquidated, more people were guillotined than almost the entire era of the revolutionary terror before. You know what was the only difference? You should look upon it closely who, who was guillotined? The point is of course that under Jacobins it was visible names, nobles and so on. what made them visible? We don’t even hear or have precise statistics of the ordinary low people who were beheaded and so on and so on. The last thing, this is my ultimate argument against those who claim 'oh it was a terrorist dictatorship.' Sorry but whatever you say about Robespierre, he was not an idiot. One should maybe find those documents which demonstrate this. I know they exist, some historians showed them to me. Do you know that Robespierre again and Saint-Just were not idiots, they saw it coming, the gradual organization in the Assemblée Nationale, National Assembly, of a new coalition to oust, to throw out the Jacobins. And they they were if anything they were too procedural, liberal. They didn’t want to do a simple coup d’état to introduce direct terror. No, it was quite tragically naive in the days before Thermidor. Robespierre was seen walking along the River Seine in Paris just thinking about his speech. For him the medium where he will win was not arrest the counter-revolutionaries and so on, it was a big speech in Assemblée Nationale. And it failed, he was overthrown by a simple majority of votes. I’m sorry, that’s not how you overthrow a true totalitarian dictator and so on and so on. If anything Robespierre was very moderate. He knew, he was aware of the danger of the terror exploding into madness. And his last writings were full of double fear or suspicion. One is how to gradually bring the terror to the end and second maybe his deepest insight, and here I see the proper greatness of of Robespierre, of Saint-Just and some others, you know they were not idiots, they were aware of what Marxists later conceptualized as the gradual shift from republican form to some form of personal dictatorship, Bonapartism. And they were aware that again this will in all probability happen. And they even debated this temptation: should we become the new Bonaparte and we will control the situation blah blah. And it’s one of the most beautiful ethical gestures, my God, they concluded, no, sorry, it’s better for us to lose our physical head than to take that path. And the step from Robespierre to Napoleon is an important step. Let me give you just one proof which is for me maybe the most sublime moment. You may know that my big fixation is Haiti Revolution. I even have a theory, as you already mentioned it, that French Revolution only became a world-historic model through its repetition in Haiti. That was the test that a totally different race, cultural group recognized itself in it. And here you measure who was truly progressive. For example Hegel, who is supposed to be more conservative, in a wonderful footnote to his Philosophy of Right I think, he praises Haiti as an example of how even a nation which is not part of Western European enlightened people can successfully establish a modern state. So for me the single most sublime moment is you know the story, when the when still before Thermidor Toussaint Louverture, the ruling new circle in Haiti, sent a delegation to Assemblée Nationale. They were celebrated, immediately recognized as equals. Then things changed with Napoleon. Napoleon did something very nasty there. He sent the army, I think it was his brother Joseph who was the head, the general, with the explicit goal of not only bringing order there, re-establish slavery, but as he said, Napoleon, no, this is such a dangerous precedent that all the slaves there should be killed and new slaves brought. It’s not enough just to control the situation. And now comes for me one of those every revolutionary should know them, incredibly moving moment. An important part of Napoleon’s army were Polish soldiers. And they did something incredible. They were approaching the revolutionary Black army and when they approached it they heard some singing. And they thought, 'Ah this must be some this must be some stupid tribal songs and so on.' And then when they approached more they saw the rebels, the Blacks are singing Marseillaise. You know what happened? The the French soldiers said 'Wait a minute, are we here fighting on the right side?' They changed sides, they rejoined the Blacks. That’s why very interesting that’s why when later in I think, when the revolution deviated a little bit and the first king or whatever emperor after Toussaint Louverture ordered 'kill all white people.' I have two explanations here, not justifications but explanations. First is that nonetheless he explicitly exempted white people of Polish origins. He said they saved us, Poles should survive. Second thing, you know how I understand this 'kill all white people'? This is exactly the moment when the Black Revolution started to imitate, they wanted to copy the white power structure, they wanted to be the new ruling class and so on and so on. So it's not 'oh they went so far they wanted to kill all the white people,' no, this was immanently reactionary moment, an attempt to re-establish the old power structure only with them at position of power. But I think now I will stop but just this. Do you remember, my God, Haiti is with us, this nation for being the first who took independence clearly, for being, and that’s where I’m wrongly accused of Euro-centrism, for being more European than we Europeans, if by European we mean what is best in our legacy, equality blah blah. They were only through them again, French Revolution became a world-historic event which here I follow my friend Jean-Claude Milner who is not exactly a radical leftist, but here he is right, who says, sorry, American Revolution was never such an authentic emancipatory event. Even now it’s an unfinished revolution, it drags on. That’s why American Revolution, in a nice polemics against Hannah Arendt, Milner develops this, how American Revolution was always a compromise. Lincoln again it didn't succeed, you had Ku Klux Klan and so on and so on. So again, just to conclude but you can then ask me more, what I would like to point out is that we live in an era so it seems where these are old romantic dreams, 'oh people gather, sorry we live in a complex digitalized society, it’s no longer time for such things.' No, I think that today with the crisis that we are approaching and now it’s clear that Covid will not disappear, uh there will be other pandemics, global warming is becoming reality and so on and so on, we are approaching an emergency state. And sooner or later it may take years but then we will pay the price, it probably will take years, something will have to happen, it’s simply the only way out. First voluntarism, in a progressive sense, like we cannot justify uh measures of how to reorient our production to fit the to fit ecological goals, protecting environment, you cannot ground this in some objective necessity of productive forces, we simply should act even if it’s against the market logic. Second point, egalitarianism. Even those in power has to pay now lip service to it. We fight pandemic, the goal should be not protected bubbles but universal healthcare. Then, I know what I’m saying here, elements of progressive terror. I don’t mean secret police grabbing you, but when you have a pandemic, when you have nature in chaos, you have to control the situation. And fourth element as a counter-point to the third one, trust in the people, which means precisely more than this every four years you have election and then corruption takes on and so on and so on. It was already clear in fighting the pandemic that the best countries till now at least, the best in dealing with the pandemic, were those where the state could rely on the people. For example although now they have a little bit higher number, but the miracle till two months ago was Vietnam. They didn’t have enough vaccines or whatever, they have excellent local self-organization. These four features: voluntarism, egalitarianism, terror in good sense and trust in the people, this will be needed, this is needed in emergency states. So I think again that something like the way the Jacobins acted, of course in different conditions, but this basic logic will have to be reinvented if we mean it seriously coping with not just one catastrophe, pandemic, it will be another pandemic, it will be ecological catastrophe and so on and so on. There is no return to normality. We will need this type of radical measures. I’m here on Lenin’s side. People are often telling me 'but you are critical of Lenin sometimes.' I say maybe, but the only Lenin I really don’t like and I hope you also is Lenin Moreno, the president of Ecuador who delivered Assange to the... no I I think that that what has to be done now cannot be formulated in this for my taste a little bit too trustful standard Marxist notion 'the relations of production are developed', sorry 'forces of production', blah blah. No, as we should act not literally but in the spirit of what Lenin did. He saw out of all this standard evolutionary Marxist formulas an opportunity for the revolution. Remember that Mensheviks were not some bad guys. Okay they were but basically they were simply old-fashioned orthodox Marxists. When Marx said, you remember, when Marx said 'One thing is certain, I am not a Marxist,' I think he had precisely Mensheviks. Their idea was don't dream about revolution now, the situation is not yet ripe, we first has to have to enact the passage to bourgeois democracy in an orderly way and so on and so on. No, we cannot play this game today. We should act in a voluntarist way and a little bit faster. I’ve spoken too long, please, put on at least now you, Jen, put on your stupid Black leather. Actually I’m going to hand the leather over to Paul. So, and speaking of that, um I mean, what do you think we can learn from the nature of counter-revolution and reaction from the experience of the French Revolution and even the Haitian Revolution? What what does it teach us about the nature of counter-revolution? Uh, first the the usual thing is to say that Jacobins were too radical, they should have been looking for a pact and so on. You you know it’s the same as with October Revolution. It’s often said that they could have predominated in a more peaceful organic way, that it is the Red terror which cost them the counter-revolution, civil war. Look, it’s not so simple. Can we even imagine today the tremendous pressure under which France was in early and then Soviet Union in beginning of In both cases the central government controlled I think around only one-seventh of the of the territory of the state. And this was not just like in Vendée some primitive farmers rebelling and so on. In concerning Soviet future Soviet Union, you know which book is the absolute one to read, it’s difficult to get today. An English general joined Kolchak, this Siberian counter-revolution, the most dangerous one who covered till Ural, all that big Asian part of Soviet Union and he wrote his memoirs after the war, observations. And the image you get there is a terrifying one. Against these accusations of, you know, communists are usually anti-Semitic, sorry. The first thing Kolchak did in his domain was to start reprinting like crazy Protocols of Zion and claiming this is a Judeo-Bolshevik plot. At that point already it originated, you know, this caricature of Trotsky as a devil, Jewish devil and so on and so on. And he, this British general, I’m so sorry I don’t I forgot his name, slipped out of my mind, he also described in detail what the white counter-revolutionaries did when they occupied a territory. Incredible purges, much more brutal than those of the Bolsheviks when they re-occupied at the end this territory. Massive killing, restoration of land to the previous owners and so on and so on. So it absolutely wasn't just the Bolshevik brutality. No, it was much more complex. It was also that farmers like 'Okay say Bolsheviks we don’t trust them, okay let the white people, let the counter-revolution come,' and then the situation for them was much worse. And they almost effectively welcomed back the Bolshevik land, the Bolshevik forces because, you know, you should not forget that at that point Lenin’s formula was not collectivization, it was land to the farmers. And Bolsheviks did that. It was an ingenious an ingenious move. Lenin to the end of his life warned against the deadlock of too fast a privatization. You know who follows Lenin here? My good friend, I’m proud to say although we met only two times, my good friend Alvaro Garcia Linera, the Bolivian Vice President, who said 'that Lenin' and the term we coined together in debate is principled pragmatic stance. You have a principled stance, we know, communist horizon and so on, but then in how to actualize this principled stance you have to be very cautious. Don’t alienate people who are not really your enemies. And Lenin was here incredibly open. I read some um some documents on how after the civil war many Western high corporate managers, Rockefeller even I don’t know who the time, came to visit Soviet Union and Lenin was fascinated with them. He saw in them masters of how to coordinate, organize large factories, all the complexity. He saw an emancipatory potential in them. And the same miracle was accomplished by Morales, Linera and now Lucho Arce in Bolivia. They were radical, but in a very careful way. They didn’t screw it up. When people ask me, 'okay whenever radical left came to power they screwed it up,' I’m very sorry, in Bolivia they did not screw it up. The real purchase power of ordinary worker in the how much was it years of Morales’ first reign, more than redoubled. They succeeded in controlling the big capital but at the same time exploiting it in the sense of making it work for them. It's this is very important for us today. And my I think this is what we need today. And this is where Jacobins come. Why do I
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still prefer Jacobins a little bit over Lenin was
still prefer Jacobins a little bit over Lenin was
unknown
that not in his practice but in his theory Lenin was for me a little bit too much of an idealist and at the same time historical determinist. You know, like in orthodox Marxism he still thought history is on our side, there are phases of history, we are we just
that not in his practice but in his theory Lenin was for me a little bit too much of an idealist and at the same time historical determinist. You know, like in orthodox Marxism he still thought history is on our side, there are phases of history, we are we just
Slavoj Žižek
accomplish a task predetermined by history and so on. While Robespierre and Saint-Just use some wonderful metaphors here when they say 'no, revolution is like you are on wild sea on a boat and you don't have any maps, any compasses, orientation, you have to improvise' and so on and so on. They were much more aware and we should be aware of this open situation how to reorganize thing, we have to improvise and so on and so on. Lenin in his practice was fully was fully aware of this. So to answer to your question, I think there is, and this is how great progressive revolutionaries act, yes, ultimately you have to maintain power. No bullshitting here. But at the same time that you don't make compromises about who is in power and so on, you should not create unnecessary enemies. You should look at things rationally, like we have there some very efficient big corporations. How to control them but not ruin the production? How to make them work for us? Or as Lenin was aware, New Economic Policy. How to, he was well aware that state cannot provide this small-level production of consumerist goods, so let’s use them. It can be controlled and so on and so on. That’s I think how you really fight a counter-revolution. By this mixture of on the one hand at the principled level no compromises. But you should nonetheless give those who are in principle your opponents, you should give them a chance like obey our rules, contribute to the welfare of the nation and okay we tolerate a certain level of your wealth and so on and so on. It can be done. Again, of all the countries Bolivia proved that it can be done. Now people tell me right-wingers 'but look at Haiti even now,' you remember a week ago or when the Prime Minister killed and so on. That’s the curse of Haiti. It’s a nightmare how this country for just doing this at that point making a revolution and as some people deployed very nicely, all European modernity, that's its paradox, was filled in full of the ideas of freedom freedom against slavery, but they mostly meant slavery in this metaphorical sense. As a worker you are just a slave, at home a woman maybe is a slave, blah blah. But at the same time they didn't write a lot about literal slavery, which was exploding in early stages of capitalism. And again, in Haiti they did this. That’s why they had to be punished. And they were punished for years. So, I I want to go back to something you alluded to when you were talking about the Haitian Revolution um or the Haitian Revolution and the French Revolution. So, you know, as we know, the principles of the Enlightenment very heavily influenced the French revolutionaries and as you mentioned, you can see that sort of being pulled through to the Haitian Revolution. Um, I kind of feel like today, especially in the US on the left, the Enlightenment has kind of fallen out of favor, right? Uh and you you had sort of mentioned this or alluded to this as well. Um I think there’s a conception among some people that, you know, Enlightenment principles or Enlightenment values are somehow uh Eurocentric or non-universal. Or perhaps I should say that the very Enlightenment concept of universality is something that a lot of people on the left in the US now try to push against. So, I, you know, because we are talking about the French Revolution and the Enlightenment, um I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about why the left today should embrace the Enlightenment? Or or what is it that we can take from the Enlightenment? Uh I know of course in thanks very much for this question. I know in detail this line of argumentation. The problem is identity politics for me here. And of course I have nothing against identity politics in the sense of every group should be allowed or even solicited to to retain, assert its identity. Incidentally, in the mid-1920s till the Stalinist turn Soviet Union practiced this type of identity politics in Ukraine. I read now a right-wing historical overview of the development of Ukraine. Do you know that till October Revolution Ukrainians were not allowed to use everyday level to practice the Ukrainian language. It was just Russian. Ukraine developed its grammar, dictionaries, Ukrainian became a literary language during the 1920s. So they consciously proposed this identities. The problem I see is somewhere else somewhere else and as I did it I think already I forgot where in a text, the problem with identity politics for me is that it implies a kind of a horizontal image of social antagonisms. I’m here, you are there, we should tolerate each other, it should be allowed to build its identity and so on and so on. And you can see the catastrophe of this the moment you apply it to class struggle. Now comes my provocation. The movie which got which triumphed at Oscars this year, Nomadland. It’s honest, nice, liberal, yeah. But I think it’s a wrong step towards what I’m tempted to call classism in the sense of class identity politics. The thesis is implicit, at least the way I experience the movie, 'look even those poorest workers who cannot even afford a a home permanent home, who had to drive around searching for jobs and so on, even they have their own cultural identity, even they have their own way of life with small rituals, solidarity and so on and so on.' I don’t buy this. I think that the problem of this type of nomadic proletarians is not cannot be solved in this sense that you provide a proper cultural identity for them, but that you demonstrate precisely that their situation is so tragic that they cannot reach a full satisfactory self-identity. As Marx put it about proletariat, their identity is self-contradictory. They they cannot achieve that. Incidentally, in the same way maybe I will even now write a a new text criticizing this new woke Hollywood, politically correct Hollywood movies which I think are very dangerous. Like I didn’t see it, I read about it, Luca. This new Disney cartoon about a boy from the sea off Italian coast sea monster who can adopt human image and then becomes friendly with I think a gay boy ordinary Italian man and they overcome the barriers, develop friendship and so on and so on. We see, of course this is meant to be as a parable for parable for every hatred of the otherness, LGBT, uh immigrants and so on and so on. But I’m always very suspicious when a whole set of social contradictions, like why are immigrants coming here? What are the social antagonism among the immigrants? What are we doing wrong with the immigrants? Why can’t we deal with the problem of immigrants just in this pure humanitarian way? 'Oh there are poor people, we are humans, let’s help them' and so on and so on. No, the way to really help them is to question our politics of neo-colonialism. Look at all these critical points, refugees, immigrants from Africa, not to mention ISIS, Syrian civil war and so on and so on. I wrote a short text apropos Donald Rumsfeld where I claim my God, Rumsfeld was the main creator of ISIS in the sense that his catastrophic politics in Iraq, Syria and so on which created ISIS. Changes had to happen at this level. So you know how far I’m ready to go here? Now this will be a problematic part, but please take me seriously. I don’t trust humanitarians who say 'but immigrants are suffering so much, we should help them.' No, I would much more trust a slightly conservative guy who says 'immigrants are annoying me, they are too different, I don’t want them here. But I want to be honest, they live in a shitty place there, so let’s stop what we are doing economically, politically so that they will be able to have normal life there.' The moment the problem is put in the terms of humanitarianism, 'are we good enough to help them' and so on, something is terribly wrong. Again, the problem is the global international situation. The problem is not, 'oh my God there are immigrants on our border, should we allow them in or not?' Of course we should allow them in to avoid a misunderstanding, much more than we do. But this is not the solution. The and at this level again I’m already for years ago suspicious of this certain kind of identity politics. You know what is my primordial experience here? I remember I’m old enough before Mandela and ANC took over, the last years of apartheid rule in South Africa. You know that apartheid ideology was absolutely identity politics. Their argument, I read some
accomplish a task predetermined by history and so on. While Robespierre and Saint-Just use some wonderful metaphors here when they say 'no, revolution is like you are on wild sea on a boat and you don't have any maps, any compasses, orientation, you have to improvise' and so on and so on. They were much more aware and we should be aware of this open situation how to reorganize thing, we have to improvise and so on and so on. Lenin in his practice was fully was fully aware of this. So to answer to your question, I think there is, and this is how great progressive revolutionaries act, yes, ultimately you have to maintain power. No bullshitting here. But at the same time that you don't make compromises about who is in power and so on, you should not create unnecessary enemies. You should look at things rationally, like we have there some very efficient big corporations. How to control them but not ruin the production? How to make them work for us? Or as Lenin was aware, New Economic Policy. How to, he was well aware that state cannot provide this small-level production of consumerist goods, so let’s use them. It can be controlled and so on and so on. That’s I think how you really fight a counter-revolution. By this mixture of on the one hand at the principled level no compromises. But you should nonetheless give those who are in principle your opponents, you should give them a chance like obey our rules, contribute to the welfare of the nation and okay we tolerate a certain level of your wealth and so on and so on. It can be done. Again, of all the countries Bolivia proved that it can be done. Now people tell me right-wingers 'but look at Haiti even now,' you remember a week ago or when the Prime Minister killed and so on. That’s the curse of Haiti. It’s a nightmare how this country for just doing this at that point making a revolution and as some people deployed very nicely, all European modernity, that's its paradox, was filled in full of the ideas of freedom freedom against slavery, but they mostly meant slavery in this metaphorical sense. As a worker you are just a slave, at home a woman maybe is a slave, blah blah. But at the same time they didn't write a lot about literal slavery, which was exploding in early stages of capitalism. And again, in Haiti they did this. That’s why they had to be punished. And they were punished for years. So, I I want to go back to something you alluded to when you were talking about the Haitian Revolution um or the Haitian Revolution and the French Revolution. So, you know, as we know, the principles of the Enlightenment very heavily influenced the French revolutionaries and as you mentioned, you can see that sort of being pulled through to the Haitian Revolution. Um, I kind of feel like today, especially in the US on the left, the Enlightenment has kind of fallen out of favor, right? Uh and you you had sort of mentioned this or alluded to this as well. Um I think there’s a conception among some people that, you know, Enlightenment principles or Enlightenment values are somehow uh Eurocentric or non-universal. Or perhaps I should say that the very Enlightenment concept of universality is something that a lot of people on the left in the US now try to push against. So, I, you know, because we are talking about the French Revolution and the Enlightenment, um I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about why the left today should embrace the Enlightenment? Or or what is it that we can take from the Enlightenment? Uh I know of course in thanks very much for this question. I know in detail this line of argumentation. The problem is identity politics for me here. And of course I have nothing against identity politics in the sense of every group should be allowed or even solicited to to retain, assert its identity. Incidentally, in the mid-1920s till the Stalinist turn Soviet Union practiced this type of identity politics in Ukraine. I read now a right-wing historical overview of the development of Ukraine. Do you know that till October Revolution Ukrainians were not allowed to use everyday level to practice the Ukrainian language. It was just Russian. Ukraine developed its grammar, dictionaries, Ukrainian became a literary language during the 1920s. So they consciously proposed this identities. The problem I see is somewhere else somewhere else and as I did it I think already I forgot where in a text, the problem with identity politics for me is that it implies a kind of a horizontal image of social antagonisms. I’m here, you are there, we should tolerate each other, it should be allowed to build its identity and so on and so on. And you can see the catastrophe of this the moment you apply it to class struggle. Now comes my provocation. The movie which got which triumphed at Oscars this year, Nomadland. It’s honest, nice, liberal, yeah. But I think it’s a wrong step towards what I’m tempted to call classism in the sense of class identity politics. The thesis is implicit, at least the way I experience the movie, 'look even those poorest workers who cannot even afford a a home permanent home, who had to drive around searching for jobs and so on, even they have their own cultural identity, even they have their own way of life with small rituals, solidarity and so on and so on.' I don’t buy this. I think that the problem of this type of nomadic proletarians is not cannot be solved in this sense that you provide a proper cultural identity for them, but that you demonstrate precisely that their situation is so tragic that they cannot reach a full satisfactory self-identity. As Marx put it about proletariat, their identity is self-contradictory. They they cannot achieve that. Incidentally, in the same way maybe I will even now write a a new text criticizing this new woke Hollywood, politically correct Hollywood movies which I think are very dangerous. Like I didn’t see it, I read about it, Luca. This new Disney cartoon about a boy from the sea off Italian coast sea monster who can adopt human image and then becomes friendly with I think a gay boy ordinary Italian man and they overcome the barriers, develop friendship and so on and so on. We see, of course this is meant to be as a parable for parable for every hatred of the otherness, LGBT, uh immigrants and so on and so on. But I’m always very suspicious when a whole set of social contradictions, like why are immigrants coming here? What are the social antagonism among the immigrants? What are we doing wrong with the immigrants? Why can’t we deal with the problem of immigrants just in this pure humanitarian way? 'Oh there are poor people, we are humans, let’s help them' and so on and so on. No, the way to really help them is to question our politics of neo-colonialism. Look at all these critical points, refugees, immigrants from Africa, not to mention ISIS, Syrian civil war and so on and so on. I wrote a short text apropos Donald Rumsfeld where I claim my God, Rumsfeld was the main creator of ISIS in the sense that his catastrophic politics in Iraq, Syria and so on which created ISIS. Changes had to happen at this level. So you know how far I’m ready to go here? Now this will be a problematic part, but please take me seriously. I don’t trust humanitarians who say 'but immigrants are suffering so much, we should help them.' No, I would much more trust a slightly conservative guy who says 'immigrants are annoying me, they are too different, I don’t want them here. But I want to be honest, they live in a shitty place there, so let’s stop what we are doing economically, politically so that they will be able to have normal life there.' The moment the problem is put in the terms of humanitarianism, 'are we good enough to help them' and so on, something is terribly wrong. Again, the problem is the global international situation. The problem is not, 'oh my God there are immigrants on our border, should we allow them in or not?' Of course we should allow them in to avoid a misunderstanding, much more than we do. But this is not the solution. The and at this level again I’m already for years ago suspicious of this certain kind of identity politics. You know what is my primordial experience here? I remember I’m old enough before Mandela and ANC took over, the last years of apartheid rule in South Africa. You know that apartheid ideology was absolutely identity politics. Their argument, I read some
unknown
of their texts, against simply giving the Blacks right to vote was 'my God but look they have wonderful authentic ancient culture. If we give them the right to vote, they will just become alienated consumerists like us and so on and so on.' Here I love my friends from this minorities whose answer is not a hypocritical one but a wonderfully open us open one. 'Yes, please, why not? Let us allow us please to experience a little bit of your corrupted welfare state, alienation and so on.' You know there is so much there is so much hypocrisy here. So that’s my worry, that how to really solve the problems. And it’s not just at a moral level, it’s a question of survival for all of us. If things that are now happening in still in the Middle East and other parts, Guatemala, parts of Africa and so on, if this is not resolved there, then this situation of allowing a certain amount of them to come, I’m now talking from my perspective to Western Europe will just breed hatred here and even more crucial, we are not receiving here the
of their texts, against simply giving the Blacks right to vote was 'my God but look they have wonderful authentic ancient culture. If we give them the right to vote, they will just become alienated consumerists like us and so on and so on.' Here I love my friends from this minorities whose answer is not a hypocritical one but a wonderfully open us open one. 'Yes, please, why not? Let us allow us please to experience a little bit of your corrupted welfare state, alienation and so on.' You know there is so much there is so much hypocrisy here. So that’s my worry, that how to really solve the problems. And it’s not just at a moral level, it’s a question of survival for all of us. If things that are now happening in still in the Middle East and other parts, Guatemala, parts of Africa and so on, if this is not resolved there, then this situation of allowing a certain amount of them to come, I’m now talking from my perspective to Western Europe will just breed hatred here and even more crucial, we are not receiving here the
Slavoj Žižek
true victims. It’s good to look at the statistics. Average immigrant apart from a minor number are those who are aggressive strong enough to pay all the bribes and so on, the truly poor remain there in terrible conditions. I think again we should move to this level of seeing the global problem, seeing where are the roots of the problem, if not we are lost. And so the, you know, spirit of the French Revolution and I think the Enlightenment in general was kind of infused with this hope um and hope in progress for the future. And I think on the left, especially in academia, there are certain trends such as like afro-pessimism or postmodernism that don't have this same kind of hope. And, you know, a lot of the revolutions of the late 18th, early 19th century were kind of fueled by these common um, you know, themes, grievances, social forces. Do you see any prospects for revolutions in the 21st century? And if so, you know, what factors do you think will fuel them? It’s very risky this terrain, we don’t know not, but I I think that yes, you know history is full of miracles in a good sense. Like who would have even imagined years ago something like what happened, okay we know how it finished then, but nonetheless something like Syriza in Greece. The literally majority of the population mobilized at this level and so on and so on. And so I cannot be precise about what form some let’s call it revolution or upheaval, strong social upheaval will take. I just want to emphasize one thing which seems to me crucial, I’ve written about it a couple of times. Till now the predominant form of protests in third world and Eastern European post-communist countries was what Habermas in a very unfortunate term of the phrase called Nachholende Revolution, catch-up revolution. Like we in the developed Western Europe already have it, you are just trying to catch up with us and that’s all you can do. Habermas went so far here that he even attacked some East German dissidents like Christa Wolf, the writer and so on, who claimed 'but maybe in spite of all communist failures there were some forms of minimal social solidarity and so on that could remain some kind of a lesson which could remain operative and help us even if or when we integrate the West.' Habermas was in panic about this protest. For him 'no, no, no, this was the danger then of new totalitarianism and so on and so on.' But I think this skeptics by skeptics I mean people who saw that what happened after the fall of really existing socialism is not simply 'we want to catch up with the West.' Why? Because first I remember from my youth, I was part of those phenomena, especially my links with Poland. I knew Adam Michnik and so on. And they all told me 'you know at the beginning Solidarność was a workers' committee, it had a much stronger workers' and even modern top-culture turn.' The church took over later. So basically, if you look closely at what was moving even the majority of Solidarity it was not simply capitalism, it was an open society where there is a freedom of expression, basic social safety, welfare some welfare guaranteed and so on. It was much closer to what was the best in the official ideology itself. And the sad paradox is that since then neoliberal take-over of post-European east- sorry post-communist East European countries, when this happened then this betrayed socialist legacy returned in the guise of its opposite, as this new right-wing populism, which and that’s the saddest thing, which still has a much stronger social note than pro-Western market liberals and so on. Look at Poland. Yes, I hate them this Kaczynski’s party Law and Justice, but you know what they did? It’s horrible, horrible from the perspective of freedom-loving liberals, they raised average salary, they made conditions for retirement much better, student loans much and so on and so on. They did a whole series of measures for ordinary people which the ruling liberal, even left-liberal business elite was not ready to do. So what I’m trying to say is that aren’t we getting now something similar even in the West, the revolts we are getting now there? Look at Gilet Jaunes, the Yellow Vests in France. Okay they are mixed, I don’t totally support them, but the important thing is this one: they are not no longer a catch-up demand. It's not 'no we want true parliamentary democracy.' They they articulate a discontent precisely in this Fukuyama’s world of capitalist liberal democracy and so on and so on. So in the East and in the West we have a certain amount amount of critical energy which cannot be properly articulated more and more in the existing parliamentary system. And again, the right-wing populist manipulate with this in a very astute way. And my formula is the only way even for the honest liberals to catch ground again is to move to the left. I think that’s a pretty pretty good note to end on. Uh, it looks like we are coming up on the hour, so I want to thank you, Slavoj, for being here. Again, we will air this on Bastille Day, so Happy Bastille Day to you and to all the viewers. I’m very grateful to all of you for being able to talk here. You know why, if you allow me a brief conclusion, because I always when I mention Jacobins and so on, even those who are sympathetic to me, they take this as a kind of an eccentricity, you know, 'ooh you are playing a post-modern intellectual game' or whatever. But listen, I now I even don’t want to mention Marxism too much, I simply tell them look at Seattle and no, I don’t like Seattle, my favorite cities there are Vancouver, although the center the island is now occupied by the Far East rich people, they will have to do something. No, I have nothing against people from this to coming, but not just the rich people from there. And Portland, you know why I like Portland? It still has I think the best bookstore in the United States, four five hundred connected, no. So what I’m saying is that just look just look at it with some kind of a remainder of a healthy common sense. When you have these effects of global warming, pandemic is going on and so on and so on, it’s stupid to say let’s leave the conclusion to the market. The situation is too much an emergency state. It’s not I don’t like the metaphor of war here, but it is some kind of a war-like emergency state. And let me give a metaphor which I hope all rough militarists will like. You are attacked by an enemy and you need planes and tanks. And if you don’t say, 'okay let’s let’s address the market, let’s you know blah blah,' no, you have to organize it in a voluntarist way immediately. We need tanks, we need bombers and so on. And I’m just saying that the same thing is here, that voluntarism is needed. Again, egalitarianism, not in this abstract sense everybody the same salary, but in this simple sense of never should we in the pandemic for example sacrifice one part of the world of one part of our own population. It doesn’t work. Healthcare simply has to be universal. Not to mention the new crisis. We will need some transnational organizations with enough force to even enforce solutions. I think it’s totally realistic if this trends of extreme heat, drought in some places will go on, to somehow execute large movements, tens of millions even more of the population. And we cannot afford today to do this through war, as it was done in the past. These are for me simply things of common sense survival. So my concluding formula is
true victims. It’s good to look at the statistics. Average immigrant apart from a minor number are those who are aggressive strong enough to pay all the bribes and so on, the truly poor remain there in terrible conditions. I think again we should move to this level of seeing the global problem, seeing where are the roots of the problem, if not we are lost. And so the, you know, spirit of the French Revolution and I think the Enlightenment in general was kind of infused with this hope um and hope in progress for the future. And I think on the left, especially in academia, there are certain trends such as like afro-pessimism or postmodernism that don't have this same kind of hope. And, you know, a lot of the revolutions of the late 18th, early 19th century were kind of fueled by these common um, you know, themes, grievances, social forces. Do you see any prospects for revolutions in the 21st century? And if so, you know, what factors do you think will fuel them? It’s very risky this terrain, we don’t know not, but I I think that yes, you know history is full of miracles in a good sense. Like who would have even imagined years ago something like what happened, okay we know how it finished then, but nonetheless something like Syriza in Greece. The literally majority of the population mobilized at this level and so on and so on. And so I cannot be precise about what form some let’s call it revolution or upheaval, strong social upheaval will take. I just want to emphasize one thing which seems to me crucial, I’ve written about it a couple of times. Till now the predominant form of protests in third world and Eastern European post-communist countries was what Habermas in a very unfortunate term of the phrase called Nachholende Revolution, catch-up revolution. Like we in the developed Western Europe already have it, you are just trying to catch up with us and that’s all you can do. Habermas went so far here that he even attacked some East German dissidents like Christa Wolf, the writer and so on, who claimed 'but maybe in spite of all communist failures there were some forms of minimal social solidarity and so on that could remain some kind of a lesson which could remain operative and help us even if or when we integrate the West.' Habermas was in panic about this protest. For him 'no, no, no, this was the danger then of new totalitarianism and so on and so on.' But I think this skeptics by skeptics I mean people who saw that what happened after the fall of really existing socialism is not simply 'we want to catch up with the West.' Why? Because first I remember from my youth, I was part of those phenomena, especially my links with Poland. I knew Adam Michnik and so on. And they all told me 'you know at the beginning Solidarność was a workers' committee, it had a much stronger workers' and even modern top-culture turn.' The church took over later. So basically, if you look closely at what was moving even the majority of Solidarity it was not simply capitalism, it was an open society where there is a freedom of expression, basic social safety, welfare some welfare guaranteed and so on. It was much closer to what was the best in the official ideology itself. And the sad paradox is that since then neoliberal take-over of post-European east- sorry post-communist East European countries, when this happened then this betrayed socialist legacy returned in the guise of its opposite, as this new right-wing populism, which and that’s the saddest thing, which still has a much stronger social note than pro-Western market liberals and so on. Look at Poland. Yes, I hate them this Kaczynski’s party Law and Justice, but you know what they did? It’s horrible, horrible from the perspective of freedom-loving liberals, they raised average salary, they made conditions for retirement much better, student loans much and so on and so on. They did a whole series of measures for ordinary people which the ruling liberal, even left-liberal business elite was not ready to do. So what I’m trying to say is that aren’t we getting now something similar even in the West, the revolts we are getting now there? Look at Gilet Jaunes, the Yellow Vests in France. Okay they are mixed, I don’t totally support them, but the important thing is this one: they are not no longer a catch-up demand. It's not 'no we want true parliamentary democracy.' They they articulate a discontent precisely in this Fukuyama’s world of capitalist liberal democracy and so on and so on. So in the East and in the West we have a certain amount amount of critical energy which cannot be properly articulated more and more in the existing parliamentary system. And again, the right-wing populist manipulate with this in a very astute way. And my formula is the only way even for the honest liberals to catch ground again is to move to the left. I think that’s a pretty pretty good note to end on. Uh, it looks like we are coming up on the hour, so I want to thank you, Slavoj, for being here. Again, we will air this on Bastille Day, so Happy Bastille Day to you and to all the viewers. I’m very grateful to all of you for being able to talk here. You know why, if you allow me a brief conclusion, because I always when I mention Jacobins and so on, even those who are sympathetic to me, they take this as a kind of an eccentricity, you know, 'ooh you are playing a post-modern intellectual game' or whatever. But listen, I now I even don’t want to mention Marxism too much, I simply tell them look at Seattle and no, I don’t like Seattle, my favorite cities there are Vancouver, although the center the island is now occupied by the Far East rich people, they will have to do something. No, I have nothing against people from this to coming, but not just the rich people from there. And Portland, you know why I like Portland? It still has I think the best bookstore in the United States, four five hundred connected, no. So what I’m saying is that just look just look at it with some kind of a remainder of a healthy common sense. When you have these effects of global warming, pandemic is going on and so on and so on, it’s stupid to say let’s leave the conclusion to the market. The situation is too much an emergency state. It’s not I don’t like the metaphor of war here, but it is some kind of a war-like emergency state. And let me give a metaphor which I hope all rough militarists will like. You are attacked by an enemy and you need planes and tanks. And if you don’t say, 'okay let’s let’s address the market, let’s you know blah blah,' no, you have to organize it in a voluntarist way immediately. We need tanks, we need bombers and so on. And I’m just saying that the same thing is here, that voluntarism is needed. Again, egalitarianism, not in this abstract sense everybody the same salary, but in this simple sense of never should we in the pandemic for example sacrifice one part of the world of one part of our own population. It doesn’t work. Healthcare simply has to be universal. Not to mention the new crisis. We will need some transnational organizations with enough force to even enforce solutions. I think it’s totally realistic if this trends of extreme heat, drought in some places will go on, to somehow execute large movements, tens of millions even more of the population. And we cannot afford today to do this through war, as it was done in the past. These are for me simply things of common sense survival. So my concluding formula is
unknown
that as we know many things, but the most surprising thing is our self-imposed blindness
that as we know many things, but the most surprising thing is our self-imposed blindness
unknown
how many things we refuse to know. We simply act as if you know oh the pandemic will be over, oh so what if some oysters are frying in the ocean near Vancouver and so on and so on. But it’s clear that these phenomena are just are just popping up here and there and they are gradually combining in a more global change of balance. Like what gives me panic is that it’s not just there
how many things we refuse to know. We simply act as if you know oh the pandemic will be over, oh so what if some oysters are frying in the ocean near Vancouver and so on and so on. But it’s clear that these phenomena are just are just popping up here and there and they are gradually combining in a more global change of balance. Like what gives me panic is that it’s not just there
Slavoj Žižek
Vancouver. Did you read what is happening now in those places which were usually proclaimed the coldest places in the earth in Northern Siberia? They also are at degrees now. We have to get ready. I’m not saying panic, I’m saying getting ready for large movement of the population, emergency measures and so on and so on. And I think here communism, some form of communism will be necessary. Capitalism cannot confront these problems. That was kind of the perfect note to end on, I think. I hope all of you watching enjoyed that interview. I had a great time speaking to Slavoj. Paul, any last thoughts on the Žižek interview? Just, never a dull moment. Might not always agree with him, but it's always interesting. Indeed it is. Oh, I also want to quickly mention, um we tentatively asked Slavoj if he would come back in October to talk about the Russian Revolution. Uh, so if you enjoyed that, please hit like and we will have to get him back. And believe it or not, that whole segment that was four questions on our part. So Yeah, when we were re-watching that I was like, oh, we only asked him four questions? He’s got a lot to say. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like you said, never a dull moment. Um, so I want to say we actually have another guest coming on in just a minute. Uh, this will be part of the Labor Paul segment and I will hand it over to you, Paul, for that. Um, but before we turn to Todd Wolfson, who will be joining us in just a second, I want to quickly mention again for anybody who's just tuning in, Jacobin magazine is having a Bastille Day sale. If you're an international subscriber, you can get a subscription, a print and digital subscription for, yes, the price of If you're here in the US, the a domestic subscription is Uh, so definitely hit the link in the description box, or you can also go to Jacobin’s website and use the code BastilleDay to to get that discount. Um and that'll be for today, Bastille Day. And here’s young Cale. All right folks, we're doing it. I'm going to show you how to do it, because don't you want to be someone who owns this many Jacobins? Well, this is the sale for you, and all you got to do is go to jacobin.com, oh wait wait here hold on there it is jacobinmag, jacobinmag.com. Don't go to jacobin.com, I don't know what that is. It’s probably... We don't know what that is. I'm going to look that up after the show, actually. Um jacobinmag.com. We're doing this together right now. You you're on your computer, I'm on mine. I'm pulling up jacobinmag.com. And ooh, look, right now you get this article that says to celebrate Bastille Day subscriptions. Let's click on this guy. And when you scroll down it says ooh just follow this link. That's all you got to do, you just got to click on this link. So let's all do it together, click together. All right, and we get a new new pop-up and it says to subscribe. And you can you can get one for yourself or you can get one for someone else. It could be a gift. This could be like a generous thing you do today. Have you done something generous today? This could be it. Um self-improvement. Uh subscription levels all this, you know, you want to get it for the year or you can get it for three years. Maybe that’s a that’s a you're going to save some money. Uh but the biggest thing is that when you scroll all the way down, look, I’m I'm going to save dollars and cents. That’s, you know, that’s like a lot of coffee or something, I don’t know. This is like a New York cup of coffee with this host-y tip. I actually I don't know if I mentioned this earlier, but I think an international subscription is usually over dollars because of the shipping costs. So definitely if you're outside of the US, get on the deal. Um it’s also more than half off if you're in the US, um so this is a really good deal. Um, you don't just get the print issue, you also, you know, can access everything online and you have access to all of Jacobin's archives. So if you missed, for instance, one of the early issues that had the IKEA guillotine on the cover, I don't know if Cale you have that one. That’s a really old-school one. I do not, but it also serves as a home gym as Cale you can see from Cale, you can lift weights with it, it’s great. I'm balancing my computer on it right now. It's helping me raise... There you go. So many things. So again, uh for today only, the Bastille Day sale, use code BastilleDay or click the link in the description box. This is the new
Vancouver. Did you read what is happening now in those places which were usually proclaimed the coldest places in the earth in Northern Siberia? They also are at degrees now. We have to get ready. I’m not saying panic, I’m saying getting ready for large movement of the population, emergency measures and so on and so on. And I think here communism, some form of communism will be necessary. Capitalism cannot confront these problems. That was kind of the perfect note to end on, I think. I hope all of you watching enjoyed that interview. I had a great time speaking to Slavoj. Paul, any last thoughts on the Žižek interview? Just, never a dull moment. Might not always agree with him, but it's always interesting. Indeed it is. Oh, I also want to quickly mention, um we tentatively asked Slavoj if he would come back in October to talk about the Russian Revolution. Uh, so if you enjoyed that, please hit like and we will have to get him back. And believe it or not, that whole segment that was four questions on our part. So Yeah, when we were re-watching that I was like, oh, we only asked him four questions? He’s got a lot to say. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like you said, never a dull moment. Um, so I want to say we actually have another guest coming on in just a minute. Uh, this will be part of the Labor Paul segment and I will hand it over to you, Paul, for that. Um, but before we turn to Todd Wolfson, who will be joining us in just a second, I want to quickly mention again for anybody who's just tuning in, Jacobin magazine is having a Bastille Day sale. If you're an international subscriber, you can get a subscription, a print and digital subscription for, yes, the price of If you're here in the US, the a domestic subscription is Uh, so definitely hit the link in the description box, or you can also go to Jacobin’s website and use the code BastilleDay to to get that discount. Um and that'll be for today, Bastille Day. And here’s young Cale. All right folks, we're doing it. I'm going to show you how to do it, because don't you want to be someone who owns this many Jacobins? Well, this is the sale for you, and all you got to do is go to jacobin.com, oh wait wait here hold on there it is jacobinmag, jacobinmag.com. Don't go to jacobin.com, I don't know what that is. It’s probably... We don't know what that is. I'm going to look that up after the show, actually. Um jacobinmag.com. We're doing this together right now. You you're on your computer, I'm on mine. I'm pulling up jacobinmag.com. And ooh, look, right now you get this article that says to celebrate Bastille Day subscriptions. Let's click on this guy. And when you scroll down it says ooh just follow this link. That's all you got to do, you just got to click on this link. So let's all do it together, click together. All right, and we get a new new pop-up and it says to subscribe. And you can you can get one for yourself or you can get one for someone else. It could be a gift. This could be like a generous thing you do today. Have you done something generous today? This could be it. Um self-improvement. Uh subscription levels all this, you know, you want to get it for the year or you can get it for three years. Maybe that’s a that’s a you're going to save some money. Uh but the biggest thing is that when you scroll all the way down, look, I’m I'm going to save dollars and cents. That’s, you know, that’s like a lot of coffee or something, I don’t know. This is like a New York cup of coffee with this host-y tip. I actually I don't know if I mentioned this earlier, but I think an international subscription is usually over dollars because of the shipping costs. So definitely if you're outside of the US, get on the deal. Um it’s also more than half off if you're in the US, um so this is a really good deal. Um, you don't just get the print issue, you also, you know, can access everything online and you have access to all of Jacobin's archives. So if you missed, for instance, one of the early issues that had the IKEA guillotine on the cover, I don't know if Cale you have that one. That’s a really old-school one. I do not, but it also serves as a home gym as Cale you can see from Cale, you can lift weights with it, it’s great. I'm balancing my computer on it right now. It's helping me raise... There you go. So many things. So again, uh for today only, the Bastille Day sale, use code BastilleDay or click the link in the description box. This is the new
unknown
issue that's coming out on the working class. Very, very appropriate for today, so don't sleep. Good stuff, get it. All right, um well, I think it's time for our next guest. Uh so this is part of the Labor Paul segment. We’re gonna gonna
issue that's coming out on the working class. Very, very appropriate for today, so don't sleep. Good stuff, get it. All right, um well, I think it's time for our next guest. Uh so this is part of the Labor Paul segment. We’re gonna gonna
Slavoj Žižek
be speaking to Todd Wolfson from Rutgers University. Paul, take it away. All right. And uh before I start, uh just a reminder, you know, we've been on a roll with these Labor Paul guests, so I don't want to miss out but keep submitting questions, if you have any questions about labor unions, labor union history, whatever it is, put them in the chat, we are looking at them and collecting them and I will try to answer it. Um but I want to bring on someone I've gotten to know virtually over the next few months. Um Todd Wolfson is joining us. He is an Associate Professor of Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University and President of the Rutgers Union of Graduate Workers, Faculty and Postdoctoral Associates. Uh welcome Todd. Thank you so much for having me Paul and Jen. Um never fun to follow Žižek in a in a interview, you know. Yeah, you know, I I should have just said and now for something completely different. Um but very important. Um so you just got done uh attending and I think you helped put together this Higher Education Labor Summit. So could you just talk a little bit about that? Like, what was the impetus for putting this together? Um what kind of came out of it? Um, you know, tell us about it. Absolutely. So it it was last week on Wednesday and Friday and it's the Higher Ed Labor Summit: Building a Movement to Transform Higher Ed. And basically we it’s important to note the context. Higher ed is in both a acute and long-term crisis. The long-term crisis has been massive disinvestment from federal and state government, and that's led to public universities in particular reaching in all sorts of ways moving towards a as we all know a neoliberal or corporate form of governance of our higher of of our higher ed institutions, which has led to rising student rising tuition costs and growing student debt, but also a growing number of contingent workers in higher ed, including adjuncts, and that's one of the parts of the workforce we see the most as the most exploited, but we also are talking about staff. So that that’s been a a crisis in higher ed over the last years. And then with the pandemic we’ve seen an acute crisis. Uh higher ed was hit particularly hard by the pandemic. people in the US lost their jobs, and that's about of the sector. So in general higher ed has seen uh these two crises, um and but we’ve also uh those of us in labor have also seen a moment where there's a lot of hand-wringing and discussion at the federal level about what's to be done in higher ed. Uh competing bills, one from the American Families Plan, um and another from um uh Senator Sanders and Rep Jayapal which uh calls College for All. And so we recognized this as a moment to step into this space and build a collective voice to fight for the future of higher ed. And the only way we’re gonna transform higher ed is if labor leads the way. Um and so we had this summit last week, it was two days, we had hundreds of participants from different unions uh representing over three to between three and workers. We came out with a platform to focus us on next steps on how to build power together. Um so that’s what it was about. And I can say more about what what the what the platform is, etc. Yeah, that definitely is appealing to me and I hope this doesn't sound bad, because sometimes when you know there's higher ed labor fights of grad students or not, it does seem kind of isolated and, you know, not necessarily of the utmost importance. But I think, you know, when you think about it like take Philadelphia, universities are a huge part of our economy
be speaking to Todd Wolfson from Rutgers University. Paul, take it away. All right. And uh before I start, uh just a reminder, you know, we've been on a roll with these Labor Paul guests, so I don't want to miss out but keep submitting questions, if you have any questions about labor unions, labor union history, whatever it is, put them in the chat, we are looking at them and collecting them and I will try to answer it. Um but I want to bring on someone I've gotten to know virtually over the next few months. Um Todd Wolfson is joining us. He is an Associate Professor of Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University and President of the Rutgers Union of Graduate Workers, Faculty and Postdoctoral Associates. Uh welcome Todd. Thank you so much for having me Paul and Jen. Um never fun to follow Žižek in a in a interview, you know. Yeah, you know, I I should have just said and now for something completely different. Um but very important. Um so you just got done uh attending and I think you helped put together this Higher Education Labor Summit. So could you just talk a little bit about that? Like, what was the impetus for putting this together? Um what kind of came out of it? Um, you know, tell us about it. Absolutely. So it it was last week on Wednesday and Friday and it's the Higher Ed Labor Summit: Building a Movement to Transform Higher Ed. And basically we it’s important to note the context. Higher ed is in both a acute and long-term crisis. The long-term crisis has been massive disinvestment from federal and state government, and that's led to public universities in particular reaching in all sorts of ways moving towards a as we all know a neoliberal or corporate form of governance of our higher of of our higher ed institutions, which has led to rising student rising tuition costs and growing student debt, but also a growing number of contingent workers in higher ed, including adjuncts, and that's one of the parts of the workforce we see the most as the most exploited, but we also are talking about staff. So that that’s been a a crisis in higher ed over the last years. And then with the pandemic we’ve seen an acute crisis. Uh higher ed was hit particularly hard by the pandemic. people in the US lost their jobs, and that's about of the sector. So in general higher ed has seen uh these two crises, um and but we’ve also uh those of us in labor have also seen a moment where there's a lot of hand-wringing and discussion at the federal level about what's to be done in higher ed. Uh competing bills, one from the American Families Plan, um and another from um uh Senator Sanders and Rep Jayapal which uh calls College for All. And so we recognized this as a moment to step into this space and build a collective voice to fight for the future of higher ed. And the only way we’re gonna transform higher ed is if labor leads the way. Um and so we had this summit last week, it was two days, we had hundreds of participants from different unions uh representing over three to between three and workers. We came out with a platform to focus us on next steps on how to build power together. Um so that’s what it was about. And I can say more about what what the what the platform is, etc. Yeah, that definitely is appealing to me and I hope this doesn't sound bad, because sometimes when you know there's higher ed labor fights of grad students or not, it does seem kind of isolated and, you know, not necessarily of the utmost importance. But I think, you know, when you think about it like take Philadelphia, universities are a huge part of our economy
unknown
and of course it's not just the professors, you know I remember when I was at Temple, dining hall workers were in a union, the
and of course it's not just the professors, you know I remember when I was at Temple, dining hall workers were in a union, the
unknown
groundskeeping staff, so it really is a big force that can be brought together and
groundskeeping staff, so it really is a big force that can be brought together and
unknown
it is important for the economy. It’s critical to the economy, right? And also when you think about something like the pandemic and you think about how the managers of our public
it is important for the economy. It’s critical to the economy, right? And also when you think about something like the pandemic and you think about how the managers of our public
unknown
institutions act, they we know what they've done historically and we know what
institutions act, they we know what they've done historically and we know what
unknown
they did here, which is they always went after the most
they did here, which is they always went after the most
unknown
vulnerable workers. So
vulnerable workers. So
unknown
they went after adjunct faculty, they went after staff um and largely disproportionately low-wage workers, largely disproportionately women and people of color. That happened at Rutgers, it happened across the nation in the layoffs. And so when and then also when we think about students, the people who are most burdened by student debt because of the rising tuition costs are largely working-class kids. And so if we want to reimagine higher ed and also uh fight student debt, the way we're going to do it is to build a broad-based force with staff and adjunct faculty leading the way. And that's what we’re trying to build out now. Because and so I’ll just say to you Paul to your
they went after adjunct faculty, they went after staff um and largely disproportionately low-wage workers, largely disproportionately women and people of color. That happened at Rutgers, it happened across the nation in the layoffs. And so when and then also when we think about students, the people who are most burdened by student debt because of the rising tuition costs are largely working-class kids. And so if we want to reimagine higher ed and also uh fight student debt, the way we're going to do it is to build a broad-based force with staff and adjunct faculty leading the way. And that's what we’re trying to build out now. Because and so I’ll just say to you Paul to your
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point, you know, as as the president of a faculty union what I stepped into was a place where faculty really feel like special unicorns, right? Um that they're different, that they're not workers. And what we have to do is change that way of thinking and let and build a sort of ideological and political force that recognizes us all as workers that make our institutions run, whether we’re uh serving food at the dining halls, whether we’re teaching in the class, whether we’re uh working on the grounds, whether we’re uh security guards, etc. And so that’s what we’re trying to do and that’s the goal here. Awesome. So, uh do you want to talk about what are some of the highlights of the platform that y'all discussed then decided on? Yeah, I think the the highlight here is fighting against I mean, what we’re trying to do actually first and foremost is to build a an aligned social force that can continue to fight in the medium term over a set of these issues. And the the reality is
point, you know, as as the president of a faculty union what I stepped into was a place where faculty really feel like special unicorns, right? Um that they're different, that they're not workers. And what we have to do is change that way of thinking and let and build a sort of ideological and political force that recognizes us all as workers that make our institutions run, whether we’re uh serving food at the dining halls, whether we’re teaching in the class, whether we’re uh working on the grounds, whether we’re uh security guards, etc. And so that’s what we’re trying to do and that’s the goal here. Awesome. So, uh do you want to talk about what are some of the highlights of the platform that y'all discussed then decided on? Yeah, I think the the highlight here is fighting against I mean, what we’re trying to do actually first and foremost is to build a an aligned social force that can continue to fight in the medium term over a set of these issues. And the the reality is
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it hasn't existed in higher ed. There has not been an alignment of forces and part of this is because of the way we’re represented. We’re all represented by unions that have another workforce that’s dominant, whether it’s K-12 for AFT, whether it’s municipal workers for AFSCME, um whether it’s industrial workers for UAW. And so what we’ve recognized is
it hasn't existed in higher ed. There has not been an alignment of forces and part of this is because of the way we’re represented. We’re all represented by unions that have another workforce that’s dominant, whether it’s K-12 for AFT, whether it’s municipal workers for AFSCME, um whether it’s industrial workers for UAW. And so what we’ve recognized is
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if if we’re actually make um a play here, we need to build alignment amongst all the local unions uh together and step
if if we’re actually make um a play here, we need to build alignment amongst all the local unions uh together and step
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forward there. Um and so the main goal is to use the fights over higher ed funding right now to build this force that's both around legislative fights
forward there. Um and so the main goal is to use the fights over higher ed funding right now to build this force that's both around legislative fights
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but also ultimately about direct action and building collectivity and building this social force. And we have been watching our our uh siblings in K-12 and been really inspired by the leadership the Red for Ed movement, but also uh the work of unions like CTU or UTLA. And so I think for us um we we want to build this engine. But in
but also ultimately about direct action and building collectivity and building this social force. And we have been watching our our uh siblings in K-12 and been really inspired by the leadership the Red for Ed movement, but also uh the work of unions like CTU or UTLA. And so I think for us um we we want to build this engine. But in
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the short term what we're doing is focusing on these federal bills. So there's the Biden-backed plan, the American Families Plan, which calls for free color education for community colleges for two-year institutions. And then there's the Sanders-Jayapal bill which calls for uh free public higher ed for two and four-year institutions and then also has these two critical labor provisions. One, that all all universities, public universities that get this funding are bound to move all instruction towards a model of
the short term what we're doing is focusing on these federal bills. So there's the Biden-backed plan, the American Families Plan, which calls for free color education for community colleges for two-year institutions. And then there's the Sanders-Jayapal bill which calls for uh free public higher ed for two and four-year institutions and then also has these two critical labor provisions. One, that all all universities, public universities that get this funding are bound to move all instruction towards a model of
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tenure-stream and adjunct or or part-time faculty.
tenure-stream and adjunct or or part-time faculty.
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Right now at universities like Rutgers, it’s the opposite. is is adjunct faculty or grad workers and is tenure-stream. And they also have a corollary provision that all these institutions like Rutgers, if they're going to get this money they must move
Right now at universities like Rutgers, it’s the opposite. is is adjunct faculty or grad workers and is tenure-stream. And they also have a corollary provision that all these institutions like Rutgers, if they're going to get this money they must move
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to a tenure-stream model and they must hire first and foremost their own contingent faculty for those new roles. And so the unions at this um event very strongly backed this plan. And we are going to lift our voices up and demand that whether it’s College for All or the American Families Plan that in it that the there is funding for public universities at two and four-year institutions and that there is uh these two labor provisions that uh will create less contingent labor. We also want pay parity for uh part-time uh teachers. So whether you’re end up being a tenure-stream faculty member or an adjunct faculty member, we want you paid as much as uh tenure-stream faculty. That's all awesome stuff. And maybe to go backwards a little bit, um I know this might be kind of a big question but you recently had a fight over what's called work sharing and I think people might our audience might want to know what that is. It probably sounds like a really nice thing to people. Um can you talk a little bit about like what is work sharing and how did y'all fight it at Rutgers? Yeah, so um we actually we fought for it. It's complicated. So what work sharing is what the university at Rutgers what Rutgers did was the pandemic hit and they laid off a thousand workers. Again, uh dining
to a tenure-stream model and they must hire first and foremost their own contingent faculty for those new roles. And so the unions at this um event very strongly backed this plan. And we are going to lift our voices up and demand that whether it’s College for All or the American Families Plan that in it that the there is funding for public universities at two and four-year institutions and that there is uh these two labor provisions that uh will create less contingent labor. We also want pay parity for uh part-time uh teachers. So whether you’re end up being a tenure-stream faculty member or an adjunct faculty member, we want you paid as much as uh tenure-stream faculty. That's all awesome stuff. And maybe to go backwards a little bit, um I know this might be kind of a big question but you recently had a fight over what's called work sharing and I think people might our audience might want to know what that is. It probably sounds like a really nice thing to people. Um can you talk a little bit about like what is work sharing and how did y'all fight it at Rutgers? Yeah, so um we actually we fought for it. It's complicated. So what work sharing is what the university at Rutgers what Rutgers did was the pandemic hit and they laid off a thousand workers. Again, uh dining
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staff and adjunct faculty, largely low-wage, largely women and people of
staff and adjunct faculty, largely low-wage, largely women and people of
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color. We built an alliance of unions and we turned to the university and said, with the CARES Act, we can build a plan out that saves the university a hundred million dollars, which is about what they said their shortfall was because of the pandemic, doesn't cost workers a dime, and if
color. We built an alliance of unions and we turned to the university and said, with the CARES Act, we can build a plan out that saves the university a hundred million dollars, which is about what they said their shortfall was because of the pandemic, doesn't cost workers a dime, and if
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we give you that, we demand that you don't lay anyone off. And what we offered actually was work sharing. What that means simply it comes from Europe and it’s, you know, it's a social democratic model and basically it says that in a time of crisis the state picks up the cost of the employee, part of the cost of the employee for the employer, in this case Rutgers. They share the cost. The employee is furloughed but the employee doesn't lose that money because the state picks it up through unemployment. So with the CARES Act and then with the later uh pandemic relief bills there is unemployment and through that unemployment from the federal government we’re able to keep everyone whole while furloughing which saves Rutgers money. And so we offered that to the university. Ultimately we forced them to accept it. We saved the university a hundred thousand dollars, we got all our staff rehired and we got all our adjuncts rehired. We’ll see, but we expect them all to be rehired in September. Um we also want important things for our grad workers and others. So it was something we actually fought
we give you that, we demand that you don't lay anyone off. And what we offered actually was work sharing. What that means simply it comes from Europe and it’s, you know, it's a social democratic model and basically it says that in a time of crisis the state picks up the cost of the employee, part of the cost of the employee for the employer, in this case Rutgers. They share the cost. The employee is furloughed but the employee doesn't lose that money because the state picks it up through unemployment. So with the CARES Act and then with the later uh pandemic relief bills there is unemployment and through that unemployment from the federal government we’re able to keep everyone whole while furloughing which saves Rutgers money. And so we offered that to the university. Ultimately we forced them to accept it. We saved the university a hundred thousand dollars, we got all our staff rehired and we got all our adjuncts rehired. We’ll see, but we expect them all to be rehired in September. Um we also want important things for our grad workers and others. So it was something we actually fought
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for in order to uh lead in a moment when we knew the university was going to take the most irresponsible approach, which is lay off low-wage workers etc. So we got them all hired back through the work sharing program. Thanks for correcting I don't know why I was thinking that you were y'all were against it. Um and then, you know, it feels like so many things in society
for in order to uh lead in a moment when we knew the university was going to take the most irresponsible approach, which is lay off low-wage workers etc. So we got them all hired back through the work sharing program. Thanks for correcting I don't know why I was thinking that you were y'all were against it. Um and then, you know, it feels like so many things in society
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it's like before Covid and after Covid, where you know we kind of have this sense even though we don't know fully what it's going to look like that things are kind of changed forever after Covid. How do you think that's playing out in the university? And I know you already saying that of course for years like universities have become more neoliberal in different ways. This has already been a trend, but do you see anything kind of being accelerated post-Covid? Absolutely. So um we’re in these fights in at Rutgers and, you know, you think about uh Naomi Klein’s work Shock Doctrine, right? And the the argument that they will never let a good crisis go to waste. So we had deans and administrators saying
it's like before Covid and after Covid, where you know we kind of have this sense even though we don't know fully what it's going to look like that things are kind of changed forever after Covid. How do you think that's playing out in the university? And I know you already saying that of course for years like universities have become more neoliberal in different ways. This has already been a trend, but do you see anything kind of being accelerated post-Covid? Absolutely. So um we’re in these fights in at Rutgers and, you know, you think about uh Naomi Klein’s work Shock Doctrine, right? And the the argument that they will never let a good crisis go to waste. So we had deans and administrators saying
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literally, "We must use this crisis to create a more efficient workforce." What that meant to them was disciplining faculty, disciplining staff, and creating a getting rid of redundancies. And they so we expected them and they did attempt to take every nasty managerial strategy to speed up the workforce and to get rid of redundancies uh that they could, and they used the pandemic to do that. And so there's no reason to expect that they are going to stop with that strategy, whether we’re talking about Rutgers,
literally, "We must use this crisis to create a more efficient workforce." What that meant to them was disciplining faculty, disciplining staff, and creating a getting rid of redundancies. And they so we expected them and they did attempt to take every nasty managerial strategy to speed up the workforce and to get rid of redundancies uh that they could, and they used the pandemic to do that. And so there's no reason to expect that they are going to stop with that strategy, whether we’re talking about Rutgers,
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whether we’re talking about Temple University or Penn State or the UC system
whether we’re talking about Temple University or Penn State or the UC system
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or SUNY, right? And so that's the fight in front of us is a series of neoliberal managers who run our institutions and their attempts to speed up the workforce. And so this brings me to the last goal that we have at Rutgers and I think we need to have uh across the university across the nation, which is in our public institutions, in our public universities, we must fight for workers' councils that govern, that govern these institutions. Because we know that the people governing these institutions and running them now do not do it in the interest of the students, the parents or the workers who make these universities run, or the states in which they’re embedded. And so the only people that can reimagine higher ed, public higher ed in particular that uh speaks to uh the states and the parents and the students and the workers, is the workers and the students together. And so the on the medium-term horizon we will fight over who governs our institutions. Very well said. And I the last question, I hate to respond to what you just said with something so trivial, but the uh chat is exploding about the ducks in the background. I don't know if you have any final words about the ducks? Well, we all need to collectivize ourselves, and as you can see behind me, the ducks have collectivized themselves here and they are demanding a more just situation in I’m in I’m on the Jersey Shore, and so they’re demanding a uh a very different situation for ducks down here. No more hunting. Wow. Radical. Um well, thank you so much Todd for coming on. I mean, you you're really doing great work, really kind of pioneering work in the labor movement in higher education. So thank you so much, I'm
or SUNY, right? And so that's the fight in front of us is a series of neoliberal managers who run our institutions and their attempts to speed up the workforce. And so this brings me to the last goal that we have at Rutgers and I think we need to have uh across the university across the nation, which is in our public institutions, in our public universities, we must fight for workers' councils that govern, that govern these institutions. Because we know that the people governing these institutions and running them now do not do it in the interest of the students, the parents or the workers who make these universities run, or the states in which they’re embedded. And so the only people that can reimagine higher ed, public higher ed in particular that uh speaks to uh the states and the parents and the students and the workers, is the workers and the students together. And so the on the medium-term horizon we will fight over who governs our institutions. Very well said. And I the last question, I hate to respond to what you just said with something so trivial, but the uh chat is exploding about the ducks in the background. I don't know if you have any final words about the ducks? Well, we all need to collectivize ourselves, and as you can see behind me, the ducks have collectivized themselves here and they are demanding a more just situation in I’m in I’m on the Jersey Shore, and so they’re demanding a uh a very different situation for ducks down here. No more hunting. Wow. Radical. Um well, thank you so much Todd for coming on. I mean, you you're really doing great work, really kind of pioneering work in the labor movement in higher education. So thank you so much, I'm
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sure I'll see you in like a Zoom meeting probably next month or
sure I'll see you in like a Zoom meeting probably next month or
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something. Um but thanks so much for coming on. Thank you so much for having me, Paul. Thank you Jen. Uh and it was great to follow Žižek. So that’s fantastic. Thank you Todd. Wow, Todd really uh he he handled the ducks question like a pro. Yeah, I think he he maybe saw it coming. Okay, yeah, yeah. I would love
something. Um but thanks so much for coming on. Thank you so much for having me, Paul. Thank you Jen. Uh and it was great to follow Žižek. So that’s fantastic. Thank you Todd. Wow, Todd really uh he he handled the ducks question like a pro. Yeah, I think he he maybe saw it coming. Okay, yeah, yeah. I would love
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uh for Žižek to be here to comment on the ducks. Uh I’m sure he would have a totally different interpretation. That would be like another 30-minute uh answer we’d have to deal with. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That was a great talk though, a great interview. Uh and like you mentioned, um at one point, you know, I think that sometimes when we think about like academic unions or grad student unions, you know, there's a little bit of it seems it seems kind of rarefied or like the academic world seems like not where our strategic focus should be. Um but it’s really great to hear that over at Rutgers, uh uh what they’re doing, um you know, organizing across both the professional workers and the blue-collar workers as well. Um and as you pointed out, you know, so-called blue-collar workers or like university staff actually constitutes a huge portion of the people who work at
uh for Žižek to be here to comment on the ducks. Uh I’m sure he would have a totally different interpretation. That would be like another 30-minute uh answer we’d have to deal with. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That was a great talk though, a great interview. Uh and like you mentioned, um at one point, you know, I think that sometimes when we think about like academic unions or grad student unions, you know, there's a little bit of it seems it seems kind of rarefied or like the academic world seems like not where our strategic focus should be. Um but it’s really great to hear that over at Rutgers, uh uh what they’re doing, um you know, organizing across both the professional workers and the blue-collar workers as well. Um and as you pointed out, you know, so-called blue-collar workers or like university staff actually constitutes a huge portion of the people who work at
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a university. Um and I think, you know, as you mentioned, they very frequently sort of go unnoticed or or aren't really uh acknowledged as, you know, members of the university. But of course they are. Right. And I’ll just add one anecdote from something I did recently. Um, you
a university. Um and I think, you know, as you mentioned, they very frequently sort of go unnoticed or or aren't really uh acknowledged as, you know, members of the university. But of course they are. Right. And I’ll just add one anecdote from something I did recently. Um, you
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know, I I’ve helped volunteer in New York canvassing for a candidate for City Council, Jaslin Kaur, who came in second place, she did really well, it was her first time running, um so I went up with some DSA people to help, and um, you know, on the doors I found the thing that resonated most with people, especially older people, um a lot of them were skeptical of her age, she’s younger and they asked about her experience, but what resonated them the most was about fully funding CUNY, which is a it’s a great
know, I I’ve helped volunteer in New York canvassing for a candidate for City Council, Jaslin Kaur, who came in second place, she did really well, it was her first time running, um so I went up with some DSA people to help, and um, you know, on the doors I found the thing that resonated most with people, especially older people, um a lot of them were skeptical of her age, she’s younger and they asked about her experience, but what resonated them the most was about fully funding CUNY, which is a it’s a great
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working-class institution in New York, a, you know, a very affordable community public university, and that really was the thing I found that on the doors the issue that most people, you know, got excited about. And actually more so older people who remember when CUNY was free, affordable. Yeah, yeah. Right. Um so yeah, I mean just to say that, you know,
working-class institution in New York, a, you know, a very affordable community public university, and that really was the thing I found that on the doors the issue that most people, you know, got excited about. And actually more so older people who remember when CUNY was free, affordable. Yeah, yeah. Right. Um so yeah, I mean just to say that, you know,
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I know sometimes on this show we kind of rag on um academia, but I do think
I know sometimes on this show we kind of rag on um academia, but I do think
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some issues I think if they’re framed the right way actually do resonate a lot with people. I also liked that we went from the French Revolution
some issues I think if they’re framed the right way actually do resonate a lot with people. I also liked that we went from the French Revolution
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and Žižek to an actual, you know, real-life modern-day uh worker campaign and then to ducks. So, good trajectory. The show,
and Žižek to an actual, you know, real-life modern-day uh worker campaign and then to ducks. So, good trajectory. The show,
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I mean, it has it
I mean, it has it
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all, this show, I mean.
all, this show, I mean.
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What more? I don't know
What more? I don't know
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why we're not up
why we're not up
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to a million views, but...
to a million views, but...
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Right, yeah, it's beyond me. Anyway, um again, I want to wish everybody a Happy Bastille Day. Uh please hit like and subscribe, share this video if you liked it. Uh like the video to get Žižek back for uh October and talking about the Russian Revolution. Uh and one last plug for Jacobin magazine’s Bastille Day special where you can get an international subscription of the magazine for just
Right, yeah, it's beyond me. Anyway, um again, I want to wish everybody a Happy Bastille Day. Uh please hit like and subscribe, share this video if you liked it. Uh like the video to get Žižek back for uh October and talking about the Russian Revolution. Uh and one last plug for Jacobin magazine’s Bastille Day special where you can get an international subscription of the magazine for just
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and a domestic subscription for Uh this is last this is um more than half off in both cases, so get it. Well said. All right, well, uh goodnight everybody, enjoy the rest of your Bastille Day and actually we won't see you next week, we're off, FYI, but the week after that we will be back. Uh so
and a domestic subscription for Uh this is last this is um more than half off in both cases, so get it. Well said. All right, well, uh goodnight everybody, enjoy the rest of your Bastille Day and actually we won't see you next week, we're off, FYI, but the week after that we will be back. Uh so
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goodnight and until then. Goodnight.
goodnight and until then. Goodnight.