Whither Left?
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2010-01-09 · 2:12:27 · 18,055 words
capitalismcommunism-socialismideologyrevolution-violencepsychoanalysisecology-climatetechnology-ai-cyberspacehegel-dialecticsfascism-populismliberalism-political-correctnesshistorygeopolitics-wareconomicsrace-antisemitism
Žižek delivers a lecture in India (likely at a conference) on the question 'whither the Left?' after the historical defeat signaled by 1989 and the financial crisis. He surveys six inadequate leftist responses to capitalism's triumph, accommodation, withdrawal, waiting for catastrophe, metaphysical critique, local struggle, and postmodern pluralism, before outlining four structural antagonisms capitalism cannot resolve: ecology, intellectual property, biogenetics, and new social apartheids. A lengthy Q&A covers distinctions between Stalinist and Nazi terror, the Jacobin legacy, India's emancipatory potential, capital flight and progressive governments, gender/class intersections, and the psychoanalytic status of authority under permissive capitalism.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 20
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
as “revolutionary repetition”
Lenin's insight, drawn from the mountain-climber metaphor, that a revolutionary process is not gradual progress but a repetitive movement of trying from zero, failing, and starting again.
The dangerous dream of achieving capitalist modernization without its antagonisms, exemplified historically by fascism and today by anti-imperialist nationalism.
Žižek's ironic phrase for authoritarian capitalism, the idea that capitalism can take non-Western cultural forms while retaining its fundamental antagonisms.
as “global capitalism with a human face”
What Žižek diagnoses as the actual dream of today's self-identified leftists: the same capitalist system but with less racism and sexism, analogous to 'socialism with a human face.'
Žižek's ironic Stalinist formulation for the current situation: the Left has all its deviations and revisionist tendencies but no coherent central political vision to deviate from.
as “shock therapy”
Naomi Klein's concept that Žižek applies to China's Cultural Revolution: the destruction of traditional social fabric created the void that Deng Xiaoping's capitalist reforms then filled.
Kant's concept that Žižek invokes to distinguish truly universal, unconstrained rational discourse from 'private' (state/corporate-subordinated) use of reason; the model for communist mobilization.
as “commons”
The shared substance, external nature (ecology), inner nature (biogenetics), and symbolic substance (intellectual property), that capitalism progressively encloses and privatizes.
A subject deprived of a livable natural environment through pollution and ecological destruction, constituting a new proletarian position outside classical wage-labor.
A subject whose symbolic commons, media, knowledge, cultural means, are privatized or taken away, producing a proletarian position analogous to classical labor exploitation.
New walls and exclusions generated within each country by globalization, dividing those integrated into global capitalism from those displaced or expelled, the fourth insoluble antagonism.
Marx's concept from the Grundrisse that knowledge becomes the key productive force; Žižek invokes it to explain rent extraction (Bill Gates) and the failure of Marx to foresee reprivatization.
as “profit to rent”
Žižek's claim that contemporary capitalism increasingly extracts value through rent, payment for monopoly access to privatized commons (software, natural resources), rather than classical surplus profit from labor.
The old Marxist trust in historical necessity as guaranteeing revolutionary progress, which Žižek rejects; the light at the end of the tunnel might be another train coming toward you.
Žižek's label for the post-1989 Western Left that defines itself negatively by apologizing for past totalitarianism and thereby abandons any positive transformative project.
as “radical Eurocentrism”
Žižek's self-described position: European Enlightenment is worth defending not as particular European culture but because it uniquely generated the capacity for universal self-criticism.
as “permissive capitalism”
A mode of social control that replaces explicit paternal prohibition with the injunction to enjoy freely, producing a harsher superego command ('you must want to visit grandmother') and new forms of guilt.
Lacanian concept of symbolic paternal authority, distinguished from the obscene superego; Žižek uses the distinction to argue that fascism and permissive capitalism undermine rather than embody paternal authority.
The underside of law and authority, not paternal prohibition but the injunction to enjoy; Žižek distinguishes it from the Lacanian name-of-the-father to explain totalitarian and permissive social formations.
as “cynical ideology”
Ideology in the mode of 'I know very well, but nonetheless': beliefs that function socially without any individual needing to sincerely hold them, as in the horseshoe anecdote.
Stories he reaches for 15
Niels Bohr had a horseshoe above his country house door; when asked if he believed in the superstition, he replied 'of course not, I'm a scientist, but I was told it works even if you don't believe in it.'
Every year on Stalin's birthday, even Gulag inmates were made to sign congratulatory telegrams, an impossible scene in Nazi Germany, where Jews would never have been asked to sign a telegram to Hitler.
The price of Microsoft Windows does not track labor costs or production expenses; it is rent paid for monopoly access to privatized intellectual commons, the general intellect reprivatized.
“He privatized part of our intellectual commons. In order to be able to participate in social space, communicate with each other, you have to go through his property.”
An authoritarian father orders the child to visit grandmother; the permissive postmodern father says 'only if you want to.' The child understands the second as a harsher command: you must want to visit.
“You must like to visit your grandmother. It's a much harsher order.”
Watching American sitcoms like Friends or Cheers, the screen laughs for you; you feel relieved even if you didn't laugh. The lesson: others can not only work for you but laugh, cry, and believe for you.
Scientists have created a wheelchair for paralyzed people that reads basic brain commands (forward/backward/left/right) without any physical input, proof that the barrier between thinking and acting is dissolving, with nightmarish surveillance implications.
Afghanistan was once among the most secular Muslim countries, with a pro-Western king and a strong Communist Party; US and Soviet intervention transformed it into the paradigmatic fundamentalist state.
“It's through this globalization that Afghanistan became fundamentalist. Fundamentalism is not the remainder of some dark past, it was generated.”
The Haitian slave rebellion demanded equality and fraternity as the French proclaimed; the Jacobins received the black delegation from Port-au-Prince as 'one of us.' Napoleon reversed this immediately upon taking power.
Kansas was once the most progressive US state, home to major leftist and anti-racist movements; it is now the most fundamentalist Bible Belt state, proof that fundamentalism is generated, not inherited.
“Till years ago it was the most progressive state of the United States of America. All big leftist populist movements, anti-racism and so on started there.”
A man from Montenegro (stereotyped as extremely lazy) explains how Montenegrins masturbate: dig a hole, insert penis, wait for earthquake because they're too lazy to move.
Gilliam's film depicts a society that is authoritarian yet permits consumerism, sexuality, and promiscuity, Žižek's figure for what Russia, Italy, and other states are approaching.
“A perverse permissive totalitarian society. Everybody can enjoy promiscuity, sexuality, consumerism but at the same time authoritarianism is here.”
Jacques-Louis David's painting shows Marat in the lower third and two-thirds darkness/void, a totalitarian regime would have filled the void with kitsch images of happy liberated people; the void proves the Jacobins were not totalitarian.
Badiou asked to use Žižek's phone while expecting an important call; when it rang during Žižek's lecture, Badiou asked Žižek to speak more quietly so as not to disturb him.
“He asked me if I can talk a little bit with a lower voice so that I don't disturb him. No problem for me, this is what friends are doing.”
Lenin in 1922 openly admitted that Russia had a working-class party dictatorship without a working class, since the class had been destroyed in the Civil War, a sign of his tragic lucidity versus Stalin's self-deception.
Mali's economy minister said they don't want Western aid, only that the West respect its own free-market rules; Mali produces the world's best cotton at a third of US prices, but the US spends more subsidizing its cotton industry than Mali's entire state budget.
Works invoked 9
Capital book
Cited for Marx's use of oil as an example of why natural resources are not sources of value, an irony given how much rent is extracted from oil today.
Grundrisse book
Marx's manuscript where the concept of general intellect is developed; Žižek uses it to argue that Marx foresaw but failed to account for the reprivatization of shared knowledge.
Žižek's own book, dedicated to Badiou; mentioned as containing his analysis of the differences between Stalinist and fascist terror.
The Matrix film
Cited as a figure for intellectual proletarianization: humans lying in pods with energy and thoughts extracted; described as 'not a great film for me' but useful as illustration.
Brazil film
Terry Gilliam's film used as the defining image of permissive totalitarianism, authoritarianism combined with consumerist and sexual permissivity.
The Death of Marat artwork
Jacques-Louis David's painting is Žižek's key evidence that Jacobinism was not totalitarian: its two-thirds void/darkness could not have been authorized by a totalitarian regime.
Gulag book
Anne Applebaum's book cited for the Stalin birthday telegram anecdote; described as 'very critical' of Stalinism, Žižek uses it despite political differences as a reliable source.
Žižek's most recent book at the time; an interlocutor says they criticized its apocalyptic vision of capitalism; Žižek defends it.
Lenin's short text with the climber metaphor, cited to frame the entire talk's argument about revolutionary repetition and beginning from zero.
People invoked 35
Mahatma Gandhi positive
Despite critical things said about Gandhi earlier in the conference, Žižek closes with his motto 'Be yourself the change you want to see in the world' to call for personal commitment over comfortable radicalism.
Robert Mugabe negative
Initially given benefit of doubt; on testimony from Zimbabweans, concluded Mugabe is ruining the country and playing the race card to protect a new black ruling class.
Called a horrible regime that Žižek totally opposes; yet noted that under Saddam, women's situation was better than in most Arab countries due to secular pan-Arab nationalist ideology.
Vladimir Lenin positive
Žižek opens by citing Lenin's 'High Mountain' text and its metaphor of revolutionary repetition; praises Lenin's tragic late lucidity (dictatorship without working class) and contrasts him favorably with Stalin.
Theodor W. Adorno negative
Represents the Frankfurt School position of waiting for catastrophe without engaging in positive political struggle; Žižek treats this as a form of comfortable withdrawal.
Cited as the beneficiary of the Cultural Revolution's destructive shock therapy; his reforms filled the void left by Mao's destruction of tradition.
Jacques Lacan positive
Invoked via the name-of-the-father / obscene superego distinction to analyze authority under permissive capitalism and totalitarianism; central theoretical resource.
Gilles Deleuze negative
His anti-Oedipal position is questioned; Žižek doubts that the Oedipal family is the main enemy under permissive capitalism.
Francis Fukuyama negative
His 'end of history' thesis is Žižek's main foil; yet Žižek argues the hidden Fukuyamaism of today's Left; notes Fukuyama himself conceded biogenetics undermines his diagnosis.
Used as an example of Stalinist show trial confessions to illustrate the difference between Stalinist and Nazi terror: accused confess as 'responsible human beings,' which is impossible in Nazism.
Jean-Bertrand Aristide positive
Praised as a hero who took power in a desperate situation knowing his limits and tried to do something modest; his overthrow is presented as a sign he posed a real threat.
Her book Gulag is cited for the anecdote about Stalin birthday telegrams; described as 'very critical' (of Stalinism), so a source Žižek uses despite political distance.
Naomi Klein positive
Her concept of shock therapy is applied to China's Cultural Revolution to explain how destruction of tradition cleared the way for capitalist reforms.
Peter Mandelson negative
Called 'the corrupted dark prince of the Labour government'; cited for the Third Way slogan 'in economy we are all Thatcherites.'
Antonio Negri negative
Criticized for claiming capitalism is 'already communist' and that revolution is unnecessary; Žižek cites an interview in Brazil where Negri spoke more openly than in Europe.
Alain Badiou positive
Described as a 'good friend'; Žižek dedicated In Defense of Lost Causes to him; used to illustrate genuine intellectual friendship with an affectionate anecdote about the phone call.
Giorgio Agamben negative
Grouped with Adorno as representative of a politics of withdrawal and waiting for catastrophic redemption, which Žižek rejects as politically useless.
George Orwell positive
Cited for the observation that radical talk about change functions as a superstitious mantra ensuring nothing changes; Žižek uses this to critique comfortable academic leftism.
Mentioned in the context of rejecting the Trotskyist game ('if Lenin had lived two more years'); Žižek agrees with Trotsky that Stalin betrayed authenticity but rejects the counterfactual.
Fredric Jameson positive
Described as an 'American Marxist friend'; cited for the observation that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.
Mentioned alongside Mandela as an example of a progressive leader eventually domesticated by the system.
Evo Morales positive
Admired more than Chavez; cited alongside Aristide as a leader who accepted desperate conditions and acted pragmatically without illusions.
Maximilien Robespierre positive
Žižek is explicitly pro-Jacobin; defends Robespierre against the charge of proto-Stalinism, arguing Thermidor killed more people than the Terror and that Robespierre fell through a parliamentary vote.
Cited as the betrayer of Jacobin universalism: immediately after taking power, he sent troops to suppress the Haitian Revolution that the Jacobins had recognized.
Gerald Cohen negative
Analytic Marxist invoked for his four-feature definition of the working class; Žižek uses Cohen to show those features no longer align in the same group today.
Walter Benjamin positive
Cited for the aphorism 'every fascism is a sign of a failed revolution,' which Žižek uses to explain Islamic fundamentalism.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau positive
Cited for observing that French philosophers like to sympathize with distant peoples (Mongols) to avoid seeing the poor at their doorstep; a critique of Western radical tourism.
Niels Bohr positive
The horseshoe anecdote attributed to Bohr is used as Žižek's closing illustration of cynical ideology, belief that functions without being believed.
Cited as a symptom: his emergence as second in French presidential elections (circa 2002) was the first shock signaling the rise of nationalist fundamentalism as the main opposition to liberal capitalism.
Used as an example of progressive leaders who are absorbed into the capitalist framework within two years of taking power.
Jacques-Louis David positive
His Death of Marat is analyzed as evidence that Jacobinism was not totalitarian: the painting's two-thirds void/darkness is something a totalitarian regime would never have permitted.
Hugo Chávez negative
Initially admired for politically mobilizing the poor, but now criticized for following Cuban-style Latin American populism without structural change; Venezuela imports food despite fertile land.
Joseph Stalin negative
Žižek analyzes Stalinist terror as more irrational than Nazi terror (it cannibalized its own cadres); distinguishes Stalinism from Leninism; uses Stalinism as a foil throughout.
Karl Marx positive
Cited for the concept of general intellect, the vampire metaphor for capitalism, and the theory of value; Žižek argues Marx needs radical rethinking but remains the essential framework.
Immanuel Kant positive
Invoked for the public/private use of reason distinction as a model for communist mobilization outside state and corporate constraints.
What it argues
the historical defeat of the Left and the need to begin from zerofour insoluble antagonisms of global capitalism: ecology, intellectual property, biogenetics, new apartheidsthe commons and the communist horizoninadequacy of anti-imperialism as substitute for anti-capitalismpermissive capitalism and new forms of dominationdistinctions between Stalinist, Nazi, and Jacobin terrorideology as belief that functions without individual believers
Dialectical moves 12
“Every fascism is a sign of a failed revolution.”
Fundamentalism and fascism are not pre-modern remnants but symptoms of the Left's absence; they arise where radical politics collapsed.
“The only truly radical ecology is the ecology which claims nature doesn't exist.”
There is no stable natural homeostasis to restore; ecology must abandon the myth of Mother Nature and confront an open, risky process without a ground to return to.
“It is today much easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”
The closure of anti-capitalist imagination is a symptom of ideological triumph; apocalypse is conceivable while systemic change is not.
“The only utopia today is the utopia to think things can go on indefinitely the way they are.”
The accusation of utopianism is inverted: it is the defenders of the status quo who are the real utopians.
“Far from wanting what they got, people in Eastern Europe after 1989 wanted something closer to the official ideology read literally.”
The disappointment with capitalism in the East is not immaturity but a sign that the emancipatory content of socialism's stated ideals was genuine, even if the regime was not.
“Globalization always also means its exact opposite: stronger internal divisions and new walls within each country.”
Globalization and exclusion are not opposites but two sides of the same process; Congo is a paradigm of full integration that produces total social disintegration.
“The Cultural Revolution worked like shock therapy for capitalism: it destroyed the past and created the void that Deng Xiaoping filled.”
The most radical anti-capitalist act in modern history was retroactively transformed into the condition of possibility for the most dynamic capitalism.
“Only radical Left can save you—only we can guarantee in the long term that you will still have freedom of choice, women's rights.”
The Left is not the enemy of liberal freedoms but their only reliable guarantor; liberalism without socialism reverts to authoritarianism.
“The light at the end of the tunnel can also be another train coming forward to you.”
Historical optimism is structurally indistinguishable from naive catastrophism; there is no teleological guarantee of progress.
“Stalinism is no longer my problem—it is your problem, advocates of capitalism.”
Since the most efficient contemporary capitalists are former Stalinists now ruling China, the burden of explaining Stalinism belongs to the pro-capitalist side.
“Far from being a proto-totalitarian movement, the Jacobins were not totalitarian—the proof is David's Death of Marat, which devotes two-thirds of its canvas to void and darkness.”
A revolution that can authorize an anxiety-provoking, open painting as its definitive emblem is not a totalitarian movement; aesthetic form is evidence of political structure.
“The permissive father's command—'visit grandmother only if you want to'—is a much harsher order than the authoritarian father's direct command.”
Permissive capitalism does not abolish domination but intensifies it by demanding not mere compliance but the correct inner desire.
Claims 28
asserts
The Left must reject continuity with what Left meant in the last two centuries and begin again from zero.the Left's historical situation after 1989
rejects
The anti-globalization movement's shift from critique of capitalism to critique of American imperialism is a dangerous limitation that sustains the dream of 'alternate modernity.'anti-imperialism as substitute for anti-capitalism
asserts
Fascism is itself a historical project of alternate modernity—modernization without its antagonisms—and thus the template for the dangerous dream.fascism as alternate modernity
asserts
Most self-identified leftists today secretly dream not of communism but of 'global capitalism with a human face.'the Left's hidden Fukuyamaism
asserts
The virtual disappearance of the very term 'capitalism' is the most reliable sign of capitalism's ideological triumph.capitalist ideological hegemony
asserts
Capitalism has an incredible capacity to return from every catastrophe even stronger—it functions like the living dead.capitalism's resilience
asserts
China's Cultural Revolution functioned as shock therapy for capitalism, destroying traditional social fabric and creating a void that Deng Xiaoping's reforms filled.the Cultural Revolution's historical function
asserts
The Copenhagen climate talks failed because finance capital commands immediate action while the survival of humanity does not—capitalism cannot solve the ecological crisis.the limits of capitalism in addressing ecology
asserts
The institution of private property is inappropriate for intellectual labor because knowledge multiplies through use rather than being depleted by it.intellectual property and capitalism
asserts
Bill Gates's wealth is best understood as rent extracted from privatized intellectual commons, not as surplus profit from exploited labor.Microsoft and the return from profit to rent
asserts
Globalization always produces its exact opposite within each country: stronger divisions and new walls between those included and excluded.globalization and new apartheids
asserts
Without linking ecology, biogenetics, and intellectual property struggles to the struggle against new inner social exclusions, you solve nothing.the necessity of articulating the four antagonisms
asserts
Today it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.the closure of emancipatory imagination
asserts
Islamic fundamentalism was generated by globalization and the destruction of secular Left movements, not by some survival of a dark pre-modern past.the origins of religious fundamentalism
reframes
The conflict between liberal permissive capitalism and religious fundamentalism is an immanent conflict within capitalism where both sides codepend; a radical Left is the missing third term.liberalism versus fundamentalism
asserts
Only the radical Left can guarantee in the long term liberal freedoms like freedom of choice and women's rights; without it, authoritarian capitalism awaits.the Left as defender of liberal freedoms
asserts
The future will be either 'socialist' (authoritarian-capitalist containment of contradictions) or communist—there is no stable liberal-democratic middle.future political alternatives
asserts
The only real utopia today is the belief that things can go on indefinitely as they are.the charge of utopianism against the Left
asserts
Stalinist terror was more irrational than Nazi terror because it aimed at its own cadres, not only perceived racial enemies, betraying the lost authenticity of the revolution.the difference between Stalinist and Nazi terror
asserts
Jacobin Terror has been systematically overstated; more people were beheaded in three weeks after Thermidor than in the entire Jacobin Terror period.the historical record of Jacobin Terror
asserts
Lenin's last politics—accepting that only bourgeois culture could be salvaged—was the exact opposite of Stalin's 'socialism in one country.'the Lenin-Stalin continuity thesis
reframes
Stalinism is no longer a problem for the Left but for advocates of capitalism, since its most efficient inheritors are today's Chinese capitalists.the legacy of Stalinism
rejects
Patriarchal-paternal authority is not the dominant ideology of permissive capitalism; the ruling injunction is to enjoy and realize yourself, not to obey the father.feminist and Deleuzian critiques of Oedipal authority
asserts
Totalitarianisms (fascism and Stalinism) actually undermined the family rather than relying on it, pressuring children to betray their parents.totalitarianism and family structure
asserts
Ideology today functions in the cynical mode: beliefs operate socially without any individual needing to sincerely hold them.the structure of contemporary ideology
rejects
American cultural studies wrongly transforms problems of race and labor exploitation into purely cultural problems of tolerance and recognition.culturalist bias in American feminism and race theory
rejects
Toni Negri's claim that capitalism is 'already communist' and only needs reappropriation is too optimistic and analytically wrong.Negri's postoperaist thesis
asserts
India is a potential site of new emancipatory politics because it combines extreme development with embedded democratic traditions and condensed capitalist contradictions.India's emancipatory potential
Quotes 15
“It is today much easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”Slavoj Žižek · closure of anti-capitalist imagination
“The most reliable sign of capitalism's ideological triumph is the virtual disappearance of the very term capitalism.”Slavoj Žižek · ideological hegemony of capitalism
“The only utopia today is the utopia to think things can go on indefinitely the way they are.”Slavoj Žižek · inversion of the utopianism charge
“Yes, there is always a light at the end of the tunnel. But this light can also be another train coming forward to you.”Slavoj Žižek · rejection of historical teleology
“Every fascism is a sign of a failed revolution.”Slavoj Žižek · fundamentalism as symptom of Left's absence
“Only we can save you. Only radical Left can guarantee in the long term that we will still have even freedom of choice, women's rights.”Slavoj Žižek · the Left as the only guarantor of liberal freedoms
“Fundamentalism is not the remainder of some dark past, it was generated.”Slavoj Žižek · fundamentalism as product of globalization
“In Russia we have the dictatorship of the working class party without the working class.”Slavoj Žižek · Lenin's tragic lucidity about the Soviet situation
“The only truly radical ecology is the ecology which claims nature doesn't exist.”Slavoj Žižek · ecology without nature as ground
“Communists who have no illusions, who do not give way to despondency, and who preserve their strength and flexibility to begin from the beginning over and over again are not doomed.”Slavoj Žižek · Lenin on revolutionary persistence and repetition
“I don't believe in it, I'm a scientist, but I have it there because I was told that it works even if you don't believe in it.”Slavoj Žižek · cynical ideology—belief without belief
“Whatever you do it's revisionism, it's a deviation—deviation without the principal line.”Slavoj Žižek · the Left's incoherence: deviations without a party line
“Be yourself the change you want to see in the world.”Slavoj Žižek · Gandhi's motto invoked against comfortable radical posturing
“Stalinism is now your problem. All Stalinists already reinvented themselves as more efficient and ruthless capitalists.”Slavoj Žižek · Stalinism reframed as capitalism's problem
“The others can not only do the work for you, others can also laugh for you, cry for you, and especially believe for you.”Slavoj Žižek · delegated belief in cynical ideology
Transcript 46 turns
Slavoj Žižek
I hope this works. Thank you very much. First let me tell you that I'm really proud to be here and I hope it's the first time but not the last time. I hope that I will be in the next years like that, you know, you must have some annoying old uncle, relative who visits you, then you throw him out, then you throw him out through the door, through the window he comes back again or what, no? I simply like it here. Second thing, I hope you will not be disappointed because usually I'm associated with telling dirty jokes and so on and examples from cinema, but I told myself why shouldn't I do for a change something, well, different. Very naively to try to ask answer the question, whither Left? That is to say where are a kind of a general balance, which of course is more focused on the part of the world where I come from, but this precisely is why I would more than like to to hear your reaction, where I got it wrong and so on. I'm sure there will be some disagreements. Okay, let me begin with a brief reference to Lenin, the one of October Revolution. When in after the Bolsheviks won the Civil War they had to retreat into the so-called New Economic Policy of allowing much more market economy and so on, Lenin wrote a wonderful short text with the title On Ascending a High Mountain. He uses there a simile, a metaphor of a climber who has to retreat back to the valley from his first attempt to reach a mountain peak. He uses this metaphor in order to describe what a retreat means in a revolutionary process. After enumerating all the achievements and failures of the first five years of Soviet power, Lenin concludes, quote: "Communists who have no illusions, who do not give way to despondency, and who preserve their strength and flexibility to begin from the beginning over and over again in approaching an extremely difficult task are not doomed and in all probability will not perish," end of quote. This conclusion, to begin from the beginning over and over again, makes it clear that Lenin is not talking only about slowing down the progress, fortifying what was already achieved and so on, but precisely on descending back to the starting point. One should begin from the beginning. A revolutionary process is not a gradual process but a kind of repetitive movement of you try, you fail, you try from the zero point again and so on and so forth. And I think here is where we are today after the disaster of the definitive end of the epoch which began with the October Revolution. One should therefore, here is maybe the point of the first disagreement, one should therefore I claim reject the continuity with what Left meant in the last two centuries, at least in the West. Although of course we should keep in our memory sublime moments like the Jacobin climax of the French Revolution, the October Revolution and so on and so forth, this story is over. We should begin from the zero point. Let's admit it, it was already emphasized this morning in the first intervention how it seems as if capitalism triumphed. The most reliable sign of capitalism's ideological triumph is, at least in the West in the last decades, the virtual disappearance of the very term capitalism. Now you will say, but what about anti-globalization movement? I think that a close look quickly shows how anti-globalization movement, and this is for me its limitation, succumbs to the temptation to transform a critique of capitalism itself, centered on economic mechanisms, forms of work organization, profit extraction and so on, into a critique of imperialism. Now let me avoid a misunderstanding, my God, I wrote two books dedicated to the critique of the role of United States today and so on and so forth, so the last thing you can accuse me is to support in any way United States. I'm just saying that if you read closely how the term anti-imperialist struggle is used, I see a danger there. The danger is that by, how should I put it, personalizing the enemy, by talking instead of capitalism about American imperialism, you sustain a very dangerous dream. The dream of, again you see I'm just enumerating misunderstandings and then I humbly wait for you to counter-attack, a dream which I considered a very dangerous potentially reactionary dream, a dream of alternate modernity. A dream that, you know, the West, at least in Western Europe, did it in one way, in their own way, this liberal exploitative individualist capitalism, we can do it in a different way. We can have modernization and so on without all that. I think this is a dangerous trap. If you think this, you as they say in English, which is not my mother tongue, you want to have a cake and eat it. You want capitalist modernity without paying the price for it, with all the antagonisms and so on and so forth. The dream is that the horrors, struggles, wars generated by capitalism are just something basically proper to West European capitalism and that we can or you or whoever can do it in a different way. Why am I skeptical about this? Because you know in Europe throughout the at least first half of the 20th century, we had one big movement of alternate modernity, it is called fascism. Fascism is precisely a project of alternate modernity, of we can have technology, industry, everything but, as they put it, without the Jewish corruption class struggle, we can maintain harmonious society and so on and so forth. So we should be very clear here, modernization means today capitalist modernization. And, I'm not saying I'm not a kind of a crazy radical pseudo-radical leftist who thinks reject capitalism whatever, I'm aware of the constellation in which we are. All I'm saying is we should be aware that the antagonism, the contradiction to use the old Marxist term, is not in some wrong application or local culturally conditioned version of capitalism, it is in capitalism as such. So that all different versions of capitalism, I agree, there is not only Western capitalism, there is what we poetically call capitalism with Asian values which means less poetically authoritarian capitalism, no? And there is Latin American populist capitalism and so on and so forth. We should be aware that we just changing the form from the West you don't you don't get rid of capitalist antagonisms as such. So again all this talk, you know this is the danger I see in the talk of anti-imperialist struggle. Of course you should fight it but don't personalize enemy too much. The problem is not there. Okay, to provoke you even further, when we talked as you did very nicely earlier about financial international finance, it would be good, and I'm not attacking China here, but it would be good to compare to compare the international capital how it functions precisely in this tension between United States and China. Do you know the incredible amounts of money invested by China now in the United States? Because we know what's the problem, you who are economists know better than me, I know only the superficial things. What's how does do United States survive? Basically it's they really treat us all as some kind of a feudal master, they need, which is masked then as a trade deficit or whatever, they need till now, now it's even more, minimum one to two billion dollar billion dollars per day. And they get it as investments as whatever. But they are paying a price. I read somewhere that in very global numbers around of United States, if you take all real estate factories, is already owned by Saudi Arabia and China is catching up quickly with it. And this can incidentally lead to unpredictable developments. So that's my first point. What about this big defeat of the Left? And it really is a defeat, in what sense? In the sense that you know when I was young and also maybe some of you, we were dreaming about so-called socialism with a human face, without the Stalinist distortion and so on. It seems to me as if most of us today are, even if we proclaim to be leftists, are really really dreaming about, let's call it, global capitalism with a human face. You know, it's the same system but we say a little bit less less racism, sexism, and so on and so forth. So let me improvise quickly which are the way I see it, you can correct me here, main types of the reaction of the Left to this historical defeat. I think it's the whole spectrum of versions. The first one would be simply to accept global capitalism and as as Americans like to say the only game in town and then just to play within it. As as Peter Mandelson, the corrupted dark prince of the Labour government in United Kingdom put it, in economy we are all Thatcherites. All we can do is then, you know, invest outside economy a little bit more for education, health care, this, that, and so on and so forth. This is the Third Way, this is even in a different way of course, the so-called Chinese way, and we have many other variations of this. I wonder if you also debated here in Latin America and Europe, what is popular now, not so much as actual politics as as theoretical debate, although in Brazil they passed a law on it, they try to realize it but they are far from it. It's the so-called idea of basic citizen's income. Or I think it's much more appropriate the term they use in Brazil is Renda Básica, the basic rent. The idea being that capitalism can only be justified if it serves the common good, which means and the problem is how to unite capitalism with social justice and so on. The idea is let capitalists thrive, but tax them and so that you can guarantee to every citizen a certain basic income which allows him to lead a minimally decent life. I think this is, for reasons I cannot develop now, a little bit of an ideological dream. So this is then the first version. The idea is, okay, capitalism won, let's play within its rules. Then the second the second is the opposite reaction. It is withdrawal. Withdrawal in the sense of, yes, capitalism won, it is at least for some time here to stay, but we should nonetheless resist it. So and this is for obvious reasons popular especially among academic intellectuals, so don't dirty our hands, withdraw to small artistic communities, academic communities, do there the safe cultural analysis and wait. But you know, wait with the pleasure of knowing that you don't really risk anything. I found this very suspicious. Aldous Huxley, no, the British writer, he said something very nice in the late thirties about British progressives. He said that he has the impression, sorry mistake it's not Aldous Huxley it is George Orwell, he said that his impression is that whenever British progressives call for change, it sounds as an superstitious mantra, if we talk enough about change it is sure that nothing will really change, you know. This is why radical some radical so-called intellectuals like radical big proposals. They say, "no, this is not enough, demand more," because secretly they know if you demand more it often equals demanding nothing, how should I put it, no? And it's also morally a comfortable position. Then the third position, again at least in Western Europe it's popular, it is you accept the futility of all struggle. You say that fighting capitalism sooner or later leads to imitating the enemy. You become in the same way militaristic, totalitarian, and so on and so forth. So we should basically wait, withdraw and wait for some magic moment of catastrophic divine violence. I mean authors who are very popular today in the West like Adorno of Frankfurt School, like Giorgio Agamben, their attitude is this one. It's ridiculous to play political games but, you know, wait for the catastrophe. Then the next position is the one that I also reject, it's the apparently more radical philosophical one, up to a point connected with the previous one. It's the one of saying the crisis is not only because of capitalism, it's a deeper metaphysically grounded crisis. They they no, no, I love this, I love what you are doing, I will try, you know why? I dedicated my book In Defense of Lost Causes to my good friend Alain Badiou, who it's a wonderful story once he asked me for a phone saying that he wants to he's expecting an important message. So while I was talking in a hall like this, the phone rang, he started to talk, and then he asked me up here if I can talk a little bit with a lower voice so that I don't disturb him. No problem for me, this is what friends are doing. Okay, sorry, let me go on. So you know, the idea is that the crisis is metaphysical. Usually in Europe it's fashionable to say we lost the holistic attitude, it's the technological attitude, it's the guilt's response is our techno technological scientific civilization and so on and so forth. Then the next version, popular also with some practical people, is this idea of local struggle. Don't aim directly for power, organize local communities and gradually you will undermine power without directly directly attacking it. I like this metaphor because the idea is a little bit like you know if you look at especially American cartoons like Tom and Jerry, Mickey Mouse, you have there always one classical scene: let's say a cat walks, a cat walks across the precipice, it doesn't fall down, only when after a certain time a cat looks down, ah, it notices then it falls, no? So that's the idea, we build our local communities, self-management, then at a certain point we just call those in power, "Hey, look down," they notice they fall down. I'm skeptical to this one also. Then we have the postmodern politics. The idea is, it's usually put in high theoretical terms is that the era of class reductionism or economic essentialism is over, there is no reason now to privilege economy. We have a whole series of multiplicity of struggles: cultural struggles, sexism, racism, human rights, ecology. And the point is just to open the space within civil society for these pluralities of struggles. I see there a clear limitation, this strategy is only possible in developed West where we have a solid base of standard of living, welfare state, and so on. As soon as we are outside this very narrow field of developed West, this doesn't function. Then let me mention another big fashionable strategy, which is for me a desperate strategy of which I doubt that it works. They claim that that today with so-called post-industrial capitalism where the shift is more and more towards towards intellectual work and so on and so forth, communist communist vision is closer than ever to realization. They go very far here, they claim that this so-called digital virtual capitalism almost already is communism. We just have to change it a little bit, we are there we just don't know. I'm a little bit skeptical about that. But what I'm saying is that what we should avoid here is to claim, "Oh, what I enumerated now are just wrong versions, deviations." The problem is deviations from what? I don't see today any convincing global vision. You know, it's like to put it in old Stalinist terms, we have all the deviations, revisions, but we don't know what is the main party line, how should I put it, no? As if you know this would be a nightmare for a Stalinist: whatever you do it's revisionism, it's a deviation, no, it's deviation without the principal line. So and it is true that capitalism, you know what's the problem with capitalism? One must admit this, that it has an incredible capacity to to return from every catastrophe even stronger. Already Marx used for capitalism the metaphor of a vampire, I would rather say the living dead, you know, you kill him and then you know all those horror movies, oh, it comes to haunt you even stronger. It is true, namely look for example at the Chinese Great Cultural Revolution, a radical attempt to create new men if there ever was one. But now now from I don't support it, but what I'm saying is that now from our perspective we can say that Cultural Revolution worked like shock therapy for capitalism in the sense of Naomi Klein. I claim to this, I claim that because the effect of Cultural Revolution was to destroy the past, the texture of traditions and so on and so forth, and it created the void which was then effectively filled with Deng Xiaoping's capitalist reforms and so on and so forth. So is this my message? Precisely not. Don't be afraid, I am on on your side, more than ever we need communism. How? Let's look nonetheless at this defeat of the Left. I'm sorry if I will be now a little bit limited to European perspective, that's my world. You know that recently we celebrated, if it was a cause of celebration, the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. But one should note something there, this is the first common sense observation: people didn't want what they got. I mean this in a very naive empirical sense. If you ask let's take the most triumphant case, Poland, if you ask the Polish workers in Solidarity Union, if you look not if you ask, if you simply look their documents, what do they want? To put it in naive terms, they wanted some kind of a solidarity, a rough kind of justice, they wanted to lead their lives outside state control, to come together and talk as they please, they wanted a life of simple honesty, sincerity, the life without prevailing cynical hypocrisy and so on and so forth. As many intelligent observers noticed, what they wanted is even in a paradoxical way close to the official ideology itself, at least if we read it literally. So then people were disappointed. How are we to read this disappointment? This disappointment is then expressed in very interesting ways. One is that so soon afterwards in free election, successor of ex-communist powers came back to power. Second form of disappointment, the most interesting one for me is a retreat to kind of a fundamentalist nationalism. It's a typical move of of the shift anti-communist, they claim that this is very popular to say in many East European countries now, that even the that that capitalism liberal Western capitalism is basically no better than communism, that they are both the same side of the same decadence, we should return to our proud national traditions and so on. Maybe you remember the old anti-communist motto was "Better dead than Red." I heard now a new right-wing motto: "Better Red than eating hamburgers." Like you know, that's the enemy, or as a right-wing friend explained to me: "We share, we right-wingers, with communists the same principle, authoritarian organization of society, that's how they perceive it, but they claim we just we are just opposed on how to do it, content, but they claim with liberal capitalists we share nothing, not even this, there the contradiction is absolute as it were." And so on, let me not get lost here, let me just make the point how when the people were disappointed so with new capitalist freedom, how are we to interpret this? The predominant West European reaction is to treat it as a sign of immaturity. People were stupid, they expected too much, they thought capitalism is only freedom, consumption, as they ironically put it for East Germans, they thought they will get free pornography and bananas and so on. They had to learn that capitalism also means hard work, you can fail, responsibility and so on and so forth, now we have to gain maturity. It is, first one has to concede, it is that European Left had died twice. Not only in '89 the communist Left, but also its twin social democratic Left. It took a little bit longer, years, but if you follow what goes on now in Western Europe, social democratic parties are I claim in a serious crisis, which is not simply the usual exchange. You know in France they are practically disintegrating, in Germany, in Britain, in Italy and so on. And I claim that as to the dominant political mapping, a new antagonism is emerging. If in the old West European scene we usually had two big parties apart from smaller parties, Center-Left and Center-Right, usually, I don't know, let's say conservative or Christian popular party and social democrats so and they they they exchange each other in power. Now a new duality is emerging: a kind of a centrist pure capitalist liberal party which is usually politically, sorry, culturally tolerant, gay rights, whatever you want, abortion, and as the only reaction to it, reaction strong enough in electoral terms, nationalist fundamentalists. It's for example it happens one after the other. The first shock was you remember how many years ago, ten already, when to the surprise of all Le Pen emerged as the second for the second round of presidential elections in France. In many countries now, even in Netherlands, Holland, where they celebrate themselves the most liberal open society, the nationalist anti-immigrant racist basically parties the second strongest. This is I think, I cannot judge about you, but definitely in Western Europe and somewhere else also I think the greatest danger. We are approaching an era where, if I may paraphrase Sigmund Freud who spoke about in German Unbehagen in der Kultur, discontent uneasy unease in civilization, about uneasiness, discontent with liberal capitalism. The tragedy of the Western Europe is that, and not only of the Western Europe is that, the only organized large political force which successfully gives voice to this discontent are fundamentalist racist nationalists. And it's an incredibly sad phenomenon. How so again, how to break out of all this? It is I think we should start at the very beginning. It is a standard thing to say how how '89 meant the end of utopias. The utopias are over, now we reached maturity, we see capitalism is the only thing which really functions. But I think nonetheless that if there is a meaning to the first decade of the 21st century is that this utopia, Fukuyama utopia of the nineties is dying, died twice. I think that precisely the two events which limit the first decade, September 11th attacks and then at the end financial crisis. September attacks mean, if they mean anything, I don't think they were such a big event but if they mean anything, they mean a sign that liberal democracy is not a form which can simply be applied to the entire world. And the financial crisis means second death of the more economic aspect of liberal capitalism. So my point is that we may all laugh about Fukuyama, End of History, but again as I emphasized already said, you know secretly even the large majority of our Left is Fukuyamaist today. Nobody even talks today about, you know, the problems we were talking years ago. Is capitalism here to stay or will there be another society? Is the state here to stay? Can we, it is as if these basic things are here to stay. Even as my friend American Marxist Fredric Jameson pointed out, referring to all these catastrophic films, to and so on, it is for us today much much easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, you know. Okay, an asteroid will hit us, some virus, we are all dead, but somehow capitalism will go on, you cannot even imagine a change a change of capitalism. So you see this is enemies intervening at this precise point. Okay, so let's go on. Where then do we stand today? Sorry. You know Gerald Cohen, this I don't agree with him absolutely not, a British so-called analytic Marxist. But he had a simple empirical enumerate four features of the classic Marxist notion of the working class. First it you hear me or not? Okay, I will talk like in a popular meeting. Thank you. For Gerald Cohen there are four features according to Gerald Cohen in classical Marxism working class is characterized by first the fact that it constitute the majority of a society. Point two, it produces the wealth of society. Point three, it consists of the exploited members of society and point four, its members are the needy, poor needy people, parts of society. And then from these four features two further features follow: the working class has nothing to lose from the revolution and it can and will engage in a revolutionary transformation of society. But there is a point in Cohen's observation that today we still have a majority, we still have exploitation, we still have poor, but they no longer even in the long term belong to the same group of people. Those who work, workers, are usually not the poorest. Even those who are the poorest are not always those who those who protest, those who rebel, and so on and so forth. So what does this mean? That it simply disturb, confused the field? This brings me to the crucial question, which is I think the question we all face today. Is capitalism here to stay? Which means will it be possible for capitalism to, even if it's a little bit transformed, to contain at least if not resolve its contradictions, antagonisms? Or are we facing today problems, antagonisms which will prevent the indefinite production, reproduction of capitalism? Of course I will not cover all these problems. There are many, many problems. For example deep things can be said about the so-called moral vacuum of that the global capitalism is creating. Deep things can be said about how the so-called capitalist permissivity is misleading, that how contemporary capitalism involves new forms of domination. What do I mean by this? Just to amuse you a little bit, let me give you a brief anecdote that I like to repeat. We have traditional paternal authority, and we like to say today how the authority is no longer paternal, it's more permissive. But permissivity can have its own traps, like again my own story from when I was young. Let's say you have an authoritarian father, it's Saturday or Sunday afternoon, father tells you, "We have to visit grandmother. I know she is old, boring, but you have to do it, behave properly, obey." No problem, you will do it, you will rebel, it goes. Let's say you have a postmodern permissive father, what will he tell you? He will tell you something like, "You know how your grandmother loves you, but nonetheless you should visit her only if you want to visit her." What's the trick here? The trick is that apparently the father is giving you freedom of choice, but you know every child and they are not stupid knows that beneath this freedom there is even a much stronger order. The order is not just visit your grandmother, but you must like to visit your grandmother. It's a much harsher order. I think this is one of the great tricks of of permissivity today. The problem another problem, people praise sexual liberation. That's why we have depressions and so on. Because at least in the West, French are telling me who are psychoanalysts that people no longer feel guilty today for having perverse desires and then you go to a psychoanalyst who liberates you and you can enjoy it. No, people today feel guilty for not being for, how should I put it, for not being able to perform, for not being able to act. People feel guilty for not enjoying. The big guilt if you cannot sexually enjoy. So the idea is that the psychoanalyst should return you to enjoyment. The paradox is what? The paradox is that it is precisely, and that's one of the lessons of psychoanalysis, this shift from permitted sexual pleasures to ordered sexual pleasures which causes depressions, impotence, frigidity, whatever whatever you want. The worst thing your father can tell you is to tell you, "Why don't you seduce girls? Where are you? Be a man!" and so on and so forth. Okay, but these are other amusing stories. Let's stop with this and let's go to four absolutely serious crucial problems which as I see generate also what we should still call proletarian position, although not quite in the same sense as Marx. So four spheres which I think generate problems which cannot be solved within liberal capitalist framework. First of course ecology. On the one hand one should emphasize the infinite adaptability of capitalism. Capitalism is able to turn every crisis into a new source of investment and profits. If if half of United States go underwater, they will open up a new market for reconstructing whatever and so on and so forth. And up to a point it works, like you can tax pollution and so on. The problem is that when we are dealing with the threat of large catastrophe, you know if you have a small valley polluted, you can do it through market means because markets work through competition trial and error. But when you have Chernobyl of global warming, you cannot say we will try this way, if this doesn't work, we will try another way and the market will decide. We will all be dead before the market decides. It is why? Because we are effectively entered a new era with the latest scientific developments, a new era where as we all know humanity maybe for the first time in history has the ability to to perturb, disturb the entire natural cycle of life on earth and in this sense to destroy in this sense to destroy itself. And what's the problem here? A lot could be said about how ideology is crucial. Sorry. Yeah, no, what I want to say is that look the Copenhagen talks which as we all know failed. I think a Copenhagen talk in December about how to face ecological threat, compare Copenhagen talks to reaction to financial crisis
I hope this works. Thank you very much. First let me tell you that I'm really proud to be here and I hope it's the first time but not the last time. I hope that I will be in the next years like that, you know, you must have some annoying old uncle, relative who visits you, then you throw him out, then you throw him out through the door, through the window he comes back again or what, no? I simply like it here. Second thing, I hope you will not be disappointed because usually I'm associated with telling dirty jokes and so on and examples from cinema, but I told myself why shouldn't I do for a change something, well, different. Very naively to try to ask answer the question, whither Left? That is to say where are a kind of a general balance, which of course is more focused on the part of the world where I come from, but this precisely is why I would more than like to to hear your reaction, where I got it wrong and so on. I'm sure there will be some disagreements. Okay, let me begin with a brief reference to Lenin, the one of October Revolution. When in after the Bolsheviks won the Civil War they had to retreat into the so-called New Economic Policy of allowing much more market economy and so on, Lenin wrote a wonderful short text with the title On Ascending a High Mountain. He uses there a simile, a metaphor of a climber who has to retreat back to the valley from his first attempt to reach a mountain peak. He uses this metaphor in order to describe what a retreat means in a revolutionary process. After enumerating all the achievements and failures of the first five years of Soviet power, Lenin concludes, quote: "Communists who have no illusions, who do not give way to despondency, and who preserve their strength and flexibility to begin from the beginning over and over again in approaching an extremely difficult task are not doomed and in all probability will not perish," end of quote. This conclusion, to begin from the beginning over and over again, makes it clear that Lenin is not talking only about slowing down the progress, fortifying what was already achieved and so on, but precisely on descending back to the starting point. One should begin from the beginning. A revolutionary process is not a gradual process but a kind of repetitive movement of you try, you fail, you try from the zero point again and so on and so forth. And I think here is where we are today after the disaster of the definitive end of the epoch which began with the October Revolution. One should therefore, here is maybe the point of the first disagreement, one should therefore I claim reject the continuity with what Left meant in the last two centuries, at least in the West. Although of course we should keep in our memory sublime moments like the Jacobin climax of the French Revolution, the October Revolution and so on and so forth, this story is over. We should begin from the zero point. Let's admit it, it was already emphasized this morning in the first intervention how it seems as if capitalism triumphed. The most reliable sign of capitalism's ideological triumph is, at least in the West in the last decades, the virtual disappearance of the very term capitalism. Now you will say, but what about anti-globalization movement? I think that a close look quickly shows how anti-globalization movement, and this is for me its limitation, succumbs to the temptation to transform a critique of capitalism itself, centered on economic mechanisms, forms of work organization, profit extraction and so on, into a critique of imperialism. Now let me avoid a misunderstanding, my God, I wrote two books dedicated to the critique of the role of United States today and so on and so forth, so the last thing you can accuse me is to support in any way United States. I'm just saying that if you read closely how the term anti-imperialist struggle is used, I see a danger there. The danger is that by, how should I put it, personalizing the enemy, by talking instead of capitalism about American imperialism, you sustain a very dangerous dream. The dream of, again you see I'm just enumerating misunderstandings and then I humbly wait for you to counter-attack, a dream which I considered a very dangerous potentially reactionary dream, a dream of alternate modernity. A dream that, you know, the West, at least in Western Europe, did it in one way, in their own way, this liberal exploitative individualist capitalism, we can do it in a different way. We can have modernization and so on without all that. I think this is a dangerous trap. If you think this, you as they say in English, which is not my mother tongue, you want to have a cake and eat it. You want capitalist modernity without paying the price for it, with all the antagonisms and so on and so forth. The dream is that the horrors, struggles, wars generated by capitalism are just something basically proper to West European capitalism and that we can or you or whoever can do it in a different way. Why am I skeptical about this? Because you know in Europe throughout the at least first half of the 20th century, we had one big movement of alternate modernity, it is called fascism. Fascism is precisely a project of alternate modernity, of we can have technology, industry, everything but, as they put it, without the Jewish corruption class struggle, we can maintain harmonious society and so on and so forth. So we should be very clear here, modernization means today capitalist modernization. And, I'm not saying I'm not a kind of a crazy radical pseudo-radical leftist who thinks reject capitalism whatever, I'm aware of the constellation in which we are. All I'm saying is we should be aware that the antagonism, the contradiction to use the old Marxist term, is not in some wrong application or local culturally conditioned version of capitalism, it is in capitalism as such. So that all different versions of capitalism, I agree, there is not only Western capitalism, there is what we poetically call capitalism with Asian values which means less poetically authoritarian capitalism, no? And there is Latin American populist capitalism and so on and so forth. We should be aware that we just changing the form from the West you don't you don't get rid of capitalist antagonisms as such. So again all this talk, you know this is the danger I see in the talk of anti-imperialist struggle. Of course you should fight it but don't personalize enemy too much. The problem is not there. Okay, to provoke you even further, when we talked as you did very nicely earlier about financial international finance, it would be good, and I'm not attacking China here, but it would be good to compare to compare the international capital how it functions precisely in this tension between United States and China. Do you know the incredible amounts of money invested by China now in the United States? Because we know what's the problem, you who are economists know better than me, I know only the superficial things. What's how does do United States survive? Basically it's they really treat us all as some kind of a feudal master, they need, which is masked then as a trade deficit or whatever, they need till now, now it's even more, minimum one to two billion dollar billion dollars per day. And they get it as investments as whatever. But they are paying a price. I read somewhere that in very global numbers around of United States, if you take all real estate factories, is already owned by Saudi Arabia and China is catching up quickly with it. And this can incidentally lead to unpredictable developments. So that's my first point. What about this big defeat of the Left? And it really is a defeat, in what sense? In the sense that you know when I was young and also maybe some of you, we were dreaming about so-called socialism with a human face, without the Stalinist distortion and so on. It seems to me as if most of us today are, even if we proclaim to be leftists, are really really dreaming about, let's call it, global capitalism with a human face. You know, it's the same system but we say a little bit less less racism, sexism, and so on and so forth. So let me improvise quickly which are the way I see it, you can correct me here, main types of the reaction of the Left to this historical defeat. I think it's the whole spectrum of versions. The first one would be simply to accept global capitalism and as as Americans like to say the only game in town and then just to play within it. As as Peter Mandelson, the corrupted dark prince of the Labour government in United Kingdom put it, in economy we are all Thatcherites. All we can do is then, you know, invest outside economy a little bit more for education, health care, this, that, and so on and so forth. This is the Third Way, this is even in a different way of course, the so-called Chinese way, and we have many other variations of this. I wonder if you also debated here in Latin America and Europe, what is popular now, not so much as actual politics as as theoretical debate, although in Brazil they passed a law on it, they try to realize it but they are far from it. It's the so-called idea of basic citizen's income. Or I think it's much more appropriate the term they use in Brazil is Renda Básica, the basic rent. The idea being that capitalism can only be justified if it serves the common good, which means and the problem is how to unite capitalism with social justice and so on. The idea is let capitalists thrive, but tax them and so that you can guarantee to every citizen a certain basic income which allows him to lead a minimally decent life. I think this is, for reasons I cannot develop now, a little bit of an ideological dream. So this is then the first version. The idea is, okay, capitalism won, let's play within its rules. Then the second the second is the opposite reaction. It is withdrawal. Withdrawal in the sense of, yes, capitalism won, it is at least for some time here to stay, but we should nonetheless resist it. So and this is for obvious reasons popular especially among academic intellectuals, so don't dirty our hands, withdraw to small artistic communities, academic communities, do there the safe cultural analysis and wait. But you know, wait with the pleasure of knowing that you don't really risk anything. I found this very suspicious. Aldous Huxley, no, the British writer, he said something very nice in the late thirties about British progressives. He said that he has the impression, sorry mistake it's not Aldous Huxley it is George Orwell, he said that his impression is that whenever British progressives call for change, it sounds as an superstitious mantra, if we talk enough about change it is sure that nothing will really change, you know. This is why radical some radical so-called intellectuals like radical big proposals. They say, "no, this is not enough, demand more," because secretly they know if you demand more it often equals demanding nothing, how should I put it, no? And it's also morally a comfortable position. Then the third position, again at least in Western Europe it's popular, it is you accept the futility of all struggle. You say that fighting capitalism sooner or later leads to imitating the enemy. You become in the same way militaristic, totalitarian, and so on and so forth. So we should basically wait, withdraw and wait for some magic moment of catastrophic divine violence. I mean authors who are very popular today in the West like Adorno of Frankfurt School, like Giorgio Agamben, their attitude is this one. It's ridiculous to play political games but, you know, wait for the catastrophe. Then the next position is the one that I also reject, it's the apparently more radical philosophical one, up to a point connected with the previous one. It's the one of saying the crisis is not only because of capitalism, it's a deeper metaphysically grounded crisis. They they no, no, I love this, I love what you are doing, I will try, you know why? I dedicated my book In Defense of Lost Causes to my good friend Alain Badiou, who it's a wonderful story once he asked me for a phone saying that he wants to he's expecting an important message. So while I was talking in a hall like this, the phone rang, he started to talk, and then he asked me up here if I can talk a little bit with a lower voice so that I don't disturb him. No problem for me, this is what friends are doing. Okay, sorry, let me go on. So you know, the idea is that the crisis is metaphysical. Usually in Europe it's fashionable to say we lost the holistic attitude, it's the technological attitude, it's the guilt's response is our techno technological scientific civilization and so on and so forth. Then the next version, popular also with some practical people, is this idea of local struggle. Don't aim directly for power, organize local communities and gradually you will undermine power without directly directly attacking it. I like this metaphor because the idea is a little bit like you know if you look at especially American cartoons like Tom and Jerry, Mickey Mouse, you have there always one classical scene: let's say a cat walks, a cat walks across the precipice, it doesn't fall down, only when after a certain time a cat looks down, ah, it notices then it falls, no? So that's the idea, we build our local communities, self-management, then at a certain point we just call those in power, "Hey, look down," they notice they fall down. I'm skeptical to this one also. Then we have the postmodern politics. The idea is, it's usually put in high theoretical terms is that the era of class reductionism or economic essentialism is over, there is no reason now to privilege economy. We have a whole series of multiplicity of struggles: cultural struggles, sexism, racism, human rights, ecology. And the point is just to open the space within civil society for these pluralities of struggles. I see there a clear limitation, this strategy is only possible in developed West where we have a solid base of standard of living, welfare state, and so on. As soon as we are outside this very narrow field of developed West, this doesn't function. Then let me mention another big fashionable strategy, which is for me a desperate strategy of which I doubt that it works. They claim that that today with so-called post-industrial capitalism where the shift is more and more towards towards intellectual work and so on and so forth, communist communist vision is closer than ever to realization. They go very far here, they claim that this so-called digital virtual capitalism almost already is communism. We just have to change it a little bit, we are there we just don't know. I'm a little bit skeptical about that. But what I'm saying is that what we should avoid here is to claim, "Oh, what I enumerated now are just wrong versions, deviations." The problem is deviations from what? I don't see today any convincing global vision. You know, it's like to put it in old Stalinist terms, we have all the deviations, revisions, but we don't know what is the main party line, how should I put it, no? As if you know this would be a nightmare for a Stalinist: whatever you do it's revisionism, it's a deviation, no, it's deviation without the principal line. So and it is true that capitalism, you know what's the problem with capitalism? One must admit this, that it has an incredible capacity to to return from every catastrophe even stronger. Already Marx used for capitalism the metaphor of a vampire, I would rather say the living dead, you know, you kill him and then you know all those horror movies, oh, it comes to haunt you even stronger. It is true, namely look for example at the Chinese Great Cultural Revolution, a radical attempt to create new men if there ever was one. But now now from I don't support it, but what I'm saying is that now from our perspective we can say that Cultural Revolution worked like shock therapy for capitalism in the sense of Naomi Klein. I claim to this, I claim that because the effect of Cultural Revolution was to destroy the past, the texture of traditions and so on and so forth, and it created the void which was then effectively filled with Deng Xiaoping's capitalist reforms and so on and so forth. So is this my message? Precisely not. Don't be afraid, I am on on your side, more than ever we need communism. How? Let's look nonetheless at this defeat of the Left. I'm sorry if I will be now a little bit limited to European perspective, that's my world. You know that recently we celebrated, if it was a cause of celebration, the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. But one should note something there, this is the first common sense observation: people didn't want what they got. I mean this in a very naive empirical sense. If you ask let's take the most triumphant case, Poland, if you ask the Polish workers in Solidarity Union, if you look not if you ask, if you simply look their documents, what do they want? To put it in naive terms, they wanted some kind of a solidarity, a rough kind of justice, they wanted to lead their lives outside state control, to come together and talk as they please, they wanted a life of simple honesty, sincerity, the life without prevailing cynical hypocrisy and so on and so forth. As many intelligent observers noticed, what they wanted is even in a paradoxical way close to the official ideology itself, at least if we read it literally. So then people were disappointed. How are we to read this disappointment? This disappointment is then expressed in very interesting ways. One is that so soon afterwards in free election, successor of ex-communist powers came back to power. Second form of disappointment, the most interesting one for me is a retreat to kind of a fundamentalist nationalism. It's a typical move of of the shift anti-communist, they claim that this is very popular to say in many East European countries now, that even the that that capitalism liberal Western capitalism is basically no better than communism, that they are both the same side of the same decadence, we should return to our proud national traditions and so on. Maybe you remember the old anti-communist motto was "Better dead than Red." I heard now a new right-wing motto: "Better Red than eating hamburgers." Like you know, that's the enemy, or as a right-wing friend explained to me: "We share, we right-wingers, with communists the same principle, authoritarian organization of society, that's how they perceive it, but they claim we just we are just opposed on how to do it, content, but they claim with liberal capitalists we share nothing, not even this, there the contradiction is absolute as it were." And so on, let me not get lost here, let me just make the point how when the people were disappointed so with new capitalist freedom, how are we to interpret this? The predominant West European reaction is to treat it as a sign of immaturity. People were stupid, they expected too much, they thought capitalism is only freedom, consumption, as they ironically put it for East Germans, they thought they will get free pornography and bananas and so on. They had to learn that capitalism also means hard work, you can fail, responsibility and so on and so forth, now we have to gain maturity. It is, first one has to concede, it is that European Left had died twice. Not only in '89 the communist Left, but also its twin social democratic Left. It took a little bit longer, years, but if you follow what goes on now in Western Europe, social democratic parties are I claim in a serious crisis, which is not simply the usual exchange. You know in France they are practically disintegrating, in Germany, in Britain, in Italy and so on. And I claim that as to the dominant political mapping, a new antagonism is emerging. If in the old West European scene we usually had two big parties apart from smaller parties, Center-Left and Center-Right, usually, I don't know, let's say conservative or Christian popular party and social democrats so and they they they exchange each other in power. Now a new duality is emerging: a kind of a centrist pure capitalist liberal party which is usually politically, sorry, culturally tolerant, gay rights, whatever you want, abortion, and as the only reaction to it, reaction strong enough in electoral terms, nationalist fundamentalists. It's for example it happens one after the other. The first shock was you remember how many years ago, ten already, when to the surprise of all Le Pen emerged as the second for the second round of presidential elections in France. In many countries now, even in Netherlands, Holland, where they celebrate themselves the most liberal open society, the nationalist anti-immigrant racist basically parties the second strongest. This is I think, I cannot judge about you, but definitely in Western Europe and somewhere else also I think the greatest danger. We are approaching an era where, if I may paraphrase Sigmund Freud who spoke about in German Unbehagen in der Kultur, discontent uneasy unease in civilization, about uneasiness, discontent with liberal capitalism. The tragedy of the Western Europe is that, and not only of the Western Europe is that, the only organized large political force which successfully gives voice to this discontent are fundamentalist racist nationalists. And it's an incredibly sad phenomenon. How so again, how to break out of all this? It is I think we should start at the very beginning. It is a standard thing to say how how '89 meant the end of utopias. The utopias are over, now we reached maturity, we see capitalism is the only thing which really functions. But I think nonetheless that if there is a meaning to the first decade of the 21st century is that this utopia, Fukuyama utopia of the nineties is dying, died twice. I think that precisely the two events which limit the first decade, September 11th attacks and then at the end financial crisis. September attacks mean, if they mean anything, I don't think they were such a big event but if they mean anything, they mean a sign that liberal democracy is not a form which can simply be applied to the entire world. And the financial crisis means second death of the more economic aspect of liberal capitalism. So my point is that we may all laugh about Fukuyama, End of History, but again as I emphasized already said, you know secretly even the large majority of our Left is Fukuyamaist today. Nobody even talks today about, you know, the problems we were talking years ago. Is capitalism here to stay or will there be another society? Is the state here to stay? Can we, it is as if these basic things are here to stay. Even as my friend American Marxist Fredric Jameson pointed out, referring to all these catastrophic films, to and so on, it is for us today much much easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, you know. Okay, an asteroid will hit us, some virus, we are all dead, but somehow capitalism will go on, you cannot even imagine a change a change of capitalism. So you see this is enemies intervening at this precise point. Okay, so let's go on. Where then do we stand today? Sorry. You know Gerald Cohen, this I don't agree with him absolutely not, a British so-called analytic Marxist. But he had a simple empirical enumerate four features of the classic Marxist notion of the working class. First it you hear me or not? Okay, I will talk like in a popular meeting. Thank you. For Gerald Cohen there are four features according to Gerald Cohen in classical Marxism working class is characterized by first the fact that it constitute the majority of a society. Point two, it produces the wealth of society. Point three, it consists of the exploited members of society and point four, its members are the needy, poor needy people, parts of society. And then from these four features two further features follow: the working class has nothing to lose from the revolution and it can and will engage in a revolutionary transformation of society. But there is a point in Cohen's observation that today we still have a majority, we still have exploitation, we still have poor, but they no longer even in the long term belong to the same group of people. Those who work, workers, are usually not the poorest. Even those who are the poorest are not always those who those who protest, those who rebel, and so on and so forth. So what does this mean? That it simply disturb, confused the field? This brings me to the crucial question, which is I think the question we all face today. Is capitalism here to stay? Which means will it be possible for capitalism to, even if it's a little bit transformed, to contain at least if not resolve its contradictions, antagonisms? Or are we facing today problems, antagonisms which will prevent the indefinite production, reproduction of capitalism? Of course I will not cover all these problems. There are many, many problems. For example deep things can be said about the so-called moral vacuum of that the global capitalism is creating. Deep things can be said about how the so-called capitalist permissivity is misleading, that how contemporary capitalism involves new forms of domination. What do I mean by this? Just to amuse you a little bit, let me give you a brief anecdote that I like to repeat. We have traditional paternal authority, and we like to say today how the authority is no longer paternal, it's more permissive. But permissivity can have its own traps, like again my own story from when I was young. Let's say you have an authoritarian father, it's Saturday or Sunday afternoon, father tells you, "We have to visit grandmother. I know she is old, boring, but you have to do it, behave properly, obey." No problem, you will do it, you will rebel, it goes. Let's say you have a postmodern permissive father, what will he tell you? He will tell you something like, "You know how your grandmother loves you, but nonetheless you should visit her only if you want to visit her." What's the trick here? The trick is that apparently the father is giving you freedom of choice, but you know every child and they are not stupid knows that beneath this freedom there is even a much stronger order. The order is not just visit your grandmother, but you must like to visit your grandmother. It's a much harsher order. I think this is one of the great tricks of of permissivity today. The problem another problem, people praise sexual liberation. That's why we have depressions and so on. Because at least in the West, French are telling me who are psychoanalysts that people no longer feel guilty today for having perverse desires and then you go to a psychoanalyst who liberates you and you can enjoy it. No, people today feel guilty for not being for, how should I put it, for not being able to perform, for not being able to act. People feel guilty for not enjoying. The big guilt if you cannot sexually enjoy. So the idea is that the psychoanalyst should return you to enjoyment. The paradox is what? The paradox is that it is precisely, and that's one of the lessons of psychoanalysis, this shift from permitted sexual pleasures to ordered sexual pleasures which causes depressions, impotence, frigidity, whatever whatever you want. The worst thing your father can tell you is to tell you, "Why don't you seduce girls? Where are you? Be a man!" and so on and so forth. Okay, but these are other amusing stories. Let's stop with this and let's go to four absolutely serious crucial problems which as I see generate also what we should still call proletarian position, although not quite in the same sense as Marx. So four spheres which I think generate problems which cannot be solved within liberal capitalist framework. First of course ecology. On the one hand one should emphasize the infinite adaptability of capitalism. Capitalism is able to turn every crisis into a new source of investment and profits. If if half of United States go underwater, they will open up a new market for reconstructing whatever and so on and so forth. And up to a point it works, like you can tax pollution and so on. The problem is that when we are dealing with the threat of large catastrophe, you know if you have a small valley polluted, you can do it through market means because markets work through competition trial and error. But when you have Chernobyl of global warming, you cannot say we will try this way, if this doesn't work, we will try another way and the market will decide. We will all be dead before the market decides. It is why? Because we are effectively entered a new era with the latest scientific developments, a new era where as we all know humanity maybe for the first time in history has the ability to to perturb, disturb the entire natural cycle of life on earth and in this sense to destroy in this sense to destroy itself. And what's the problem here? A lot could be said about how ideology is crucial. Sorry. Yeah, no, what I want to say is that look the Copenhagen talks which as we all know failed. I think a Copenhagen talk in December about how to face ecological threat, compare Copenhagen talks to reaction to financial crisis
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one year ago. Although we know it's our survival at stake, in Copenhagen they were dealing,
one year ago. Although we know it's our survival at stake, in Copenhagen they were dealing,
Slavoj Žižek
negotiating, we have time, not billion dollars and so on. You remember how when the financial crisis broke out, in one week they found first then more and so on and so forth. And something very interesting happened there, you remember Bush was still president. First Bush went to Congress demanding that the Congress votes for the money. Congress first said no, American Congress. Then the entire American elite came together, Bush, Obama, all of them, and basically their message to the Congress was, "Don't play games, this is now no time for democratic debate, we need this money." In one week the Congress so this is a big lesson of how capitalism functions. We can we can debate about
negotiating, we have time, not billion dollars and so on. You remember how when the financial crisis broke out, in one week they found first then more and so on and so forth. And something very interesting happened there, you remember Bush was still president. First Bush went to Congress demanding that the Congress votes for the money. Congress first said no, American Congress. Then the entire American elite came together, Bush, Obama, all of them, and basically their message to the Congress was, "Don't play games, this is now no time for democratic debate, we need this money." In one week the Congress so this is a big lesson of how capitalism functions. We can we can debate about
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everything: ecology, hunger, AIDS, and so on. When it comes to financial capital, money, there is no joke. You simply have to do it there. So my point here is that the lesson of the Copenhagen fiasco is that neither private capital nor state will do it. This is for me the very sad lesson of Copenhagen, that
everything: ecology, hunger, AIDS, and so on. When it comes to financial capital, money, there is no joke. You simply have to do it there. So my point here is that the lesson of the Copenhagen fiasco is that neither private capital nor state will do it. This is for me the very sad lesson of Copenhagen, that
Slavoj Žižek
we need some kind of, I don't know how will it look, communist mobilization. By communist I mean something very precise. I refer here to a wonderful distinction, before you were talking I heard about private public, by you know the German philosopher one of the biggest Immanuel Kant. He opposes in a very interesting way which is more than ever actual today, public and private use of reason. For him private is not when you sit with your friends in the kitchen. Private is precisely state apparatus and so on. Private is when the debate is subordinated to some corporate community goals, so that you know in advance, you serve the state, we don't criticize the state and so on and so forth. For Kant public use of reason is a more radical universal one where you are no longer bound by narrow so we need that kind of a public use of reason. Which means that which means that another thing that there is tremendous lot of work to be done here. Ecology is a problem but as you especially in India must know, it's also one of the main fields of ideological struggle, of ideological investment today. It is used to punish you countries in development like don't develop and so on, it is used as a source of new obscurantist ideologies and so on and so forth. And my solution here again to provoke you is a radical one. The only truly radical ecology is the ecology which claims nature doesn't exist. Don't be afraid, not in the sense of a stupid subjectivism like, you know, I just invent nature. In the sense that what is usually in ecology ideology meant by nature, a kind of a Mother Nature, you know big living homeostatic system which we humans disturbed with our bad evil technological exploitation. Nature is crazy in herself. If it's a mother it's a pretty crazy mother. I mean just think about oil. Are we even able to imagine what kind of a mega catastrophe, ecological, must have happened for us to have oil, reserves of oil? So the message is not don't take ecology seriously, the message I think it's an even harsher one. There is no natural balance to which we can return. It's an open risky process. So first ecology. Second field where I see insoluble problems: the inappropriateness of the institution of private property for the so-called intellectual labor. As you probably know, these new digital industries and so know fight again and again with the problem how to keep the results of intellectual work in the form of private property. If there is one good thing about intellectual work, which produces knowledge, expertise, is that in contrast to material products, it multiplies by use. If I have a car and you buy it from me, if we both use the car it gets used faster. If I produce or you a piece of knowledge, the more we use it the richer it becomes. It's the logic is already in itself much more communist. So what I'm saying is that this is why more and more today we are dealing with state regulation and so on and so forth, or with all these absurd consequences where you also in India were victims. Wasn't there a case everyone was shocked when a method for healing or whatever used for hundreds of years by your farmers was patented in the United States and all of a sudden your farmers learned that they had to pay for what they were doing for hundreds of years and so on and so forth. So again I claim that intellectual so-called intellectual property it will get more and more crazy. If we leave free path to it, we will live in a totally crazy situation where even our thoughts and so on will be owned by others. The third domain, don't underestimate it, is are the socio-ethical implications of the new techno-scientific developments, biogenetics and so on and so forth. It's interesting to know that Fukuyama himself, who is not a total idiot, admitted, I met him at some debate recently, that the very fact of biogenetics changes his diagnostic. Now he admits, no no end of history. Why? Because something is so radically potentially happening which I think will change maybe even our very elementary definition of what it is to be human. I refer here not only to the fact that in predictable future it will be already possible to through genetic manipulations change not only our physical properties of newborn children or even adults, but especially psychological properties and attitudes. For example my friends in China gave me gave me kind of a big plan of Chinese Academy of Sciences for and they are pretty open there. They claim that their goal is, to cut a long story short, to control the entire Chinese population, its physical and mental health. You know like to genetically in the long term reduce aggressiveness if needed or whatever and so on and so forth. Another thing which I think has incredible consequences even philosophical ones is for example what defines us as free human beings? The fact that I'm I'm in here in my thoughts, reality is out there. You know this is what gives you the freedom, I can think whatever I want. This is falling apart. First come the good news, which is that you know that scientists are already slowly, it's still very modest but it already works, breaking the barrier between thinking and doing. For example I saw on TV recently, I think it was in Florida, they generated a wheelchair for the crippled where you don't even need that finger that Stephen Hawking moved moves a little bit, simply your brain is scanned and at a very primitive level still but nonetheless it's the computer through electro rays and so on magnetic can read your basic as it were order attitude. These very primitive orders: forward, backward, left, right. So you just think about it and it moves. I claim there is something terrifying in it. Why? On the one hand you can say we become like Gods, no? You think, there it is. But remember what goes out comes in. That is to say they are already thinking they just don't talk about it so much how also new ways of controlling your mind. This is not a utopia, they are just doing it like crazy. I was told already United States and other armies, very primitive example: they discovered that when you are in a total panic your brain produces generates certain electromagnetic waves. I simplify the story. The point is that if you generate artificially these waves and I bombard you with them, you will be in a panic. So they're already massively doing it. You no longer even need firearms, you simply bombard a certain area with these waves and so on and so forth. So what I'm saying that the nightmarish prospect here is that these crucial developments in biogenetics will be either privatized or totally controlled by state. Again it's a question of our human dignity, survival as humans, not to reactionarily repress it, not to say this is devil's work let's not do it, for that it's too too late. But again some kind of mobilization will be needed which is neither private capital nor simple state regulation. Now what has all this to do with communism? Did you notice how I would like to return here to the old Marxist notion, not only Marx, of commons? And the idea of enclosure of the commons. Commons in the sense of what should be out there as our shared substance, which belongs to all of us. That ecology deals with external nature as air, water, what should be there to all of us. Biogenetics deals with the commons of our inner nature, genetic identity inheritance, and intellectual property deals with our let's call it symbolic commons, symbolic substance. And in in all these three fields we can isolate something like a terrifying forthcoming new proletarian position. We not only have the Marxian proletarian, a proletarian from whom the product of his or her work is taken, we even have today let's say when you are more and more deprived of even your environment being polluted and so on, I think it's quite reasonable to talk about some kind of ecological proletarian position. When all your intellectual media are privatized or taken from you, it's a kind of intellectual proletarian position whose nice metaphor, although it's not a great film for me, is you remember Matrix, the first one at least. You know how they just lie there, their energy being sucked out of them, their thoughts controlled. Intellectual proletarians. If your biogenetic structure is manipulated, you are genetically in a proletarian position. But now I come to the crucial point, and then I will finish. All these three fields are not enough. We need a fourth crucial piece of struggle which is again the old Marxist class struggle, but class struggle in even an even more radical form of new apartheids. I think you know globalization in a kind of nice example of dialectics, don't ever forget that globalization in practice always also means its exact opposite. If you look to each specific country, globalization usually means the elite or part of it exploited gets globalized, the other part regresses even further back. The biggest example of perfectly globalized country would be for me the country where maybe the suffering, if we measure it in this primitive quantitative way, is the greatest today: Congo, Republic of Congo, Kinshasa. It's a country which doesn't function, people half starve and so on, but at the same time all the local warlords are connected with foreign companies. It's fully integrated, which is why it's not simply left out. The way Congo is today is fully integrated, globalized. And so did you notice how if the symbol of '89-'90 was the fall of the Berlin Wall, today new walls are emerging all around: West Bank Palestine, Mexico-United States, Europe is talking about Fortress Europe to protect from immigrants and so on and so forth. I claim that the reality in each country of globalization is self globalization precisely means the way we know it, stronger divisions between those who are in, those who are out, different forms of exclusion and so on and so forth within each country. This is why and I claim if you don't link the other three struggles that I mentioned, ecology, biogenetic, intellectual property, to this struggle against new inner separations, divisions, exclusions, if you don't do this, then you solve nothing. For example, you can well be a reactionary ecologist, with all even the racist undertones claiming, you know, countries like India, Brazil, they are destroying us all, we need more elite white culture whatever and so on and so forth. Even like biogenetics, you can be a very conservative there claiming this is the devil's work or whatever. So what I'm claiming is that our situation is this one. How as we all know slums are exploding all around today and and this struggle the key task of the Left for me is to kind of a establish a chain among all these struggles. To offer the struggle for the rights of those they may be dalits or scavengers here excluded, to link this struggle to to all other struggles. Why? Where do I see the difference between the classical Marxist notion on and with this I will conclude, working class proletarian and our situation. Marx had a right intuition but at the same time I think he missed the point when he developed this idea of what he called general intellect, which is the idea that with the development of productive forces, knowledge, scientific knowledge, expert knowledge becomes more and more the key factor of production. And in his Grundrisse manuscripts, maybe you know, Marx even develops quickly in a passing way a vision of how once knowledge will become very very important, capitalism will simply have to disintegrate because knowledge will become the main source of value. What Marx didn't take into account is the possibility of reprivatizing this general knowledge, our shared substance. This is I think the key to this stupid question asked in all the media, why is Bill Gates if he still is, it all the time changes, the most the richest man in the world? I don't think you can play the classical Marxist game of extra profit extra exploitation. I have an answer which I think it's still Marxist, but not the traditional one. I tend to agree with economists who claim that today capitalism is in a way paradoxically up to a point returning from profit to rent. What is Bill Gates doing? He what is the source of his wealth? Why do we pay him so much for using? Because he privatized part of our intellectual commons. In order to be able to participate in social space, communicate with each other, you have to go through his property as it were. We pay him a rent. We pay him a rent for his quasi-monopoly situation. So I think that in the intellectual property that's an important thing to say, it's not you cannot deduce it Bill Gates doesn't exploit very much, at least not his workers and so on. You cannot put it in that way. It's intellectual, we are paying him rent. So and I think the same is going with natural resources. Oil and so on is not for Marx a source of value. What we are paying when we pay for oil is rent. Incidentally there is a nice irony here. When Marx in Capital explains why only human labor is the source of value, not natural resources, you know what is his example? Oil precisely. A little bit ironic taking into account how much money we have to pay to oil, but it is clear that's my point. If you take either Microsoft program or oil that the price we pay has nothing okay has something but not a lot to do with money or work spent to produce these commodities. The way the price of Microsoft Windows goes up and down, it's not that Bill Gates says, "Oh, now I had to pay more programmers I will raise the price." It with oil it's the same. The price fell as you know in the crisis down up. It's not because of production costs and then you charge the extra profit, it is rent. This I think points towards a very difficult dangerous but potentially redemptive development. How what is happening today I think it's not that we no longer have the working class, but it it's divided more or less into three. Three which basically fit these three domains: intellectual work, physical work and so on. We have so-called intellectual workers classes in the broadest sense of scientists, journalists, professors and so on. Then we have the old-fashioned material workers and then those who provide more material resources. I think that three main classes which are systematically generated by today's capitalism are intellect again intellectual laborers, the old manual working class and then simply the outcasts, those who have to be displaced to get access to mining and so on and so forth. What's so interesting and the most dangerous development for me is that each of these three classes is more and more subclasses rather precisely they're three factions of the working class, is more and more developing even its own life-world, ideology. For example at least in the developed West, I don't know how it is here, you can immediately identify a member of intellectual class by the food he is, they don't eat hamburger, they eat this disgusting healthy food you know a slice of salmon with two carrots and so on. They are usually more liberal, open, promiscuous, postmodern, even in religion they like fake Buddhism, fake oriental thought. The traditional working class is more conservative, religious usually, old family values and so on, and then you have the outcasts. And it is crucial to know it is crucial to take into account this division into three. Because I claim that the entire ideological machine thrives on keeping these three parts apart. Which is why they promote all these cultural wars and so on and so forth. So again I claim that I'm at the same time now to really conclude, a pessimist and an optimist. I'm a pessimist because I don't think the game the way we know it, liberal capitalism, can go on indefinitely. I think that the choice in not hundred years from now, now in the next decades, it's either a gradual return to not return, change transformation of capitalism into a more authoritarian capitalism, this is one option which shouldn't be neglected. That even in the West there are clear signs in today's Italy, France and so on, how the developed Western democracies are getting depoliticized effectively more authoritarian. So I claim but I use here the term socialism in a different way than you do. If by socialism we mean a rather reactionary thing in the sense of asserting some kind of community values more cohesion, I claim ironically the future will be either socialist or communist. By socialist I mean a kind of authoritarian fascist in a new way organization of society, for example ecological control and so on and so forth, control control of immigrants and so on through which capitalism will try to contain its contradictions, or inventing new forms of inventing new forms of communism. And so more and more there will be the proof there will be chance for radical politics. The the proof is precisely for me what people claim as the main counter-argument: the rise of religious fundamentalisms. You know Walter Benjamin said something very nice. He said, "Every fascism is a sign of a failed revolution." And if there is somewhere this is true, it is the so-called Islamic fundamentalists in the Middle East. They are there because the secular Left disappeared from the Arab countries. This is our first this is the ABC, the first step of radical politics. You read in the media what are the struggles today. You read, "Ooh, fundamentalists," as if if you read the media the basic problem is liberal permissive capitalism versus religious fundamentalists. The first step of the Left is to see that this is a not so much a false division as an immanent conflict to capitalism where both sides codepend on each other. It's capitalism itself which through its dynamics generates fundamentalism. A simple proof if you need one, Afghanistan, which is today presented as the ultimate fundamentalist country. Wait a minute, I'm unfortunately old enough to remember years ago Afghanistan was maybe even the most secular of Muslim countries in the near East. It had you remember a secular pro-Western modernizer king, it had a very strong local Communist Party and so on. Then when, you know the story, communists tried to take over, Soviet Union intervened, United States intervened and so on. It's through this globalization that Afghanistan became fundamentalist. This is absolutely crucial to learn. Fundamentalism is not the remainder of some dark past, it was generated. And the same goes for my God, United States themselves, they have their own fundamentalism. Let's take one of the states, it's crucial example, Kansas. You maybe know Wizard of Oz, over the rainbow, all that bullshit no, but Kansas as a state is today the most fundamentalist Christian Bible belt state. But till years ago it was the most progressive state of the United States of America. All big leftist populist movements, anti-racism and so on started there. So you see how literally it is true when that this the problem with this struggle between liberalism, permissivity and so on and fundamentalism is that a third term is missing: radical Left. And I think that if we do not enter then it's not that I don't have sympathy for liberal values. I have great sympathy for freedom of choice all that they praise so much. But I claim that in the long term our message to them should be only, ridiculous as it may sound: only we can save you. Only radical Left can guarantee in the long term that we will still have even freedom of choice, women's rights, and so on. Without us, we are witnessing a new more authoritarian capitalism. And to conclude, the difficulty of the situation is that we no longer can have I think this old Marxist trust into what ironically we call the train of history. You know like history is on our side, we meet we work for the historical tendency. I think I'm more of a pessimist here, history brings an open position, if anything if left to itself, the system will rather move towards some kind of new catastrophic authoritarianism or whatever. I claim that we cannot count on any divine agency even in the Stalinist sense of, you know, this position of a Stalinist communist, we are just instruments of historical necessity. There is no necessity guaranteeing anything. You know like how old communists using this metaphor of we are riding the train of history liked to say, "Yes, there is always even if the situation looks dark, a light at the end of the tunnel." I say, "Yes but this light can also be another train coming forward to you," no? And again here I would like although in the last days I heard and said many critical thing about Gandhi, I would nonetheless like to finish with one of the well-known Gandhi's motto. You must know it all: "Be yourself the change you want to see in the world." Or to make another version of it from Hopi Indians in America: "We are the ones we have been waiting for." You know, don't have this comfortable attitude of waiting others to do it. Especially I'm criticizing here not you but West European intellectuals, leftists who like very much to be radical but keep their careers safe. So they love an authentic revolution which happens somewhere far away, you know. Soviet Union, Cuba, name it, today Venezuela. Because you can be radical your heart is warm and you can feel good with them, while here in your country you play the same dirty academic games who will get the post, but deep in your heart you are radical. The no, this how should I put it, these games have to stop. Already Rousseau, the philosopher, got it because he said that all he said Rousseau that all French philosophers like very much to sympathize with Mongols because this allows them to ignore the poor at their doorstep, you know. So be careful of Western liberals who sympathize with you, they are the worst, they use you. So again my message is you got it at the same time good and bad, no? Don't you know when my friends tell me, "But why do you want change? The system will go on indefinitely, can't you see?" My point is I don't worry that there will be no crisis, there will be new crisis, stronger than and so on. We live in a time which is a very dangerous time. Why? Because we don't even see at the levels that I designated, intellectual property, biogenetics, ecology, new social tensions, how many things are happening. This is the most dangerous time where it appears that just capitalism is slowly progressing, nothing is happening. Be be careful that we will not be like that cat above the precipice, where we will still think we live in a nice capitalist democracy, then we will be told, "Aha, we are already here," and we will all of a sudden fall down. So again it's up, it's up to us, there is no excuse and how should I put it, the last thing you have to worry is "Are what we want a radical change, utopia," and so on. No, there is only one utopia today. It's the utopia to think things can go on indefinitely the way they are. So I don't have any precise formulas here, I don't have exact advice how to do it and so on. I'm just saying only a more radical act can solve us. Without that we are approaching. Did you see just to really finish with comical example from my favorite domain cinema, did you see it's not so well known, it's maybe only some of you know it, Terry Gilliam's Brazil? It's a kind of a negative futuristic utopia, British film, about a country which is authoritarian but not in this old-fashioned sense a leader proclaims, it's a kind of perverse permissive totalitarian society. You know everybody can enjoy promiscuity, sexuality, consumerism but at the same time authoritarianism is here. I think that ex-Soviet Union Russia, Italy today, many countries are approaching all this. Here I think again we have to be the change we are looking for. And if because I'm here very apocalyptic, nobody will do it if not we ourselves, if we don't do it our liberals who today suspect us of totalitarianism will see their own freedoms taken taken from them. So I think because of all this the Left, at least in the West in the last years, was how should I call it, the Left of excuses. They said, "Oh, we were guilty of those totalitarian horrors, excuse me, we will not do it again," and they all the time try to prove that they are not this. So a typical still in the West at least, leftist wants terribly to prove that he's not the old-fashioned working class guy, screw the trade unions, we are for progressive capitalism and so on. I think it's time for the Left to stop this how should I call it apologizing attitude. We don't have to be ashamed. It's our time again. Thank you very much. I sit down? Thank you. Thank you. There we are. And now the we'll open this up to the floor. We'll start with Usha Zacharias, who will kind of kick the kick off this this debate, this open house debate. May I request all of you to wait for the microphone before you speak? Partly because all of us can't hear you if you speak without the microphone, but also because we're recording the proceedings, and unless you if you don't speak into the microphone, the question won't be recorded, and we'd very much like that for archival purposes. Usha. Thanks a lot Professor Zizek. I actually criticized you in your absence, you know, when you were not here in the room earlier. My paper was on your book and I did criticize your apocalyptic— Which book? Your latest one, First as Tragedy, then as Farce. And I did criticize your apocalyptic vision about you know the present state of capitalism, and perhaps we can start off about a debate about capitalism itself. The nature of capitalism in Asia right now and India right now, whether you see global capitalism and the features that you just described: the loss of the internal commons, the loss of the external and the you know the symbolic substance, if you think those things are also relevant to Asia today or to India today. And I know you've just been here for two days so it's a really unfair question. You can abandon that and open it to the floor if you like. Sorry, what then is exactly your question? How is this what I developed— Yes. —relevant for Asia? Exactly. I think it's, okay, to be very brief because as you may have noticed I speak too much. So I'll be very brief. I think it's extremely relevant because one of the nonetheless, okay, I wouldn't say good things but things which fascinates me about global capitalism in its new however we call it postmodern age, is that it's much more dynamic, less linear. With the old capitalism you needed decades to accommodate yourself, you know, an undeveloped country needed decades to catch up with it. Today it's not only India, take Singapore and so on, how practically in one generation you can in some sense catch up with at least at some. Now you will say, but we in India we still have all our problems, castes and so on. And this brings me to the crucial feature where this is what interests me in India. You are not special here in the I mean not special in the good sense for you, that when people think, you know there is this racist cliché in the West, this is almost the main association with India today in the West. Bangalore programmer, excellent programmer, but nonetheless in the morning before he goes to his job, he burns the incenses to some divinity and so on. What a paradox and so on. But I think this is the logic of global capitalism. I don't think global capitalism works, here I disagree with some post-colonial thinkers who read global capitalism as a threat to local traditions. I think yes and no. Often it even resuscitates local traditions. I think global capitalism thrives with and needs multiculturalism in the sense of all the diversity of culture is nothing else it's a wonderful market, it prevents political unification and so on and so forth of the opponent. So what I would say is that India is for me usually if there is one thing where I would change my book, it's that I would add India to China. There I take, if you read it you know, as the model of where maybe we are going, China. China in the sense of a capitalism which is it looks even more dynamic productive in all senses, also in destructive sense productive than Western capitalism. But I think the liberals who think give them years another Tiananmen revolution, no. But you in India are maybe maybe here you will, maybe not, I don't know. It's always a mystery where something new emerges, no? With your nonetheless much stronger embedded peaceful spirit of, at least I know you also have problems I'm not an idiot, but nonetheless spirit of tolerance, let's call them naively democratic traditions and so on. You are in a situation for me where what I'm tempted to call the contradictions of global capitalism are condensed in a certain way. Where I think maybe you, I don't think that new phenomena, new in the good sense of new emancipatory phenomena, will emerge, they will emerge, I don't think they will emerge in really poor non-developed countries. They are too desperate, they cannot do it. Unfortunately I also don't think they will emerge in the developed West. We are we have to look to countries like India where you know you have already remember in Russia it was similar in It was undeveloped but at the same time ultra-developed like India. You know people forget that Russia were not just primitive hundred million or however of farmers. It was also a very developed working class, developed scientific art and so on and so forth. I see India as a potential site. So that would have been sincerely my greatest self self-criticism. But can I ask you a very brief question: where do you disagree, this is what I don't see, with my basic characterization, very vague I know, of global capitalism today? Well, I think the symbolic substance, for instance. You know? So what I call symbolic substance? Yeah, I'm not sure exactly what you mean by it because you don't completely elaborate that and I was also wondering how that would particularly relate to Indian personal— I simply mean what Marx called general intellect, you know. The idea being that the idea being that more and more, I accept this development predicted by Marx himself, that more and more knowledge, distribution, control, organization of knowledge is one of the key factors. Which is why the the control for it, the struggle for distribution of knowledge is one of the key struggles. This is all, I don't mean anything mysterious. What I don't agree is nonetheless those who see too much of an easy solution in it, like Toni Negri. He simply thinks with this new capitalism communism already won. For him we are almost there. He even said in an interview in Brazil, I'm here as an evil detective, you know he is careful not to say this in Europe, but you know there in Brazil he thought we are not reading it, he said, "No need today to fight capitalism. Capitalism is already communist, we just have to reappropriate it." That's way too much to say for me. I just wanted to ask you two questions. One is basically you described about the Jacobin Terror and the Stalinist Terror. Is there any difference between the Jacobin Terror and the Stalinist Terror? And what is happening as the so-called Islamic terror now? Is there any distinction between these three genealogies of terror? Which is the third one? Sorry. Jacobin Terror. Yeah, yeah. Jacobin, Stalinist, you said the third one. Third one is Islamic. Islamic. Ah. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. No no no wait a minute, when I say okay, let's even add the fourth one, the fascist Nazi terror. Absolutely but don't misunderstand me because here the field is so sensitive, the liberal hegemony is so strong that if you even insist on a difference between Stalinist and Nazi terror, you are already accused of justifying Stalin or whatever. I'm not saying at the level of human suffering, maybe Stalinism was even a little bit worse. Why? Because look let me improvise a little bit, maybe it will amuse you but these are tragic stories for amusement. Let let's say I'm an ordinary citizen in Moscow '36 or in '37 or in Berlin '37. In Berlin let's say, and this is to say a lot, I am lucky enough not to be a Jew, not to be ex-communist, and not to have any enemies in the Nazi Party. Under these conditions I can be pretty sure to survive till the war of course then, no? Let's say I'm an ordinary citizen in Soviet Union in '37. The Stalinist purges were much more irrational, irrational in the sense that they can hit anyone. It was the logic of Stalinist purges was a totally different one. I tried in my other book Defense of the Lost Causes and some previous book, I tried to develop some differences. Let me give you a simple example. You do you know, and I read this in a book Anne Applebaum, Gulag, very critical. Do you know that every year on Stalin's birthday, even in the darkest Gulag, all inmates were collected mean gathered and they had to sign a telegram to Comrade Stalin wishing him all the best for his birthday and at so on. You cannot even imagine the same thing in Nazism, that they would collect all the Jews, make them sign a telegram to Hitler or whatever. Another thing, did you in Stalinism you have this show, great show trials, you know, Bukharin, leaders accused of treason, confessed. You cannot even imagine the same trial in Nazi Germany.
we need some kind of, I don't know how will it look, communist mobilization. By communist I mean something very precise. I refer here to a wonderful distinction, before you were talking I heard about private public, by you know the German philosopher one of the biggest Immanuel Kant. He opposes in a very interesting way which is more than ever actual today, public and private use of reason. For him private is not when you sit with your friends in the kitchen. Private is precisely state apparatus and so on. Private is when the debate is subordinated to some corporate community goals, so that you know in advance, you serve the state, we don't criticize the state and so on and so forth. For Kant public use of reason is a more radical universal one where you are no longer bound by narrow so we need that kind of a public use of reason. Which means that which means that another thing that there is tremendous lot of work to be done here. Ecology is a problem but as you especially in India must know, it's also one of the main fields of ideological struggle, of ideological investment today. It is used to punish you countries in development like don't develop and so on, it is used as a source of new obscurantist ideologies and so on and so forth. And my solution here again to provoke you is a radical one. The only truly radical ecology is the ecology which claims nature doesn't exist. Don't be afraid, not in the sense of a stupid subjectivism like, you know, I just invent nature. In the sense that what is usually in ecology ideology meant by nature, a kind of a Mother Nature, you know big living homeostatic system which we humans disturbed with our bad evil technological exploitation. Nature is crazy in herself. If it's a mother it's a pretty crazy mother. I mean just think about oil. Are we even able to imagine what kind of a mega catastrophe, ecological, must have happened for us to have oil, reserves of oil? So the message is not don't take ecology seriously, the message I think it's an even harsher one. There is no natural balance to which we can return. It's an open risky process. So first ecology. Second field where I see insoluble problems: the inappropriateness of the institution of private property for the so-called intellectual labor. As you probably know, these new digital industries and so know fight again and again with the problem how to keep the results of intellectual work in the form of private property. If there is one good thing about intellectual work, which produces knowledge, expertise, is that in contrast to material products, it multiplies by use. If I have a car and you buy it from me, if we both use the car it gets used faster. If I produce or you a piece of knowledge, the more we use it the richer it becomes. It's the logic is already in itself much more communist. So what I'm saying is that this is why more and more today we are dealing with state regulation and so on and so forth, or with all these absurd consequences where you also in India were victims. Wasn't there a case everyone was shocked when a method for healing or whatever used for hundreds of years by your farmers was patented in the United States and all of a sudden your farmers learned that they had to pay for what they were doing for hundreds of years and so on and so forth. So again I claim that intellectual so-called intellectual property it will get more and more crazy. If we leave free path to it, we will live in a totally crazy situation where even our thoughts and so on will be owned by others. The third domain, don't underestimate it, is are the socio-ethical implications of the new techno-scientific developments, biogenetics and so on and so forth. It's interesting to know that Fukuyama himself, who is not a total idiot, admitted, I met him at some debate recently, that the very fact of biogenetics changes his diagnostic. Now he admits, no no end of history. Why? Because something is so radically potentially happening which I think will change maybe even our very elementary definition of what it is to be human. I refer here not only to the fact that in predictable future it will be already possible to through genetic manipulations change not only our physical properties of newborn children or even adults, but especially psychological properties and attitudes. For example my friends in China gave me gave me kind of a big plan of Chinese Academy of Sciences for and they are pretty open there. They claim that their goal is, to cut a long story short, to control the entire Chinese population, its physical and mental health. You know like to genetically in the long term reduce aggressiveness if needed or whatever and so on and so forth. Another thing which I think has incredible consequences even philosophical ones is for example what defines us as free human beings? The fact that I'm I'm in here in my thoughts, reality is out there. You know this is what gives you the freedom, I can think whatever I want. This is falling apart. First come the good news, which is that you know that scientists are already slowly, it's still very modest but it already works, breaking the barrier between thinking and doing. For example I saw on TV recently, I think it was in Florida, they generated a wheelchair for the crippled where you don't even need that finger that Stephen Hawking moved moves a little bit, simply your brain is scanned and at a very primitive level still but nonetheless it's the computer through electro rays and so on magnetic can read your basic as it were order attitude. These very primitive orders: forward, backward, left, right. So you just think about it and it moves. I claim there is something terrifying in it. Why? On the one hand you can say we become like Gods, no? You think, there it is. But remember what goes out comes in. That is to say they are already thinking they just don't talk about it so much how also new ways of controlling your mind. This is not a utopia, they are just doing it like crazy. I was told already United States and other armies, very primitive example: they discovered that when you are in a total panic your brain produces generates certain electromagnetic waves. I simplify the story. The point is that if you generate artificially these waves and I bombard you with them, you will be in a panic. So they're already massively doing it. You no longer even need firearms, you simply bombard a certain area with these waves and so on and so forth. So what I'm saying that the nightmarish prospect here is that these crucial developments in biogenetics will be either privatized or totally controlled by state. Again it's a question of our human dignity, survival as humans, not to reactionarily repress it, not to say this is devil's work let's not do it, for that it's too too late. But again some kind of mobilization will be needed which is neither private capital nor simple state regulation. Now what has all this to do with communism? Did you notice how I would like to return here to the old Marxist notion, not only Marx, of commons? And the idea of enclosure of the commons. Commons in the sense of what should be out there as our shared substance, which belongs to all of us. That ecology deals with external nature as air, water, what should be there to all of us. Biogenetics deals with the commons of our inner nature, genetic identity inheritance, and intellectual property deals with our let's call it symbolic commons, symbolic substance. And in in all these three fields we can isolate something like a terrifying forthcoming new proletarian position. We not only have the Marxian proletarian, a proletarian from whom the product of his or her work is taken, we even have today let's say when you are more and more deprived of even your environment being polluted and so on, I think it's quite reasonable to talk about some kind of ecological proletarian position. When all your intellectual media are privatized or taken from you, it's a kind of intellectual proletarian position whose nice metaphor, although it's not a great film for me, is you remember Matrix, the first one at least. You know how they just lie there, their energy being sucked out of them, their thoughts controlled. Intellectual proletarians. If your biogenetic structure is manipulated, you are genetically in a proletarian position. But now I come to the crucial point, and then I will finish. All these three fields are not enough. We need a fourth crucial piece of struggle which is again the old Marxist class struggle, but class struggle in even an even more radical form of new apartheids. I think you know globalization in a kind of nice example of dialectics, don't ever forget that globalization in practice always also means its exact opposite. If you look to each specific country, globalization usually means the elite or part of it exploited gets globalized, the other part regresses even further back. The biggest example of perfectly globalized country would be for me the country where maybe the suffering, if we measure it in this primitive quantitative way, is the greatest today: Congo, Republic of Congo, Kinshasa. It's a country which doesn't function, people half starve and so on, but at the same time all the local warlords are connected with foreign companies. It's fully integrated, which is why it's not simply left out. The way Congo is today is fully integrated, globalized. And so did you notice how if the symbol of '89-'90 was the fall of the Berlin Wall, today new walls are emerging all around: West Bank Palestine, Mexico-United States, Europe is talking about Fortress Europe to protect from immigrants and so on and so forth. I claim that the reality in each country of globalization is self globalization precisely means the way we know it, stronger divisions between those who are in, those who are out, different forms of exclusion and so on and so forth within each country. This is why and I claim if you don't link the other three struggles that I mentioned, ecology, biogenetic, intellectual property, to this struggle against new inner separations, divisions, exclusions, if you don't do this, then you solve nothing. For example, you can well be a reactionary ecologist, with all even the racist undertones claiming, you know, countries like India, Brazil, they are destroying us all, we need more elite white culture whatever and so on and so forth. Even like biogenetics, you can be a very conservative there claiming this is the devil's work or whatever. So what I'm claiming is that our situation is this one. How as we all know slums are exploding all around today and and this struggle the key task of the Left for me is to kind of a establish a chain among all these struggles. To offer the struggle for the rights of those they may be dalits or scavengers here excluded, to link this struggle to to all other struggles. Why? Where do I see the difference between the classical Marxist notion on and with this I will conclude, working class proletarian and our situation. Marx had a right intuition but at the same time I think he missed the point when he developed this idea of what he called general intellect, which is the idea that with the development of productive forces, knowledge, scientific knowledge, expert knowledge becomes more and more the key factor of production. And in his Grundrisse manuscripts, maybe you know, Marx even develops quickly in a passing way a vision of how once knowledge will become very very important, capitalism will simply have to disintegrate because knowledge will become the main source of value. What Marx didn't take into account is the possibility of reprivatizing this general knowledge, our shared substance. This is I think the key to this stupid question asked in all the media, why is Bill Gates if he still is, it all the time changes, the most the richest man in the world? I don't think you can play the classical Marxist game of extra profit extra exploitation. I have an answer which I think it's still Marxist, but not the traditional one. I tend to agree with economists who claim that today capitalism is in a way paradoxically up to a point returning from profit to rent. What is Bill Gates doing? He what is the source of his wealth? Why do we pay him so much for using? Because he privatized part of our intellectual commons. In order to be able to participate in social space, communicate with each other, you have to go through his property as it were. We pay him a rent. We pay him a rent for his quasi-monopoly situation. So I think that in the intellectual property that's an important thing to say, it's not you cannot deduce it Bill Gates doesn't exploit very much, at least not his workers and so on. You cannot put it in that way. It's intellectual, we are paying him rent. So and I think the same is going with natural resources. Oil and so on is not for Marx a source of value. What we are paying when we pay for oil is rent. Incidentally there is a nice irony here. When Marx in Capital explains why only human labor is the source of value, not natural resources, you know what is his example? Oil precisely. A little bit ironic taking into account how much money we have to pay to oil, but it is clear that's my point. If you take either Microsoft program or oil that the price we pay has nothing okay has something but not a lot to do with money or work spent to produce these commodities. The way the price of Microsoft Windows goes up and down, it's not that Bill Gates says, "Oh, now I had to pay more programmers I will raise the price." It with oil it's the same. The price fell as you know in the crisis down up. It's not because of production costs and then you charge the extra profit, it is rent. This I think points towards a very difficult dangerous but potentially redemptive development. How what is happening today I think it's not that we no longer have the working class, but it it's divided more or less into three. Three which basically fit these three domains: intellectual work, physical work and so on. We have so-called intellectual workers classes in the broadest sense of scientists, journalists, professors and so on. Then we have the old-fashioned material workers and then those who provide more material resources. I think that three main classes which are systematically generated by today's capitalism are intellect again intellectual laborers, the old manual working class and then simply the outcasts, those who have to be displaced to get access to mining and so on and so forth. What's so interesting and the most dangerous development for me is that each of these three classes is more and more subclasses rather precisely they're three factions of the working class, is more and more developing even its own life-world, ideology. For example at least in the developed West, I don't know how it is here, you can immediately identify a member of intellectual class by the food he is, they don't eat hamburger, they eat this disgusting healthy food you know a slice of salmon with two carrots and so on. They are usually more liberal, open, promiscuous, postmodern, even in religion they like fake Buddhism, fake oriental thought. The traditional working class is more conservative, religious usually, old family values and so on, and then you have the outcasts. And it is crucial to know it is crucial to take into account this division into three. Because I claim that the entire ideological machine thrives on keeping these three parts apart. Which is why they promote all these cultural wars and so on and so forth. So again I claim that I'm at the same time now to really conclude, a pessimist and an optimist. I'm a pessimist because I don't think the game the way we know it, liberal capitalism, can go on indefinitely. I think that the choice in not hundred years from now, now in the next decades, it's either a gradual return to not return, change transformation of capitalism into a more authoritarian capitalism, this is one option which shouldn't be neglected. That even in the West there are clear signs in today's Italy, France and so on, how the developed Western democracies are getting depoliticized effectively more authoritarian. So I claim but I use here the term socialism in a different way than you do. If by socialism we mean a rather reactionary thing in the sense of asserting some kind of community values more cohesion, I claim ironically the future will be either socialist or communist. By socialist I mean a kind of authoritarian fascist in a new way organization of society, for example ecological control and so on and so forth, control control of immigrants and so on through which capitalism will try to contain its contradictions, or inventing new forms of inventing new forms of communism. And so more and more there will be the proof there will be chance for radical politics. The the proof is precisely for me what people claim as the main counter-argument: the rise of religious fundamentalisms. You know Walter Benjamin said something very nice. He said, "Every fascism is a sign of a failed revolution." And if there is somewhere this is true, it is the so-called Islamic fundamentalists in the Middle East. They are there because the secular Left disappeared from the Arab countries. This is our first this is the ABC, the first step of radical politics. You read in the media what are the struggles today. You read, "Ooh, fundamentalists," as if if you read the media the basic problem is liberal permissive capitalism versus religious fundamentalists. The first step of the Left is to see that this is a not so much a false division as an immanent conflict to capitalism where both sides codepend on each other. It's capitalism itself which through its dynamics generates fundamentalism. A simple proof if you need one, Afghanistan, which is today presented as the ultimate fundamentalist country. Wait a minute, I'm unfortunately old enough to remember years ago Afghanistan was maybe even the most secular of Muslim countries in the near East. It had you remember a secular pro-Western modernizer king, it had a very strong local Communist Party and so on. Then when, you know the story, communists tried to take over, Soviet Union intervened, United States intervened and so on. It's through this globalization that Afghanistan became fundamentalist. This is absolutely crucial to learn. Fundamentalism is not the remainder of some dark past, it was generated. And the same goes for my God, United States themselves, they have their own fundamentalism. Let's take one of the states, it's crucial example, Kansas. You maybe know Wizard of Oz, over the rainbow, all that bullshit no, but Kansas as a state is today the most fundamentalist Christian Bible belt state. But till years ago it was the most progressive state of the United States of America. All big leftist populist movements, anti-racism and so on started there. So you see how literally it is true when that this the problem with this struggle between liberalism, permissivity and so on and fundamentalism is that a third term is missing: radical Left. And I think that if we do not enter then it's not that I don't have sympathy for liberal values. I have great sympathy for freedom of choice all that they praise so much. But I claim that in the long term our message to them should be only, ridiculous as it may sound: only we can save you. Only radical Left can guarantee in the long term that we will still have even freedom of choice, women's rights, and so on. Without us, we are witnessing a new more authoritarian capitalism. And to conclude, the difficulty of the situation is that we no longer can have I think this old Marxist trust into what ironically we call the train of history. You know like history is on our side, we meet we work for the historical tendency. I think I'm more of a pessimist here, history brings an open position, if anything if left to itself, the system will rather move towards some kind of new catastrophic authoritarianism or whatever. I claim that we cannot count on any divine agency even in the Stalinist sense of, you know, this position of a Stalinist communist, we are just instruments of historical necessity. There is no necessity guaranteeing anything. You know like how old communists using this metaphor of we are riding the train of history liked to say, "Yes, there is always even if the situation looks dark, a light at the end of the tunnel." I say, "Yes but this light can also be another train coming forward to you," no? And again here I would like although in the last days I heard and said many critical thing about Gandhi, I would nonetheless like to finish with one of the well-known Gandhi's motto. You must know it all: "Be yourself the change you want to see in the world." Or to make another version of it from Hopi Indians in America: "We are the ones we have been waiting for." You know, don't have this comfortable attitude of waiting others to do it. Especially I'm criticizing here not you but West European intellectuals, leftists who like very much to be radical but keep their careers safe. So they love an authentic revolution which happens somewhere far away, you know. Soviet Union, Cuba, name it, today Venezuela. Because you can be radical your heart is warm and you can feel good with them, while here in your country you play the same dirty academic games who will get the post, but deep in your heart you are radical. The no, this how should I put it, these games have to stop. Already Rousseau, the philosopher, got it because he said that all he said Rousseau that all French philosophers like very much to sympathize with Mongols because this allows them to ignore the poor at their doorstep, you know. So be careful of Western liberals who sympathize with you, they are the worst, they use you. So again my message is you got it at the same time good and bad, no? Don't you know when my friends tell me, "But why do you want change? The system will go on indefinitely, can't you see?" My point is I don't worry that there will be no crisis, there will be new crisis, stronger than and so on. We live in a time which is a very dangerous time. Why? Because we don't even see at the levels that I designated, intellectual property, biogenetics, ecology, new social tensions, how many things are happening. This is the most dangerous time where it appears that just capitalism is slowly progressing, nothing is happening. Be be careful that we will not be like that cat above the precipice, where we will still think we live in a nice capitalist democracy, then we will be told, "Aha, we are already here," and we will all of a sudden fall down. So again it's up, it's up to us, there is no excuse and how should I put it, the last thing you have to worry is "Are what we want a radical change, utopia," and so on. No, there is only one utopia today. It's the utopia to think things can go on indefinitely the way they are. So I don't have any precise formulas here, I don't have exact advice how to do it and so on. I'm just saying only a more radical act can solve us. Without that we are approaching. Did you see just to really finish with comical example from my favorite domain cinema, did you see it's not so well known, it's maybe only some of you know it, Terry Gilliam's Brazil? It's a kind of a negative futuristic utopia, British film, about a country which is authoritarian but not in this old-fashioned sense a leader proclaims, it's a kind of perverse permissive totalitarian society. You know everybody can enjoy promiscuity, sexuality, consumerism but at the same time authoritarianism is here. I think that ex-Soviet Union Russia, Italy today, many countries are approaching all this. Here I think again we have to be the change we are looking for. And if because I'm here very apocalyptic, nobody will do it if not we ourselves, if we don't do it our liberals who today suspect us of totalitarianism will see their own freedoms taken taken from them. So I think because of all this the Left, at least in the West in the last years, was how should I call it, the Left of excuses. They said, "Oh, we were guilty of those totalitarian horrors, excuse me, we will not do it again," and they all the time try to prove that they are not this. So a typical still in the West at least, leftist wants terribly to prove that he's not the old-fashioned working class guy, screw the trade unions, we are for progressive capitalism and so on. I think it's time for the Left to stop this how should I call it apologizing attitude. We don't have to be ashamed. It's our time again. Thank you very much. I sit down? Thank you. Thank you. There we are. And now the we'll open this up to the floor. We'll start with Usha Zacharias, who will kind of kick the kick off this this debate, this open house debate. May I request all of you to wait for the microphone before you speak? Partly because all of us can't hear you if you speak without the microphone, but also because we're recording the proceedings, and unless you if you don't speak into the microphone, the question won't be recorded, and we'd very much like that for archival purposes. Usha. Thanks a lot Professor Zizek. I actually criticized you in your absence, you know, when you were not here in the room earlier. My paper was on your book and I did criticize your apocalyptic— Which book? Your latest one, First as Tragedy, then as Farce. And I did criticize your apocalyptic vision about you know the present state of capitalism, and perhaps we can start off about a debate about capitalism itself. The nature of capitalism in Asia right now and India right now, whether you see global capitalism and the features that you just described: the loss of the internal commons, the loss of the external and the you know the symbolic substance, if you think those things are also relevant to Asia today or to India today. And I know you've just been here for two days so it's a really unfair question. You can abandon that and open it to the floor if you like. Sorry, what then is exactly your question? How is this what I developed— Yes. —relevant for Asia? Exactly. I think it's, okay, to be very brief because as you may have noticed I speak too much. So I'll be very brief. I think it's extremely relevant because one of the nonetheless, okay, I wouldn't say good things but things which fascinates me about global capitalism in its new however we call it postmodern age, is that it's much more dynamic, less linear. With the old capitalism you needed decades to accommodate yourself, you know, an undeveloped country needed decades to catch up with it. Today it's not only India, take Singapore and so on, how practically in one generation you can in some sense catch up with at least at some. Now you will say, but we in India we still have all our problems, castes and so on. And this brings me to the crucial feature where this is what interests me in India. You are not special here in the I mean not special in the good sense for you, that when people think, you know there is this racist cliché in the West, this is almost the main association with India today in the West. Bangalore programmer, excellent programmer, but nonetheless in the morning before he goes to his job, he burns the incenses to some divinity and so on. What a paradox and so on. But I think this is the logic of global capitalism. I don't think global capitalism works, here I disagree with some post-colonial thinkers who read global capitalism as a threat to local traditions. I think yes and no. Often it even resuscitates local traditions. I think global capitalism thrives with and needs multiculturalism in the sense of all the diversity of culture is nothing else it's a wonderful market, it prevents political unification and so on and so forth of the opponent. So what I would say is that India is for me usually if there is one thing where I would change my book, it's that I would add India to China. There I take, if you read it you know, as the model of where maybe we are going, China. China in the sense of a capitalism which is it looks even more dynamic productive in all senses, also in destructive sense productive than Western capitalism. But I think the liberals who think give them years another Tiananmen revolution, no. But you in India are maybe maybe here you will, maybe not, I don't know. It's always a mystery where something new emerges, no? With your nonetheless much stronger embedded peaceful spirit of, at least I know you also have problems I'm not an idiot, but nonetheless spirit of tolerance, let's call them naively democratic traditions and so on. You are in a situation for me where what I'm tempted to call the contradictions of global capitalism are condensed in a certain way. Where I think maybe you, I don't think that new phenomena, new in the good sense of new emancipatory phenomena, will emerge, they will emerge, I don't think they will emerge in really poor non-developed countries. They are too desperate, they cannot do it. Unfortunately I also don't think they will emerge in the developed West. We are we have to look to countries like India where you know you have already remember in Russia it was similar in It was undeveloped but at the same time ultra-developed like India. You know people forget that Russia were not just primitive hundred million or however of farmers. It was also a very developed working class, developed scientific art and so on and so forth. I see India as a potential site. So that would have been sincerely my greatest self self-criticism. But can I ask you a very brief question: where do you disagree, this is what I don't see, with my basic characterization, very vague I know, of global capitalism today? Well, I think the symbolic substance, for instance. You know? So what I call symbolic substance? Yeah, I'm not sure exactly what you mean by it because you don't completely elaborate that and I was also wondering how that would particularly relate to Indian personal— I simply mean what Marx called general intellect, you know. The idea being that the idea being that more and more, I accept this development predicted by Marx himself, that more and more knowledge, distribution, control, organization of knowledge is one of the key factors. Which is why the the control for it, the struggle for distribution of knowledge is one of the key struggles. This is all, I don't mean anything mysterious. What I don't agree is nonetheless those who see too much of an easy solution in it, like Toni Negri. He simply thinks with this new capitalism communism already won. For him we are almost there. He even said in an interview in Brazil, I'm here as an evil detective, you know he is careful not to say this in Europe, but you know there in Brazil he thought we are not reading it, he said, "No need today to fight capitalism. Capitalism is already communist, we just have to reappropriate it." That's way too much to say for me. I just wanted to ask you two questions. One is basically you described about the Jacobin Terror and the Stalinist Terror. Is there any difference between the Jacobin Terror and the Stalinist Terror? And what is happening as the so-called Islamic terror now? Is there any distinction between these three genealogies of terror? Which is the third one? Sorry. Jacobin Terror. Yeah, yeah. Jacobin, Stalinist, you said the third one. Third one is Islamic. Islamic. Ah. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. No no no wait a minute, when I say okay, let's even add the fourth one, the fascist Nazi terror. Absolutely but don't misunderstand me because here the field is so sensitive, the liberal hegemony is so strong that if you even insist on a difference between Stalinist and Nazi terror, you are already accused of justifying Stalin or whatever. I'm not saying at the level of human suffering, maybe Stalinism was even a little bit worse. Why? Because look let me improvise a little bit, maybe it will amuse you but these are tragic stories for amusement. Let let's say I'm an ordinary citizen in Moscow '36 or in '37 or in Berlin '37. In Berlin let's say, and this is to say a lot, I am lucky enough not to be a Jew, not to be ex-communist, and not to have any enemies in the Nazi Party. Under these conditions I can be pretty sure to survive till the war of course then, no? Let's say I'm an ordinary citizen in Soviet Union in '37. The Stalinist purges were much more irrational, irrational in the sense that they can hit anyone. It was the logic of Stalinist purges was a totally different one. I tried in my other book Defense of the Lost Causes and some previous book, I tried to develop some differences. Let me give you a simple example. You do you know, and I read this in a book Anne Applebaum, Gulag, very critical. Do you know that every year on Stalin's birthday, even in the darkest Gulag, all inmates were collected mean gathered and they had to sign a telegram to Comrade Stalin wishing him all the best for his birthday and at so on. You cannot even imagine the same thing in Nazism, that they would collect all the Jews, make them sign a telegram to Hitler or whatever. Another thing, did you in Stalinism you have this show, great show trials, you know, Bukharin, leaders accused of treason, confessed. You cannot even imagine the same trial in Nazi Germany.
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There was no big trial against Jews as as part of discovering fascist plot. Why? This brings me nonetheless to some ideological component which I find a little bit marginally more terrorizing in Nazism. Namely paradoxically Stalin needed these show trials and so on because even if you okay not you me sorry if I am let us say the lowest scum, treason the lowest traitor in Stalinism, I am formally I know this is a pure form, I'm still treated as a responsible human being who made a wrong decision.
There was no big trial against Jews as as part of discovering fascist plot. Why? This brings me nonetheless to some ideological component which I find a little bit marginally more terrorizing in Nazism. Namely paradoxically Stalin needed these show trials and so on because even if you okay not you me sorry if I am let us say the lowest scum, treason the lowest traitor in Stalinism, I am formally I know this is a pure form, I'm still treated as a responsible human being who made a wrong decision.
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This is why I am able to confess. In confession confession means I still have access to universal reason. You know if you read these terrifying reports on Stalinist trials. An accused functionary Bukharin comes and says, "I became a traitor because of this that." He as it were gives an account on himself. This is not possible in in fascism. There there is nothing to prove, you are guilty just for being what you are.
This is why I am able to confess. In confession confession means I still have access to universal reason. You know if you read these terrifying reports on Stalinist trials. An accused functionary Bukharin comes and says, "I became a traitor because of this that." He as it were gives an account on himself. This is not possible in in fascism. There there is nothing to prove, you are guilty just for being what you are.
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You are guilty as a Jew. Second thing now you will say, but what has this to do with the distinction? It has a great thing. Because I think that I think that there is one another big difference between now you ask me Stalinist and fascist terror. Fascist terror was directed against perceived or imagined enemies. The inner purges were minimal. After in '34 Hitler got rid of SA, he had to do this to get rid of the brutal thugs to be able to function as a state leader. After that did you hear about any great Nazi dissidents? While Stalinism
You are guilty as a Jew. Second thing now you will say, but what has this to do with the distinction? It has a great thing. Because I think that I think that there is one another big difference between now you ask me Stalinist and fascist terror. Fascist terror was directed against perceived or imagined enemies. The inner purges were minimal. After in '34 Hitler got rid of SA, he had to do this to get rid of the brutal thugs to be able to function as a state leader. After that did you hear about any great Nazi dissidents? While Stalinism
Slavoj Žižek
all the time had to fight its own dissidents. The in Soviet Union the most dangerous place to be in the mid-thirties was not even a farmer, ex-clergy, it was to be member of the top nomenclature. Look at the data: from '34 to '37, of the Central Committee members were shot as traitors, of the generals in headquarters. Paradoxically I claim this permanent urge to as it were self-destroy itself is a sign of a lost authenticity in Stalinism. They were all the time in some way aware, you know what I mean, an authentic revolution was betrayed. That's why it was called in this self-destructive urge. Can I can I interrupt you in this moment? You said about authenticity. Lenin. I know what I'm talking about. Stalin Stalin was asserting the authenticity of the revolution. In what what do you mean by authenticity? This was exactly Robespierre was trying to do, authenticity,
all the time had to fight its own dissidents. The in Soviet Union the most dangerous place to be in the mid-thirties was not even a farmer, ex-clergy, it was to be member of the top nomenclature. Look at the data: from '34 to '37, of the Central Committee members were shot as traitors, of the generals in headquarters. Paradoxically I claim this permanent urge to as it were self-destroy itself is a sign of a lost authenticity in Stalinism. They were all the time in some way aware, you know what I mean, an authentic revolution was betrayed. That's why it was called in this self-destructive urge. Can I can I interrupt you in this moment? You said about authenticity. Lenin. I know what I'm talking about. Stalin Stalin was asserting the authenticity of the revolution. In what what do you mean by authenticity? This was exactly Robespierre was trying to do, authenticity,
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Robespierre
Robespierre
Slavoj Žižek
in Robespierre was trying to do the authenticity of the revolution. Because Robespierre said that the authenticity of the revolution was being betrayed. Same thing Stalin was also feeling that the authenticity of the revolution is being betrayed within. So how do you account this thing? Who who is going to determine the authenticity of the revolution? Okay, what I can answer you, not now but in a detailed analysis, what can be shown, I'm not talking now about some abstract authenticity. I'm talking about that if you look at the history of what we call Soviet Union, it's clear that in spite of all horrors and so on, something there was an emancipatory dimension in I've read books about it, I don't buy the story that it was just Lenin's coup d'état and so on and like five top Bolsheviks. There was an emancipatory explosion going on there. And the difference even between Leninist and Stalinist terror is that precisely Leninist terror, Red Terror so-called, was much more open and honest. They didn't hide anything, they openly said, "This is terror." In Stalinism it function but what I wanted to tell you is that I'm not saying that Stalin I'm not talking about Stalin's authenticity. I'm saying basically although don't agree with him that what Trotsky said, Stalinism itself betrayed authenticity. Now you will say, "How do I know this?" I will tell you by analyzing Stalin himself, all his acts, that's my point. The proof is not that I from outside know the inner truth of revolution and if this would be my even up to a point I would say psychoanalytic approach, you know. Like from what Stalin did, it's clear that he's fighting as it were his own demon, how should I put it. That that he himself acts as a traitor the one who has to as it were erase all the traces of its own past. As to Jacobins Robespierre, there you touch a sensitive point. I'm absolutely pro-Jacobin. I know they say Jacobin Terror, let me give you some facts which you don't find in ordinary books. They all talk about Jacobin Terror. Why? Because they cut a couple of heads of the rich. Do you know that in three weeks Thermidor after Robespierre fell, more people were beheaded than the entire Jacobin Terror? But they were poor anonymous people, nobody cares about that and so on. Second thing, listen, Robespierre terrorist. Do you remember how Robespierre and Jacobins lost power? With the vote in the National Assembly. I'm sorry, this is not the way you overthrow a totalitarian leader. Third thing, one thing you should say about Robespierre. This is their heroism, I mentioned it in Hyderabad already I think. For me even more important than French Revolution was Haiti
in Robespierre was trying to do the authenticity of the revolution. Because Robespierre said that the authenticity of the revolution was being betrayed. Same thing Stalin was also feeling that the authenticity of the revolution is being betrayed within. So how do you account this thing? Who who is going to determine the authenticity of the revolution? Okay, what I can answer you, not now but in a detailed analysis, what can be shown, I'm not talking now about some abstract authenticity. I'm talking about that if you look at the history of what we call Soviet Union, it's clear that in spite of all horrors and so on, something there was an emancipatory dimension in I've read books about it, I don't buy the story that it was just Lenin's coup d'état and so on and like five top Bolsheviks. There was an emancipatory explosion going on there. And the difference even between Leninist and Stalinist terror is that precisely Leninist terror, Red Terror so-called, was much more open and honest. They didn't hide anything, they openly said, "This is terror." In Stalinism it function but what I wanted to tell you is that I'm not saying that Stalin I'm not talking about Stalin's authenticity. I'm saying basically although don't agree with him that what Trotsky said, Stalinism itself betrayed authenticity. Now you will say, "How do I know this?" I will tell you by analyzing Stalin himself, all his acts, that's my point. The proof is not that I from outside know the inner truth of revolution and if this would be my even up to a point I would say psychoanalytic approach, you know. Like from what Stalin did, it's clear that he's fighting as it were his own demon, how should I put it. That that he himself acts as a traitor the one who has to as it were erase all the traces of its own past. As to Jacobins Robespierre, there you touch a sensitive point. I'm absolutely pro-Jacobin. I know they say Jacobin Terror, let me give you some facts which you don't find in ordinary books. They all talk about Jacobin Terror. Why? Because they cut a couple of heads of the rich. Do you know that in three weeks Thermidor after Robespierre fell, more people were beheaded than the entire Jacobin Terror? But they were poor anonymous people, nobody cares about that and so on. Second thing, listen, Robespierre terrorist. Do you remember how Robespierre and Jacobins lost power? With the vote in the National Assembly. I'm sorry, this is not the way you overthrow a totalitarian leader. Third thing, one thing you should say about Robespierre. This is their heroism, I mentioned it in Hyderabad already I think. For me even more important than French Revolution was Haiti
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Revolution. The first
Revolution. The first
Slavoj Žižek
black slave rebellion, which was not done
black slave rebellion, which was not done
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in this archaic way "we just want to return to our tribes." No, they said, "If French said equality, fraternity,
in this archaic way "we just want to return to our tribes." No, they said, "If French said equality, fraternity,
Slavoj Žižek
we want it," and so on. And all the glory goes here to Jacobins. When the black delegation from Port-au-Prince Haiti visited Paris in '92 I think, they were celebrated as one of us and so on. When Napoleon took over, he immediately sent the army and so on. So you know how should I put it, the first good thing about or again now if some of you like art and so that you will see that I'm not just a primitive Marxist that I also do high art analysis. For me the highest proof that Jacobinism was not some kind of a proto-Stalinist terror is painting. You I hope some of you know the painting which is the definitive painting of French Revolution: Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Marat. You know Marat, radical revolution okay. Do you know remember how that painting looks? This is let's say the entire picture. In the lower third you see Marat in a bathtub dead, and then what do you have here? Nothing. Void, darkness. It's as if the void that haunts the revolution was there. A totalitarian
we want it," and so on. And all the glory goes here to Jacobins. When the black delegation from Port-au-Prince Haiti visited Paris in '92 I think, they were celebrated as one of us and so on. When Napoleon took over, he immediately sent the army and so on. So you know how should I put it, the first good thing about or again now if some of you like art and so that you will see that I'm not just a primitive Marxist that I also do high art analysis. For me the highest proof that Jacobinism was not some kind of a proto-Stalinist terror is painting. You I hope some of you know the painting which is the definitive painting of French Revolution: Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Marat. You know Marat, radical revolution okay. Do you know remember how that painting looks? This is let's say the entire picture. In the lower third you see Marat in a bathtub dead, and then what do you have here? Nothing. Void, darkness. It's as if the void that haunts the revolution was there. A totalitarian
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would never allow that darkness, two-thirds of the painting is darkness. You know how would that painting look in a Stalinist version? Where you would have the dying Marat and then up you would have some kitsch version of what he was thinking when he was dying, happy French people singing in freedom, tell you know what I mean. The the fact that they allowed this void darkness to be seen meant for me simple fact they were not they were not totalitarian. And this was not to misunderstand this
would never allow that darkness, two-thirds of the painting is darkness. You know how would that painting look in a Stalinist version? Where you would have the dying Marat and then up you would have some kitsch version of what he was thinking when he was dying, happy French people singing in freedom, tell you know what I mean. The the fact that they allowed this void darkness to be seen meant for me simple fact they were not they were not totalitarian. And this was not to misunderstand this
Slavoj Žižek
was not a marginal painting. This painting was
was not a marginal painting. This painting was
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displayed in Paris, it was a pop I admire a
displayed in Paris, it was a pop I admire a
Slavoj Žižek
revolution which is able to make to produce a painting which functions at its defining emblematic painting such a weird uncanny anxiety-provoking painting. You don't find this, you don't find this there. So again to return back to you, if anything Stalinism was pure horror and so on. And I'm also not, read my book on Lenin if you don't believe me, I'm not playing this boring Trotskyist game of "Oh, if only Lenin lived two years more he would have made a pact with Trotsky and Soviet Union would have been a thriving rich country." No. I wanted to bring to though that particular point... No I think I think it was a tragic fate from the beginning. And this is my final question. So I just wanted to ask you this thing. See there is a there is a there is a continuation saying that it is basically Lenin which has led to Stalin. There is hardly any difference between Lenin and Stalin. There is at least one difference. Read Lenin's last texts. They are tragic. He said things are lost. He says it's even ridiculous to talk about socialism. He said all we can do is to bring a little bit more of bourgeois culture to Soviet Union. Lenin Lenin's last politics was the exact opposite of what one year later Stalin advocated, socialism in one country. There is at least this big difference. That Lenin you I'm not sanctifying Lenin, I'm just saying that in the last years Lenin saw all if when you quoted somebody quoted just before this when this you know Lenin working class and so on. Lenin party of the working class. Lenin even said something wonderfully sarcastic in '22. He said, "In Russia we have the dictatorship of the working class party without the working class." He said practically all of the working class was killed in in the Civil War. He was open to all these paradoxes, he knew it's nonsense to talk about working class dictatorship, there is no working class and so on. I like this totally resigned, despair but nonetheless pragmatically taken taken despair of the of the late Lenin. I like this. You know what Lenin said? Lenin said democracy yes but anarchy no. Democracy yes, but you have somebody who coordinates. Yeah a little bit. So we'll have Akhil has a question, and any others who need to ask just so that I identify yeah we'll have the gentleman in the yellow shirt there and then I'll come to you. Okay. I agree with you that the radical Left is is the only source of of real politics in in the future, but I was just curious about how different and more difficult it is for movements to have effect now than they had even or years ago. You know in the sixties or or before that, just the difficulty of of movements. Thanks very much for this question, you know because I like questions which begin with "I agree with you." It means while you are saying this you are already sharpening your knife behind— Sorry. No, I see your problem and I'm even very critical here. Some people thought the Porto Alegre anti-globalist movement, I think it's still a pure protest movement. Sorry, I'm sorry very much. So you see one of the the difficulties is is this and I just was wondering if if you were sort of clear about it because I'm I think I'm clear about it but but I'm just curious to to know how you think. You see one of the the things is that in the last years or so when a movement succeeds and you get a a form of change a Left change, there's a terrible fear of whatever happens that there'll be a there'll be capital flight. Capital flight. Yeah. There'll be the flight of capital. So you get a progressive government as a result of a movement, but then there's this fear that there will be capital flight. So even if somebody's come into power on a mandate which is progressive, they find the hands tied because, you know, since the dismantling of the Bretton Woods institutions there's a as capital flight is much
revolution which is able to make to produce a painting which functions at its defining emblematic painting such a weird uncanny anxiety-provoking painting. You don't find this, you don't find this there. So again to return back to you, if anything Stalinism was pure horror and so on. And I'm also not, read my book on Lenin if you don't believe me, I'm not playing this boring Trotskyist game of "Oh, if only Lenin lived two years more he would have made a pact with Trotsky and Soviet Union would have been a thriving rich country." No. I wanted to bring to though that particular point... No I think I think it was a tragic fate from the beginning. And this is my final question. So I just wanted to ask you this thing. See there is a there is a there is a continuation saying that it is basically Lenin which has led to Stalin. There is hardly any difference between Lenin and Stalin. There is at least one difference. Read Lenin's last texts. They are tragic. He said things are lost. He says it's even ridiculous to talk about socialism. He said all we can do is to bring a little bit more of bourgeois culture to Soviet Union. Lenin Lenin's last politics was the exact opposite of what one year later Stalin advocated, socialism in one country. There is at least this big difference. That Lenin you I'm not sanctifying Lenin, I'm just saying that in the last years Lenin saw all if when you quoted somebody quoted just before this when this you know Lenin working class and so on. Lenin party of the working class. Lenin even said something wonderfully sarcastic in '22. He said, "In Russia we have the dictatorship of the working class party without the working class." He said practically all of the working class was killed in in the Civil War. He was open to all these paradoxes, he knew it's nonsense to talk about working class dictatorship, there is no working class and so on. I like this totally resigned, despair but nonetheless pragmatically taken taken despair of the of the late Lenin. I like this. You know what Lenin said? Lenin said democracy yes but anarchy no. Democracy yes, but you have somebody who coordinates. Yeah a little bit. So we'll have Akhil has a question, and any others who need to ask just so that I identify yeah we'll have the gentleman in the yellow shirt there and then I'll come to you. Okay. I agree with you that the radical Left is is the only source of of real politics in in the future, but I was just curious about how different and more difficult it is for movements to have effect now than they had even or years ago. You know in the sixties or or before that, just the difficulty of of movements. Thanks very much for this question, you know because I like questions which begin with "I agree with you." It means while you are saying this you are already sharpening your knife behind— Sorry. No, I see your problem and I'm even very critical here. Some people thought the Porto Alegre anti-globalist movement, I think it's still a pure protest movement. Sorry, I'm sorry very much. So you see one of the the difficulties is is this and I just was wondering if if you were sort of clear about it because I'm I think I'm clear about it but but I'm just curious to to know how you think. You see one of the the things is that in the last years or so when a movement succeeds and you get a a form of change a Left change, there's a terrible fear of whatever happens that there'll be a there'll be capital flight. Capital flight. Yeah. There'll be the flight of capital. So you get a progressive government as a result of a movement, but then there's this fear that there will be capital flight. So even if somebody's come into power on a mandate which is progressive, they find the hands tied because, you know, since the dismantling of the Bretton Woods institutions there's a as capital flight is much
unknown
easier than it used to be or years ago. So there is the fact that there can be movements but what they what emerges out of them is constrained just by the nature of, you know,
easier than it used to be or years ago. So there is the fact that there can be movements but what they what emerges out of them is constrained just by the nature of, you know,
Slavoj Žižek
a changed form of capital. Now what I'm curious
a changed form of capital. Now what I'm curious
unknown
about is, are developments like Morales and so on in Bolivia, do they show that fear of capital flight is just simply irrational? I sorry. That's the question. Yeah. No, I see your problem, yeah. First I must say that the reason I admire Morales much more than Chavez. I think he or even my big hero would be Aristide in Haiti. This is why he was overthrown. I admire these people
about is, are developments like Morales and so on in Bolivia, do they show that fear of capital flight is just simply irrational? I sorry. That's the question. Yeah. No, I see your problem, yeah. First I must say that the reason I admire Morales much more than Chavez. I think he or even my big hero would be Aristide in Haiti. This is why he was overthrown. I admire these people
Slavoj Žižek
because especially Aristide in Haiti, they knew they are taking over in a totally desperate situation. They knew but nonetheless pragmatically they tried to do modestly here and there whatever can be done. So what I'm saying is that here I'm very pragmatic. I know this is a very real problem and I deeply agree with you. What's the story of the Left in the last decades? It's some progressive leaders like Mandela in South Africa, Lula in Brazil taking over for the first usually it takes about two years to to dress them, to contain them. Then you see that basically they accept the game. And even I will go even further. Here I see a truly possibilities of a further catastrophic development. For example in South Africa, take Zimbabwe. I thought for a long time maybe Mugabe should be given a chance. But then I spoke with people blacks from there. They told me, "No, Mugabe is crazy ruining the country." And they gave me a very simple theory which I think it's basically true about Zimbabwe. Namely that the problem was that after the black majority in elections took over, no nothing happened practically for ordinary poor people, if anything there was more poverty. All that effectively happened was a new rich ruling joined with whites class. So now this class has a temptation when of course then dissatisfaction among the poor continues. The only way they see to avoid being themselves target of violence, of rebellion, of low is to play the race card. To say, "No no no no no no it's remainders of neo-colonialism and so on and so forth." The tragedy is that although they are not doing so bad in this purely economic terms, no? Like statistics, French are telling me they worry along the same lines for South Africa. That effectively ordinary people, it's basically poor blacks live the same life as under apartheid, some of them better, some of them even worse especially there is much more uncertainty and crime. So there is dissatisfaction. And the pro- there are already tendencies that so again the only thing that really changed is a new rich black class, basically dominating the country together with very strong still ruling white class. So the temptation of the black class is in order not to threaten their own privileges to play the race card, no? And this I see again and here again, I agree with you, international capital is a very tricky thing, you know. You can do your reforms, if they go too fast, capital flees and you are where you are. Which is why incidentally I am getting, I'm sorry if you disagree with me, more and more critical about Chavez. I think he's more and more first I admired Chavez. Why? Because he was the only one apart from Aristide and later Morales who did something which is crucial to do: he really politically mobilized this Indian Aboriginal, Indian in the sense of whatever, majority there. And this is crucial, I mean people in favelas slums. If we don't politically mobilize them, we are approaching a silent at least civil war eternal. There, but now all that he is basically doing it's playing the typical Latino-American populism with American dollars, or for whatever whatever he gets there. I don't see any actual change in social structure. It's the usual process, middle classes are flying out, industries regressing, he's going in following he's rather following what was bad in the Cuban Revolution. For example, do you know that they already import Venezuela, fertile country, they already import of their food and so on and so forth. So I agree with you but nonetheless this I think what does this mean? This means of course we have to play tricky games within the regime, but my answer would have been this is like you said if you just put if you see the way you formulated things is that the two players were international capital and local nation states. Everything is permitted here to our struggle. One game which is much more important than may appear, maybe also in India, I know in many African countries it's tragic. For example, years ago I read an interview with the minister of economy of Mali, Republic of Mali. He said
because especially Aristide in Haiti, they knew they are taking over in a totally desperate situation. They knew but nonetheless pragmatically they tried to do modestly here and there whatever can be done. So what I'm saying is that here I'm very pragmatic. I know this is a very real problem and I deeply agree with you. What's the story of the Left in the last decades? It's some progressive leaders like Mandela in South Africa, Lula in Brazil taking over for the first usually it takes about two years to to dress them, to contain them. Then you see that basically they accept the game. And even I will go even further. Here I see a truly possibilities of a further catastrophic development. For example in South Africa, take Zimbabwe. I thought for a long time maybe Mugabe should be given a chance. But then I spoke with people blacks from there. They told me, "No, Mugabe is crazy ruining the country." And they gave me a very simple theory which I think it's basically true about Zimbabwe. Namely that the problem was that after the black majority in elections took over, no nothing happened practically for ordinary poor people, if anything there was more poverty. All that effectively happened was a new rich ruling joined with whites class. So now this class has a temptation when of course then dissatisfaction among the poor continues. The only way they see to avoid being themselves target of violence, of rebellion, of low is to play the race card. To say, "No no no no no no it's remainders of neo-colonialism and so on and so forth." The tragedy is that although they are not doing so bad in this purely economic terms, no? Like statistics, French are telling me they worry along the same lines for South Africa. That effectively ordinary people, it's basically poor blacks live the same life as under apartheid, some of them better, some of them even worse especially there is much more uncertainty and crime. So there is dissatisfaction. And the pro- there are already tendencies that so again the only thing that really changed is a new rich black class, basically dominating the country together with very strong still ruling white class. So the temptation of the black class is in order not to threaten their own privileges to play the race card, no? And this I see again and here again, I agree with you, international capital is a very tricky thing, you know. You can do your reforms, if they go too fast, capital flees and you are where you are. Which is why incidentally I am getting, I'm sorry if you disagree with me, more and more critical about Chavez. I think he's more and more first I admired Chavez. Why? Because he was the only one apart from Aristide and later Morales who did something which is crucial to do: he really politically mobilized this Indian Aboriginal, Indian in the sense of whatever, majority there. And this is crucial, I mean people in favelas slums. If we don't politically mobilize them, we are approaching a silent at least civil war eternal. There, but now all that he is basically doing it's playing the typical Latino-American populism with American dollars, or for whatever whatever he gets there. I don't see any actual change in social structure. It's the usual process, middle classes are flying out, industries regressing, he's going in following he's rather following what was bad in the Cuban Revolution. For example, do you know that they already import Venezuela, fertile country, they already import of their food and so on and so forth. So I agree with you but nonetheless this I think what does this mean? This means of course we have to play tricky games within the regime, but my answer would have been this is like you said if you just put if you see the way you formulated things is that the two players were international capital and local nation states. Everything is permitted here to our struggle. One game which is much more important than may appear, maybe also in India, I know in many African countries it's tragic. For example, years ago I read an interview with the minister of economy of Mali, Republic of Mali. He said
unknown
something shocking to me. He said, "We
something shocking to me. He said, "We
Slavoj Žižek
don't want from the West any
don't want from the West any
unknown
of your help. We just ask you please respect your own free competition game rules." He says, and I checked it up with my friends economists they confirmed. Do you know that Mali
of your help. We just ask you please respect your own free competition game rules." He says, and I checked it up with my friends economists they confirmed. Do you know that Mali
unknown
produces the best cotton in the world for one third of the price of American cotton? To
produces the best cotton in the world for one third of the price of American cotton? To
Slavoj Žižek
protect their own cotton producers, United States give more money to subsidize their cotton industry than the entire state budget of Mali. In the North, Europe is doing the same milk industry Nestle and so on. So you know one of the fields of struggle is even it's simply to play to put the pressure on the West. You know what's so shocking of the West? It's not liberal free market capitalism, they cheat like crazy my God when it's in their interest. United States who spoke about state, you know United States like to play these games giving advice to poor country: diminish bureaucracy, more free market, well they should begin with themselves my God. So you know there is the but my main thing would be I agree with you as long as you move within these two coordinates: international capital versus state. The battle can't be won, which is why I think what is really needed and we will have somehow to reinvent them, some kind of a international solidarity movements and so on and so forth. The old motto that English practiced to perfection with you ago,
protect their own cotton producers, United States give more money to subsidize their cotton industry than the entire state budget of Mali. In the North, Europe is doing the same milk industry Nestle and so on. So you know one of the fields of struggle is even it's simply to play to put the pressure on the West. You know what's so shocking of the West? It's not liberal free market capitalism, they cheat like crazy my God when it's in their interest. United States who spoke about state, you know United States like to play these games giving advice to poor country: diminish bureaucracy, more free market, well they should begin with themselves my God. So you know there is the but my main thing would be I agree with you as long as you move within these two coordinates: international capital versus state. The battle can't be won, which is why I think what is really needed and we will have somehow to reinvent them, some kind of a international solidarity movements and so on and so forth. The old motto that English practiced to perfection with you ago,
unknown
you know rule and divide, one Maharaja against the other with all this multiculturalism and so on, no? That's the enemy more than ever today I claim. So again
you know rule and divide, one Maharaja against the other with all this multiculturalism and so on, no? That's the enemy more than ever today I claim. So again
unknown
yes I agree with you there are even more problems here. If I'm not mistaken what you said throughout your lecture, for me it meant that there is a very deep crisis in Marxist theory. Crisis in Marxist theory. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah and but you didn't spell it out
yes I agree with you there are even more problems here. If I'm not mistaken what you said throughout your lecture, for me it meant that there is a very deep crisis in Marxist theory. Crisis in Marxist theory. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah and but you didn't spell it out
Slavoj Žižek
so I think whether you mean it is so deep that you have to rethink basic theoretical propositions of Marxism. That is one. Even at the historical materialism etc. level. Secondly there is a shattering of a vision shattering of the utopia shattering of the dream. So there was
so I think whether you mean it is so deep that you have to rethink basic theoretical propositions of Marxism. That is one. Even at the historical materialism etc. level. Secondly there is a shattering of a vision shattering of the utopia shattering of the dream. So there was
unknown
a certain kind of communist dream and I'm talking from whatever impressions I got from your lecture but you didn't spell it out that's what a second question also is related to. So after debacle or whatever happened in Soviet Union and East Europe and China, even Cuba and Vietnam, there is for the rest of the exploited people there is for the movement it is a shattering of the old dream old vision. So whether you want to say that there is a necessity of creation of new dream on the basis of a new theory development of the theory and radically new theory that is one aspect. Secondly there was no mention of gender exploitation throughout your lecture. I can understand that you if you don't talk about caste system because it is not the global level system but gender gender exploitation is world over and your presentation appeared to me as a classist kind of a presentation in which you consider only class and changes in the class relations changes in the
a certain kind of communist dream and I'm talking from whatever impressions I got from your lecture but you didn't spell it out that's what a second question also is related to. So after debacle or whatever happened in Soviet Union and East Europe and China, even Cuba and Vietnam, there is for the rest of the exploited people there is for the movement it is a shattering of the old dream old vision. So whether you want to say that there is a necessity of creation of new dream on the basis of a new theory development of the theory and radically new theory that is one aspect. Secondly there was no mention of gender exploitation throughout your lecture. I can understand that you if you don't talk about caste system because it is not the global level system but gender gender exploitation is world over and your presentation appeared to me as a classist kind of a presentation in which you consider only class and changes in the class relations changes in the
unknown
class forms etc. etc. etc. So you don't refer to the basic exploitation relation which is related to all human beings in a
class forms etc. etc. etc. So you don't refer to the basic exploitation relation which is related to all human beings in a
Slavoj Žižek
very different sense and half of the society is exploited because of this. So I I was wondering why this? Thank you. Okay, maybe I'm not sure I because of a bad sound I totally understood what you said so let me just try to answer first crisis of Marxism. Of course but nonetheless you know when people ask me, "But how can you be sure that your new communism whatever will it be will not repeat turn up into the same kind of deplorable totalitarianism like Stalinism and so on and so forth?" Well my brutal answer is that you already have it. Stalinists already repainted themselves as most efficient capitalists today in China and so on and so forth. I mean my reproach to pro-capitalists here is "Sorry, Stalinism is now your problem." All Stalinists are already reinvented themselves as as more efficient and ruthless. You know if if you think that I exaggerate, I have some very good friends in China and they sent me a book which made me very sad. The official sacred book, you know every communist party in power has the book of History of Our Party which is tells the official myth, no? Like the famous history of Bolshevik party in St- okay. And the guy gave me two editions and brought my attention to a fact. In the latest edition one chapter is censored of the official history of Chinese Communist Party, the chapter describing the significant role of the party you know when nonetheless in the twenties and early thirties before war with Japan, there was some kind of explosion of development at least in Shanghai and that part. There the Communist Party played a very honorable role of organizing workers, trade unions, strike and so on. That chapter disappeared because it may have given wrong idea for today, you know what I mean. Like what they really are afraid nobody cares about religion if it's not politically independent, what they really fear is ecology if you probe too deep into it and trade union independent workers organizations. There you really risk. So what I'm saying is that for me again Stalinism is no longer my problem, the problem should be for advocates of capitalism. How do you explain that you can that the most efficient form of capitalism it with Stalinists in power? That's your problem, not mine. If you are there. When you said of necessity but precisely of new dream, but precisely for me necessity in the sense that if we want to live a dignified life we will have to do it. But not necessity in the old Marxist sense. I don't think there is any historical necessity. But now the most interesting aspect which will be again I agree problematic with you. I totally support all these struggles, gender, race, tolerance and so on. The reason I don't emphasize them too much is not only that others talk all the time about them, but another reason how ambiguous can some of these struggles be. For example, let's take the United States American feminism. Okay of course I support it. But you know whenever I read American feminist text, at least the majority of it, I'm always shocked by the implicit class bias. In the sense that not only it's not class neutral, but basically they don't say it but the whole metaphor and so on, to cut a long story short, working class are those idiot fundamentalist patriarchal who beat their wives and so on and so forth. There is an okay there are many who are much better, but they are rare. The ones who you know really do questions about exploitation of Mexican workers, immigrant Spanish women who really connect the two. But even there I don't like this culturalist bias. How American cultural studies how should I put it automatically transform a problem of race, intolerance, racism into a cultural problem. You would have thought that Americans exploit Mexican immigrant workers because they don't tolerate their cultural otherness or whatever. For me it's exactly the other way around and so on and so forth. You know this is what I don't like there. And it's the same again with you know feminism, you do know it was marginal I know but nonetheless how feminism was even incorporated into the justification of the American attack on Iraq, no, or Afghanistan especially. We go there to liberate women from and as it is always the case the result was the opposite one. Whatever you say about Saddam Hussein's Iran and it was a horrible regime, I'm totally opposed to it. Sorry, Iraq sorry Iraq but nonetheless he in you know that under Saddam the situation of women was far better than in the majority of other Arab countries because only at the end for political reasons Saddam started to flirt with Islam. Before he had a kind of a secularist pan-Arab nationalist modernism as ideology. He created in the first years of his rule a very strong secular middle class: doctors and so on. And the paradox is that the main social result till now of the American occupation is in this naive liberal sense big regression. Iraq is now after they went there to liberate women and so on a much more religiously fundamentalist country than it was than it was before. So again what I'm not in any way I claim a class fundamentalist, if anything I precisely showed how we cannot any longer speak about the old type class exploitation because why not? Let me give you an extremely simple provocative example. If you define working class as being exploited in the strict Marxist terms and also at the same time accept that labor is the main the only source of value, then I'm sorry to tell you you have to accept that Chavez's Venezuela is exploiting United States. Because they are basically Chavez does what he does because he has oil. Oil for Marx is not a source of value. I'm not saying of course claiming this, I'm claiming we have very radically to rethink Marx. Things are happening today in the functioning of capitalism and I'm even very modest here. You know we have all these journalistic phrases: postmodern capitalism, post-industrial society, whatever. I don't like these post theories, I claim these are mostly even if they are interesting journalistic
very different sense and half of the society is exploited because of this. So I I was wondering why this? Thank you. Okay, maybe I'm not sure I because of a bad sound I totally understood what you said so let me just try to answer first crisis of Marxism. Of course but nonetheless you know when people ask me, "But how can you be sure that your new communism whatever will it be will not repeat turn up into the same kind of deplorable totalitarianism like Stalinism and so on and so forth?" Well my brutal answer is that you already have it. Stalinists already repainted themselves as most efficient capitalists today in China and so on and so forth. I mean my reproach to pro-capitalists here is "Sorry, Stalinism is now your problem." All Stalinists are already reinvented themselves as as more efficient and ruthless. You know if if you think that I exaggerate, I have some very good friends in China and they sent me a book which made me very sad. The official sacred book, you know every communist party in power has the book of History of Our Party which is tells the official myth, no? Like the famous history of Bolshevik party in St- okay. And the guy gave me two editions and brought my attention to a fact. In the latest edition one chapter is censored of the official history of Chinese Communist Party, the chapter describing the significant role of the party you know when nonetheless in the twenties and early thirties before war with Japan, there was some kind of explosion of development at least in Shanghai and that part. There the Communist Party played a very honorable role of organizing workers, trade unions, strike and so on. That chapter disappeared because it may have given wrong idea for today, you know what I mean. Like what they really are afraid nobody cares about religion if it's not politically independent, what they really fear is ecology if you probe too deep into it and trade union independent workers organizations. There you really risk. So what I'm saying is that for me again Stalinism is no longer my problem, the problem should be for advocates of capitalism. How do you explain that you can that the most efficient form of capitalism it with Stalinists in power? That's your problem, not mine. If you are there. When you said of necessity but precisely of new dream, but precisely for me necessity in the sense that if we want to live a dignified life we will have to do it. But not necessity in the old Marxist sense. I don't think there is any historical necessity. But now the most interesting aspect which will be again I agree problematic with you. I totally support all these struggles, gender, race, tolerance and so on. The reason I don't emphasize them too much is not only that others talk all the time about them, but another reason how ambiguous can some of these struggles be. For example, let's take the United States American feminism. Okay of course I support it. But you know whenever I read American feminist text, at least the majority of it, I'm always shocked by the implicit class bias. In the sense that not only it's not class neutral, but basically they don't say it but the whole metaphor and so on, to cut a long story short, working class are those idiot fundamentalist patriarchal who beat their wives and so on and so forth. There is an okay there are many who are much better, but they are rare. The ones who you know really do questions about exploitation of Mexican workers, immigrant Spanish women who really connect the two. But even there I don't like this culturalist bias. How American cultural studies how should I put it automatically transform a problem of race, intolerance, racism into a cultural problem. You would have thought that Americans exploit Mexican immigrant workers because they don't tolerate their cultural otherness or whatever. For me it's exactly the other way around and so on and so forth. You know this is what I don't like there. And it's the same again with you know feminism, you do know it was marginal I know but nonetheless how feminism was even incorporated into the justification of the American attack on Iraq, no, or Afghanistan especially. We go there to liberate women from and as it is always the case the result was the opposite one. Whatever you say about Saddam Hussein's Iran and it was a horrible regime, I'm totally opposed to it. Sorry, Iraq sorry Iraq but nonetheless he in you know that under Saddam the situation of women was far better than in the majority of other Arab countries because only at the end for political reasons Saddam started to flirt with Islam. Before he had a kind of a secularist pan-Arab nationalist modernism as ideology. He created in the first years of his rule a very strong secular middle class: doctors and so on. And the paradox is that the main social result till now of the American occupation is in this naive liberal sense big regression. Iraq is now after they went there to liberate women and so on a much more religiously fundamentalist country than it was than it was before. So again what I'm not in any way I claim a class fundamentalist, if anything I precisely showed how we cannot any longer speak about the old type class exploitation because why not? Let me give you an extremely simple provocative example. If you define working class as being exploited in the strict Marxist terms and also at the same time accept that labor is the main the only source of value, then I'm sorry to tell you you have to accept that Chavez's Venezuela is exploiting United States. Because they are basically Chavez does what he does because he has oil. Oil for Marx is not a source of value. I'm not saying of course claiming this, I'm claiming we have very radically to rethink Marx. Things are happening today in the functioning of capitalism and I'm even very modest here. You know we have all these journalistic phrases: postmodern capitalism, post-industrial society, whatever. I don't like these post theories, I claim these are mostly even if they are interesting journalistic
unknown
clichés. We don't yet have a real good theory of what goes on today in the world is the simplest that. We need theory more than ever. Okay, now I'm making propaganda for— You said of the incredible amount of money China invest in USA and you said this is how the US survives now, now that US need billion dollars per day. Huge part of US economy is owned by Chinese and you again said Saudi Arabia is catching up. My question is, see look at us, Asians have no such Western or European fear of China or KSA owning up US or Western assets. Now that maybe the boot is in our legs, but Europeans have this fear of their cream economic assets owned by outsiders. Anyway you are a radical leftist so how can you aren't you as a normal European, not as a radical leftist as a normal European betraying a European Eurocentric bias and fear of the non-European like the yellow peril? Isn't it your unconscious Eurocentrism is coming forth unconsciously, isn't it? First, how should I put it, now I will say something which may shock you, but my Eurocentrism is not unconscious. I even wrote a text precisely to provoke all my enemies and friends shamelessly entitled "A Plea for Radical Eurocentrism" and so on. Because I claim that that how should I put it, I will say now something very provocative, I think that European project of enlightenment and so on is self contradictory. In the sense of it's not the whole truth about European enlightenment to say, "Yes, it's universality, it's a false one, it's only a mask for particular European
clichés. We don't yet have a real good theory of what goes on today in the world is the simplest that. We need theory more than ever. Okay, now I'm making propaganda for— You said of the incredible amount of money China invest in USA and you said this is how the US survives now, now that US need billion dollars per day. Huge part of US economy is owned by Chinese and you again said Saudi Arabia is catching up. My question is, see look at us, Asians have no such Western or European fear of China or KSA owning up US or Western assets. Now that maybe the boot is in our legs, but Europeans have this fear of their cream economic assets owned by outsiders. Anyway you are a radical leftist so how can you aren't you as a normal European, not as a radical leftist as a normal European betraying a European Eurocentric bias and fear of the non-European like the yellow peril? Isn't it your unconscious Eurocentrism is coming forth unconsciously, isn't it? First, how should I put it, now I will say something which may shock you, but my Eurocentrism is not unconscious. I even wrote a text precisely to provoke all my enemies and friends shamelessly entitled "A Plea for Radical Eurocentrism" and so on. Because I claim that that how should I put it, I will say now something very provocative, I think that European project of enlightenment and so on is self contradictory. In the sense of it's not the whole truth about European enlightenment to say, "Yes, it's universality, it's a false one, it's only a mask for particular European
Slavoj Žižek
interests," and so on and so forth. What you have to admit is also that European enlightenment was always strong enough to mercilessly criticize itself. And this you have to admit to Europe, that it it had so-called cultural imperialism and so on and so forth, but this idea that for example the idea that Europe is not the center, Europe is just one among other cultures, that every life world every culture is ultimately contingent, it doesn't that how should I put it a particular life world is not a category of truth, that you should experience your own life world as something contingent, ridiculous. I like this idea. I think this is the only way to respect each other, not just to respect each other but to make fun of ourselves to each other. I never liked this polite multicultural and I'm not kidding here, it's terribly serious what I'm saying. I'm always suspicious of this UNESCO respect, you know, "Oh how great is your culture." I like don't be shocked, I will immediately explain what I mean, I like racist jokes. But not use them in the racist way. In my country ex-Yugoslavia, we were all the time telling dirty racist jokes. They were the best thing to keep us together as friends. Because they were not jokes against each other, I met a Serb or a Montenegro guy and we joyously accepted, assumed racist clichés about ourselves and made fun about it. For example, one of the republics of ex-Yugoslavia was Montenegro, the small one. Their racist cliché is that they are lazy, absolutely lazy. At the same time you should know you get earthquakes in Montenegro. So I met recently a Montenegro guy who told me, "Now I discovered you know how we must masturbate in Montenegro? You dig a hole in the earth, you put the penis in, and you wait for the earthquake because we are too lazy even to move and so on." You know there is something very for me this is the only way you really overcome racism. If I come to India and you tell me, "Oh, our great past, great traditions," and I tell you, "Ooh," F-three points off I tell you, tell me a dirty joke we are friends. And I'm doing this as you know, no? So you know I'm very serious here, you know what I really hate is racism masked as a pseudo-respect. You need a little bit of obscenity, and I'm well aware that obscenity is an ambiguous thing. I'm well aware at the same time I've written chapters on it how every structure of authority also has always this underside of vulgarity, brutality, obscenity. I served the army I know how this works. Army is not only order discipline, army are brutal beatings, dirty jokes, obscenities and so on and so forth. But nonetheless I think obscenity is neither to be celebrated nor to be condemned, obscenity is a field of a great struggle. Who will appropriate obscenity? I'm just going to attention to one of the remarks you made in your presentation, that is capitalism has its own father. And you sorry can you explain a little bit what do you mean capitalism has its own father? During your talk you mentioned that capitalism has father and that he prevents the members from enjoyment or whatever some kind of libidinal enjoyment or whatever. And this struck me because you being a Lacanian psychoanalyst probably cannot think of father and symbolic order... I'm coming to that point only and this the amazing of wealth and the private property actually comes from the familial. And that is ultimately I think the inevitable logic of capitalism. And we time and again speak of the need of a Left politics very passionately. And I very much suspect whether a truly Left politics is possible without shattering of the symbolic father figure, the Oedipus. And we should be able to speak from the a beyond the position of this and unless and until the shattering of the I and the familial there may not be a truly Left politics may not be possible. And otherwise there is every chance of it to lead into softer forms of authoritarianism that is witnessing in capitalism or a harder form of authoritarianism that leads to fascism either in the form of Nazi politics or— This is very interesting question, maybe I don't quite... But I would also like to how did historicism fail? Okay, let him say in one sentence. Okay, no, very briefly, but this is very interesting topic you started. Because you know what I tend more and more to think, and I just here follow already some it's not my eccentricity some old Marxists like okay Western Marxist I don't think that how should I put it in very naive terms, paternal authority, patriarchal family is a mode of social life which fits today's permissive capitalism. I claim that already in so-called totalitarianism to to understand
interests," and so on and so forth. What you have to admit is also that European enlightenment was always strong enough to mercilessly criticize itself. And this you have to admit to Europe, that it it had so-called cultural imperialism and so on and so forth, but this idea that for example the idea that Europe is not the center, Europe is just one among other cultures, that every life world every culture is ultimately contingent, it doesn't that how should I put it a particular life world is not a category of truth, that you should experience your own life world as something contingent, ridiculous. I like this idea. I think this is the only way to respect each other, not just to respect each other but to make fun of ourselves to each other. I never liked this polite multicultural and I'm not kidding here, it's terribly serious what I'm saying. I'm always suspicious of this UNESCO respect, you know, "Oh how great is your culture." I like don't be shocked, I will immediately explain what I mean, I like racist jokes. But not use them in the racist way. In my country ex-Yugoslavia, we were all the time telling dirty racist jokes. They were the best thing to keep us together as friends. Because they were not jokes against each other, I met a Serb or a Montenegro guy and we joyously accepted, assumed racist clichés about ourselves and made fun about it. For example, one of the republics of ex-Yugoslavia was Montenegro, the small one. Their racist cliché is that they are lazy, absolutely lazy. At the same time you should know you get earthquakes in Montenegro. So I met recently a Montenegro guy who told me, "Now I discovered you know how we must masturbate in Montenegro? You dig a hole in the earth, you put the penis in, and you wait for the earthquake because we are too lazy even to move and so on." You know there is something very for me this is the only way you really overcome racism. If I come to India and you tell me, "Oh, our great past, great traditions," and I tell you, "Ooh," F-three points off I tell you, tell me a dirty joke we are friends. And I'm doing this as you know, no? So you know I'm very serious here, you know what I really hate is racism masked as a pseudo-respect. You need a little bit of obscenity, and I'm well aware that obscenity is an ambiguous thing. I'm well aware at the same time I've written chapters on it how every structure of authority also has always this underside of vulgarity, brutality, obscenity. I served the army I know how this works. Army is not only order discipline, army are brutal beatings, dirty jokes, obscenities and so on and so forth. But nonetheless I think obscenity is neither to be celebrated nor to be condemned, obscenity is a field of a great struggle. Who will appropriate obscenity? I'm just going to attention to one of the remarks you made in your presentation, that is capitalism has its own father. And you sorry can you explain a little bit what do you mean capitalism has its own father? During your talk you mentioned that capitalism has father and that he prevents the members from enjoyment or whatever some kind of libidinal enjoyment or whatever. And this struck me because you being a Lacanian psychoanalyst probably cannot think of father and symbolic order... I'm coming to that point only and this the amazing of wealth and the private property actually comes from the familial. And that is ultimately I think the inevitable logic of capitalism. And we time and again speak of the need of a Left politics very passionately. And I very much suspect whether a truly Left politics is possible without shattering of the symbolic father figure, the Oedipus. And we should be able to speak from the a beyond the position of this and unless and until the shattering of the I and the familial there may not be a truly Left politics may not be possible. And otherwise there is every chance of it to lead into softer forms of authoritarianism that is witnessing in capitalism or a harder form of authoritarianism that leads to fascism either in the form of Nazi politics or— This is very interesting question, maybe I don't quite... But I would also like to how did historicism fail? Okay, let him say in one sentence. Okay, no, very briefly, but this is very interesting topic you started. Because you know what I tend more and more to think, and I just here follow already some it's not my eccentricity some old Marxists like okay Western Marxist I don't think that how should I put it in very naive terms, paternal authority, patriarchal family is a mode of social life which fits today's permissive capitalism. I claim that already in so-called totalitarianism to to understand
unknown
how figures like Hitler, Stalin functioned, they are not paternal figures, they are not figures of the father. In order to properly develop this in psychoanalytic terms one has to go to all this distinction between what Jacques Lacan calls the name of the father, paternal authority and the obscene superego. Superego is not paternal authority. So again this is my problem also with some of the feminists. I claim that again that it's a mis- to put it in very naive terms, again I
how figures like Hitler, Stalin functioned, they are not paternal figures, they are not figures of the father. In order to properly develop this in psychoanalytic terms one has to go to all this distinction between what Jacques Lacan calls the name of the father, paternal authority and the obscene superego. Superego is not paternal authority. So again this is my problem also with some of the feminists. I claim that again that it's a mis- to put it in very naive terms, again I
Slavoj Žižek
have a lot to learn from here, but if I go to a developed Western country what is there in the very ordinary sense the ruling ideology, in the sense that what is this inner sense of duty what do people what kind of pressure do people get from society, what should you become? I claim it's some- it's not create a family, it's something like a blurred pseudo-pseudo-oriental spirituality, spiritual hedonism. It's something like be dynamic, be truly yourself, realize your potential, basically it's enjoy life, be truly yourself. And it's even what is praise- you know that I read somewhere a very good analysis that even love, love in the sense of this you know, I see you, sorry I will not look anyone into the eyes then I will be accused of harassment or both. You okay no I'm not gay, fuck off, okay. But sorry, but what I mean is that like you know I look you into the eye all my life is ruined even this is considered not trendy or whatever. The idea is this easy life you reconstruct if you fall in love, they even in a manipulative way like to refer to India. More and more now in Western these agencies where you want to marry or find a partner, the latest fashion there is to say "I we will enable you to be in love without falling in love." And they literally claim the thing to avoid is this moment of fall, you know, I see you oh my God my life has changed. They say we will analyze you and we will find you a partner then we will give you a training with body language how for the two of you to fall in love and no trauma, no passion, everything will be under control and their reference are you. They claim as usually Western obscurantist like that they follow the ancient Veda writings that they found there in this they claim we can do these old arranged marriages in a modern scientific way, we should learn the wisdom and so on. So you see I'm the big question is what is today the predominant ideology? I claim it's not patriarchal ideology any longer. So paradoxically I claim that you know if we want to analyze phenomena like fascism, authoritarianism and so on, no. On the contrary, what you can show is that if there is one feature which unites, and I don't like the term I've written a book against it but nonetheless to simplify, so-called totalitarianism, it's the undermining of family. The fear of totalitarianisms was always that if parents control the child's education the child will not be enough under social control so in Nazi Germany, in Stalinism, in my own country, the pressure was always there at least when the regime was harsh for children to potentially even betray their parents, you know. Not to consider family as the ultimate cell of the ultimate figure of authority.
have a lot to learn from here, but if I go to a developed Western country what is there in the very ordinary sense the ruling ideology, in the sense that what is this inner sense of duty what do people what kind of pressure do people get from society, what should you become? I claim it's some- it's not create a family, it's something like a blurred pseudo-pseudo-oriental spirituality, spiritual hedonism. It's something like be dynamic, be truly yourself, realize your potential, basically it's enjoy life, be truly yourself. And it's even what is praise- you know that I read somewhere a very good analysis that even love, love in the sense of this you know, I see you, sorry I will not look anyone into the eyes then I will be accused of harassment or both. You okay no I'm not gay, fuck off, okay. But sorry, but what I mean is that like you know I look you into the eye all my life is ruined even this is considered not trendy or whatever. The idea is this easy life you reconstruct if you fall in love, they even in a manipulative way like to refer to India. More and more now in Western these agencies where you want to marry or find a partner, the latest fashion there is to say "I we will enable you to be in love without falling in love." And they literally claim the thing to avoid is this moment of fall, you know, I see you oh my God my life has changed. They say we will analyze you and we will find you a partner then we will give you a training with body language how for the two of you to fall in love and no trauma, no passion, everything will be under control and their reference are you. They claim as usually Western obscurantist like that they follow the ancient Veda writings that they found there in this they claim we can do these old arranged marriages in a modern scientific way, we should learn the wisdom and so on. So you see I'm the big question is what is today the predominant ideology? I claim it's not patriarchal ideology any longer. So paradoxically I claim that you know if we want to analyze phenomena like fascism, authoritarianism and so on, no. On the contrary, what you can show is that if there is one feature which unites, and I don't like the term I've written a book against it but nonetheless to simplify, so-called totalitarianism, it's the undermining of family. The fear of totalitarianisms was always that if parents control the child's education the child will not be enough under social control so in Nazi Germany, in Stalinism, in my own country, the pressure was always there at least when the regime was harsh for children to potentially even betray their parents, you know. Not to consider family as the ultimate cell of the ultimate figure of authority.
unknown
So again I doubt if Oedipus to follow Gilles Deleuze I doubt if Oedipus family is our big our big enemy, how should I put it, no? It's a very tricky
So again I doubt if Oedipus to follow Gilles Deleuze I doubt if Oedipus family is our big our big enemy, how should I put it, no? It's a very tricky
Slavoj Žižek
question, you know, what happens with authority, how authority
question, you know, what happens with authority, how authority
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functions. Even to amuse you just with another example, even I'm sad I didn't talk about that but it wouldn't fit the title, for example how beliefs function today. I claim that's total bullshit that stuff of conservatives who
functions. Even to amuse you just with another example, even I'm sad I didn't talk about that but it wouldn't fit the title, for example how beliefs function today. I claim that's total bullshit that stuff of conservatives who
Slavoj Žižek
worry
worry
unknown
today people no longer believe. We believe more than ever, only in an impersonal way. You believe but you don't have to. The model at least in the West for me is if you say, "now I saw even signs here Christmas Santa Claus." You ask a parent, "Do you believe in Santa Claus?" They will tell you, "No, I'm not crazy, I pretend to make my child happy." But then you ask the child, "Do you believe in
today people no longer believe. We believe more than ever, only in an impersonal way. You believe but you don't have to. The model at least in the West for me is if you say, "now I saw even signs here Christmas Santa Claus." You ask a parent, "Do you believe in Santa Claus?" They will tell you, "No, I'm not crazy, I pretend to make my child happy." But then you ask the child, "Do you believe in
Slavoj Žižek
Santa
Santa
unknown
Claus?" He will tell you, "No, I'm not crazy, I pretend to get from parent..." But you know what's my point? Nobody has to believe but the belief functions socially. And this is what we call cynical era of ideology. And even another phenomenon, I repeat
Claus?" He will tell you, "No, I'm not crazy, I pretend to get from parent..." But you know what's my point? Nobody has to believe but the belief functions socially. And this is what we call cynical era of ideology. And even another phenomenon, I repeat
Slavoj Žižek
myself I know okay from Hyderabad you were not there, but sorry to repeat, this is why I like in a more detailed cultural analysis, phenomena like do you also have here the misfortune of watching those stupid American TV series like comedy series like Cheers, Friends, where crucial: laughter is part of the soundtrack. This is for me an extremely mysterious wonderful phenomenon. How does it work? You sit at a table yesterday in the evening you watch at the screen as an idiot, the screen laughs for you, at the end you feel relieved as if even if you didn't laugh. This is a very important psychological lesson: the others can not only do the work for you, others can also laugh for you, cry for you, and especially believe for you. A typical believer today doesn't have to believe himself, you need another to play the naive idiot for you. You say, "I am a pervert, but my my children has have to believe," and so on and so forth. So you know things are so co- for to finish with a joke probably known to most of you that you know yeah, which I think it's a condensation absolute of how things function today. Sorry if you know it, Niels Bohr, Copenhagen, you know the great physicist. You know the story, he was visited at his house in a countryside by a fellow scientist. Above the entrance to his house country house there was a horseshoe, which in Europe is a superstitious item preventing evil spirits to enter the house. And the friend asks him, "Listen, why do you have this up there? You are a scientist, do you believe in this superstition shit?" Niels Bohr answered, "Of course I don't believe in it, I'm a scientist, but I have it there because I was told that it works even if you don't believe in it." That's ideology today. Beliefs function, you don't have to believe. That's nice, thank you. Thank you, thank you very much, so all that. I'm grateful to you and I'm sorry, the only way to overcome I claim, now I will shock you, racist prejudice, I'm sorry if I was a cultural imperialist is, the only way to fight racism is universalized racism. We make fun of each other to each other. Next time we should do it. Thank you very much.
myself I know okay from Hyderabad you were not there, but sorry to repeat, this is why I like in a more detailed cultural analysis, phenomena like do you also have here the misfortune of watching those stupid American TV series like comedy series like Cheers, Friends, where crucial: laughter is part of the soundtrack. This is for me an extremely mysterious wonderful phenomenon. How does it work? You sit at a table yesterday in the evening you watch at the screen as an idiot, the screen laughs for you, at the end you feel relieved as if even if you didn't laugh. This is a very important psychological lesson: the others can not only do the work for you, others can also laugh for you, cry for you, and especially believe for you. A typical believer today doesn't have to believe himself, you need another to play the naive idiot for you. You say, "I am a pervert, but my my children has have to believe," and so on and so forth. So you know things are so co- for to finish with a joke probably known to most of you that you know yeah, which I think it's a condensation absolute of how things function today. Sorry if you know it, Niels Bohr, Copenhagen, you know the great physicist. You know the story, he was visited at his house in a countryside by a fellow scientist. Above the entrance to his house country house there was a horseshoe, which in Europe is a superstitious item preventing evil spirits to enter the house. And the friend asks him, "Listen, why do you have this up there? You are a scientist, do you believe in this superstition shit?" Niels Bohr answered, "Of course I don't believe in it, I'm a scientist, but I have it there because I was told that it works even if you don't believe in it." That's ideology today. Beliefs function, you don't have to believe. That's nice, thank you. Thank you, thank you very much, so all that. I'm grateful to you and I'm sorry, the only way to overcome I claim, now I will shock you, racist prejudice, I'm sorry if I was a cultural imperialist is, the only way to fight racism is universalized racism. We make fun of each other to each other. Next time we should do it. Thank you very much.