Why I Am Still A Communist
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2019-12-07 · 2:14:56 · 18,756 words
with Tyler Cowen, Adrian Johnston (video question), Jodi Dean (video question), Paul Taylor (video question), Rebecca Comay (video question), Jesse Tobi (audience question)
communism-socialismcapitalismideologyecology-climategeopolitics-warliberalism-political-correctnesstechnology-ai-cyberspacedemocracyrevolution-violencepsychoanalysishegel-dialecticssexuality-genderfascism-populismhistorysubjectivityethics
Žižek delivers a lecture titled 'Why I Am Still a Communist' at the 2019 Holberg Debate in Bergen, Norway, followed by a conversation with economist Tyler Cowen. He argues that the liberal-democratic capitalist order is insufficient to cope with three interrelated apocalyptic threats, mass migration, ecological catastrophe, and digital surveillance/brain-machine interface, and that only radical collective action deserving the name 'communism' (as a signifier of the problem, not a program) can address them. He critically surveys the failures of twentieth-century communism, rejects nostalgia, skewers political correctness, deep ecology, humanitarian liberalism, and identity politics, and defends a paradoxical combination of voluntarism and 'terror' (whistleblowing) as the only honest response.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 21
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Žižek borrows Henry Farrell's term for a system where state surveillance combined with machine learning can manage a population's needs more efficiently than democracy, offered as a description of China's current model.
as “catch-up revolution”
Habermas's term (nachholende Revolution) for the 1989 Eastern European revolutions, which Žižek endorses as accurate but argues conceals a deeper utopian desire for more than liberal normality.
Adapting Freud's 'Civilization and Its Discontents', Žižek coins this phrase for the diffuse, inarticulate dissatisfaction driving contemporary protest movements that cannot be channeled into established political representation.
Žižek's term for Thatcherite ideology's false repersonalization of social relations, which pretends to liberate individuals from the abstract state while in fact dismantling the impersonal mechanisms that sustain genuine freedom.
as “the poetic-military complex”
Žižek's coinage for ex-Yugoslavia, replacing 'industrial-military complex': the combination of poets/nationalist poetry with soldiers as the true engine of ethnic cleansing, more dangerous than industrial machinery.
Žižek's concept for refugees who, from the standpoint of global capital, are not exploited but simply superfluous, a mirror image of surplus value, a human remainder of global capital.
The ecological ideology Žižek rejects: the idea that humanity should renounce its 'arrogant' centrality and return to harmony with Mother Nature, which he argues is ideologically false because nature itself is chaotic and indifferent.
Zuboff's concept, cited by Žižek: a system in which knowledge, authority, and power rest with digital capital that treats users as natural resources to be mined for behavioral data.
Borrowing from Shoshana Zuboff, the excess behavioral data extracted from users beyond what they receive in exchange when using digital platforms, the raw material of surveillance capitalism.
Žižek's fusion of Lacanian 'big Other' with digital surveillance: the anonymous algorithmic system that collects behavioral data while users experience their submission as the highest exercise of freedom.
The political stance Žižek advocates: taking large-scale collective decisions against the spontaneous logic of capitalist development, with no foundation in 'objective tendencies of social development', Benjaminian emergency brake on the train of progress.
Fredric Jameson's concept, cited by Žižek against Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale: a work that appears critical of the near future but is actually nostalgic for and fascinated by the present permissive society.
Borrowed from philosopher Robert Pfaller: the Western intellectual desire to be authentic through exotic others, enjoying the authenticity of 'poor communists' or Third World radicals while remaining comfortably at home.
as “the right kind of alienation”
Žižek's reframing of the emancipatory goal: instead of overcoming alienation, the task is to enforce the properly functioning alienated invisible social mechanisms (the welfare state) that sustain non-alienated community life.
Žižek's theoretical innovation on LGBT+ discourse: instead of treating 'plus' as an empirical openness to future identities, he proposes it can be a structural subject-position, maintaining distance, doubt, the inability to fully identify, which he links to a specifically feminine stance.
Marx's concept invoked by Žižek to show that ideology is not subjective illusion but objectified in the structure of social practice itself, we may be pragmatic cynics in our minds yet act as fetishists in reality.
Borrowing Jon Elster's concept of states that cannot be planned or directly willed but only arrive as unintended side-effects, Žižek applies this to the proper function of academia and great intellectual discoveries.
as “Hölderlinian paradigm”
The idea, from Hölderlin's poem and quoted by Heidegger, that where danger is greatest salvation is also nearest, Žižek treats this as the false model of revolutionary thinking (including Marx's on the proletariat) that he contrasts with genuine Hegelian pessimism.
Žižek invokes Hegel's theory that a project must be attempted, fail, and only through a second attempt informed by that failure can something genuinely new emerge, his model for rethinking communism after the 20th-century disaster.
Žižek's redefinition of 'communism': not a solution or program but a signifier for the fundamental antagonisms of capitalism that cannot be resolved within the existing liberal democratic framework.
as “sincere hypocrisies”
Žižek's term for the empty social rituals and politeness formulas that structure human communication, gestures expected to be rejected but that must be made; he argues civilization depends on these 'idiotic' protocols.
Stories he reaches for 7
Bohr had a horseshoe above his door for luck; when asked if he believed in it as a scientist, he replied he was told it works even if you don't believe in it. Žižek uses this to illustrate how ideology operates not through belief but through material practice.
“of course i don't believe in it, but i have it there because i was told that it works even if you don't believe in it. that's how ideology works today.”
Žižek uses the final scene of the film (masked crowd overwhelming Parliament) to demand the question no revolutionary spectacle addresses: what would have happened the day after, how would people reorganize daily life?
“i am ready to sell my mother into slavery in order to see v for vendetta what i asked at the end of the film triumph people won over what would have happened the day after”
Žižek describes his book rewriting Antigone in three alternate-history versions: (1) Sophocles' original; (2) Antigone wins the argument with Creon but this triggers revolt and ruin; (3) the Chorus executes both Antigone and Creon as traitors establishing Jacobin terror. He uses this to explore the logic of revolutionary action and its unintended consequences.
“the third version... while creon and antigone are fighting, the chorus steps over, said you are both traitors ruining the city, you should both be liquidated and they establish a kind of jacobin terror”
Žižek describes the ritual where everyone at the table knows the host will pay, yet all must go through the motions of offering to split; he recounts maliciously accepting a friend's offer, forcing genuine embarrassment. This illustrates sincere hypocrisies as the foundation of civilization.
“we both know that you will pay. but i have to insist a little bit. no, let's at least pay it. not too much... you make an offer, a gesture which is expected to be rejected but nonetheless, it has to be made.”
Žižek recalls that in the Yugoslav army of the mid-70s, officially thoroughly homophobic, daily life was entirely permeated by homosexual jokes and innuendo, his unit's greeting was an explicit sexual remark. He uses this to illustrate how ideology can function in its own apparent negation.
“yugoslav army was, as all armies, probably absolutely homophobic... but at the same time crucial absolutely crucial. the entire life was totally penetrated by homosexual innuendos”
During the 1870 Paris Commune, when revolution seemed possible, Marx wrote to Engels complaining he had not finished Capital yet and couldn't afford a revolution now, Žižek offers this as the true spirit of the intellectual who prefers to write over seizing power.
“marx wrote a letter to engels, i love him for that, where he says, oh my god, they want a revolution now, but i haven't yet finished my capital.”
Žižek argues soldiers are not bad per se; what makes ethnic cleansing possible is the combination of soldiers with nationalist poets who anesthetize ordinary sensitivity to suffering. In ex-Yugoslavia this was the 'poetic-military complex', personified by poet Radovan Karadžić and General Ratko Mladić.
“there is no ethnic cleansing without poetry. to do horrible things most of us need to be anestheticised against our elementary sensitivity to others' suffering”
Works invoked 8
Antigone play
Žižek describes his own rewriting of Antigone with three alternate scenarios, used to explore the logic of revolution, the problem of tragic fidelity, and the possibility of Jacobin terror emerging from the conflict between principle and power.
V for Vendetta film
Žižek explicitly says he doesn't like the film but uses its final scene (masked crowd storming Parliament) to raise the crucial unasked question: what happens the day after revolutionary victory?
The Handmaid's Tale book
Žižek dislikes Atwood's novel as an example of 'nostalgia for the present' (Jameson), a text fascinated by permissive society while appearing to critique a theocratic future, failing to raise the crucial questions about the present.
Cited as the central thesis of late Frankfurt School, that Enlightenment reason itself contains totalitarian potentials deployed in fascism and Stalinism, but Žižek faults it for neglecting Stalinism as the more traumatic example compared to fascism.
Frankenstein book
Used as a literary example of allowing the 'enemy' to speak for himself (the monster's narrative), but also to illustrate the limit of this empathic procedure when applied to genuine enemies.
Soviet Marxism book
Marcuse's analysis of Soviet communism is noted as a partial exception to the Frankfurt School's neglect of actually-existing communism, but Žižek regards it as 'very specific' and insufficient.
Capital and Ideology book
Žižek engages seriously with Piketty's proposals (basic income, worker board seats, carbon tax, exit tax, supranational parliament) but argues Piketty's own proposals already require radical social change that he fails to theorize, so his 'pragmatic' utopia is no less utopian.
Marginalrevolution.com other
Mentioned as Tyler Cowen's blog, cited by the host introducing Cowen.
People invoked 38
Radovan Karadžić negative
Named as the prime example of the 'poetic-military complex', a poet who became the political leader of Bosnian Serb nationalism and an architect of ethnic cleansing.
Rebecca Comay positive
Video questioner praised as among the best Hegelian scholars (most of the best Hegelians are women, Žižek notes); her question on the Hölderlinian paradigm receives his most theoretically dense response.
Edward Snowden positive
Cited alongside Assange and Manning as an exemplar of the 'traitor as ethical hero', those who betray the nation state in an act of higher ethical fidelity.
Vladimir Lenin positive
Žižek distinguishes Lenin's significance from his program: it is Lenin's pragmatic voluntarism, honest admission of desperation, and willingness to return to zero in 1921-22 that fascinates him, not any return to his politics.
Shoshana Zuboff positive
Žižek quotes Zuboff's concept of surveillance capitalism and behavioral surplus approvingly but argues she stops short of identifying the deeper threat: direct brain-machine interface.
Mentioned in passing as having visited Singapore and declared it a model for China's economic reforms, illustrating the Singapore-China ideological connection.
Margaret Atwood negative
Žižek dislikes The Handmaid's Tale as a form of 'nostalgia for the present', appearing to critique a future theocracy while actually fascinated by and failing to question the current permissive society.
Gilles Deleuze positive
Žižek quotes the Deleuzian phrase in French, 'si vous êtes pris dans le rêve de l'autre' ('if you are caught in another's dream'), as capturing the problem of Western leftists who project authenticity onto exotic others.
Francis Fukuyama negative
Cited as the paradigm of silently accepting liberal democracy as the best possible order; Žižek repeatedly uses 'Fukuyamaist' as a term of critique for those who believe liberal capitalism can manage the crises ahead.
Jodi Dean positive
Video questioner, fellow communist philosopher; Žižek engages with her question about communist organizational forms and the uses of Lenin.
Robert Pfaller positive
Named as 'my friend, another Austrian philosopher' from whom Žižek borrows the concept of 'inter-passive authenticity'.
Žižek calls Trump a 'genius' for breaking electoral rules and reaching disaffected workers, while condemning him personally and warning that left identity politics is functionally helping Trump get re-elected.
Chelsea Manning positive
Named alongside Assange and Snowden as one of the authentic heroes of today whose treason constitutes the highest ethical act.
Alain Badiou positive
Cited as a fellow philosopher who reinvigorated communist philosophy; Žižek distances himself from Badiou's vision of nomadic proletarians as a new revolutionary force but acknowledges the shared project.
Henry Farrell positive
Žižek attributes the term 'networked authoritarianism' to Farrell and uses it as his working definition of China's current model.
Fredric Jameson positive
Cited for his concept of 'nostalgia for the present', which Žižek applies to critique Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale as fascinated with rather than critical of contemporary permissive society.
Bernie Sanders positive
Supported implicitly as the correct Democratic candidate who can reach beyond identity politics to working-class voters.
Julian Assange positive
Žižek visited Assange in Belmarsh prison and regards him as one of today's authentic heroes, a figure of the 'terrorist informer' who practices the only genuine political act available.
Adrian Johnston positive
Video questioner described as a friend; Žižek agrees with Johnston's implied point about changes in the base-superstructure relationship.
Yanis Varoufakis positive
Cited as 'my good friend' who pointed out that Western 'austerity' (a 0.5% drop in purchasing power) is trivial compared to genuine austerity like Greece's 30% contraction.
Kojin Karatani positive
Žižek cites 'my Japanese friend' Karatani's argument that the passage from bourgeois to proletarian democracy is the passage from voting to lottery, to prevent expert technocratic rule.
Peter Handke negative
Žižek criticizes Handke's sympathizing with Serbian atrocities, and identifies the underlying structure as 'inter-passive authenticity', Handke's pride in Slovenian communism was instrumental, lasting only as long as Slovenians remained authentically poor and communist.
Peter Sloterdijk positive
Mentioned as 'my good friend conservative but bright' Peter Sloterdijk, who supplements university funding by doing 'business weekends' for Volkswagen managers, used as an example of the troubling instrumentalization of philosophy.
Jon Elster positive
Cited for his concept of 'states which are necessary byproducts', outcomes that cannot be planned or directly willed, used by Žižek to defend the unplanned, useless character of academic inquiry.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez positive
Žižek admires her endorsement of Bernie Sanders on the basis that Sanders can reach impoverished white workers who would otherwise vote for Trump, seeing this as the correct anti-identity-politics electoral strategy.
Greta Thunberg positive
Initially disliked her 'innocent girl' persona but now admires the 'mean Greta', dogmatic, insistent, with a 'diabolical aggressive smile'; calls her 'deeply communist' in the sense he means the term.
Tyler Cowen positive
Žižek praises Cowen as the ideal interlocutor, 'modest, intelligent, honest sceptical conservative', and credits him with the best self-description: 'moderate conservative communist'.
Walter Benjamin positive
Žižek invokes Benjamin's 'Theses on the Philosophy of History' and the figure of pulling the emergency brake on the train of history as his model for voluntarist intervention against ecological catastrophe.
Søren Kierkegaard positive
Anecdote cited about Kierkegaard being summoned by the Danish king and told to learn polite platitudes, used to illustrate the importance of empty social manners as civilization's foundation.
Niels Bohr positive
Cited for the horseshoe anecdote, 'I don't believe in it, but I'm told it works even if you don't believe in it', which Žižek uses as his canonical illustration of how ideology operates through practice rather than belief.
Jürgen Habermas negative
Žižek calls Habermas 'the ultimate left Fukuyamaist' for welcoming the 1989 revolutions as mere catch-up revolutions aimed at liberal normality, and criticizes the Frankfurt School for almost completely ignoring actually-existing communism in East Germany.
Žižek analyzes a Putin interview passage as revealing Putin's true position: zero tolerance for traitors, no personal sympathy for Snowden or Assange, whom he helps only to annoy Western enemies.
Karl Marx positive
Žižek praises Marx's theory of commodity fetishism as his genuine achievement and his 'true spirit', wanting to finish Capital before a revolution, as a model for the intellectual. He also calls for critical reassessment of Marx, noting the communist project failed and problems existed in the original vision.
Sigmund Freud positive
Invoked for the claim that what is repressed returns in distorted form (explaining right-wing populism after 1989), for the notion that we don't know what we truly desire, and for sexuality's inherently antagonistic nature, Žižek uses Freud as a corrective to LGBT+ identity politics.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Central theoretical reference throughout: Žižek defends Hegel as a thinker of deep distrust and radical pessimism (not optimism), uses Hegelian repetition as his model for rethinking communism, and invokes Hegel's emphasis on unwritten customs against political correctness's legalism.
Ratko Mladić negative
Named as the military half of the 'poetic-military complex' in ex-Yugoslavia, the general paired with the poet Karadžić.
Martin Luther positive
Cited as the paradigmatic example of how revolutions proclaim themselves a return to origins, as Lenin did, while in fact radically overturning the tradition.
Thomas Piketty positive
Žižek engages seriously with Piketty's Capital and Ideology, he agrees with Piketty's goals (progressive taxation, worker board representation, basic income) but argues that achieving them already requires the radical social change Piketty fails to theorize.
What it argues
why the communist label still matters despite the failures of actually-existing communismthree apocalyptic threats: migration, ecology, digital controlcritique of humanitarian liberalism and political correctnessthe necessity of voluntary-collectivist ('communist') intervention beyond market and statealienation as the proper medium of communal life, not its enemywhistleblowers and informers as the authentic heroes of todayHegelian pessimism: everything turns wrong, but repetition with learning is possible
Dialectical moves 13
“The only real triumph of communists in power is what happened in China — the greatest economic success story — yet China is today the model of networked authoritarianism, the very combination of what the left was supposed to oppose.”
The greatest communist success is simultaneously the strongest argument against communism, the reversal that makes China's achievement ideologically undecidable.
“Far from being the goal of emancipatory struggles, overcoming alienation is itself the problem; the true goal is to enforce the right kind of alienation.”
Alienation is not the enemy of freedom but its precondition, impersonal mechanisms (the welfare state) must be protected, not abolished.
“What Thatcher calls freedom from the abstract state — repersonalizing social relations — is actually the most insidious form of ideological unfreedom: fake disalienation.”
The apparent liberation from alienated bureaucracy is really ideological mystification that makes inequality personally shameful rather than structurally caused.
“We experience the activity which effectively enslaves us — freely surfing the web — as our highest exercise of freedom.”
Digital surveillance colonizes freedom from within: the very act of free self-expression generates the behavioral surplus that the digital big Other appropriates.
“It is even more utopian to think we can manage without radical measures; the true utopia is modest optimism that it will all work out somehow.”
The inversion of realism and utopianism: communist radicalism is the realistic option, while liberal gradualism is the true fantasy.
“What I call terror is the informer, the whistleblower — the lowest, most despised figure — who is today maybe the only authentic hero.”
The inversion of the hero/traitor binary: the archetypal villain (the informer) is today's ethical hero precisely because state loyalty has become complicity in catastrophe.
“There are circumstances when treason — the betrayal of one's nation state — is the greatest act of ethical fidelity.”
National loyalty and ethical fidelity are inverted when the nation state's sovereignty produces barbarism, betraying the state becomes the only way to remain faithful to universal ethics.
“Communism is not a solution — it is the name of a problem.”
The reversal of the usual function of the communist label: it names not an answer but the set of antagonisms capitalism cannot solve.
“The more I know about and understand Hitler, the more he is my enemy.”
Understanding does not dissolve enmity, the empathic-narrative approach to political violence inverts real moral cognition by confusing explanation with justification.
“To be in a good mood today you have to be a pessimist; if you are today an optimist, it is the way to suicide.”
Pessimism is the condition of authentic positive experience: low expectations mean occasional goods feel like gifts, while optimism produces constant disappointment.
“Hegel's insight is exactly the opposite of the Hölderlinian paradigm: no matter how good an idea or project is, we can be sure it will turn wrong somehow.”
Žižek reverses the standard 'Hegel as optimist of Reason' reading: the genuine Hegelian position is radical pessimism about every project's realization.
“Yugoslavia: an ideology that functions not only even if you don't believe in it, but one where it is prohibited to believe in it.”
The deepest form of ideological integration is one where disbelief itself becomes compulsory, cynicism is no longer a critique of ideology but its primary operating mode.
“Capitalist injustice is elegant: in a just society, if you are richer than me, I must admit I am more stupid than you; under capitalism, luck absorbs the insult so my pride survives.”
Capitalism's injustice (luck, inheritance) paradoxically preserves subjective dignity better than a truly just meritocracy would, which would be unbearably humiliating.
Claims 23
asserts
The only real triumph of communism in power was China's economic development, but today's China is best described as networked authoritarianism — a combination of authoritarian state and wild capitalist dynamics — that is ultimately unstable.China and the legacy of 20th-century communism
asserts
The anti-communist protesters of 1989 in Eastern Europe were not simply demanding capitalism; their vague ideals were largely drawn from socialist ideology itself, and what was repressed from the dissident imaginary returned in the form of right-wing populism.fall of communism and right-wing populism
rejects
Habermas was the ultimate left-Fukuyamaist in welcoming the 1989 revolutions as 'catch-up' revolutions, failing to see that they aimed at something beyond liberal-capitalist normality.Habermas's interpretation of 1989
asserts
The emancipatory goal should be changed from overcoming alienation to enforcing the right kind of alienation — smooth-functioning impersonal social mechanisms (like the welfare state) that sustain non-alienated community life.alienation and the welfare state
rejects
Thatcherite ideology introduces a 'fake disalienation' — a false repersonalization that makes the poor individually responsible for their fate and turns recipients of welfare into faces of abuse, which is an ideological lie.Thatcherite individualism
asserts
There is no ethnic cleansing without poetry: soldiers become capable of atrocities only when mobilized by nationalist poetry or religious narrative that anesthetizes them against sensitivity to others' suffering.nationalism, poetry, and ethnic violence
rejects
The idea that 'an enemy is someone whose story you have not heard' is a dangerous stupidity: the more one understands Hitler, the more he is one's enemy.liberal humanitarian ethics and empathy
asserts
Refugees are not proletarians in the Marxist sense: they do not produce surplus value but are literally valueless from the perspective of capital — surplus humanity, a remainder of global capital — and no humanitarian openness can resolve this without restructuring the global economic order.refugees and global capital
asserts
The deepest threat from digitalization is not surveillance capitalism per se but direct brain-machine interface, which erodes the distance between inner life and external reality that is the basis of subjective freedom.digital control and freedom
rejects
Deep ecology's appeal to Mother Nature is ideologically wrong: nature is not a harmonious balance disrupted by humanity but a chaotic, indifferent force; environmentalism is really about our own survival, not nature's.deep ecology
rejects
Personal responsibility campaigns (recycling, organic food) are ideology at its best: they offer an easy way out that allows people to feel they have done their duty while the systemic causes of ecological catastrophe go unaddressed.individualist responses to ecological crisis
asserts
The combination of voluntarism and 'terror' (in the form of whistleblowing) is the only honest response to ecological and digital threats; whistleblowers like Assange and Snowden are today's authentic heroes.political action under catastrophe
reframes
To think we will somehow manage without radical measures is the true utopia; the modest optimism that 'it will all work out' is more unrealistic than the communist demand for structural change.utopianism versus realism
asserts
Commodity fetishism in Marx's sense is not subjective illusion but the objectified structure of our social practices themselves — the fetishist inversion is in how we act, not merely what we believe.Marxist theory of ideology
rejects
The identity-politics approach of American feminism is an upper-middle-class fake that avoids systemic economic analysis and has even supported imperialist interventions like the Iraq war in the name of women's rights.identity politics and American feminism
rejects
Political correctness tries too much to legalize customs and unwritten rules, and in doing so it cannot truly address the power dynamics it intends to combat — consent forms do not eliminate sexual exploitation.political correctness and legalization of social norms
asserts
The left lacks any coherent general vision of a future society, which is why it remains ineffective — it oscillates between vague anti-corruption sentiment and the old failed models.the contemporary left's failure of vision
asserts
Lenin's true significance is his pragmatic voluntarism and honest admission of total openness — not a return to his program but his spirit of beginning from zero when all formulas have failed.Lenin's legacy
asserts
The twentieth-century communist project was an absolute failure, and one should not play the game of blaming corruption, Stalin, or 'Asiatic barbarism' — the deadlock was there from the beginning.20th-century communism
asserts
Academia's value is its uselessness in the immediate sense — the best intellectual discoveries emerge as necessary byproducts, not planned outcomes — and the pressure on humanities to serve concrete social needs reproduces the worst communist-era instrumentalism.the proper function of academia
asserts
Singapore functions as a structural exception that cannot be generalized — 'fascism with a human face' — and its success depended on a unique conjunction of factors that cannot be replicated at scale.Singapore as a political model
rejects
Sexuality is in itself antagonistic, traumatic, and shadowy — the LGBT+ fantasy of a multiplicity of genders flourishing without social pressure presupposes that we naturally know what we desire, which Freud definitively disproved.LGBT+ identity politics and desire
asserts
Hegel, properly read, is a thinker of deep distrust — his basic insight is that no matter how good an idea or project is, it will turn wrong — and this is the correct lesson to draw about the French Revolution and 20th-century communism.Hegel's dialectics and historical failure
Quotes 17
“there is no ethnic cleansing without poetry. soldiers are not bad per se. what is bad are soldiers combined with poets. soldiers mobilized by nationalist poetry or religion.”Slavoj Žižek · poetry and ideology as enablers of mass violence
“we should change the goal of emancipatory struggles from overcoming alienation to enforcing the right kind of alienation.”Slavoj Žižek · the right kind of alienation as emancipatory goal
“this is what is so dangerous about the process that began with margaret thatcher: a kind of fake disalienation, a false repersonalization of social relations.”Slavoj Žižek · Thatcherism as fake disalienation
“we experience this unequal exchange — the activity which effectively enslaves us — as our highest exercise of freedom.”Slavoj Žižek · digital slavery experienced as freedom
“my figure of the terrorist is the informer. this type of traitors are maybe the only authentic heroes today.”Slavoj Žižek · whistleblower as authentic hero
“to be in a good mood today, you have to be a pessimist. because a pessimist doesn't expect a lot. but from time to time, nice things happen.”Slavoj Žižek · pessimism as condition of authentic joy
“happiness is for pimps. i want traumas, i want shock.”Slavoj Žižek · rejection of happiness ideology
“it is even more utopian to think that we can somehow manage to survive without similar radical measures. my dogma is that to think that somehow we will manage — this is the true utopia.”Slavoj Žižek · liberal optimism as the real utopia
“the experience that we have of our lives from within, the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves in order to account for what we are doing are fundamentally a lie. the truth lies outside in what we do.”Slavoj Žižek · subjective self-narrative as ideological lie
“communism is for me just the name of a problem. it is not a solution.”Slavoj Žižek · communism as name of a problem
“the more i know about and understand hitler, the more he is my enemy.”Slavoj Žižek · understanding does not dissolve enmity
“an ideology can function not only even if you don't believe in it, but where it is prohibited to believe in it.”Slavoj Žižek · compulsory cynicism as ideological mode
“there are circumstances when treason — the betrayal of one's own nation state — is the greatest act of ethical fidelity.”Slavoj Žižek · treason as ethical fidelity
“hegel's basic insight is exactly the opposite: no matter how good an idea or project is, we can be sure that it will turn wrong somehow.”Slavoj Žižek · Hegelian pessimism
“there is no civilization without these idiots. you make an offer, a gesture which is expected to be rejected but nonetheless, it has to be made.”Slavoj Žižek · sincere hypocrisies as foundation of civilization
“when we worry about environment, let's be at least honest, we worry about our own fate. what if we cost the end of human life on earth. earth itself is indifferent to it.”Slavoj Žižek · ecology is really about human survival, not nature
“behind our ideological and geopolitical tensions they all share the same basic interest in holding on to power.”Slavoj Žižek · ruling class solidarity across ideological divides
Transcript 177 turns
Slavoj Žižek
don't applaud too much my old joke sorry no no problem keep the energy when we communists take over you will have no but more seriously because i speak too much usually i have to be brief and go through fast. let me begin by expressing a sincere gratitude for this invitation it's an honor for me and also my love for berg the city. there is a well-known joke in my country at least about a small boy who asks his father, dad, why don't they build cities in the countryside where the air is much cleaner? i know i'm wrong probably, but bergen comes for me at least pretty close to this idea. okay, let me begin. why am i still a communist when the communist dream of the twentieth century is clearly over together with the dreams of the dissident communists about socialism with a human face i am also as far as imaginable from the old mantra that communism was a good idea which just got corrupted by totalitarian perverts. no, there are problems already in the original vision and one should submit. to severe reassessment also marx himself yes, commun in power did some good things we know the litany education healthcare fight against fascism and so on but overall the only real. theiumph of communismists in power is i think what happened in china in the last decades arguably the greatest economic success story in human history hundreds of millions were raised from poverty. how did china achieve this the twentieth century left was defined by its opposition to two fundamental tendencies of modernity the reign of capital with its aggressive individualism and alienating dynamics and the authoritarian bureaucratic state power what we get in today's china is exactly the combination of these two features in its extreme form strong authoritarian state wild capitalist dynamics and this is the most efficient form of socialism today china is becoming the model of what henry farrell called networked authoritarianism. if a state that's the idea spies on people enough and allows machine learning systems to incorporate their behavior and respond to it, it is possible to provide for everyone's needs better than a democracy could. that's the idea but this isn't what's happening in china china is very unstable plagued by wildcat strikes.. concentration camps massive corruption and so on this instability was signalled by a strange event in mid-october 2019. the chinese media launched an offensive promoting the claim that, i quote, demonstrations in europe and south america are the direct result of western tolerance for hong kong unrest. quote goes on. there are many problems in the west and all kinds of undercurrents of dissatisfaction many of them will eventually manifest in the way the hong kong protests did what cannot but strike the eye here is that communist china discreetly plays on the solidarity of those in power all around the world against the rebellious populations, warning the west not to underestimate the dissatisfaction in their own countries, as if beneath our ideological and geopolitical tensions they all share the same basic interest in holding on to power. these protests are not taking place only in poor and desolate countries countries like iran but also in countries of relative at least prosperity they express. a growing dissatisfaction that cannot be channeled into established modes of political representation what awaits us is a society of permanent state of exception and civil unrest str strange protest wave enables us to take a fresh look at the fall of the berlin wall it is a commonplace place to emphasise the miraculous nature of the fall of the wall thirty years ago something happened that one couldn't even imagine a couple of months earlier, the communist regimes collapsed like a house of cards. however, one should add that an even greater miracle happened only a couple of years later. the return of ex-communists to power through free elections. remember poland. valencia was totally marginalized and much less popular than general jarzelsski, who? crash solidarity with a military coup d'etat. now two decades later today came the third surprise poland is now in the grip of rightist populists who reject both communism and liberal democracy so what goes on what the large majority of those who protested against the communist regimes had in mind i claim was not simply capitalism they wanted social security solidarity a rough kind of justice freedom to live their own life outside the oppressive state control honesty sincerity they wanted to be liberated from the primitive ideological indoctrination and the prevailing cynical hypocrisy. in short the vague ideals that led the protesters were to a large extent taken from socialist ideology itself and as we learned from freud what is repressed returns in a distorted form in our case what was repressed from the dissident imaginary returned in the guise of right populism in his interpretation of the fall of east european communism jürgen habermas proved to be the ultimate left fukuyamaist i am referring of course to fukuyama silently accepting that the existing liberal democratic order is the best possible. this is why he welcomed precisely what many leftists saw as the big deficiency of the anti-communist protests in eastern europe. the fact that they were not motivated by a new vision of some post-communist future. as habermas put it, the central and eastern european revolutions were just what he called rectifying or catch up nachholende revolutions their aim was to enable central and eastern european societies to gain what the western europeans already possessed in short to rejoin the west european normality however the yellow vests and other similar protests are definitely not catch up movements the populist disappointment at liberal democracy is the proof that one thousand nine hundred and ninety was not just a catch up revolution it aimed at more than liberal capitalist normality. freud spoke about unbehagen in der kultur, the discontent unease in culture. today, thirty years after the fall of the wall, the ongoing new wave of protests bears witness to a kind of unbehagen in liberal capitalism. and the key question is, who will articulate this discontent? will it be left to nationalist populists to exploit it. therein resides the big task for the left i will now refer to a movie that i hope you saw though i don't like it. in the final scene of v for vendetta thousands of unarmed londoners wearing guy fawkes masks march towards parliament. the military allows the crowd to pass and the people take over. okay, a nice ecstatic moment but sorry for the plastic expression i am ready to sell my mother into slavery in in order to see v for vendetta what i asked at the end of the film triumph people won over what would have happened the day after the victory of the people how would they reorganise daily life i was never fascinated by hundreds of thousands assembling on a large square in athens or in istanbul and so on what interests me is the morning after when ecstatic passion is over. how will ordinary people experience the change thomas picketty tries to address this issue in his second book capital and ideology he proposes a radicalised social democracy not to nationalise all wealth like the soviet style communism but to maintain capitalism and. redistribute assets. so sorry progressive income taxes should allow governments to give everyone a basic income equivalent to 60% of the average wage. and to cover the costs of decarbonizing economy employees should have fifty percent of the seats on company boards and individualized carbon tax calculated by a personalized card should track each person's contribution to global heating and so on and so on but what if the rich decide to emigrate pt proposes an exit tax and a global justice system that makes it impossible to height from expropriation anywhere to that end he imagined a supranational parliament comprised of members drawn from national legislators. the two extremes of the deadlock of today's radical left are best exemplified by a long tv dialogue between piquetty and the french maoist great philosopher alain bieu bieu's vision is that of nomadic proletarians who will emerge as a new revolutionary force piquetty's proposal is no less utopian although it presents itself as pragmatic, looking for a solution within the frame of capitalism and democratic procedures. his utopia is that it can be done within this frame. you know, i agree with pt. i'm just saying in order to do what he wants they're already. radical social change already has to happen and he doesn't talk about this. there is of course now comes trigger warning for politically correct people now come my usual provocations there is a third dream that of rejuvenated local democracy which is i think if anything even worse the more our communities are selfuling relatively autonomous the more they have to rely on a thick texture of alienated institutional mechanisms where does electricity or water come from who guarantees the rule of law to whom do we turn for healthcare and so on that's my proposal. we should change the goal of emancipatory struggles from overcoming alienation to enforcing the right kind of alienation. how to achieve a smooth functioning of alienated invisible social mechanisms which sustain the space of non alienated communities. this is what makes the welfare state so attractive to me i don't have to help the poor myself the state and its anonymous apparatuses do it for me so that i don't have to confront the excluded and underprivileged face to face. this is what is so dangerous for me about the process that began in ideology and practice with margaret thatcher recall her famous quip that society doesn't exist. there are only individuals who struggle and work fully responsible for their fate. this introduces a kind of fake disalienation, a false repersonalization of social relations. the poor are ultimately responsible for their fate, and the aim of health should be to enable them to regain their responsibility. it is no longer the abstract state, it is me and other hardworking people who are covering the costs and those who receive help also personalised they acquire faces often. faces of lazy and evil people abusing our generosity is this in some sense not true? i think no because the alienated system that regulates our lives is not just an illusion but the actuality of our lives in such a universe every direct personalisation like the one proposed by tler is an ideological lie so again why do i still cling to the cursed name of communism when i know that the twentieth century communist project failed giving birth to a new form of murderous terror let me begin with the fact that we live in an age permitted by apocalyptic prospects a proviso when i talk about apocalyptic threats i am fully aware of how tricky this domain is only a thin line separates the correct perception of real dangers from the fantasy scenarios about a global catastrophe that awaits us there is a specific enjoyment of living in the end time living in the shadow of a catastrophe and the paradox is that such a fixation on some forthcoming catastrophe is precisely one of the ways to avoid really confronting it rightist populists paint a catastrophic vision of our entireisation under threat from muslim and other refugees if today's trends go on so they say in a decade or so europe will be a muslim province of europistan plus they rightist apocalyptic thinkers they see lgbt plus and political correctness as part of the cultural marxist plot to destroy western civilization muslim fundamentalists and political feminists are thus for them two sides of the same coin. leftists focus on another couple of apocalyptic threats ecology and digital control of our lives now if we discount the so called rational optimists who claim claim that life is nonetheless generally getting better let me focus on three apocalyp to be taken seriously migrations ecological threats digital control they all concern the fate of our commerce of what is the common ground of our existence natural environs the global digital space the unity of human species. these threats are by definition national they cannot be approached within the frame of nation states which nation states are today unfortunately making a comeback so let me begin with new forms of apartheid which is the leftist version of the fear of immigrants for the right immigrants pose a threat to our way of life while for the left building new walls is a threat to our global civil.. while this is basically true. i would nonetheless like second trigger warming now you will really hate me i would like to nonetheless point out that death. we should reject the simple lesson of mutual tolerance thus rendered by a well known utter stupidity i think masquerading as a deep wisdom quote an enemy is someone whose story you have not heard i cannot imagine a more stupid thing to say why i know what they want to say there is a wonderful literary example mary shelley's frankenstein in central part of the novel, shelley allows the monster to speak for himself, to tell the story from his own perspective. and in this way, she humanizes him. there is however a clear limit to this procedure whenever people tell me oh there are no enemies enemies is somebody to whom you are not ready to listen to my answer is ah good to learn so hitler was our enemy because we were not ready to listen to him or whatever now i think the more i know about and understand hitler the more he is my enemy. now comes my lesson. the experience that we have of our lives from within, the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves in order to account for what we are doing are fundamentally a lie. the truth lies outside in our actions in what we do. these stories the way we experience a situation. and i'm recently following ethnic cleansings done here and there, bosnia, rwanda. there always is a poet behind. these stories are usually written by poets. my thesis. soldiers are not bad per se. what is bad are soldiers combined with poets. soldiers mobilized by nationalist poetry or religion. there is no ethnic cleansing without poetry. why? to do horrible things most of us need to be anestheticised against our elementary sensitivity to others' suffering and for this a sacred cause is needed religious ideologies usually claim that true or not religion makes some otherwise bad people to do some good things from today's experience. i would rather stick to stein weinberg's claim that while without religion good people would have been doing good things and bad people bad things, only religion can make good people do bad things plato's reputation suffers because of his claim that poets should be thrown out of the city. i think, in view of my post-yugoslav experience, a rather good advice. in ex-yugoslavia, poets ethnic cleansing was clearly prepared by poet' dangerous dreams in ex yugoslavia instead of an industrial military complex we had the poetic military complex much more dangerous symbolised by the two names radovan kic ratko mladi poet and general in a recent tv debate on german tv, gregor giese, a key figure of linke the left party, gave i think a good answer to an anti-immigrant who aggressively insisted that he feels no responsibility for the poverty and horrors in the third world countries. instead of spending money to help them we should only be responsible for the welfare of our own citizens. the gist of gis's answer was if we only if we don't get responsible for the third world poor and act accordingly they will come here to us which is precisely what the anti immigrantigrant was ferociously opposed to. cynical as this reply may appear it is i think much more appropriate than abstract humanitarianism the humanitarian approach appeals to our generosity and guilt we should open our hearts to them also because the ultimate cause of their suffering is european racism and colonialism and this appeal is often combined by a strange economic reasoning europe needs immigrants in order to continue to expand economically. our birth rates are falling, we are losing our vitality. it is strange to hear leftists evoke the typical rightist motive of vitality. the hidden stakes of this operation are clear let's open ourselves to migrants as a desperate measure to avoid the much needed radical change and to maintain our liberal capitalist status quo the logic that sustains ghzy his statement is the opposite one only a radical social economic change can protect our way of life. in some sense a refugee is a neighbour next neighbour in the strict biblical sense the other reduced to. his her their naked presence without possessions without home without a determined place in society refugees are like a stain in the social edifice always too close. to us for a racist. since they lack a stable place in our society, they stand for universality of being human. how we relate to refugees indicates how we relate to humanity as such. but in a properly hegelian way, universality and particularity coincide here. refugees come naked only materially. and for this reason, they all the more cling to their cultural identity from this fact alone it is clear to me at least that nomadic immigrants are not proletarians in spite of attempts by aainmb badu and others to promulgate refugees into the exemplary figure of today's proletarians what makes proletarians proletarians is the fact that they are exploited they are the key moment of the valorisation of capital their labour creates surplus value in clear contrast to nomadic refugees who are not just perceived as worthless from the racist perspective but are most of them at least literally valueless a trash remainder of global capital leftists and capitalists dream of the new wave of immigrant debt. they will be integrated into our capitalist machine as it happened back in the one thousand nine hundred hundred s in europe and france since again they claim europe needs immigrants but this time i claim it will not work the bulk of them remains outside this fact makes the situation of immigrant refugees very tragic they are caught in a kind of social limbo a deadlock from which fundamentalism a exit. with regard to the circulation of global capital, refugees are put in a position of surplus humanity, a mirror image of surplus value, and no humanitarian help and openness can resolve this tension. only a restructuring of the entire international edifice. there is a passage in vladimir putin's recent interview where one can feel how he really speaks from his heart. it occurs when he solemnly declares his zero tolerance for spies who betray their country treason is the gravest crime possible and traitors must be punished it is clear from this outburst that putin has no personal sympathy for snowden or assange he just helps them to annoy in order to annoy his enemies and one can only imagine the fate of an eventual russian snowden or assange one can only wonder there some western leftists who continue to claim that in spite of his socially conservative stance putin poses an obstacle to american world domination and should be for this reason viewed with sympathy there are circumstances i claim, when treason the betrayal of one's own nation state is the greatest act of ethical fidelity. today, such treason is personified by names like assange man snowden why? the entire ethics of stake of a nation state culminates in the highest act of heroism the readiness to sacrifice one's life for one's nation state which means that the wild barbarian relations between states serve as the foundation of the ethical life within a state in today's north korea with its ruthless pursuit of nuclear weapons and rockets is this not the example of the logic of unconditional national state sovereignty the moment we fully accept the fact that we live on a spaceship earth the task that urgently imposes itself is that of civilising civilizations themselves and this brings us to the second apocalyptic threat the commons of external nature threatened by pollution and exploitation i am well aware how uncertain analyses and projections are in this domain it will be certain what is going on only when it will be too late. what i nonetheless see as certain is that there is a prospect of a catastrophe here sensitive data seem to me abundant enough so we should act in some large scale collective way how? ideologies today i think ecology is today one of the major ideological battlefields with a whole series of strategies to obfuscate the true dimension of the threat. first simple ignorance donald trump it's a marginal phenomenon life goes on don't worry second science and technology can save us don't worry scientists will come with solutions three leave the solution to the market higher taxation of the polluters and so on and the last two which i really despise four. the supererego pressure on personal responsibility instead of large systemic measures. when you criticize the system the answer you get is but did you do your duty did you put all coca-cola cans on one side did you recycle all the paper it's a wonderful formula. this is ideology at its best because first it makes you responsible and it offers you an easy way out. separate your cocaola hands hands and you did your duty you can go on but the fifth the worst version is for me so called deep ecology the idea that we should renounce traditional life the arrogant life we should renounce human hub and become again respectful children of our mother nature this whole paradigm of mother nature derailed by our human excess is i think wrong what mother nature mother nature is a dirty beak just imagine all that. catastrophes that happened on earth before humanity where does oil come from nature is completely chaotic. don't play the game of returning to balance that's the problem there is no natural balance what all the talk about how we humanity pose a threat to the life on the earth really amounts to is our worry about our own fate what if we cost the end of human life on earth. earth itself is indifferent to it. earth already went through many similar destruction. when we worry about environment, let's be at least honest, we worry about our own environment. we want our own good and safe life. ideology is at its worst here. why do we buy organic food? i don't know how it is with you but all my friends admit to me the same point. do you really believe that the half-ten and expensive organic apples are really healthier? the point is it's ideology. you feel good you see i bought them although they are half rotten and it's pure ideal because in this way i did something for humanity and mother earth. that's ideology in our everyday life. so how to act? now i go even further. we are in a deep mess there is no simple democratic solution here people talk as if politicians and corrupted scientists are covering up the truth okay, but what should we do there are many desperate proposals for example srm solar radiation management the continuous massive dispersals of aerosols into our atmosphere to absorb sunlight and thus cool the planet however srm is extremely risky we don't know what it can do trigger maybe some unpredictable effects so i think the first step to be serious is to admit that there is no simple clear way out. it's a... very sad confused complex situation the least we can do is set the priorities straight and admit the absurdity of our geopolitical war games when the very planet for which we are for which wars are fought is under threat that we should. begin. this brings me to the third threat the commons of internal nature when the threat posed by the digitalization of our lives is debated in our media, the focus is usually on the new phase of capitalism called by shoshana zuboff surveillance capitalism. quote knowledge, authority and power rest with surveillance capital, for which we are merely human natural resources. we are the native peoples now whose claims to determination have vanished from the maps of our own experience. end quote so we the wards are not just material, we are also exploited, involved in an unequal exchange, which is why the term behavioral surplus is justified here. when we are surfing, buying, watching tv and so on, we get what we want, but we give more. we lay ourselves bare. we make the details of our lives and its habits transparent to the digital big other. the paradox is that we experience this unequal exchange, the activity which effectively enslaves us as our highest exercise of freedom. what is more freedom and freely surfing on the web just by exerting this freedom of ours, we generate the surplus appropriated by the digital big other which collects data. however, and don't be afraid, i am coming important as this surveillance capitalism is i think it's not yet the true game changer i see a much greater potential for new forms of domination in the prospect of direct brain machine all. all kinds of secret agencies are working intensely on it. what we learn is just the public face of it, the often sensational news about it in our public media. like, you know, a totally crippled man now which his mind alone can make objects move and so on and so on. yeah, but what about billions, billions invested by military machinery into direct mind control and so on and so on? one one. where do i see a threat here again a threat in this idea that. our mind processes can directly interact without. communication media like language and so on with the machine. the distance between our inner life, the flow of our thoughts, and external reality is the basis of our self-perception as free beings. we are free in our thoughts, precisely because i am aware that what i think stays with me. i can play with my thoughts i can make thought experiments engage in dreaming and so on with no direct consequences in reality this is now potentially under threat and just don't tell me oh it will take centuries till we do it at an elementary level it is already happening was it reported in your media that i read somewhere two or three weeks ago that in china i don't like to focus on china because we like to report things about china to paint them as these eccentric totalitarians but we are doing the same things in maybe in for example in some elementary school classes in china pupils already have to wear some kind of a frame on their head which controls the activity of their brain so that the teacher can see. on a screen if they are listening to his talk or just dozing off and so on that's just the beginning i mean the potentials are absolutely incredible here and so then how are we two. fight all this. ah now comes my final pessimism i don't have a simple clear answer all i know is that neither although they should be used yes i am for market regulation welfare state and so on but neither market nor state apparatuses as we know them, i think can do the job. so i will just to conclude, propose to shock you a little bit a combination of two things which have this very obscure totalitarian associations, voluntarism and terror. first voluntarism the only way to confront the threat of ecological catastrophe, i think, is by means of large scale collective decisions which will counter to the spontaneous im logic of capitalist development. i refer here implicitly to walter benjamin who wrote in his thesis on the concept of history that today the task is not in this old marxist term, to be on on the train of progress and so on but to pull the emergency brake on the train we no longer can afford this old fashioned marxist alliance history is on our side no, it's not. we have to... in a voluntarist way by this i mean with no foundation in some objective tendencies of social development and so on and so on and this i want combined with terror don't be afraid. i'm not for new communist terror. just the opposite. my idea is, what if in some sense, the united states are right to denounce now in their pursuit of julian assange, to denounce wikileaks as a terrorist organization. in some sense, they are. they are clearly breaking the laws, disturbing proper relations, know, and so on and so on and so on. i think that you know who is for me, i know how provocative i am. i'm advocating terror. yes, but... my figure of the terrorist is the informer. you know, this lowest idea of whistleblower, informer who denounces you and so on and so on, that's what we need today. this type of traitors are maybe the only authentic heroes today. now you are quite right to ask me but is this not a crazy utopia will people be mobilised in this sense answer ist. maybe probably even no but my only answer is that it is even more utopian to think that we can somehow manage to survive without similar radical measures my dogma is that to think that somehow we will manage don't worry too much. one somehow it will go that this is the true utopia. you know, it's no longer ecological threat, digital control and so on. it's no longer something happening in third world countries. it's just slowly progressive. look at what's happening happens now in australia, in india and so on and so on. it will just go on. and i just pray that a not too large catastrophe, ecological or whatever, we... b. enough to awaken us if you want but i'm pessimist. i'm a pessimist and that's good because to conclude with a personal thought, i think that today to be in a good mood, you have to be a pessimist. why? because a pessimist doesn't expect a lot. but from time to time, nice things happen. and that's beautiful, you know like, oh my god, it's not all so bad. if you are today an optimist, it's the way to suicide. you are all the time. so just what i to finish. if you allow me half a minute, even less improvisation. what i'm very traditional, even conservative at this level. i hate this obsession with good life, happiness, and so on and so on. no, happiness is for pimps, whatever. i hate it. i want traumas, i want shock and so on. the third thing for me, okay, at my old age, it doesn't matter, is what's happening with... what's happening, for example, with sexuality today? did you notice how today passionate love to one person is considered almost something dangerous, outdated? the ideological message that we get from society today is be plastic, reconstruct yourself, try everything, make experiments and so on and so on. no, i think what do i mean when i say i'm for a catastrophe? imagine yourself not being in love. it's usually very happy life if you have a job and so on. you have your job, afternoon you go to a drink beer with friends, maybe a one-night stand here and there. life goes on, then all of a sudden you passionately fall in love. the same role can be also played by engaging writing, scientific discovery, whatever. admit it, your life is ruined. you worry all the time the peaceful times are over. in this sense, yes, i want a traumatic life where you cannot even sleep well and so on and so on. i hope we be still we are still ready. to do it i'm very sorry if i was too long i am very grateful for your attention. thank you very much. i'm sorry.
don't applaud too much my old joke sorry no no problem keep the energy when we communists take over you will have no but more seriously because i speak too much usually i have to be brief and go through fast. let me begin by expressing a sincere gratitude for this invitation it's an honor for me and also my love for berg the city. there is a well-known joke in my country at least about a small boy who asks his father, dad, why don't they build cities in the countryside where the air is much cleaner? i know i'm wrong probably, but bergen comes for me at least pretty close to this idea. okay, let me begin. why am i still a communist when the communist dream of the twentieth century is clearly over together with the dreams of the dissident communists about socialism with a human face i am also as far as imaginable from the old mantra that communism was a good idea which just got corrupted by totalitarian perverts. no, there are problems already in the original vision and one should submit. to severe reassessment also marx himself yes, commun in power did some good things we know the litany education healthcare fight against fascism and so on but overall the only real. theiumph of communismists in power is i think what happened in china in the last decades arguably the greatest economic success story in human history hundreds of millions were raised from poverty. how did china achieve this the twentieth century left was defined by its opposition to two fundamental tendencies of modernity the reign of capital with its aggressive individualism and alienating dynamics and the authoritarian bureaucratic state power what we get in today's china is exactly the combination of these two features in its extreme form strong authoritarian state wild capitalist dynamics and this is the most efficient form of socialism today china is becoming the model of what henry farrell called networked authoritarianism. if a state that's the idea spies on people enough and allows machine learning systems to incorporate their behavior and respond to it, it is possible to provide for everyone's needs better than a democracy could. that's the idea but this isn't what's happening in china china is very unstable plagued by wildcat strikes.. concentration camps massive corruption and so on this instability was signalled by a strange event in mid-october 2019. the chinese media launched an offensive promoting the claim that, i quote, demonstrations in europe and south america are the direct result of western tolerance for hong kong unrest. quote goes on. there are many problems in the west and all kinds of undercurrents of dissatisfaction many of them will eventually manifest in the way the hong kong protests did what cannot but strike the eye here is that communist china discreetly plays on the solidarity of those in power all around the world against the rebellious populations, warning the west not to underestimate the dissatisfaction in their own countries, as if beneath our ideological and geopolitical tensions they all share the same basic interest in holding on to power. these protests are not taking place only in poor and desolate countries countries like iran but also in countries of relative at least prosperity they express. a growing dissatisfaction that cannot be channeled into established modes of political representation what awaits us is a society of permanent state of exception and civil unrest str strange protest wave enables us to take a fresh look at the fall of the berlin wall it is a commonplace place to emphasise the miraculous nature of the fall of the wall thirty years ago something happened that one couldn't even imagine a couple of months earlier, the communist regimes collapsed like a house of cards. however, one should add that an even greater miracle happened only a couple of years later. the return of ex-communists to power through free elections. remember poland. valencia was totally marginalized and much less popular than general jarzelsski, who? crash solidarity with a military coup d'etat. now two decades later today came the third surprise poland is now in the grip of rightist populists who reject both communism and liberal democracy so what goes on what the large majority of those who protested against the communist regimes had in mind i claim was not simply capitalism they wanted social security solidarity a rough kind of justice freedom to live their own life outside the oppressive state control honesty sincerity they wanted to be liberated from the primitive ideological indoctrination and the prevailing cynical hypocrisy. in short the vague ideals that led the protesters were to a large extent taken from socialist ideology itself and as we learned from freud what is repressed returns in a distorted form in our case what was repressed from the dissident imaginary returned in the guise of right populism in his interpretation of the fall of east european communism jürgen habermas proved to be the ultimate left fukuyamaist i am referring of course to fukuyama silently accepting that the existing liberal democratic order is the best possible. this is why he welcomed precisely what many leftists saw as the big deficiency of the anti-communist protests in eastern europe. the fact that they were not motivated by a new vision of some post-communist future. as habermas put it, the central and eastern european revolutions were just what he called rectifying or catch up nachholende revolutions their aim was to enable central and eastern european societies to gain what the western europeans already possessed in short to rejoin the west european normality however the yellow vests and other similar protests are definitely not catch up movements the populist disappointment at liberal democracy is the proof that one thousand nine hundred and ninety was not just a catch up revolution it aimed at more than liberal capitalist normality. freud spoke about unbehagen in der kultur, the discontent unease in culture. today, thirty years after the fall of the wall, the ongoing new wave of protests bears witness to a kind of unbehagen in liberal capitalism. and the key question is, who will articulate this discontent? will it be left to nationalist populists to exploit it. therein resides the big task for the left i will now refer to a movie that i hope you saw though i don't like it. in the final scene of v for vendetta thousands of unarmed londoners wearing guy fawkes masks march towards parliament. the military allows the crowd to pass and the people take over. okay, a nice ecstatic moment but sorry for the plastic expression i am ready to sell my mother into slavery in in order to see v for vendetta what i asked at the end of the film triumph people won over what would have happened the day after the victory of the people how would they reorganise daily life i was never fascinated by hundreds of thousands assembling on a large square in athens or in istanbul and so on what interests me is the morning after when ecstatic passion is over. how will ordinary people experience the change thomas picketty tries to address this issue in his second book capital and ideology he proposes a radicalised social democracy not to nationalise all wealth like the soviet style communism but to maintain capitalism and. redistribute assets. so sorry progressive income taxes should allow governments to give everyone a basic income equivalent to 60% of the average wage. and to cover the costs of decarbonizing economy employees should have fifty percent of the seats on company boards and individualized carbon tax calculated by a personalized card should track each person's contribution to global heating and so on and so on but what if the rich decide to emigrate pt proposes an exit tax and a global justice system that makes it impossible to height from expropriation anywhere to that end he imagined a supranational parliament comprised of members drawn from national legislators. the two extremes of the deadlock of today's radical left are best exemplified by a long tv dialogue between piquetty and the french maoist great philosopher alain bieu bieu's vision is that of nomadic proletarians who will emerge as a new revolutionary force piquetty's proposal is no less utopian although it presents itself as pragmatic, looking for a solution within the frame of capitalism and democratic procedures. his utopia is that it can be done within this frame. you know, i agree with pt. i'm just saying in order to do what he wants they're already. radical social change already has to happen and he doesn't talk about this. there is of course now comes trigger warning for politically correct people now come my usual provocations there is a third dream that of rejuvenated local democracy which is i think if anything even worse the more our communities are selfuling relatively autonomous the more they have to rely on a thick texture of alienated institutional mechanisms where does electricity or water come from who guarantees the rule of law to whom do we turn for healthcare and so on that's my proposal. we should change the goal of emancipatory struggles from overcoming alienation to enforcing the right kind of alienation. how to achieve a smooth functioning of alienated invisible social mechanisms which sustain the space of non alienated communities. this is what makes the welfare state so attractive to me i don't have to help the poor myself the state and its anonymous apparatuses do it for me so that i don't have to confront the excluded and underprivileged face to face. this is what is so dangerous for me about the process that began in ideology and practice with margaret thatcher recall her famous quip that society doesn't exist. there are only individuals who struggle and work fully responsible for their fate. this introduces a kind of fake disalienation, a false repersonalization of social relations. the poor are ultimately responsible for their fate, and the aim of health should be to enable them to regain their responsibility. it is no longer the abstract state, it is me and other hardworking people who are covering the costs and those who receive help also personalised they acquire faces often. faces of lazy and evil people abusing our generosity is this in some sense not true? i think no because the alienated system that regulates our lives is not just an illusion but the actuality of our lives in such a universe every direct personalisation like the one proposed by tler is an ideological lie so again why do i still cling to the cursed name of communism when i know that the twentieth century communist project failed giving birth to a new form of murderous terror let me begin with the fact that we live in an age permitted by apocalyptic prospects a proviso when i talk about apocalyptic threats i am fully aware of how tricky this domain is only a thin line separates the correct perception of real dangers from the fantasy scenarios about a global catastrophe that awaits us there is a specific enjoyment of living in the end time living in the shadow of a catastrophe and the paradox is that such a fixation on some forthcoming catastrophe is precisely one of the ways to avoid really confronting it rightist populists paint a catastrophic vision of our entireisation under threat from muslim and other refugees if today's trends go on so they say in a decade or so europe will be a muslim province of europistan plus they rightist apocalyptic thinkers they see lgbt plus and political correctness as part of the cultural marxist plot to destroy western civilization muslim fundamentalists and political feminists are thus for them two sides of the same coin. leftists focus on another couple of apocalyptic threats ecology and digital control of our lives now if we discount the so called rational optimists who claim claim that life is nonetheless generally getting better let me focus on three apocalyp to be taken seriously migrations ecological threats digital control they all concern the fate of our commerce of what is the common ground of our existence natural environs the global digital space the unity of human species. these threats are by definition national they cannot be approached within the frame of nation states which nation states are today unfortunately making a comeback so let me begin with new forms of apartheid which is the leftist version of the fear of immigrants for the right immigrants pose a threat to our way of life while for the left building new walls is a threat to our global civil.. while this is basically true. i would nonetheless like second trigger warming now you will really hate me i would like to nonetheless point out that death. we should reject the simple lesson of mutual tolerance thus rendered by a well known utter stupidity i think masquerading as a deep wisdom quote an enemy is someone whose story you have not heard i cannot imagine a more stupid thing to say why i know what they want to say there is a wonderful literary example mary shelley's frankenstein in central part of the novel, shelley allows the monster to speak for himself, to tell the story from his own perspective. and in this way, she humanizes him. there is however a clear limit to this procedure whenever people tell me oh there are no enemies enemies is somebody to whom you are not ready to listen to my answer is ah good to learn so hitler was our enemy because we were not ready to listen to him or whatever now i think the more i know about and understand hitler the more he is my enemy. now comes my lesson. the experience that we have of our lives from within, the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves in order to account for what we are doing are fundamentally a lie. the truth lies outside in our actions in what we do. these stories the way we experience a situation. and i'm recently following ethnic cleansings done here and there, bosnia, rwanda. there always is a poet behind. these stories are usually written by poets. my thesis. soldiers are not bad per se. what is bad are soldiers combined with poets. soldiers mobilized by nationalist poetry or religion. there is no ethnic cleansing without poetry. why? to do horrible things most of us need to be anestheticised against our elementary sensitivity to others' suffering and for this a sacred cause is needed religious ideologies usually claim that true or not religion makes some otherwise bad people to do some good things from today's experience. i would rather stick to stein weinberg's claim that while without religion good people would have been doing good things and bad people bad things, only religion can make good people do bad things plato's reputation suffers because of his claim that poets should be thrown out of the city. i think, in view of my post-yugoslav experience, a rather good advice. in ex-yugoslavia, poets ethnic cleansing was clearly prepared by poet' dangerous dreams in ex yugoslavia instead of an industrial military complex we had the poetic military complex much more dangerous symbolised by the two names radovan kic ratko mladi poet and general in a recent tv debate on german tv, gregor giese, a key figure of linke the left party, gave i think a good answer to an anti-immigrant who aggressively insisted that he feels no responsibility for the poverty and horrors in the third world countries. instead of spending money to help them we should only be responsible for the welfare of our own citizens. the gist of gis's answer was if we only if we don't get responsible for the third world poor and act accordingly they will come here to us which is precisely what the anti immigrantigrant was ferociously opposed to. cynical as this reply may appear it is i think much more appropriate than abstract humanitarianism the humanitarian approach appeals to our generosity and guilt we should open our hearts to them also because the ultimate cause of their suffering is european racism and colonialism and this appeal is often combined by a strange economic reasoning europe needs immigrants in order to continue to expand economically. our birth rates are falling, we are losing our vitality. it is strange to hear leftists evoke the typical rightist motive of vitality. the hidden stakes of this operation are clear let's open ourselves to migrants as a desperate measure to avoid the much needed radical change and to maintain our liberal capitalist status quo the logic that sustains ghzy his statement is the opposite one only a radical social economic change can protect our way of life. in some sense a refugee is a neighbour next neighbour in the strict biblical sense the other reduced to. his her their naked presence without possessions without home without a determined place in society refugees are like a stain in the social edifice always too close. to us for a racist. since they lack a stable place in our society, they stand for universality of being human. how we relate to refugees indicates how we relate to humanity as such. but in a properly hegelian way, universality and particularity coincide here. refugees come naked only materially. and for this reason, they all the more cling to their cultural identity from this fact alone it is clear to me at least that nomadic immigrants are not proletarians in spite of attempts by aainmb badu and others to promulgate refugees into the exemplary figure of today's proletarians what makes proletarians proletarians is the fact that they are exploited they are the key moment of the valorisation of capital their labour creates surplus value in clear contrast to nomadic refugees who are not just perceived as worthless from the racist perspective but are most of them at least literally valueless a trash remainder of global capital leftists and capitalists dream of the new wave of immigrant debt. they will be integrated into our capitalist machine as it happened back in the one thousand nine hundred hundred s in europe and france since again they claim europe needs immigrants but this time i claim it will not work the bulk of them remains outside this fact makes the situation of immigrant refugees very tragic they are caught in a kind of social limbo a deadlock from which fundamentalism a exit. with regard to the circulation of global capital, refugees are put in a position of surplus humanity, a mirror image of surplus value, and no humanitarian help and openness can resolve this tension. only a restructuring of the entire international edifice. there is a passage in vladimir putin's recent interview where one can feel how he really speaks from his heart. it occurs when he solemnly declares his zero tolerance for spies who betray their country treason is the gravest crime possible and traitors must be punished it is clear from this outburst that putin has no personal sympathy for snowden or assange he just helps them to annoy in order to annoy his enemies and one can only imagine the fate of an eventual russian snowden or assange one can only wonder there some western leftists who continue to claim that in spite of his socially conservative stance putin poses an obstacle to american world domination and should be for this reason viewed with sympathy there are circumstances i claim, when treason the betrayal of one's own nation state is the greatest act of ethical fidelity. today, such treason is personified by names like assange man snowden why? the entire ethics of stake of a nation state culminates in the highest act of heroism the readiness to sacrifice one's life for one's nation state which means that the wild barbarian relations between states serve as the foundation of the ethical life within a state in today's north korea with its ruthless pursuit of nuclear weapons and rockets is this not the example of the logic of unconditional national state sovereignty the moment we fully accept the fact that we live on a spaceship earth the task that urgently imposes itself is that of civilising civilizations themselves and this brings us to the second apocalyptic threat the commons of external nature threatened by pollution and exploitation i am well aware how uncertain analyses and projections are in this domain it will be certain what is going on only when it will be too late. what i nonetheless see as certain is that there is a prospect of a catastrophe here sensitive data seem to me abundant enough so we should act in some large scale collective way how? ideologies today i think ecology is today one of the major ideological battlefields with a whole series of strategies to obfuscate the true dimension of the threat. first simple ignorance donald trump it's a marginal phenomenon life goes on don't worry second science and technology can save us don't worry scientists will come with solutions three leave the solution to the market higher taxation of the polluters and so on and the last two which i really despise four. the supererego pressure on personal responsibility instead of large systemic measures. when you criticize the system the answer you get is but did you do your duty did you put all coca-cola cans on one side did you recycle all the paper it's a wonderful formula. this is ideology at its best because first it makes you responsible and it offers you an easy way out. separate your cocaola hands hands and you did your duty you can go on but the fifth the worst version is for me so called deep ecology the idea that we should renounce traditional life the arrogant life we should renounce human hub and become again respectful children of our mother nature this whole paradigm of mother nature derailed by our human excess is i think wrong what mother nature mother nature is a dirty beak just imagine all that. catastrophes that happened on earth before humanity where does oil come from nature is completely chaotic. don't play the game of returning to balance that's the problem there is no natural balance what all the talk about how we humanity pose a threat to the life on the earth really amounts to is our worry about our own fate what if we cost the end of human life on earth. earth itself is indifferent to it. earth already went through many similar destruction. when we worry about environment, let's be at least honest, we worry about our own environment. we want our own good and safe life. ideology is at its worst here. why do we buy organic food? i don't know how it is with you but all my friends admit to me the same point. do you really believe that the half-ten and expensive organic apples are really healthier? the point is it's ideology. you feel good you see i bought them although they are half rotten and it's pure ideal because in this way i did something for humanity and mother earth. that's ideology in our everyday life. so how to act? now i go even further. we are in a deep mess there is no simple democratic solution here people talk as if politicians and corrupted scientists are covering up the truth okay, but what should we do there are many desperate proposals for example srm solar radiation management the continuous massive dispersals of aerosols into our atmosphere to absorb sunlight and thus cool the planet however srm is extremely risky we don't know what it can do trigger maybe some unpredictable effects so i think the first step to be serious is to admit that there is no simple clear way out. it's a... very sad confused complex situation the least we can do is set the priorities straight and admit the absurdity of our geopolitical war games when the very planet for which we are for which wars are fought is under threat that we should. begin. this brings me to the third threat the commons of internal nature when the threat posed by the digitalization of our lives is debated in our media, the focus is usually on the new phase of capitalism called by shoshana zuboff surveillance capitalism. quote knowledge, authority and power rest with surveillance capital, for which we are merely human natural resources. we are the native peoples now whose claims to determination have vanished from the maps of our own experience. end quote so we the wards are not just material, we are also exploited, involved in an unequal exchange, which is why the term behavioral surplus is justified here. when we are surfing, buying, watching tv and so on, we get what we want, but we give more. we lay ourselves bare. we make the details of our lives and its habits transparent to the digital big other. the paradox is that we experience this unequal exchange, the activity which effectively enslaves us as our highest exercise of freedom. what is more freedom and freely surfing on the web just by exerting this freedom of ours, we generate the surplus appropriated by the digital big other which collects data. however, and don't be afraid, i am coming important as this surveillance capitalism is i think it's not yet the true game changer i see a much greater potential for new forms of domination in the prospect of direct brain machine all. all kinds of secret agencies are working intensely on it. what we learn is just the public face of it, the often sensational news about it in our public media. like, you know, a totally crippled man now which his mind alone can make objects move and so on and so on. yeah, but what about billions, billions invested by military machinery into direct mind control and so on and so on? one one. where do i see a threat here again a threat in this idea that. our mind processes can directly interact without. communication media like language and so on with the machine. the distance between our inner life, the flow of our thoughts, and external reality is the basis of our self-perception as free beings. we are free in our thoughts, precisely because i am aware that what i think stays with me. i can play with my thoughts i can make thought experiments engage in dreaming and so on with no direct consequences in reality this is now potentially under threat and just don't tell me oh it will take centuries till we do it at an elementary level it is already happening was it reported in your media that i read somewhere two or three weeks ago that in china i don't like to focus on china because we like to report things about china to paint them as these eccentric totalitarians but we are doing the same things in maybe in for example in some elementary school classes in china pupils already have to wear some kind of a frame on their head which controls the activity of their brain so that the teacher can see. on a screen if they are listening to his talk or just dozing off and so on that's just the beginning i mean the potentials are absolutely incredible here and so then how are we two. fight all this. ah now comes my final pessimism i don't have a simple clear answer all i know is that neither although they should be used yes i am for market regulation welfare state and so on but neither market nor state apparatuses as we know them, i think can do the job. so i will just to conclude, propose to shock you a little bit a combination of two things which have this very obscure totalitarian associations, voluntarism and terror. first voluntarism the only way to confront the threat of ecological catastrophe, i think, is by means of large scale collective decisions which will counter to the spontaneous im logic of capitalist development. i refer here implicitly to walter benjamin who wrote in his thesis on the concept of history that today the task is not in this old marxist term, to be on on the train of progress and so on but to pull the emergency brake on the train we no longer can afford this old fashioned marxist alliance history is on our side no, it's not. we have to... in a voluntarist way by this i mean with no foundation in some objective tendencies of social development and so on and so on and this i want combined with terror don't be afraid. i'm not for new communist terror. just the opposite. my idea is, what if in some sense, the united states are right to denounce now in their pursuit of julian assange, to denounce wikileaks as a terrorist organization. in some sense, they are. they are clearly breaking the laws, disturbing proper relations, know, and so on and so on and so on. i think that you know who is for me, i know how provocative i am. i'm advocating terror. yes, but... my figure of the terrorist is the informer. you know, this lowest idea of whistleblower, informer who denounces you and so on and so on, that's what we need today. this type of traitors are maybe the only authentic heroes today. now you are quite right to ask me but is this not a crazy utopia will people be mobilised in this sense answer ist. maybe probably even no but my only answer is that it is even more utopian to think that we can somehow manage to survive without similar radical measures my dogma is that to think that somehow we will manage don't worry too much. one somehow it will go that this is the true utopia. you know, it's no longer ecological threat, digital control and so on. it's no longer something happening in third world countries. it's just slowly progressive. look at what's happening happens now in australia, in india and so on and so on. it will just go on. and i just pray that a not too large catastrophe, ecological or whatever, we... b. enough to awaken us if you want but i'm pessimist. i'm a pessimist and that's good because to conclude with a personal thought, i think that today to be in a good mood, you have to be a pessimist. why? because a pessimist doesn't expect a lot. but from time to time, nice things happen. and that's beautiful, you know like, oh my god, it's not all so bad. if you are today an optimist, it's the way to suicide. you are all the time. so just what i to finish. if you allow me half a minute, even less improvisation. what i'm very traditional, even conservative at this level. i hate this obsession with good life, happiness, and so on and so on. no, happiness is for pimps, whatever. i hate it. i want traumas, i want shock and so on. the third thing for me, okay, at my old age, it doesn't matter, is what's happening with... what's happening, for example, with sexuality today? did you notice how today passionate love to one person is considered almost something dangerous, outdated? the ideological message that we get from society today is be plastic, reconstruct yourself, try everything, make experiments and so on and so on. no, i think what do i mean when i say i'm for a catastrophe? imagine yourself not being in love. it's usually very happy life if you have a job and so on. you have your job, afternoon you go to a drink beer with friends, maybe a one-night stand here and there. life goes on, then all of a sudden you passionately fall in love. the same role can be also played by engaging writing, scientific discovery, whatever. admit it, your life is ruined. you worry all the time the peaceful times are over. in this sense, yes, i want a traumatic life where you cannot even sleep well and so on and so on. i hope we be still we are still ready. to do it i'm very sorry if i was too long i am very grateful for your attention. thank you very much. i'm sorry.
Moderator / Host
little. thank you so much. thank you so much, slavo. i now call upon professor tyler cohen to enter the stage to conduct the interview with slavo gisek. it's a pleasure for me to welcome tyler cohen back to bergen, where he was a symposium speaker during the celebration of hberg prize laureate cass sunstein in june 2018. tyler cohen is holbert l. harris professor of economics at george mason university and director of the mercatus center. in two201 and eleven he was named in an economist poll of experts as one of the most influential economists of the last decade and bloomberg business week has dubbed him america's hottest economist' he's co-author of the blog marginalrevolution.com and host of the podcast series conversations with tyler. please take it away, tk.
little. thank you so much. thank you so much, slavo. i now call upon professor tyler cohen to enter the stage to conduct the interview with slavo gisek. it's a pleasure for me to welcome tyler cohen back to bergen, where he was a symposium speaker during the celebration of hberg prize laureate cass sunstein in june 2018. tyler cohen is holbert l. harris professor of economics at george mason university and director of the mercatus center. in two201 and eleven he was named in an economist poll of experts as one of the most influential economists of the last decade and bloomberg business week has dubbed him america's hottest economist' he's co-author of the blog marginalrevolution.com and host of the podcast series conversations with tyler. please take it away, tk.
Slavoj Žižek
before you begin one thing let me express my admiration for him i am a strange communist like marx who said that one can learn more from a conservative like balzac than from all progressives about economy i think that our only true partners the true leftists today are modest intelligent honest sceptics conservatives this morning he provided the best i'm grateful for it the best definition of myself. he told me that he considers me a moderate conservative communist. my gratitude to you.
before you begin one thing let me express my admiration for him i am a strange communist like marx who said that one can learn more from a conservative like balzac than from all progressives about economy i think that our only true partners the true leftists today are modest intelligent honest sceptics conservatives this morning he provided the best i'm grateful for it the best definition of myself. he told me that he considers me a moderate conservative communist. my gratitude to you.
Tyler Cowen
i would like to pursue this theme. thank you for your remarks. the assigned topic was why i am still a communist. i think in fact, what you argued was why i am no longer a communist. and you can be thought of as favoring a kind of social democracy with more effort directed at climate change. but before we get to psychoanalyzing you, let me me start with a simple factual question. so you cite china as the biggest success story of communism, but is it so successful? it has right now the per capita income pretty much exactly equal to mexico. not so impressive. if you look at capitalist taiwan, it has the per capita income of france, single payer health insurance, gay marriage. it's a complete liberal democracy. life there is very nice. furthermore, the last 30 years, the air in taiwan has become much cleaner, the in china has become much dirtier. so why isn't china the failure, taiwan the success? and yes, it's a vote for capitalism, not communism.
i would like to pursue this theme. thank you for your remarks. the assigned topic was why i am still a communist. i think in fact, what you argued was why i am no longer a communist. and you can be thought of as favoring a kind of social democracy with more effort directed at climate change. but before we get to psychoanalyzing you, let me me start with a simple factual question. so you cite china as the biggest success story of communism, but is it so successful? it has right now the per capita income pretty much exactly equal to mexico. not so impressive. if you look at capitalist taiwan, it has the per capita income of france, single payer health insurance, gay marriage. it's a complete liberal democracy. life there is very nice. furthermore, the last 30 years, the air in taiwan has become much cleaner, the in china has become much dirtier. so why isn't china the failure, taiwan the success? and yes, it's a vote for capitalism, not communism.
Slavoj Žižek
ah yeah, you're already asking me a question. okay, yes. okay,, no, no, first, but if you compare... what china fifty years ago, the difference is still absolutely shocking. look at shanghai, beijing today and so on. second point, you know, forget about per capita, compare prices and so on and you will see that today's china that today's china, the standard of living of middle classes at least in the developed part you know numbers at this level don't. tell a lot but at one point i agree with you that in the long term this whatever we call it chinese authoritarian capitalism or whatever we call it will not work i think
ah yeah, you're already asking me a question. okay, yes. okay,, no, no, first, but if you compare... what china fifty years ago, the difference is still absolutely shocking. look at shanghai, beijing today and so on. second point, you know, forget about per capita, compare prices and so on and you will see that today's china that today's china, the standard of living of middle classes at least in the developed part you know numbers at this level don't. tell a lot but at one point i agree with you that in the long term this whatever we call it chinese authoritarian capitalism or whatever we call it will not work i think
Tyler Cowen
and china has put over a million people in concentration camps. their labor force is already shrinking. rate of growth is falling. so you are in fact, a moderate right pro-taiwan communist. yes.
and china has put over a million people in concentration camps. their labor force is already shrinking. rate of growth is falling. so you are in fact, a moderate right pro-taiwan communist. yes.
Slavoj Žižek
no, but... okay, no, can i briefly answer you very honestly? i see all your points. i agree with them. but my point is this one, nonetheless. and now i want to ask you, if i may, a question yes. okay, i know we exaggerate and i'm well aware of i emphasize it, do you remember how easy it is to fall into this fascination by catastrophic prospect. do you remember no, you are not old enough i am some of you must around30,40 years ago, most of europe, especially germany, i remember very well was obsessed by wben
no, but... okay, no, can i briefly answer you very honestly? i see all your points. i agree with them. but my point is this one, nonetheless. and now i want to ask you, if i may, a question yes. okay, i know we exaggerate and i'm well aware of i emphasize it, do you remember how easy it is to fall into this fascination by catastrophic prospect. do you remember no, you are not old enough i am some of you must around30,40 years ago, most of europe, especially germany, i remember very well was obsessed by wben
Tyler Cowen
i live in germany.
i live in germany.
Slavoj Žižek
and i remember the cover of spiegel, they demonstrated exactly with statistics that 40, 50 years after that time, today, europe will be without forests. and sad to tell you, but according to some statistics, today there are more forests in the world than at any point in the last 100 years. so i'm over aware of this fascination of catastrophe. but nonetheless, i think and you can deny it i will not. when we communists take over you will go to gulag but for different reasons know why i'm glad to talk with him that you know in today's politically correct climate in typical western academic institutions you cannot talk like that know no but seriously but i nonetheless see these threats and i could go on indefinitely. like digital control and so on. things are serious there. the extent to which we are manipulated already and so on. ecology, immigration. and did you notice i am not a simple humanitarian there. i just don't share this simple optimism on hearts and what all the poor will move to europe and whatever very very simple question i will try to cut myself short how these three domains that i outlined i think at least in the long term they need a more radical something will have to happen probably you don't agree do you see them as serious threats are you still a fukuyamaist in the sense of we just make a system function a little bit better i'm scept there
and i remember the cover of spiegel, they demonstrated exactly with statistics that 40, 50 years after that time, today, europe will be without forests. and sad to tell you, but according to some statistics, today there are more forests in the world than at any point in the last 100 years. so i'm over aware of this fascination of catastrophe. but nonetheless, i think and you can deny it i will not. when we communists take over you will go to gulag but for different reasons know why i'm glad to talk with him that you know in today's politically correct climate in typical western academic institutions you cannot talk like that know no but seriously but i nonetheless see these threats and i could go on indefinitely. like digital control and so on. things are serious there. the extent to which we are manipulated already and so on. ecology, immigration. and did you notice i am not a simple humanitarian there. i just don't share this simple optimism on hearts and what all the poor will move to europe and whatever very very simple question i will try to cut myself short how these three domains that i outlined i think at least in the long term they need a more radical something will have to happen probably you don't agree do you see them as serious threats are you still a fukuyamaist in the sense of we just make a system function a little bit better i'm scept there
Tyler Cowen
the threats you mention i all see as serious. but ecology, keep in mind the communist nations where the worst and still are. yes surveillance, the worst culprits. china, right? not a fully communist nation, but nonetheless, surveillance is worst in china. if you're worried about genetic engineering and the reshaping of mankind, biggest defender.
the threats you mention i all see as serious. but ecology, keep in mind the communist nations where the worst and still are. yes surveillance, the worst culprits. china, right? not a fully communist nation, but nonetheless, surveillance is worst in china. if you're worried about genetic engineering and the reshaping of mankind, biggest defender.
Slavoj Žižek
is likely to be china. no, i don tell. i even know, it may surprise you, the exact data i was shown by a friend in suburb of shanghai already clinics. no, no, no okay. sorry, i will not lose too much time. this will interest you. i met years ago in frankfurt book fair one high guy from chinese academy of sciences and he gave me printed in english the short program programmatic note. and it says, it shocked me literally, the goal of biogenetics in china is to regulate physical and psychic health of the chinese nation. they are directly doing it. what i only don't like is don't just evoke china as this ultimate horror. we are basically doing the same, i claim.
is likely to be china. no, i don tell. i even know, it may surprise you, the exact data i was shown by a friend in suburb of shanghai already clinics. no, no, no okay. sorry, i will not lose too much time. this will interest you. i met years ago in frankfurt book fair one high guy from chinese academy of sciences and he gave me printed in english the short program programmatic note. and it says, it shocked me literally, the goal of biogenetics in china is to regulate physical and psychic health of the chinese nation. they are directly doing it. what i only don't like is don't just evoke china as this ultimate horror. we are basically doing the same, i claim.
Tyler Cowen
let me now get to my theory of you. now, there's an old interview i read with you, and i found this passage quite striking. quote, and sympathetic, i should add. the movies i watch are often old stalinist movies. the songs that i listen to are old communist songs. dot, dot, dot. i fully admit it, but it is also my pleasure. now also, you're from slovenia, you're from the balkans. that part of the world has not developed ideally. there are far-right parties in many places. there's been war. the balkans are still a disappointment. so there's a negative outlook on the world you're from, and i view your attachment to the communist label as a kind of nostalgia, like the old stalinist songs, which you don't actually think are better than beethoven. but it's something like the old east german women who love their sp spreewald pickels, the aldkars, the trys. and the communist label for you, it's like your spreewald pickels, the gorky. it's like the trabi. and why not just cast it aside and live free? why be so tied to your own nostalgia? that's my question.
let me now get to my theory of you. now, there's an old interview i read with you, and i found this passage quite striking. quote, and sympathetic, i should add. the movies i watch are often old stalinist movies. the songs that i listen to are old communist songs. dot, dot, dot. i fully admit it, but it is also my pleasure. now also, you're from slovenia, you're from the balkans. that part of the world has not developed ideally. there are far-right parties in many places. there's been war. the balkans are still a disappointment. so there's a negative outlook on the world you're from, and i view your attachment to the communist label as a kind of nostalgia, like the old stalinist songs, which you don't actually think are better than beethoven. but it's something like the old east german women who love their sp spreewald pickels, the aldkars, the trys. and the communist label for you, it's like your spreewald pickels, the gorky. it's like the trabi. and why not just cast it aside and live free? why be so tied to your own nostalgia? that's my question.
Slavoj Žižek
okay counter question is then that obviously what i read today around nonetheless i am more of a pessimist you see we are coming back to this basic dilemma
okay counter question is then that obviously what i read today around nonetheless i am more of a pessimist you see we are coming back to this basic dilemma
Tyler Cowen
but you need this nostalgia, right? why not free yourself by jettisoning the nostalgia? and take the next step..
but you need this nostalgia, right? why not free yourself by jettisoning the nostalgia? and take the next step..
Slavoj Žižek
okay. this is okay what i would be asking you. let's go on i don't want to lose your time but what really fascinates me in stalinism is how if you look at it closely how fascinated stalinism was by for example do you know that that's why i like soviet cinemas that the absolute model of soviet cinema was hollywood they had desperate plans in the thirties to build on crime their own version of hollywood how they imitated hollywood and so on and so on i claim that you know even explicitly when stalin was asked around 193 thirty his definition of a bolshevik he said the one which combines russian dedication to a sacred cause with american pragmatism efficiency and so on and so on. but you know behind this what you call nostalgia is for me nonetheless it's much more dramatic if you want it i am the first to admit and that's my maybe we share the opinion here that's my criticism of one of the criticisms of frankfurt school as i always repeat look at habermas at his work he began publishing in the early fifties read all his work. and i don't think you will even guess from his published text that there is something like communism in east germany frankfurt school in a strange way almost totally i know there is markou's book soviet marxism but it's very specific and you know what makes it so strange the central thesis of late frankfurt school is a dialectic of enlightenment horrors of the twentieth century fascism stalinism are not simply regressions to some dark past they are deployment of a certain totalitarian whatever we call them potentials in the project of modernity itself okay. but isn't stalinism a much more traumatic example of this than fascism, which fascism things are relatively simple, i think it's a model of conservative revolution and so on and so on. but bolshevism, which tried to do a radical emancipation and it turned into work. traumatic nightmare. i think even today we don't have a good theory of stalinism. that's what bothers me. not any return to it. i will give you as a proof that it's not in this sense nostalgia. i will give you another example. i have such a memory. i always tell my friends jokes about life in the army. i served in the mid-70s in yugoslav army. but you know, it was a nightmare. i know. but what fascinated me was i never did i learn so much about ideology and my politically correct friends. for example, i wonder if some of you know, you don't have here anymore more military service in norway. but basically, on the one hand, yugoslav army was, as all armies, probably absolutely homophobic. you were gay, you were beaten by fellow soldiers every. night discreetly before being thrown out but at the same time crucial absolutely crucial. the entire life was totally penetrated by homosexual innuendos and so on. in my unit, we didn't say good morning. we say, i'll smoke your brick. thanks and after i finish with yours. so, you read all these paradoxes. what fascinates me about ideology is, and this where communism interests me, is how this is why yugoslavia which was relatively liberal communism interested me do you know that in yugoslavia it wasn't just we have our own ideology selfaged socialism i mean this literally slovenia was a small country we knew everybody else nomenclatura.
okay. this is okay what i would be asking you. let's go on i don't want to lose your time but what really fascinates me in stalinism is how if you look at it closely how fascinated stalinism was by for example do you know that that's why i like soviet cinemas that the absolute model of soviet cinema was hollywood they had desperate plans in the thirties to build on crime their own version of hollywood how they imitated hollywood and so on and so on i claim that you know even explicitly when stalin was asked around 193 thirty his definition of a bolshevik he said the one which combines russian dedication to a sacred cause with american pragmatism efficiency and so on and so on. but you know behind this what you call nostalgia is for me nonetheless it's much more dramatic if you want it i am the first to admit and that's my maybe we share the opinion here that's my criticism of one of the criticisms of frankfurt school as i always repeat look at habermas at his work he began publishing in the early fifties read all his work. and i don't think you will even guess from his published text that there is something like communism in east germany frankfurt school in a strange way almost totally i know there is markou's book soviet marxism but it's very specific and you know what makes it so strange the central thesis of late frankfurt school is a dialectic of enlightenment horrors of the twentieth century fascism stalinism are not simply regressions to some dark past they are deployment of a certain totalitarian whatever we call them potentials in the project of modernity itself okay. but isn't stalinism a much more traumatic example of this than fascism, which fascism things are relatively simple, i think it's a model of conservative revolution and so on and so on. but bolshevism, which tried to do a radical emancipation and it turned into work. traumatic nightmare. i think even today we don't have a good theory of stalinism. that's what bothers me. not any return to it. i will give you as a proof that it's not in this sense nostalgia. i will give you another example. i have such a memory. i always tell my friends jokes about life in the army. i served in the mid-70s in yugoslav army. but you know, it was a nightmare. i know. but what fascinated me was i never did i learn so much about ideology and my politically correct friends. for example, i wonder if some of you know, you don't have here anymore more military service in norway. but basically, on the one hand, yugoslav army was, as all armies, probably absolutely homophobic. you were gay, you were beaten by fellow soldiers every. night discreetly before being thrown out but at the same time crucial absolutely crucial. the entire life was totally penetrated by homosexual innuendos and so on. in my unit, we didn't say good morning. we say, i'll smoke your brick. thanks and after i finish with yours. so, you read all these paradoxes. what fascinates me about ideology is, and this where communism interests me, is how this is why yugoslavia which was relatively liberal communism interested me do you know that in yugoslavia it wasn't just we have our own ideology selfaged socialism i mean this literally slovenia was a small country we knew everybody else nomenclatura.
Tyler Cowen
something more nostalgia to me. army tales, we talked about smoking the prick, right?
something more nostalgia to me. army tales, we talked about smoking the prick, right?
Slavoj Žižek
okay but but but the lesson i learned there i don't care if you call it nostalgia the lesson and i will tell you where i see real nostalgia today the lesson for me is how an ideology can function not only even if you don't believe in it, but it is prohibited to believe in it. this was the beautiful paradox of ex-yugoslavia. i had two friends who worked but the central committee of the slovene party, they lost their job, you know why? because they were stupid and took the ruling ideology too seriously. but you know who are for me, change the topic but along the same line, the true nostalgics today. that's why i don't like the novel. this will again hurt some of you. margaret atwood's handmaid's tale. this is for me true nostalgia. it's what frederick jston called nostalgia for the present. it paints this horrible near future. it doesn't raise the crucial question. but she's still too fascinated by our permissive societies and so on and so on. you know for.
okay but but but the lesson i learned there i don't care if you call it nostalgia the lesson and i will tell you where i see real nostalgia today the lesson for me is how an ideology can function not only even if you don't believe in it, but it is prohibited to believe in it. this was the beautiful paradox of ex-yugoslavia. i had two friends who worked but the central committee of the slovene party, they lost their job, you know why? because they were stupid and took the ruling ideology too seriously. but you know who are for me, change the topic but along the same line, the true nostalgics today. that's why i don't like the novel. this will again hurt some of you. margaret atwood's handmaid's tale. this is for me true nostalgia. it's what frederick jston called nostalgia for the present. it paints this horrible near future. it doesn't raise the crucial question. but she's still too fascinated by our permissive societies and so on and so on. you know for.
Tyler Cowen
side if i visit your debate with jordan peterson, it's on youtube, i felt you won that debate. and it's striking to me the discussion between one hour, 10 minutes, and one hour, 18 minutes. and in that part of the discussion, you say that you calling yourself a communist is a bit of a provocation. but now i'd like to draw a comparison. take the writer who just won the nobel prize in literature, peter hantkin, sometimes called an austrian, but he's ethnic slovene. is. he has sympathized with the serbian atrocities. and you are hard on him, correctly so. you don't give him the space of that being a provocation. he is so close to your world that you apply a more absolutist moral standard and you want him to jettison his serbian nostalgia. and i am submitting that.
side if i visit your debate with jordan peterson, it's on youtube, i felt you won that debate. and it's striking to me the discussion between one hour, 10 minutes, and one hour, 18 minutes. and in that part of the discussion, you say that you calling yourself a communist is a bit of a provocation. but now i'd like to draw a comparison. take the writer who just won the nobel prize in literature, peter hantkin, sometimes called an austrian, but he's ethnic slovene. is. he has sympathized with the serbian atrocities. and you are hard on him, correctly so. you don't give him the space of that being a provocation. he is so close to your world that you apply a more absolutist moral standard and you want him to jettison his serbian nostalgia. and i am submitting that.
Slavoj Žižek
i can mean nostalgia. for what do i have nostalgia?
i can mean nostalgia. for what do i have nostalgia?
Tyler Cowen
the attachment to the label communist. you can do everything you want without that word, without the concept, without having
the attachment to the label communist. you can do everything you want without that word, without the concept, without having
Slavoj Žižek
let's go step by step i know the l.
let's go step by step i know the l.
Tyler Cowen
what's the difference between a communist and a nazi? tenure, right?
what's the difference between a communist and a nazi? tenure, right?
Slavoj Žižek
you mean university titania or?
you mean university titania or?
Tyler Cowen
yes, it's a joke, but the point is... you i't need communism. you are
yes, it's a joke, but the point is... you i't need communism. you are
Slavoj Žižek
let's go step by step. first, hand. my criticism of him was very specific. before he got involved into what he got involved to, i didn't like the game he played. for example, i remember his text from 30 years ago, 40 before, where he said in austria, everything is commodified. you go to a store, every brand of milk has a name. you cross the border to slovenia. is just says milk with no brand name and so on. and what i say is, we should agree even here. what i call, through borrowing the term of my friend, another austrian philosopher, robert fer, inter-passive authenticity. you want to keep your well-g-good life in the west, but you like to be authentic others. this is why we were very good. he was proud to refer to us slovenke insofar as we were the modest, poor communists. the moment we wanted our own state join european union, we betrayed his dream. that's why, maybe you know in the text, i quote this wonderful saying by gilles deès, si vous êtes pris dans le rêve de l'autre, vous êtes if you are caught into another's dream, and that's for me, we should agree the big problem of western academic left. they are always searching for another place where things really happen. when i was young, it was cuba. then it was a decade ago venez, venezuela and so on and so on. no, nothing great happens elsewhere and so on. and to my third friend. i declare that they will see if they succeed too well he will betray them also they will disappoint him. you know this is what annoys me with h if you ask me but listen talking about nostalgia i'm sorry to tell you but i'm not saying i am. i was a great dissident but now i will say something arrogant if there are not some great dissidents from eastern europe here then probably i can venture a hypothesis that i did more for the dis of east european communism than any of you in this room. i was for five years unemployed i had to survive through parents and so on and so on so i was there when it was needed and so on and i'm even a little bit proud to say that the role i played at that time is that when you said we have problems right wing politicians yes we also do it but slovenia is the only post-yugoslav country where nationalists never took over. that we did. i was at that time, it will shock you, member of a party called liberal democratic party. and we did it. but you know what for me again, i return to that. i appreciate okay, but please ask me that question how will we deal with ecology? you really think that with market a little bit of debt it can be dealt? we need.
let's go step by step. first, hand. my criticism of him was very specific. before he got involved into what he got involved to, i didn't like the game he played. for example, i remember his text from 30 years ago, 40 before, where he said in austria, everything is commodified. you go to a store, every brand of milk has a name. you cross the border to slovenia. is just says milk with no brand name and so on. and what i say is, we should agree even here. what i call, through borrowing the term of my friend, another austrian philosopher, robert fer, inter-passive authenticity. you want to keep your well-g-good life in the west, but you like to be authentic others. this is why we were very good. he was proud to refer to us slovenke insofar as we were the modest, poor communists. the moment we wanted our own state join european union, we betrayed his dream. that's why, maybe you know in the text, i quote this wonderful saying by gilles deès, si vous êtes pris dans le rêve de l'autre, vous êtes if you are caught into another's dream, and that's for me, we should agree the big problem of western academic left. they are always searching for another place where things really happen. when i was young, it was cuba. then it was a decade ago venez, venezuela and so on and so on. no, nothing great happens elsewhere and so on. and to my third friend. i declare that they will see if they succeed too well he will betray them also they will disappoint him. you know this is what annoys me with h if you ask me but listen talking about nostalgia i'm sorry to tell you but i'm not saying i am. i was a great dissident but now i will say something arrogant if there are not some great dissidents from eastern europe here then probably i can venture a hypothesis that i did more for the dis of east european communism than any of you in this room. i was for five years unemployed i had to survive through parents and so on and so on so i was there when it was needed and so on and i'm even a little bit proud to say that the role i played at that time is that when you said we have problems right wing politicians yes we also do it but slovenia is the only post-yugoslav country where nationalists never took over. that we did. i was at that time, it will shock you, member of a party called liberal democratic party. and we did it. but you know what for me again, i return to that. i appreciate okay, but please ask me that question how will we deal with ecology? you really think that with market a little bit of debt it can be dealt? we need.
Tyler Cowen
more
more
Slavoj Žižek
than that.
than that.
Tyler Cowen
we don.
we don.
Slavoj Žižek
i call that more communism. you know why? people idiots tell me, not you. why don't you call it socialism? everybody is a socialist today. bill gates says he's a socialist and so on. it's meaningless. socialism basically means today you care for society. hitler cared for society. i don't care. you know i just want to signal that as you nicely said now, something a little bit more radical will be needed that's all i'm saying
i call that more communism. you know why? people idiots tell me, not you. why don't you call it socialism? everybody is a socialist today. bill gates says he's a socialist and so on. it's meaningless. socialism basically means today you care for society. hitler cared for society. i don't care. you know i just want to signal that as you nicely said now, something a little bit more radical will be needed that's all i'm saying
Tyler Cowen
sometimes, i love your books. i've read more than half of them.
sometimes, i love your books. i've read more than half of them.
Slavoj Žižek
madman, madman. your gulak sentence is redoubled now.
madman, madman. your gulak sentence is redoubled now.
Tyler Cowen
but one thing i crave is to one day just see you writing about a question like the electric tram in bergen. should it go through a tunnel or not? and you would not be allowed to mention fukuyyama, you couldn't use the seaw word capitalism or communism. and just analyze that question or look at a municipal bus system in denmark somewhere. and those to me, are in questions. you have a den because i will tell
but one thing i crave is to one day just see you writing about a question like the electric tram in bergen. should it go through a tunnel or not? and you would not be allowed to mention fukuyyama, you couldn't use the seaw word capitalism or communism. and just analyze that question or look at a municipal bus system in denmark somewhere. and those to me, are in questions. you have a den because i will tell
Slavoj Žižek
you why not this? this may surprise you the answer. yes first, you know, i tremendous, this was the point, you know, when in my short speech short when i said i despise for me the model of catastrophe today my friend they cried takir square in. we were there, one million people. we were all crying wonderful. i say f off. what trust me i hope we agree here what happens two months later i'm all for this pragmatic. concrete problems i am not waiting for a big revolution i just am, now this may surprise you for somebody who may sound so bombastic and pretentious like me, you know, strange it will sound, but i don't know everything i'm immediately thinking in literal terms what to do with so many factors. i don't know enough. i like these totally empirical, totally concrete empirical problems. i like paradoxes. for example, would you agree very briefly, maybe you found this in one of my books. i'm not quoting this as an argument for anti-capitalism. i don't know that. but there are some group experiments which fascinate me which prove that you cannot reduce some forms of solidarity to money. a jewish friend from israel told me this they had a kindergarten
you why not this? this may surprise you the answer. yes first, you know, i tremendous, this was the point, you know, when in my short speech short when i said i despise for me the model of catastrophe today my friend they cried takir square in. we were there, one million people. we were all crying wonderful. i say f off. what trust me i hope we agree here what happens two months later i'm all for this pragmatic. concrete problems i am not waiting for a big revolution i just am, now this may surprise you for somebody who may sound so bombastic and pretentious like me, you know, strange it will sound, but i don't know everything i'm immediately thinking in literal terms what to do with so many factors. i don't know enough. i like these totally empirical, totally concrete empirical problems. i like paradoxes. for example, would you agree very briefly, maybe you found this in one of my books. i'm not quoting this as an argument for anti-capitalism. i don't know that. but there are some group experiments which fascinate me which prove that you cannot reduce some forms of solidarity to money. a jewish friend from israel told me this they had a kindergarten
Tyler Cowen
there and this story is apocryphal. people have tried to follow up on the kindergarten in israel story. it's probably not true.
there and this story is apocryphal. people have tried to follow up on the kindergarten in israel story. it's probably not true.
Slavoj Žižek
are we talking about when they made pay?
are we talking about when they made pay?
Tyler Cowen
we're not sure this is true. i've looked really. it's possibly true. it cannot be confirmed. but i accept the point.
we're not sure this is true. i've looked really. it's possibly true. it cannot be confirmed. but i accept the point.
Slavoj Žižek
so.
so.
Tyler Cowen
the point is that i believe...
the point is that i believe...
Slavoj Žižek
and when i talk about communism and so on my god i've written texts on it and i go on into it into for me communism is just as i emphasize the name of a problem it is not a solution. you know now i will say something that will shock you i am well aware some of my communist friends admitted that even if we imagine something similar to communism the mega problem will be envy and so on. and this is who is one of the great guys, my god, the one who conducted chile according to leftist mythology, not me, the economist, free market, who advised pinochet accordingberger. no, no, no no, the big guy. f. i think he only visited once or.
and when i talk about communism and so on my god i've written texts on it and i go on into it into for me communism is just as i emphasize the name of a problem it is not a solution. you know now i will say something that will shock you i am well aware some of my communist friends admitted that even if we imagine something similar to communism the mega problem will be envy and so on. and this is who is one of the great guys, my god, the one who conducted chile according to leftist mythology, not me, the economist, free market, who advised pinochet accordingberger. no, no, no no, the big guy. f. i think he only visited once or.
Tyler Cowen
de.
de.
Slavoj Žižek
that's not my point, but one of those guys when reproached with the fact that that capitalism is unjust, you work harsh, you fail, your neighbor was there. he said, but that's why capitalism works. because he said, your pride survives intact. let's say we are two guys. we live in a just society. and if there is no luck and injustice, this means if you are richer than me, i have to admit that i am more stupid than you. but capitalist injustice is a very elegant. argument.
that's not my point, but one of those guys when reproached with the fact that that capitalism is unjust, you work harsh, you fail, your neighbor was there. he said, but that's why capitalism works. because he said, your pride survives intact. let's say we are two guys. we live in a just society. and if there is no luck and injustice, this means if you are richer than me, i have to admit that i am more stupid than you. but capitalist injustice is a very elegant. argument.
Tyler Cowen
communism is easy in a way. you always have an excuse, right? yeah the system screwed. and.
communism is easy in a way. you always have an excuse, right? yeah the system screwed. and.
Slavoj Žižek
you're always right. so i will ask you, this is my big argument against happiness. do you agree if you are now like my status observer, you have your list of you remember when i argue about happiness against... yes i take as an example, and i was there, i talk with people. who sucks czechoslovakia in the seventies? material needs were basically satisfied nobody was doing that and as you said you always had an excuse there was too much rain or drought communists screwed it up then very important you had a nearby country west germany which was the ideal other but which was not too far away and so on that's why i'm against happiness happiness means no responsibility relatively comfortable life you know because already after khhrushkv basically with brezhnev you must know this, communists in power made a pact with the population they admitted we will never reach the west but the message was you leave us political power we leave you your private niche where you can enjoy your life and so on and so on the whole i think that khrushchev was paradoxically don't you agree the last guy who somehow paradoxically you know he was sincere in that you must know it united nations speech where he the last epoch where the ruling nomenclatura have still believed in communism. after that, it's a totally different logic of emancipation. some of the communists in power, i love this in yugoslavia, even referred to maruse, frankfurt school. they said, but you know, in the west, you have commodification, alienation, here, you can take it easy, it's more poor and so on and so on. you know. sorry. let me praise you some more.
you're always right. so i will ask you, this is my big argument against happiness. do you agree if you are now like my status observer, you have your list of you remember when i argue about happiness against... yes i take as an example, and i was there, i talk with people. who sucks czechoslovakia in the seventies? material needs were basically satisfied nobody was doing that and as you said you always had an excuse there was too much rain or drought communists screwed it up then very important you had a nearby country west germany which was the ideal other but which was not too far away and so on that's why i'm against happiness happiness means no responsibility relatively comfortable life you know because already after khhrushkv basically with brezhnev you must know this, communists in power made a pact with the population they admitted we will never reach the west but the message was you leave us political power we leave you your private niche where you can enjoy your life and so on and so on the whole i think that khrushchev was paradoxically don't you agree the last guy who somehow paradoxically you know he was sincere in that you must know it united nations speech where he the last epoch where the ruling nomenclatura have still believed in communism. after that, it's a totally different logic of emancipation. some of the communists in power, i love this in yugoslavia, even referred to maruse, frankfurt school. they said, but you know, in the west, you have commodification, alienation, here, you can take it easy, it's more poor and so on and so on. you know. sorry. let me praise you some more.
Tyler Cowen
no,, all your books i've read, one of my favorite things in the books is how much humor you have and in person.
no,, all your books i've read, one of my favorite things in the books is how much humor you have and in person.
Slavoj Žižek
i. or over breakfast for this i will share your selling gulak.
i. or over breakfast for this i will share your selling gulak.
Tyler Cowen
very. your humor, which is based on insight,, rather than any youngongman type of jokes, is phenomenally good. but here's what strikes me. you have the humor of a right-winger, of a right-wing moderate. so if you think of today's left, it is increasingly humorless. you're not allowed to talk about so many things on gender, your views are much more right-wing than left-wing.
very. your humor, which is based on insight,, rather than any youngongman type of jokes, is phenomenally good. but here's what strikes me. you have the humor of a right-winger, of a right-wing moderate. so if you think of today's left, it is increasingly humorless. you're not allowed to talk about so many things on gender, your views are much more right-wing than left-wing.
Slavoj Žižek
debatable, i don't.
debatable, i don't.
Tyler Cowen
the left wing is. when i sit down with my right-wing friends and they joke around, their jokes are in broad terms like yours. left-wing
the left wing is. when i sit down with my right-wing friends and they joke around, their jokes are in broad terms like yours. left-wing
Slavoj Žižek
mer.
mer.
Tyler Cowen
humor is.
humor is.
Slavoj Žižek
it's a very simple one. my answer to this is that's why the political correct leftists are doing all possible to get trump re-elected, if you ask me. a little bit more years on this and we will be where we are. but let me at as a time of friendship to you., another bad taste humor about you. you are my friend, i like you. so when we communists take over, yes. nonetheless, because you are objectively guilty, you go to gulag. okay. but as a special favor to you, you know what you got on better days in gulag on saturdays? some kind of disgusting soup, entrails and heads, half- rottenten fishes and potatoes. i
it's a very simple one. my answer to this is that's why the political correct leftists are doing all possible to get trump re-elected, if you ask me. a little bit more years on this and we will be where we are. but let me at as a time of friendship to you., another bad taste humor about you. you are my friend, i like you. so when we communists take over, yes. nonetheless, because you are objectively guilty, you go to gulag. okay. but as a special favor to you, you know what you got on better days in gulag on saturdays? some kind of disgusting soup, entrails and heads, half- rottenten fishes and potatoes. i
Tyler Cowen
so
so
Slavoj Žižek
don don't exaggerate.
don don't exaggerate.
Tyler Cowen
okay,.
okay,.
Slavoj Žižek
i will call from my moscow center. yes, and isn't it nice? you will get two plates of that soup.
i will call from my moscow center. yes, and isn't it nice? you will get two plates of that soup.
Tyler Cowen
. do you agree you have an increasingly right-wing sense of humor and that if we're going to be?
. do you agree you have an increasingly right-wing sense of humor and that if we're going to be?
Slavoj Žižek
king.
king.
Tyler Cowen
whenever you're willing to make fun of your irony, it is no longer left-wing humor. the world has much work left the worse. okay. we're making progress. maybe. you are indeed the moderate right, communist, nostalgia, rum state communist who is maybe almost ready to abandon that final bit of the nostalgia.
whenever you're willing to make fun of your irony, it is no longer left-wing humor. the world has much work left the worse. okay. we're making progress. maybe. you are indeed the moderate right, communist, nostalgia, rum state communist who is maybe almost ready to abandon that final bit of the nostalgia.
Slavoj Žižek
count on that too much because i still think that the crisis will hit us. i see signs, here comes my pessimism. i think that the situation today with new right-wing blah blah blah and here, as we already talked about it, i'm very open for example, do they exist here? not we talked about it so-calledataires. usually they decri as the worst. women noasc no, they do something i think almost tragic. they try to turn their failure. and already this is politically incorrect to state today. you cannot address a woman almost it's prohibited saying she is beautiful. you cannot say to a man you are non-attractive enough you cannot get any woman. but that's their experience and i admire how without any imminent violence they turn this into a wonderful performance especially clown cells and so on. it's a wonderful way to survive a pretty terrifying predicament and i don't buy that they are automatically neoofascists and so on. concerning feminism and my reproach to me too is not they are too radical and so on but it's an upper middle class fake they don't really american feminism should first do, i hope we agree here a little bit of a good old fashioned stalinist you will say again nostalgia, selfriticism. you know there are so many things of american feminism. do you know for example, they supported that american invasion of iraq that it will help women well, we know today that the situation of women today in iraq is much worse than under saddam. shadam was in. brutal despot but relatively secular. women had today it's i mean i don't this is what bothers me. second problem you will again say i'm conservative here. fuck it i don't care. the problem with political correctness is for me that questions which are questions of not manners in a superficial sense, but of customs. here i am, as you know, a hegelian. hegel always emphasized the basis that hold society together are unwritten rules, customs and so on. political correctness tries much, too much to legalize it, you know, you are allowed to call this name. they try to, for example, let me give you a provocative. example you know it to provoke you uh once i problematized, how is it called, this idea of consent, even bureaucratic consent, you have to state it on a selfie sign before mutual agreement. and they say, oh, so i think we can rape women, we don't need consent. they totally misled me on the opposite. i just claim consent in itself is good, better than nothing. but it doesn't solve the problem there is so much pressure violence which can survive the forum of consent even if there is a formal consent sexual exploitation can go on and so on and so on. my problem with lgbt plus is if i am attacking them. no the problem i see there i wonder if you agree is this one i have a problem with identity politics. the problem is that the idea of predominant there are many lgbt plus who are extremely good persons but the predominant view is the one of this one i simplify it there is some kind of a multiplicity of gender positions flourishing. it's almost the maoist version, let the hundred flowers blossom. let 100 books gender b, tr-sex, and then evil patriarchy comes, imposes the binary division. let's get rid of this. and some of them even establish a list,30, 35 positions. my god, and then they say freud is outdated. there is anything to learn from freud is that sexuality is in itself antagonist, traumatic, shady domains and so on and so on. that's my first point. so it's as if what bothers me in lgbt plus is as if if we get rid of social pressure, we we get some kind of happy sexuality. the first presupposition that i adopt here is because you do what you desire. my god, didn't they read freud? how do we know how do you know that you really desire what you think that you desire? there are all the ambiguities here. my second problem, and that's the theoretical one. let's move into hegel a little bit. maybe you know my line. lgbt plus it's all about plus, no? because the ordinary lgbt theorists are for me two british empiricists. plus is for them simply maybe we don't yet know all identities, let's leave it open. you know, maybe there will be other gender identities, we will include them. no. i got this, i forgot carne, i'm sorry, from an australian lgbt theorist, very intelligent lady, who wrote to me, what if? plus itself is a subjective position. you can be a plus in the sense of, you know, at a distance, doubting. and i think this is feminine position at it stronger. i will go to absolutely everyday level. that's why the most provocative woman's answer is, why do you love me? because there is no answer to this question. the moment you answer it, it's not true love, by definition. if i tell you why i love you, then it becomes a matter of you know so what i'm saying is that i just try to complicate things.
count on that too much because i still think that the crisis will hit us. i see signs, here comes my pessimism. i think that the situation today with new right-wing blah blah blah and here, as we already talked about it, i'm very open for example, do they exist here? not we talked about it so-calledataires. usually they decri as the worst. women noasc no, they do something i think almost tragic. they try to turn their failure. and already this is politically incorrect to state today. you cannot address a woman almost it's prohibited saying she is beautiful. you cannot say to a man you are non-attractive enough you cannot get any woman. but that's their experience and i admire how without any imminent violence they turn this into a wonderful performance especially clown cells and so on. it's a wonderful way to survive a pretty terrifying predicament and i don't buy that they are automatically neoofascists and so on. concerning feminism and my reproach to me too is not they are too radical and so on but it's an upper middle class fake they don't really american feminism should first do, i hope we agree here a little bit of a good old fashioned stalinist you will say again nostalgia, selfriticism. you know there are so many things of american feminism. do you know for example, they supported that american invasion of iraq that it will help women well, we know today that the situation of women today in iraq is much worse than under saddam. shadam was in. brutal despot but relatively secular. women had today it's i mean i don't this is what bothers me. second problem you will again say i'm conservative here. fuck it i don't care. the problem with political correctness is for me that questions which are questions of not manners in a superficial sense, but of customs. here i am, as you know, a hegelian. hegel always emphasized the basis that hold society together are unwritten rules, customs and so on. political correctness tries much, too much to legalize it, you know, you are allowed to call this name. they try to, for example, let me give you a provocative. example you know it to provoke you uh once i problematized, how is it called, this idea of consent, even bureaucratic consent, you have to state it on a selfie sign before mutual agreement. and they say, oh, so i think we can rape women, we don't need consent. they totally misled me on the opposite. i just claim consent in itself is good, better than nothing. but it doesn't solve the problem there is so much pressure violence which can survive the forum of consent even if there is a formal consent sexual exploitation can go on and so on and so on. my problem with lgbt plus is if i am attacking them. no the problem i see there i wonder if you agree is this one i have a problem with identity politics. the problem is that the idea of predominant there are many lgbt plus who are extremely good persons but the predominant view is the one of this one i simplify it there is some kind of a multiplicity of gender positions flourishing. it's almost the maoist version, let the hundred flowers blossom. let 100 books gender b, tr-sex, and then evil patriarchy comes, imposes the binary division. let's get rid of this. and some of them even establish a list,30, 35 positions. my god, and then they say freud is outdated. there is anything to learn from freud is that sexuality is in itself antagonist, traumatic, shady domains and so on and so on. that's my first point. so it's as if what bothers me in lgbt plus is as if if we get rid of social pressure, we we get some kind of happy sexuality. the first presupposition that i adopt here is because you do what you desire. my god, didn't they read freud? how do we know how do you know that you really desire what you think that you desire? there are all the ambiguities here. my second problem, and that's the theoretical one. let's move into hegel a little bit. maybe you know my line. lgbt plus it's all about plus, no? because the ordinary lgbt theorists are for me two british empiricists. plus is for them simply maybe we don't yet know all identities, let's leave it open. you know, maybe there will be other gender identities, we will include them. no. i got this, i forgot carne, i'm sorry, from an australian lgbt theorist, very intelligent lady, who wrote to me, what if? plus itself is a subjective position. you can be a plus in the sense of, you know, at a distance, doubting. and i think this is feminine position at it stronger. i will go to absolutely everyday level. that's why the most provocative woman's answer is, why do you love me? because there is no answer to this question. the moment you answer it, it's not true love, by definition. if i tell you why i love you, then it becomes a matter of you know so what i'm saying is that i just try to complicate things.
Tyler Cowen
why not move to singapore? yeah, it's a wonderful country. but if you ask which nation has the quality of government and the thoughtfulness and the long time horizon to actually deal with ecological problems, are they not near or at the top of the list? and therefore, you and i can join hands in embracing singapore and presenting it to the world
why not move to singapore? yeah, it's a wonderful country. but if you ask which nation has the quality of government and the thoughtfulness and the long time horizon to actually deal with ecological problems, are they not near or at the top of the list? and therefore, you and i can join hands in embracing singapore and presenting it to the world
Slavoj Žižek
here. be.
here. be.
Tyler Cowen
pretty
pretty
Slavoj Žižek
marxist but isn't it that singapore nonetheless enjoys its role as a structural and exception i don't think you can expand singapore to indonesia already with malaysia there are problems and so on and so on
marxist but isn't it that singapore nonetheless enjoys its role as a structural and exception i don't think you can expand singapore to indonesia already with malaysia there are problems and so on and so on
Tyler Cowen
well, every country is different, but clearly singapore has worse.
well, every country is different, but clearly singapore has worse.
Slavoj Žižek
because you know i read somewhere that singapore port is even at some point it was the busiest port in the world and so on which means they are kind of a nodal point for the countries around them i doubt. second thing, maybe i have here too much liberal sensitivity. but nonetheless, you know, it's a kind of a, the way i would define singapore, you may disagree fascism with the human face. a very human face, it's consensual and so on. but there are so strict limits, even at the everyday ridiculous level. for example, i was there with my son who wanted some chewing gum. went to a store and they laughed at me. are you crazy? you have to go to pharmacy. we went to a pharmacy, they said, okay, where do you have doctor's prescription? i said, no,...
because you know i read somewhere that singapore port is even at some point it was the busiest port in the world and so on which means they are kind of a nodal point for the countries around them i doubt. second thing, maybe i have here too much liberal sensitivity. but nonetheless, you know, it's a kind of a, the way i would define singapore, you may disagree fascism with the human face. a very human face, it's consensual and so on. but there are so strict limits, even at the everyday ridiculous level. for example, i was there with my son who wanted some chewing gum. went to a store and they laughed at me. are you crazy? you have to go to pharmacy. we went to a pharmacy, they said, okay, where do you have doctor's prescription? i said, no,...
Tyler Cowen
this is fine. this is not fascism. singapore did that because too many people were leaving the chewing gum on the subway doors and it was creating a problem.
this is fine. this is not fascism. singapore did that because too many people were leaving the chewing gum on the subway doors and it was creating a problem.
Slavoj Žižek
react react. now you.
react react. now you.
Tyler Cowen
crit criticism of singapore i say, come join me at the food stalls, right? yeah, i know where all the best ones are, right? jump on board. forget the communist thing. the nostalgia can be for singapore 13 years ago, which in some ways was less crowded, right? it's a better nostalgia. no, no, no.
crit criticism of singapore i say, come join me at the food stalls, right? yeah, i know where all the best ones are, right? jump on board. forget the communist thing. the nostalgia can be for singapore 13 years ago, which in some ways was less crowded, right? it's a better nostalgia. no, no, no.
Slavoj Žižek
but again don't you see where my communism comes seriously it precisely it's not where you think i don't think there is any link with me. clinging to the name communism and my nostalgia. those times i'm well aware were more or less a nightmare. i mean listen one reason against nostalgia is that i was jobless. although you may know this joke something wonderful happened when people ask me who is most. ooh which was the key factor for your relative success in the west? i told them communist oppression. because i applied for a job when i finished my postdoctoral studies in 1973, and this was the harsh line. i couldn't get the job. and then i was for a couple of years unemployed. i was looking for contacts in the west. without communist oppression, i would have been now an unknown professor in city of ljubljana, slovenia. ind. sometimes.
but again don't you see where my communism comes seriously it precisely it's not where you think i don't think there is any link with me. clinging to the name communism and my nostalgia. those times i'm well aware were more or less a nightmare. i mean listen one reason against nostalgia is that i was jobless. although you may know this joke something wonderful happened when people ask me who is most. ooh which was the key factor for your relative success in the west? i told them communist oppression. because i applied for a job when i finished my postdoctoral studies in 1973, and this was the harsh line. i couldn't get the job. and then i was for a couple of years unemployed. i was looking for contacts in the west. without communist oppression, i would have been now an unknown professor in city of ljubljana, slovenia. ind. sometimes.
Tyler Cowen
you remind me of laibach, the slovenian rock group.
you remind me of laibach, the slovenian rock group.
Slavoj Žižek
they are my friend, my god. i'm with them from late 80s. and now things get complicated there. you know why? because many leftists people support them are nonetheless afraid of course. okay they are staging totalitarian rituals what if some people will take it seriously and so on.
they are my friend, my god. i'm with them from late 80s. and now things get complicated there. you know why? because many leftists people support them are nonetheless afraid of course. okay they are staging totalitarian rituals what if some people will take it seriously and so on.
Tyler Cowen
and once they were asked, are you a fascist? and one of them said, i am a fascist like hitler was a painter. what answer is that? i don't know. but why can't they just say, i'm not a fascist? and then you could say, i'm not a communist, and you and leibach and we could all meet in the food stalls of singapore. iwan, have a nice time, right?
and once they were asked, are you a fascist? and one of them said, i am a fascist like hitler was a painter. what answer is that? i don't know. but why can't they just say, i'm not a fascist? and then you could say, i'm not a communist, and you and leibach and we could all meet in the food stalls of singapore. iwan, have a nice time, right?
Slavoj Žižek
don.
don.
Tyler Cowen
batter so solar power can really save us. we could have the government subsidize better battery technology. i know it's not all we need to do, but about that.
batter so solar power can really save us. we could have the government subsidize better battery technology. i know it's not all we need to do, but about that.
Slavoj Žižek
i.
i.
Tyler Cowen
it another.
it another.
Slavoj Žižek
i i can tell you from my personal contact with lib they don't mean it as an ironic spectacle. they are very serious in their heartline. that's what i like about them. they are not, don't be afraid. we are not really totalitarians. it's just one big social game and so on and so on. but at a certain point, i didn't want to join them because they wanted me, you probably know, two years ago when they went to north korea. no korea. no, it would be too much. sure, of course. i didn't want to do that communist for you. yeah. no but nonetheless you know what was so interesting with laibach here you have the complexity of ideological process that all this fear will they be manipulated by radical right and so on they never were whenever they are popular i know what the right-wingers, at least in europe, are listening. it's not the german version of lieibbach. there was some influence. do you know rammstein, the group? links, link, they are left. and it's a beautiful, the right thing to do for the left to appropriate this horrible totalitarian sounding stuff and so on and so on. the right wingers that i know, they sing beautiful, romantic songs apitical usually and so on and so on. but still, you know where you i get your point, of course. i still, when you said no, something more will be needed. ask you what more? tell me. you say no no no it's not i know ecology and so on digital control have you any idea what more will be needed what do you think that ecological party will be elected? i hope so maybe
i i can tell you from my personal contact with lib they don't mean it as an ironic spectacle. they are very serious in their heartline. that's what i like about them. they are not, don't be afraid. we are not really totalitarians. it's just one big social game and so on and so on. but at a certain point, i didn't want to join them because they wanted me, you probably know, two years ago when they went to north korea. no korea. no, it would be too much. sure, of course. i didn't want to do that communist for you. yeah. no but nonetheless you know what was so interesting with laibach here you have the complexity of ideological process that all this fear will they be manipulated by radical right and so on they never were whenever they are popular i know what the right-wingers, at least in europe, are listening. it's not the german version of lieibbach. there was some influence. do you know rammstein, the group? links, link, they are left. and it's a beautiful, the right thing to do for the left to appropriate this horrible totalitarian sounding stuff and so on and so on. the right wingers that i know, they sing beautiful, romantic songs apitical usually and so on and so on. but still, you know where you i get your point, of course. i still, when you said no, something more will be needed. ask you what more? tell me. you say no no no it's not i know ecology and so on digital control have you any idea what more will be needed what do you think that ecological party will be elected? i hope so maybe
Tyler Cowen
i was bergen, it's 20% electric cars. now, i don't know what bergen did to get that. but many parts of the world could learn from whatever has been done here.
i was bergen, it's 20% electric cars. now, i don't know what bergen did to get that. but many parts of the world could learn from whatever has been done here.
Slavoj Žižek
we are 20 that's working 60, right? yeah, but on the other hand, my only not criticism of norway is that... you have oil, gas and so on, you know you can we i would like to learn from norway, but i would like even more if you give me your natural.
we are 20 that's working 60, right? yeah, but on the other hand, my only not criticism of norway is that... you have oil, gas and so on, you know you can we i would like to learn from norway, but i would like even more if you give me your natural.
Tyler Cowen
you earn from the oil and then divest from fossil fuels.
you earn from the oil and then divest from fossil fuels.
Slavoj Žižek
i meant for you here.
i meant for you here.
Tyler Cowen
the good thing about singapore is that they have no.
the good thing about singapore is that they have no.
Slavoj Žižek
natural resources, no.
natural resources, no.
Tyler Cowen
well, they do a lot of refining there, so.
well, they do a lot of refining there, so.
Slavoj Žižek
refining k. no, not that i'm aware of. but what made it? is it kind of an incidental conjunction? that's what i would have maybe said about singapore of this... chinese proclivity to hard work and english legislation or what there must have been some unique combination there.
refining k. no, not that i'm aware of. but what made it? is it kind of an incidental conjunction? that's what i would have maybe said about singapore of this... chinese proclivity to hard work and english legislation or what there must have been some unique combination there.
Tyler Cowen
keep in mind the chinese themselves felt at first that the chinese who went to singapore were kind of the losers who were not doing well in china, the poorly educated peasants. but the singaporean government thought, let's invest in human capital.
keep in mind the chinese themselves felt at first that the chinese who went to singapore were kind of the losers who were not doing well in china, the poorly educated peasants. but the singaporean government thought, let's invest in human capital.
Slavoj Žižek
when? which government? i'm talking about when you.
when? which government? i'm talking about when you.
Tyler Cowen
yes. .
yes. .
Slavoj Žižek
and it worked. for the most part. but what then your problem with china? because do you know, you must know this, that at the beginning of his reforms, deneng xiiaoping came to singapore everybody everywhere there they saw it and said singapore should be a model for
and it worked. for the most part. but what then your problem with china? because do you know, you must know this, that at the beginning of his reforms, deneng xiiaoping came to singapore everybody everywhere there they saw it and said singapore should be a model for
Tyler Cowen
it is time for china to liberalize. i don't see them doing that. they seem to be moving in the opposite direction.
it is time for china to liberalize. i don't see them doing that. they seem to be moving in the opposite direction.
Slavoj Žižek
here and now we touch the true problem sorry now i am not losing time you know where i am a pessimist some of my liberal friends tell me, oh china achieved so much with full political liberalization, they would have achieved even more.
here and now we touch the true problem sorry now i am not losing time you know where i am a pessimist some of my liberal friends tell me, oh china achieved so much with full political liberalization, they would have achieved even more.
Tyler Cowen
we don't know the counterfactuals. speaking of counterfactuals,
we don't know the counterfactuals. speaking of counterfactuals,
Slavoj Žižek
i love them.
i love them.
Tyler Cowen
question for you about donald trump.
question for you about donald trump.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah.
yeah.
Tyler Cowen
so you initially said, well, if trump wins, it could be good because it will revitalize the left.. there was then another another article where people asked you, did you really mean it? and you said it maybe a year ago, yes. but i look at the democratic race. frontrunner number one is joseph biden, age, i think, 77. he was vice president for eight years. mayor pete is now number two because he took a moderate stance. mayor pete, buddha judge.
so you initially said, well, if trump wins, it could be good because it will revitalize the left.. there was then another another article where people asked you, did you really mean it? and you said it maybe a year ago, yes. but i look at the democratic race. frontrunner number one is joseph biden, age, i think, 77. he was vice president for eight years. mayor pete is now number two because he took a moderate stance. mayor pete, buddha judge.
Slavoj Žižek
i'm so sorry i don't know how to pronounce that name
i'm so sorry i don't know how to pronounce that name
Tyler Cowen
i'm not sure i do either, but he's a mayor from south bend, indiana.. perfectly fine candidate. and the democratic conservatives are in the ascendancy. and where the democrats have gone hard left is identity politics, and that's exactly the thing you hate. so why has it been good?
i'm not sure i do either, but he's a mayor from south bend, indiana.. perfectly fine candidate. and the democratic conservatives are in the ascendancy. and where the democrats have gone hard left is identity politics, and that's exactly the thing you hate. so why has it been good?
Slavoj Žižek
out use of trump. we we don have time to go it, but let me be specific. the democrats who go for identity politics already hillary tried this against donald trump. sorry, against bernie sanders.. that's why i admire alessandandra ocasio-cortes, who said something very ingenious, you must have read it, who said, recently endorsing bernie sanders, i endorsed him not in spite of him being an old-white man, but because. her idea was this one bernie sanders can get us we don't need center democrats are obsessed if we go too much the left we lose this centrist vote and so on. trump did exactly the opposite. i think the target of the democratic party should be those impoverished white half unemployed workers who otherwise would have voted for trump not those middle of the road and so on and so on trump is a genius here how he broke all the rules and so on. because do you remember how often in his campaign when he said something i know preposterous, horrible, liberal press said, oh, trump just shot himself, he's over and so on. no, it's not over. trump proved that sometimes the only way to majority is through extremes. it's not always that center works.
out use of trump. we we don have time to go it, but let me be specific. the democrats who go for identity politics already hillary tried this against donald trump. sorry, against bernie sanders.. that's why i admire alessandandra ocasio-cortes, who said something very ingenious, you must have read it, who said, recently endorsing bernie sanders, i endorsed him not in spite of him being an old-white man, but because. her idea was this one bernie sanders can get us we don't need center democrats are obsessed if we go too much the left we lose this centrist vote and so on. trump did exactly the opposite. i think the target of the democratic party should be those impoverished white half unemployed workers who otherwise would have voted for trump not those middle of the road and so on and so on trump is a genius here how he broke all the rules and so on. because do you remember how often in his campaign when he said something i know preposterous, horrible, liberal press said, oh, trump just shot himself, he's over and so on. no, it's not over. trump proved that sometimes the only way to majority is through extremes. it's not always that center works.
Tyler Cowen
but i worry here there's a parallel, your views and pronouncements on trump and on communism. so in the case of trump, you think, well, i can say this. i have a vision that will work out a particular way, the democratic left will be revitalized. and it's the.
but i worry here there's a parallel, your views and pronouncements on trump and on communism. so in the case of trump, you think, well, i can say this. i have a vision that will work out a particular way, the democratic left will be revitalized. and it's the.
Slavoj Žižek
mo. .
mo. .
Tyler Cowen
we may lose.
we may lose.
Slavoj Žižek
it.
it.
Tyler Cowen
moderates are on the rise. and then there's a sense of, well, i can attach myself to communism. i have a particular theory that will work out some way. it will tell us we always need more when it comes to ecology. but that to me seems like the trump prediction. we know from the work of philip tetlock, it's just very hard to predict the future.
moderates are on the rise. and then there's a sense of, well, i can attach myself to communism. i have a particular theory that will work out some way. it will tell us we always need more when it comes to ecology. but that to me seems like the trump prediction. we know from the work of philip tetlock, it's just very hard to predict the future.
Slavoj Žižek
so why not? stand up directly.
so why not? stand up directly.
Tyler Cowen
just the right values. like take greta thunberg, right? i don't agree with everything she says, but her core message is correct. she is unambiguous. she's to the point.
just the right values. like take greta thunberg, right? i don't agree with everything she says, but her core message is correct. she is unambiguous. she's to the point.
Slavoj Žižek
not ironic there's got some complicated theory in the contemporary communism for me. fully. you know why.
not ironic there's got some complicated theory in the contemporary communism for me. fully. you know why.
Tyler Cowen
no what.
no what.
Slavoj Žižek
i know, you know what i like about miss carlson is a communist. now what i like about greta thunberg first you remember some media in europe claimed try to blame her parents, you know. they are manipulating her. my answer was, i hope they do. i hope. why shouldn't we, the left also, manipulate? but what i like is precisely, i didn't like her at the beginning, you remember, when she played that innocent girl who is telling us that the emperor is naked. but did you notice how in the last year old man, she has this almost a little bit of diabolical, aggressive smile? i like the mean greta thunberg i don't like the good innocent girl and i also refer to her as. you know, for me she is deeply feminine but not the usual notion of femininity promoted by the media today holistic dialogue no no no she is quite dogmatic insistent. that's what we need today and i don't need anything more. okay we can debate the name but i think that that what she is doing is definitely communist today for me greta thunberg ass songs and so on incidentally do you know the story i must repeat it to you i hope all of you don't know it when i visited him two weeks ago in prison it's wonderful, i couldn't believe it. i'm sorry if some of you know it. i was sitting close to him like this in open space at a table. a friend brought me a cup of coffee with a plastic cover i took the cover off and drank some coffee and put coffee back on the table in two seconds, literally. a guard was there, very gentle, soft, no terror. it just said, please sir put the cover, plastic cover, back on the coffee. i asked afterwards. i didn't want to cause problems there. why? they told me, you were sitting opposite assange, an evil man. it was for my own good. they told me they wanted to block the possibility that evil men like assange will grab the boiling coffee and throw it into my face and so on. no, but i think, okay, these are my heroes.
i know, you know what i like about miss carlson is a communist. now what i like about greta thunberg first you remember some media in europe claimed try to blame her parents, you know. they are manipulating her. my answer was, i hope they do. i hope. why shouldn't we, the left also, manipulate? but what i like is precisely, i didn't like her at the beginning, you remember, when she played that innocent girl who is telling us that the emperor is naked. but did you notice how in the last year old man, she has this almost a little bit of diabolical, aggressive smile? i like the mean greta thunberg i don't like the good innocent girl and i also refer to her as. you know, for me she is deeply feminine but not the usual notion of femininity promoted by the media today holistic dialogue no no no she is quite dogmatic insistent. that's what we need today and i don't need anything more. okay we can debate the name but i think that that what she is doing is definitely communist today for me greta thunberg ass songs and so on incidentally do you know the story i must repeat it to you i hope all of you don't know it when i visited him two weeks ago in prison it's wonderful, i couldn't believe it. i'm sorry if some of you know it. i was sitting close to him like this in open space at a table. a friend brought me a cup of coffee with a plastic cover i took the cover off and drank some coffee and put coffee back on the table in two seconds, literally. a guard was there, very gentle, soft, no terror. it just said, please sir put the cover, plastic cover, back on the coffee. i asked afterwards. i didn't want to cause problems there. why? they told me, you were sitting opposite assange, an evil man. it was for my own good. they told me they wanted to block the possibility that evil men like assange will grab the boiling coffee and throw it into my face and so on. no, but i think, okay, these are my heroes.
Tyler Cowen
you like alternate scenarios, right? no, that is no.
you like alternate scenarios, right? no, that is no.
Slavoj Žižek
i'd like. uh
i'd like. uh
Tyler Cowen
what's the alternate scenario where you write books which are not so much pastiche, not so much bringing together of disparate elements, but you become a kind of realistic, non-hegelian preacher almost, like rereta thunberg, return somewhat to your catholic roots, embrace your right moderate side, retire in singapore, and go gallivanting off. of where we share your sense of humor with my right wing.
what's the alternate scenario where you write books which are not so much pastiche, not so much bringing together of disparate elements, but you become a kind of realistic, non-hegelian preacher almost, like rereta thunberg, return somewhat to your catholic roots, embrace your right moderate side, retire in singapore, and go gallivanting off. of where we share your sense of humor with my right wing.
Slavoj Žižek
no is that. ecuador, it's too hot for me. if i retire if i retire, and i'm not lying to you now, two, three times i've written about it. i want to retire to the part of norway which is not even norway. i'm not kidding. i wrote about it. it's my ideal place, longkir svalbard island. that's my ideal place. it's half empty, nothing there and it's very good prospects for survival because you know the joke, it's prohibited to die there. because that last question.
no is that. ecuador, it's too hot for me. if i retire if i retire, and i'm not lying to you now, two, three times i've written about it. i want to retire to the part of norway which is not even norway. i'm not kidding. i wrote about it. it's my ideal place, longkir svalbard island. that's my ideal place. it's half empty, nothing there and it's very good prospects for survival because you know the joke, it's prohibited to die there. because that last question.
Tyler Cowen
what scenario where you evolve in this manner with your right-wing sense of humor, what does that look like?. humor of my youth. .
what scenario where you evolve in this manner with your right-wing sense of humor, what does that look like?. humor of my youth. .
Slavoj Žižek
my.
my.
Tyler Cowen
thank you. what has to happen for that scenario to come about? i'm not saying it will happen, but what is that? science fiction world look like.
thank you. what has to happen for that scenario to come about? i'm not saying it will happen, but what is that? science fiction world look like.
Slavoj Žižek
what you i will tell you now i'm not trying to make cheap propaganda for myself, but i did try to practice this, you know war one of my books, which was not full failure, but close to a failure, my rewriting of antigone. did you read that? no, i have not read that. i loved that one. you know what i did? i took it's precisely alternate scenario. i took, and you will not like the third version. i took antigone. but you should like it because it's very pragmatic. i took first it. it's pure alternate logic like klovowski's film and that lola runs and so on. first i took the way the story you have in sophocles, which incidentally is not the original story. the original greek myth is totally different. okay, you know what happens. i will not repeat them. then, at the moment of her big conflict in the middle of the play with creon, i play alternate reality. she wins creon says okay you are right let's allow the burial' in my scenario what happens is that as creon suspected there is again a revolt against a traitor the whole of tb the city is in ruin and at the end of the second version she walks desperate in the city and cries like that famous hit line of antigone was created for love, not for war, death. and the chorus answers her fuck you beat, but that's what you created. then comes the third verse.
what you i will tell you now i'm not trying to make cheap propaganda for myself, but i did try to practice this, you know war one of my books, which was not full failure, but close to a failure, my rewriting of antigone. did you read that? no, i have not read that. i loved that one. you know what i did? i took it's precisely alternate scenario. i took, and you will not like the third version. i took antigone. but you should like it because it's very pragmatic. i took first it. it's pure alternate logic like klovowski's film and that lola runs and so on. first i took the way the story you have in sophocles, which incidentally is not the original story. the original greek myth is totally different. okay, you know what happens. i will not repeat them. then, at the moment of her big conflict in the middle of the play with creon, i play alternate reality. she wins creon says okay you are right let's allow the burial' in my scenario what happens is that as creon suspected there is again a revolt against a traitor the whole of tb the city is in ruin and at the end of the second version she walks desperate in the city and cries like that famous hit line of antigone was created for love, not for war, death. and the chorus answers her fuck you beat, but that's what you created. then comes the third verse.
Tyler Cowen
word word is for you, but you have 38 seconds so
word word is for you, but you have 38 seconds so
Slavoj Žižek
okay, the third version that you will like, i hope, is while creon and antigone are fighting, the car steps over, said you are both traitors ruining the city, you should both be liquidated and they establish a kind of jacobin terror and they are both liquidated. nobody likes this.
okay, the third version that you will like, i hope, is while creon and antigone are fighting, the car steps over, said you are both traitors ruining the city, you should both be liquidated and they establish a kind of jacobin terror and they are both liquidated. nobody likes this.
Tyler Cowen
lavavooy, thank you very much. thank you.
lavavooy, thank you very much. thank you.
Slavoj Žižek
but don't you suspect me? i still have zero seconds. but don't you suspect me? how come that you don't have don't you trust me? that fear that now i'm talking soft, but if i get too close to power? you will see the inside of me. you don't suspect me of really being a bad guy. you trust.
but don't you suspect me? i still have zero seconds. but don't you suspect me? how come that you don't have don't you trust me? that fear that now i'm talking soft, but if i get too close to power? you will see the inside of me. you don't suspect me of really being a bad guy. you trust.
Tyler Cowen
i don't. i think your attachment and almost obsession with plenitude and being gener of ideas.
i don't. i think your attachment and almost obsession with plenitude and being gener of ideas.
Slavoj Žižek
a.
a.
Tyler Cowen
sense in which you are generative, which is a personality feature and a temperament and neurological in you, that that so overwhelms whatever oppressive tendencies you might have that if you were appointed dictator of whatever, you would just go off and write more books and you can't help it. and
sense in which you are generative, which is a personality feature and a temperament and neurological in you, that that so overwhelms whatever oppressive tendencies you might have that if you were appointed dictator of whatever, you would just go off and write more books and you can't help it. and
Slavoj Žižek
i here will tell you a story, very brief one. don't be afraid. no time. that's what i like. and even i hope you will like this my favorite passage in marx is, maybe you know it, 1870, paris commune, there was a dream that maybe there will be a european revolution. and marx wrote a letter to engels, i love him for that, where he says, oh my god, they want a revolution now, but i haven't yet. i capital not now. i have to finish my book. that's the true spirit exactly. and that's why i
i here will tell you a story, very brief one. don't be afraid. no time. that's what i like. and even i hope you will like this my favorite passage in marx is, maybe you know it, 1870, paris commune, there was a dream that maybe there will be a european revolution. and marx wrote a letter to engels, i love him for that, where he says, oh my god, they want a revolution now, but i haven't yet. i capital not now. i have to finish my book. that's the true spirit exactly. and that's why i
Tyler Cowen
i trust you.
i trust you.
Slavoj Žižek
yeah.
yeah.
Tyler Cowen
now we have a method for questions. there will be questions from the floor and questions from twitter. your questions from the floor are to be questions, not statements, not proclamations, not political platforms. we are here to hear this man, so i will cut you off if it is not a proper question. but before we get to that, we have four questions on video, at least one of which is too long. and i'm told they're friends, your're friends, but you need more enemies, perhaps.
now we have a method for questions. there will be questions from the floor and questions from twitter. your questions from the floor are to be questions, not statements, not proclamations, not political platforms. we are here to hear this man, so i will cut you off if it is not a proper question. but before we get to that, we have four questions on video, at least one of which is too long. and i'm told they're friends, your're friends, but you need more enemies, perhaps.
Slavoj Žižek
absolutely i.
absolutely i.
Tyler Cowen
first we start with those
first we start with those
Slavoj Žižek
questions. let's get to those. and then questions.
questions. let's get to those. and then questions.
Tyler Cowen
and the microphones will come around and it will all be managed efficiently because this is bergen, norway. questions from the video. first video, please.
and the microphones will come around and it will all be managed efficiently because this is bergen, norway. questions from the video. first video, please.
Adrian Johnston (video question)
please. my line of questioning for slavoy has to do with the marxist critique of political economy. first, in relation to marxist historical materialism, do you think there have been any major changes in the basic relations between economic infrastructure and more than economic superstructure in capitalism between the mid-19th century and today? has the role or weight of the economy in shaping social history altered over this period? second, if you were to rewrite marx's critical rendition of economics for the 21st century, what components of it would you prioritize updating, revising, scrapping, or replacing? what would be some of the distinctive features of your own contemporary critique of political economy?
please. my line of questioning for slavoy has to do with the marxist critique of political economy. first, in relation to marxist historical materialism, do you think there have been any major changes in the basic relations between economic infrastructure and more than economic superstructure in capitalism between the mid-19th century and today? has the role or weight of the economy in shaping social history altered over this period? second, if you were to rewrite marx's critical rendition of economics for the 21st century, what components of it would you prioritize updating, revising, scrapping, or replacing? what would be some of the distinctive features of your own contemporary critique of political economy?
Slavoj Žižek
they are all my friends. i know who will be, so i... on the other hand, these are difficult theoretical questions. we need another two hours. i would just say that, yes, i agree with i cannot go into it now with adrian's point how the relationship between ideology, economic infrastructural change, and so on and so on. but all i can do now is point out what he knows and most of us know, that already in march, and that's one of the critical point that we need to read marx. what i really admire in marx, because it's not what you idiots, not you personally, but think, it's his theory of commodity fetishism. it's not simply we believe in fetism no, the marxist theory is that we bourgeois subjects, in our actual life, we are usually pragmatic anglo-saxon utilitarians. the fetishist inversion is in how we act our reality structured. marx has a wonderful theory where it's not this enlightenment vision, you know, we dream illusions, the other thing is real life. no, we can be very so. to repeat a joke that i'm sure you all know, but it renders perfectly the point. you know that story that i always repeat, niels bhr and the horseshoe. you know, niels bhr had a horseshoe at his country house across the entrance door, superstitious item, and a friend asked me, why do you have it there? aren't you a scientist? do you believe in it? you know what nis bhr's answer? of course i don't believe in it, but i have it there because i was told that it works even if you don't believe in it. that's how ideology works today. at this level, the extent, and maybe you would agree with this, the lesson of marx is that that's why, interestingly enough, commodity fetishism, he never calls it ideology, because it's something very strange. it is a system of beliefs and so on, but objectized central part of infrastructure itself. along those lines i would say we have to go further than marx and so on and so on i don't want to. second video question please.
they are all my friends. i know who will be, so i... on the other hand, these are difficult theoretical questions. we need another two hours. i would just say that, yes, i agree with i cannot go into it now with adrian's point how the relationship between ideology, economic infrastructural change, and so on and so on. but all i can do now is point out what he knows and most of us know, that already in march, and that's one of the critical point that we need to read marx. what i really admire in marx, because it's not what you idiots, not you personally, but think, it's his theory of commodity fetishism. it's not simply we believe in fetism no, the marxist theory is that we bourgeois subjects, in our actual life, we are usually pragmatic anglo-saxon utilitarians. the fetishist inversion is in how we act our reality structured. marx has a wonderful theory where it's not this enlightenment vision, you know, we dream illusions, the other thing is real life. no, we can be very so. to repeat a joke that i'm sure you all know, but it renders perfectly the point. you know that story that i always repeat, niels bhr and the horseshoe. you know, niels bhr had a horseshoe at his country house across the entrance door, superstitious item, and a friend asked me, why do you have it there? aren't you a scientist? do you believe in it? you know what nis bhr's answer? of course i don't believe in it, but i have it there because i was told that it works even if you don't believe in it. that's how ideology works today. at this level, the extent, and maybe you would agree with this, the lesson of marx is that that's why, interestingly enough, commodity fetishism, he never calls it ideology, because it's something very strange. it is a system of beliefs and so on, but objectized central part of infrastructure itself. along those lines i would say we have to go further than marx and so on and so on i don't want to. second video question please.
Jodi Dean (video question)
my question is about communism. so along with alène bieu, you are one of the philosophers who reinvigorated the philosophical discussion of the idea of communism with a series of books and conferences and events. and so i'm wondering. about your thinking about that project and the potential for communism now. i'm mostly thinking about your editions of collected works of lenin, different volumes that you've produced with lenin's works. and some of your events, also your event with jordan peterson. so my sense is that for the most part, you work within the communist tradition in addition to hegel and lean, but yet sometimes it seems like your position is that every part of the 20th century experience has to be erased, has to be forgotten, has to be overcome, that we go back to the beginning and we don't need to use anything that we learned in the 20th century. at other times it seems like you're precisely actually learning from the 20th century and using some of the writings of lenin and the achievements and the examples from european history in the 20th century. so i i'm hoping that you might clarify how you see the potential for communist politics today, right not just communist philosophy, but communist politics today. what kind of organizational forms? you think it requires, and whether or not there really is a potential in communist movement. maybe another way to say this is how do you imagine the end of capitalism?
my question is about communism. so along with alène bieu, you are one of the philosophers who reinvigorated the philosophical discussion of the idea of communism with a series of books and conferences and events. and so i'm wondering. about your thinking about that project and the potential for communism now. i'm mostly thinking about your editions of collected works of lenin, different volumes that you've produced with lenin's works. and some of your events, also your event with jordan peterson. so my sense is that for the most part, you work within the communist tradition in addition to hegel and lean, but yet sometimes it seems like your position is that every part of the 20th century experience has to be erased, has to be forgotten, has to be overcome, that we go back to the beginning and we don't need to use anything that we learned in the 20th century. at other times it seems like you're precisely actually learning from the 20th century and using some of the writings of lenin and the achievements and the examples from european history in the 20th century. so i i'm hoping that you might clarify how you see the potential for communist politics today, right not just communist philosophy, but communist politics today. what kind of organizational forms? you think it requires, and whether or not there really is a potential in communist movement. maybe another way to say this is how do you imagine the end of capitalism?
Slavoj Žižek
again another two hours answer question what i would say is that look i didn't i'm not crazy i didn't edit collected works of learning i haven't read them never what interested me is learning at a very precise moment what fascinates me in learning and i said this in both of my introductions to some texts is first lenin's time is over i don't play the boring trotskite game of you know this crazy dream oh if only lenin were to survive two years longer he would have made a pact with trotsky stalin would be sidestep and so on the deadlock was there from the beginning but what interests me in lenin and maybe that's what we need today is this totally pragmatic voluntarist spirit isn't it clear that in 1917 it was a total mess? lenin often didn't know what to do. some even liberal commun praise his state revolution. but what he says there is something that he immediately abandoned then. what interests me is especially lenin in 21, 22, and this was the big failure of the october revolution. they won the civil war. and then it would have been my moment. okay now it's everyday life invent new forms if you can they failed but lenin was at least the one who he said openly our situation is totally desperate we don't have any formula' he didn't have any trust in the future he saw this total openness that's what fascinates me but i'm not preaching in in any sense the return to it so my idea unfortunately i'm here maybe a little bit more let's call it pessimist i really think and incidentally in this metaphor of returning to zero level i quote lenin who wrote in two twenty one twenty two a wonderful text where he said nothing worked' then he said it's not that we should stabil our achievements but we should return to the zero level begin from nowhere, and quoting data which also you mentioned, the fact that the only livable communism today, communism in the formal sense, the chinese one, means ecological problems, more digital control and so on and so on. we have to begin in some sense from the zero. lenin already did this, not just as a good direction. if you are a dogmatic marxist, you can show that lenin totally overturned marx and so on. in this sense, lenin was not the one of the fidelity to marx. he pretended to be, but you know how religious revolutions also work. all great revolutions proclaims itself return to origins. martin luther, the greatest oh we just want to return to the original bible and so on. so, no, i think again that we have to with all objective study and so on see the good bad sides but the twentieth century communism was ultimately a failure an absolute failure
again another two hours answer question what i would say is that look i didn't i'm not crazy i didn't edit collected works of learning i haven't read them never what interested me is learning at a very precise moment what fascinates me in learning and i said this in both of my introductions to some texts is first lenin's time is over i don't play the boring trotskite game of you know this crazy dream oh if only lenin were to survive two years longer he would have made a pact with trotsky stalin would be sidestep and so on the deadlock was there from the beginning but what interests me in lenin and maybe that's what we need today is this totally pragmatic voluntarist spirit isn't it clear that in 1917 it was a total mess? lenin often didn't know what to do. some even liberal commun praise his state revolution. but what he says there is something that he immediately abandoned then. what interests me is especially lenin in 21, 22, and this was the big failure of the october revolution. they won the civil war. and then it would have been my moment. okay now it's everyday life invent new forms if you can they failed but lenin was at least the one who he said openly our situation is totally desperate we don't have any formula' he didn't have any trust in the future he saw this total openness that's what fascinates me but i'm not preaching in in any sense the return to it so my idea unfortunately i'm here maybe a little bit more let's call it pessimist i really think and incidentally in this metaphor of returning to zero level i quote lenin who wrote in two twenty one twenty two a wonderful text where he said nothing worked' then he said it's not that we should stabil our achievements but we should return to the zero level begin from nowhere, and quoting data which also you mentioned, the fact that the only livable communism today, communism in the formal sense, the chinese one, means ecological problems, more digital control and so on and so on. we have to begin in some sense from the zero. lenin already did this, not just as a good direction. if you are a dogmatic marxist, you can show that lenin totally overturned marx and so on. in this sense, lenin was not the one of the fidelity to marx. he pretended to be, but you know how religious revolutions also work. all great revolutions proclaims itself return to origins. martin luther, the greatest oh we just want to return to the original bible and so on. so, no, i think again that we have to with all objective study and so on see the good bad sides but the twentieth century communism was ultimately a failure an absolute failure
Paul Taylor (video question)
third video question, please. hi slavoy, paul taylor here. hope life's treating you well. my question relates to the role of academics as independent critical thinkers. in my experience within the uk sector at least, academics over the years when confronted with growing bureaucracy, growing commercialism, have behaved like lemming-type creatures or quislings, to use a couple of references your norwegian audience will be familiar with. and given brexit as a recent example there is very little genuine debate over all the complicated topics around leaving the eu or not leaving as the case may be and there's a level of conformity and group thing that reminds me of the movie stepford wives, if that rings a bell with you. so my question to you is, having you've experienced yugoslav communist system. and you've experienced something of the uk academic system. which of those environments do you think is most conducive to genuine critical engaged intellectuals thanks!
third video question, please. hi slavoy, paul taylor here. hope life's treating you well. my question relates to the role of academics as independent critical thinkers. in my experience within the uk sector at least, academics over the years when confronted with growing bureaucracy, growing commercialism, have behaved like lemming-type creatures or quislings, to use a couple of references your norwegian audience will be familiar with. and given brexit as a recent example there is very little genuine debate over all the complicated topics around leaving the eu or not leaving as the case may be and there's a level of conformity and group thing that reminds me of the movie stepford wives, if that rings a bell with you. so my question to you is, having you've experienced yugoslav communist system. and you've experienced something of the uk academic system. which of those environments do you think is most conducive to genuine critical engaged intellectuals thanks!
Slavoj Žižek
it's a very nice question and again you will accuse me of nostalgia but i would say in the last decade 1980ies yugoslavia was better. you know why? there was not yet a total economic fiasco, and that was the beauty. from 1980, at least, maybe 82, the ruling nomenclatura were already preparing for the fiasco. so, actually, i think that some of the governments in different republics were pretty good. you know why? because they knew they don't have democratic legitimacy. they tried to do to learn some legitimacy think for example a very sad story in mid eighties or six seven a gay organization formed itself in slovenia. immediately, delegate from central committee came there, yes, you are progressive, we are for them, do you want financial support? and so on and so on. then we got democracy, 1990, the first thing that the city, town council, whatever, dominated by conservatives, is abolished all help to these gay organizations. so in some paradoxical sense, it was a golden era, i would say, the second half, but i don't have any illusions, it's not that communists were good or, but communists in power knew they were fighting for survival. this is incidentally also how i read the explosion of nationalism. milosevic got this. nationalism communist nomenclatura had a problem. democracy is coming. how to regain some type of democratic legitimacy without canceling themselves as natura the answer obviously was to paint yourself as a defender of national interest and so on nationalism and so on. on the other hand i must say what makes me so depressive and the united states are big enough are not the worst but especially the uk i don't know how it is here is this pragmatic terror of philosophy has to serve concrete social needs. labour party morden ter began this in england. my friend philosophers are telling me you got labour representative that is coming to university philosophy department and say we will give you more money but we will just make it if you get some money from private companies and so on and so on. but what i like about today's i think this is certainly not a traditional leftist idea that what's good about academia is precisely that it's a space with no concrete attachment to any needs of society. you can go crazy, you can freely debate and so on and so on and this is more and more difficult today. even in germany they are telling me my good friend conservative but bright peter schterdeijk he told me to get more money, you know what he likes to do? business weekend. years ago, he went for a weekend to volkswagen top managers and explained them, you know, this bullshit, what's going on today, post-modmodernity, the situation and so on. and god, i didn't ask. so what i'm saying is that this reminds me in an uncanny way to the worst years in ex-yugoslavia, 70s of the communist. oppression. this focus on also human sciences has to work for society experts solve problems. no we don't need that. we we need precisely academia humanities in their. useless. character. also in science, i think if you look closely, isn't it that practically all big inventions, as far as i can judge, emerge either in a totally contingent external way, usually some military contract, or as a private hobby and so on. so what i advise you if you are here at the university is don't believe in this mantra of uh. you are here, bourgeois spending money, hard-earned workers' money and so on, be more useful. no, what's great about university is they are not useful in the immediate sense. that's what we should expect from you academics. all great things again, to use the guy whom you mentioned this morning john elter yes he wonderful term years ago of states which are necessary a byproduct. it just comes you cannot plan it academia should be a place for this
it's a very nice question and again you will accuse me of nostalgia but i would say in the last decade 1980ies yugoslavia was better. you know why? there was not yet a total economic fiasco, and that was the beauty. from 1980, at least, maybe 82, the ruling nomenclatura were already preparing for the fiasco. so, actually, i think that some of the governments in different republics were pretty good. you know why? because they knew they don't have democratic legitimacy. they tried to do to learn some legitimacy think for example a very sad story in mid eighties or six seven a gay organization formed itself in slovenia. immediately, delegate from central committee came there, yes, you are progressive, we are for them, do you want financial support? and so on and so on. then we got democracy, 1990, the first thing that the city, town council, whatever, dominated by conservatives, is abolished all help to these gay organizations. so in some paradoxical sense, it was a golden era, i would say, the second half, but i don't have any illusions, it's not that communists were good or, but communists in power knew they were fighting for survival. this is incidentally also how i read the explosion of nationalism. milosevic got this. nationalism communist nomenclatura had a problem. democracy is coming. how to regain some type of democratic legitimacy without canceling themselves as natura the answer obviously was to paint yourself as a defender of national interest and so on nationalism and so on. on the other hand i must say what makes me so depressive and the united states are big enough are not the worst but especially the uk i don't know how it is here is this pragmatic terror of philosophy has to serve concrete social needs. labour party morden ter began this in england. my friend philosophers are telling me you got labour representative that is coming to university philosophy department and say we will give you more money but we will just make it if you get some money from private companies and so on and so on. but what i like about today's i think this is certainly not a traditional leftist idea that what's good about academia is precisely that it's a space with no concrete attachment to any needs of society. you can go crazy, you can freely debate and so on and so on and this is more and more difficult today. even in germany they are telling me my good friend conservative but bright peter schterdeijk he told me to get more money, you know what he likes to do? business weekend. years ago, he went for a weekend to volkswagen top managers and explained them, you know, this bullshit, what's going on today, post-modmodernity, the situation and so on. and god, i didn't ask. so what i'm saying is that this reminds me in an uncanny way to the worst years in ex-yugoslavia, 70s of the communist. oppression. this focus on also human sciences has to work for society experts solve problems. no we don't need that. we we need precisely academia humanities in their. useless. character. also in science, i think if you look closely, isn't it that practically all big inventions, as far as i can judge, emerge either in a totally contingent external way, usually some military contract, or as a private hobby and so on. so what i advise you if you are here at the university is don't believe in this mantra of uh. you are here, bourgeois spending money, hard-earned workers' money and so on, be more useful. no, what's great about university is they are not useful in the immediate sense. that's what we should expect from you academics. all great things again, to use the guy whom you mentioned this morning john elter yes he wonderful term years ago of states which are necessary a byproduct. it just comes you cannot plan it academia should be a place for this
Tyler Cowen
last video question, please.
last video question, please.
Rebecca Comay (video question)
hi, savoy from australia.
hi, savoy from australia.
Tyler Cowen
uh.
uh.
Rebecca Comay (video question)
so my greetings. you've often spoken critically of the helin paradigm where the danger lies, there grows the saving power. the idea that disaster harbors the seeds of its own overcoming, catastrophe provides both the negative index and even the opportunity for redemption. it's a model of historical catastrophe or crisis that's often associated with a kind of dialectical salvage along pseudo-hegelian lines. i'm saying pseudo-hegelian because you've done so much to argue that hegel himself resists this kind of negative eschatology. but you've often suggested that marx falls prey to this way of thinking. one of your criticisms of this paradigm? and is that it exaggerates or misconstrues the exceptionality of the present. and misunderstands the nature of crisis and of crisis. specifically, it underestimates the capacity of capitalism to absorb and feed on its own crises. can we still hold to the idea of capitalism as being its own graceaker? can you elaborate your critique of the hildelian paradigm in the light of the present when we can see the danger, the ravaging effects of global capitalism all around us to the extent that maybe danger itself is not the word we can use any longer. and where previous models of crisis seem not to hold. specifically, and here's my question, is there a concept of revolution in the present context that does not fall prey to this paradigm?
so my greetings. you've often spoken critically of the helin paradigm where the danger lies, there grows the saving power. the idea that disaster harbors the seeds of its own overcoming, catastrophe provides both the negative index and even the opportunity for redemption. it's a model of historical catastrophe or crisis that's often associated with a kind of dialectical salvage along pseudo-hegelian lines. i'm saying pseudo-hegelian because you've done so much to argue that hegel himself resists this kind of negative eschatology. but you've often suggested that marx falls prey to this way of thinking. one of your criticisms of this paradigm? and is that it exaggerates or misconstrues the exceptionality of the present. and misunderstands the nature of crisis and of crisis. specifically, it underestimates the capacity of capitalism to absorb and feed on its own crises. can we still hold to the idea of capitalism as being its own graceaker? can you elaborate your critique of the hildelian paradigm in the light of the present when we can see the danger, the ravaging effects of global capitalism all around us to the extent that maybe danger itself is not the word we can use any longer. and where previous models of crisis seem not to hold. specifically, and here's my question, is there a concept of revolution in the present context that does not fall prey to this paradigm?
Slavoj Žižek
again, it's a mega difficulticult question. just to explain to you, you know what she, rebecca com, incidentally, here i am a sincere, not politically correct feminist. i'm organizing next october in new york big hegel conference. the majority will be women. and i already brutally apologize to people. no, no, i'm not politically correct feminist. it's simply that the best hegelian studies come from women. so, again, heldlin in, you know this passage from heldlin, the germanantic poem, all the time quoted by heger, gef we the aus, where the danger is the greatest, the point of salvation is also near and so on. and this is a model for the usual revolutionary thinking, even in marx, proletariat, zero-level. exploitation, poverty, but a, there is a chance that you turned around into salvation. i'm here a hegelian, if you ask me. i much more believe, and i will not go into it now, it's another half an hour, how do i apply this to what i was telling about catastrophes, apocalyp and so on, the post-apocalyptic vision. hegel's problem is exactly the opposite one. the big attempt at revolution happened, french revolution and for hegel, i don't totally agree with him, but nonetheless, it turned wrong, jacobin terror and so on. so what went wrong hegel is not a crazy optimist as bad as things are you should see a chance for the better no hegel's basic insight is exactly the opposite one no matter how good an idea or a project is we can be sure that it will turn wrong somehow and i think what hegel did to the french revolution we should do to the twentieth century communism. first, we have to still, we disagree here maybe, i still see some tremendous utopian emancipatory potential, but it went terribly wrong with stalinism and so on. and we shouldn't play these cheap games just corrupted stalin or even, did you notice how marxists are often even racist here? they put the blame on russia it's too close to us so it's asiatic barbarism which is responsible for it. no, it things went wrong and we have to begin thinking from this. what's then the solution? simply return to more modest previous model of society. this is my vision today. yes, we are approaching a crisis but we cannot simply revitalize the 20 century communism. we should rethink rethink it radically i am again a hegelian pessimist here hegel is for me a thinker of deep distrust hegelian dogma is everything turns wrong so only this whole delicate hegelian theory of repetition only the second time to do it again you have to do it again maybe you have a chance the second time if you learn the lessons of the first time and i think that's what we need today this much more modest spirit don't wait for a big revolution it already happened and it got screwed up
again, it's a mega difficulticult question. just to explain to you, you know what she, rebecca com, incidentally, here i am a sincere, not politically correct feminist. i'm organizing next october in new york big hegel conference. the majority will be women. and i already brutally apologize to people. no, no, i'm not politically correct feminist. it's simply that the best hegelian studies come from women. so, again, heldlin in, you know this passage from heldlin, the germanantic poem, all the time quoted by heger, gef we the aus, where the danger is the greatest, the point of salvation is also near and so on. and this is a model for the usual revolutionary thinking, even in marx, proletariat, zero-level. exploitation, poverty, but a, there is a chance that you turned around into salvation. i'm here a hegelian, if you ask me. i much more believe, and i will not go into it now, it's another half an hour, how do i apply this to what i was telling about catastrophes, apocalyp and so on, the post-apocalyptic vision. hegel's problem is exactly the opposite one. the big attempt at revolution happened, french revolution and for hegel, i don't totally agree with him, but nonetheless, it turned wrong, jacobin terror and so on. so what went wrong hegel is not a crazy optimist as bad as things are you should see a chance for the better no hegel's basic insight is exactly the opposite one no matter how good an idea or a project is we can be sure that it will turn wrong somehow and i think what hegel did to the french revolution we should do to the twentieth century communism. first, we have to still, we disagree here maybe, i still see some tremendous utopian emancipatory potential, but it went terribly wrong with stalinism and so on. and we shouldn't play these cheap games just corrupted stalin or even, did you notice how marxists are often even racist here? they put the blame on russia it's too close to us so it's asiatic barbarism which is responsible for it. no, it things went wrong and we have to begin thinking from this. what's then the solution? simply return to more modest previous model of society. this is my vision today. yes, we are approaching a crisis but we cannot simply revitalize the 20 century communism. we should rethink rethink it radically i am again a hegelian pessimist here hegel is for me a thinker of deep distrust hegelian dogma is everything turns wrong so only this whole delicate hegelian theory of repetition only the second time to do it again you have to do it again maybe you have a chance the second time if you learn the lessons of the first time and i think that's what we need today this much more modest spirit don't wait for a big revolution it already happened and it got screwed up
Tyler Cowen
we now take questions from the floor. i will call on you and please wait for the mic. this way you can be captured on.
we now take questions from the floor. i will call on you and please wait for the mic. this way you can be captured on.
Slavoj Žižek
i love you. you are deeply a good stalinist. no i am.,. fuck democracy. you want order here.
i love you. you are deeply a good stalinist. no i am.,. fuck democracy. you want order here.
Tyler Cowen
in the front, there's two people with hands up and we'll do them in sequence. these two oh now, right there, these two.
in the front, there's two people with hands up and we'll do them in sequence. these two oh now, right there, these two.
Jesse Tobi (audience question)
i'm jesse tobi from the philosophy department here at the university of bergen. now, you came here today to tell us that you are still a communist. that's not an affirmation, that's a reaffirmation. so my questions are two. the first is, um... what has prompted this reaffirmation of your commitment to communism? and the second question is, has your commitment to communism evolved over the years? and if so, how?
i'm jesse tobi from the philosophy department here at the university of bergen. now, you came here today to tell us that you are still a communist. that's not an affirmation, that's a reaffirmation. so my questions are two. the first is, um... what has prompted this reaffirmation of your commitment to communism? and the second question is, has your commitment to communism evolved over the years? and if so, how?
Slavoj Žižek
no. i think i implicitly maybe i failed answered this in my whatever you call it bombastic word speech talk or whatever that it's simply the big dilemma is for me this one it's still again as i said the fukuyama dilemma we are confronting a series of problems today among them not only global migrations the new forms of domin based based on digital universe ecology and so on and so on is the. existing liberal democratic capitalist system strong enough to cope with these problems or not my answer is unfortunately no i'm not saying now that this means anything go let's reinvent let's return to twentieth century communism. i totally agree with you that all these problems reappeared only now we are discovering all the ecological catastrophes go to east germany whole areas are there totally contaminated go to parts of the soviet which which are even now prohibited and so on and so on but to put it to put it very simply you know i i was never naively pro-communist. my diploma work in this was early 70s, late 60s, was rejected by university this was still communist time as not marxist. this may surprise many of you, but you know that i began as a heideggerian. my first book was on heidegger and language in slovene. no i don today. i would settle accounts with the book in nazi style, burn it, you know. but what i'm saying is that this is, to put it in very simplistic, common sense terms, this is my problem. that's why i'm so distrustful about this usual liberal optimism. like, you know, of course, all my sympathy goes with for example refugees but don't turn it into a humanitarian problem but look at but not in this politically correct way western people like from developed countries like to blame themselves like yeah yeah whatever happens in the third world it's colonialism we are guilty and so on no we are not responsible because what one should never forget here i am still i'm sorry to disappoint you staunchly pro-european enlightenment tradition even political correctness itself is i think directed application of something that is part of european tradition of enlightenment. you cannot even, i think, imagine something like political correctness outside the western tradition. so, again, so that i don't get lost, my my my... it's not that once i was a traditional authentic communist but i was very lucky in yugoslavia you know why because i don't have any illusions about ex yugoslavia i'm not nostalgic but you know what was our luck from the early sixties borders were maybe for literally twenty dissidents but other sides were completely open as a student in late sixties i was going once at least every two months, it's not more awful often by plane or by train to london, paris or munich to buy books and so on. so for us in ex-yugoslavia the end of communism was not this dramatic experience oh my god, now we know what it is. no, we were there all the time going to the west, no illusions. and maybe this was my luck that i had no illusions about yugoslav communism i didn't buy the stupidity of some western communists. yugoslavia is different it was an authentic democratic communism. but borders were open so i also didn't have great illusions about the west and it goes to my honour check it up it appeared in eight eighty nine in new left review. a short text of mine the east european republic of gilead referenced to margaret atwood's handmaid's tale' where it was clear to me that i predicted explicitly that east european post-communism will take this nationalist fundamentalist turn and so on and so on so again it's not that i ever was traditional marx because you know what was my formative experience i remember when i was a young student the big conflict in slovenia was between marxist frankfurt school and heideggerarians hegerarian more dissidents. frankfurt school. official marxists. then the big french wave exploded so-called structuralism post-structuralism and both sides dissidents and the party officials use the same language attacking it that's what made my identity through the french experience but i'm sorry if i disappointed you but again my point is dich. simply. that we are approaching problems. catastrophic potentials and it will not be able to deal with it within the liberal democratic capitalist system. that's my foundation, very simple one.
no. i think i implicitly maybe i failed answered this in my whatever you call it bombastic word speech talk or whatever that it's simply the big dilemma is for me this one it's still again as i said the fukuyama dilemma we are confronting a series of problems today among them not only global migrations the new forms of domin based based on digital universe ecology and so on and so on is the. existing liberal democratic capitalist system strong enough to cope with these problems or not my answer is unfortunately no i'm not saying now that this means anything go let's reinvent let's return to twentieth century communism. i totally agree with you that all these problems reappeared only now we are discovering all the ecological catastrophes go to east germany whole areas are there totally contaminated go to parts of the soviet which which are even now prohibited and so on and so on but to put it to put it very simply you know i i was never naively pro-communist. my diploma work in this was early 70s, late 60s, was rejected by university this was still communist time as not marxist. this may surprise many of you, but you know that i began as a heideggerian. my first book was on heidegger and language in slovene. no i don today. i would settle accounts with the book in nazi style, burn it, you know. but what i'm saying is that this is, to put it in very simplistic, common sense terms, this is my problem. that's why i'm so distrustful about this usual liberal optimism. like, you know, of course, all my sympathy goes with for example refugees but don't turn it into a humanitarian problem but look at but not in this politically correct way western people like from developed countries like to blame themselves like yeah yeah whatever happens in the third world it's colonialism we are guilty and so on no we are not responsible because what one should never forget here i am still i'm sorry to disappoint you staunchly pro-european enlightenment tradition even political correctness itself is i think directed application of something that is part of european tradition of enlightenment. you cannot even, i think, imagine something like political correctness outside the western tradition. so, again, so that i don't get lost, my my my... it's not that once i was a traditional authentic communist but i was very lucky in yugoslavia you know why because i don't have any illusions about ex yugoslavia i'm not nostalgic but you know what was our luck from the early sixties borders were maybe for literally twenty dissidents but other sides were completely open as a student in late sixties i was going once at least every two months, it's not more awful often by plane or by train to london, paris or munich to buy books and so on. so for us in ex-yugoslavia the end of communism was not this dramatic experience oh my god, now we know what it is. no, we were there all the time going to the west, no illusions. and maybe this was my luck that i had no illusions about yugoslav communism i didn't buy the stupidity of some western communists. yugoslavia is different it was an authentic democratic communism. but borders were open so i also didn't have great illusions about the west and it goes to my honour check it up it appeared in eight eighty nine in new left review. a short text of mine the east european republic of gilead referenced to margaret atwood's handmaid's tale' where it was clear to me that i predicted explicitly that east european post-communism will take this nationalist fundamentalist turn and so on and so on so again it's not that i ever was traditional marx because you know what was my formative experience i remember when i was a young student the big conflict in slovenia was between marxist frankfurt school and heideggerarians hegerarian more dissidents. frankfurt school. official marxists. then the big french wave exploded so-called structuralism post-structuralism and both sides dissidents and the party officials use the same language attacking it that's what made my identity through the french experience but i'm sorry if i disappointed you but again my point is dich. simply. that we are approaching problems. catastrophic potentials and it will not be able to deal with it within the liberal democratic capitalist system. that's my foundation, very simple one.
Tyler Cowen
directly in front of her, then in the front row over here, and we'll need to compress the answers a bit to get.
directly in front of her, then in the front row over here, and we'll need to compress the answers a bit to get.
Slavoj Žižek
i'm sorry, i'm very sorry. yes i will go into my buddhist mode. you know this bullshit like clap with one hand, listen to my silence or whatever. please, sorry.
i'm sorry, i'm very sorry. yes i will go into my buddhist mode. you know this bullshit like clap with one hand, listen to my silence or whatever. please, sorry.
Audience Member (idiot-king question)
so i think we can agree with that. the idea of a stateless communist society is kind of stupid. could we apply the idiot's king in
so i think we can agree with that. the idea of a stateless communist society is kind of stupid. could we apply the idiot's king in
Slavoj Žižek
pretty deep.
pretty deep.
Audience Member (idiot-king question)
.
.
Slavoj Žižek
the ap.
the ap.
Audience Member (idiot-king question)
king hurry, edipuff.
king hurry, edipuff.
Tyler Cowen
look. idiot king, right?
look. idiot king, right?
Slavoj Žižek
who is this? okay.
who is this? okay.
Audience Member (idiot-king question)
no, like you talked about this in like theocritus, where it becomes tyranny when the experts get in charge.
no, like you talked about this in like theocritus, where it becomes tyranny when the experts get in charge.
Slavoj Žižek
that's the word. yes.
that's the word. yes.
Audience Member (idiot-king question)
yes, that's the worst. i agree with that. so we need like an idiot king to be on the top so the expert can make the decisions under him. could that solution be in a communist society and what budd?
yes, that's the worst. i agree with that. so we need like an idiot king to be on the top so the expert can make the decisions under him. could that solution be in a communist society and what budd?
Slavoj Žižek
up to a point. yes, very good question. i would refer here to my japanese friend, very intelligent, read him, his books are translated most of them into english, kin karatani. and he, okay, it's... but he said the passage from bourgeois to proletarian democracy i quote him is the passage from voting to lottery you know that there must be a dimension of lottery chance and so on to prevent expert rule and so on. so i i believe that in every whatever we call it, more authentic democracy and so on, an element of chance is needed. and that's why from ancient greece to venice, which was not exactly democratic, but nonetheless they were also obsessed with lottery. how did how you call the boss? how? yes how was he selected? an incredibly long step process, very incredibly complex, but it was a mixture of checking the person that he's not corrupted with lottery, with lot. no? so if on the other hand, you know, he is not yours, but you were once their colony. i mean, denmark, no? kierkegaard also was well aware of this, you know. i read in a biography of, how do you pronounce it correctly, kierkegaard, okay, we in the corrupted west take kierkegaard. he was, i think, i read in a biography once called by the king and like, what lessons should i learn? and he expected some deep theological, philosophical wisdom no, you must learn how to be polite, how to say polite platitudes and so on and so on. i believe in empty manners. all our humanity is based on empty manners. and this is what absolutely fascinates me. i've written a lot about it. how you know this... i call them sincere hypocrisies for example i don't know how you do this here but in my country let's say, i'm sorry, it's my old story, some of you may know it, let's say... no but we are i don't know what's our let's say you are a millionaire i'm a poor guy you invite me to dinner the bill to a. the bill arrives. in my country, it's absolutely crucial to go through this empty ritual. at the end, the bill arrives. we both know that you will pay. but i have to insist a little bit. no, let's at least pay it. not too much. not too much, yes. because in my ultimate evil, once i did this to a friend of mine, it was very evil. he insisted, let me pay and i said, okay, pay. and he was totally desperate. he had to claim, oh i forgot my credit card. but what i'm saying, isn't this something wonderful this is specific human communication you make an offer, a gesture which is expected to be rejected but nonetheless, it has to be made. and all our communication is like this. like you walk on the street, you... stumble upon a friend and you tell him, oh, nice to see you, how are you doing? usually this is a total lie. you are thinking, why didn't i see him five minutes, five seconds before to call? you know, and for this we need, i'm answering to your question, i'm not lost. for this we need idiots. there is no civilization without these idiots.
up to a point. yes, very good question. i would refer here to my japanese friend, very intelligent, read him, his books are translated most of them into english, kin karatani. and he, okay, it's... but he said the passage from bourgeois to proletarian democracy i quote him is the passage from voting to lottery you know that there must be a dimension of lottery chance and so on to prevent expert rule and so on. so i i believe that in every whatever we call it, more authentic democracy and so on, an element of chance is needed. and that's why from ancient greece to venice, which was not exactly democratic, but nonetheless they were also obsessed with lottery. how did how you call the boss? how? yes how was he selected? an incredibly long step process, very incredibly complex, but it was a mixture of checking the person that he's not corrupted with lottery, with lot. no? so if on the other hand, you know, he is not yours, but you were once their colony. i mean, denmark, no? kierkegaard also was well aware of this, you know. i read in a biography of, how do you pronounce it correctly, kierkegaard, okay, we in the corrupted west take kierkegaard. he was, i think, i read in a biography once called by the king and like, what lessons should i learn? and he expected some deep theological, philosophical wisdom no, you must learn how to be polite, how to say polite platitudes and so on and so on. i believe in empty manners. all our humanity is based on empty manners. and this is what absolutely fascinates me. i've written a lot about it. how you know this... i call them sincere hypocrisies for example i don't know how you do this here but in my country let's say, i'm sorry, it's my old story, some of you may know it, let's say... no but we are i don't know what's our let's say you are a millionaire i'm a poor guy you invite me to dinner the bill to a. the bill arrives. in my country, it's absolutely crucial to go through this empty ritual. at the end, the bill arrives. we both know that you will pay. but i have to insist a little bit. no, let's at least pay it. not too much. not too much, yes. because in my ultimate evil, once i did this to a friend of mine, it was very evil. he insisted, let me pay and i said, okay, pay. and he was totally desperate. he had to claim, oh i forgot my credit card. but what i'm saying, isn't this something wonderful this is specific human communication you make an offer, a gesture which is expected to be rejected but nonetheless, it has to be made. and all our communication is like this. like you walk on the street, you... stumble upon a friend and you tell him, oh, nice to see you, how are you doing? usually this is a total lie. you are thinking, why didn't i see him five minutes, five seconds before to call? you know, and for this we need, i'm answering to your question, i'm not lost. for this we need idiots. there is no civilization without these idiots.
Tyler Cowen
two final questions, one here, one on twitter, 30 second answers.
two final questions, one here, one on twitter, 30 second answers.
Slavoj Žižek
middle class opportunist you want to combine left and right, you know.
middle class opportunist you want to combine left and right, you know.
Tyler Cowen
yes, question.
yes, question.
Audience Member (Comparative Literature)
my name is gisler sanders, department of comparative literature. i had prepared a complex question concerning the unorientables of your last book.
my name is gisler sanders, department of comparative literature. i had prepared a complex question concerning the unorientables of your last book.
Slavoj Žižek
oh, my g, i like.
oh, my g, i like.
Audience Member (Comparative Literature)
but i took the message from the moderator and i just keep this short and very concrete. the signs of a communist future. you mentioned two names at least, greta thunberg and julian assange. so i would like to ask you very specifically, how do you believe that the hearing about the extradition of assange will turn out at the end of february? and how do you think the outcome would affect that sign of a possible communist future?
but i took the message from the moderator and i just keep this short and very concrete. the signs of a communist future. you mentioned two names at least, greta thunberg and julian assange. so i would like to ask you very specifically, how do you believe that the hearing about the extradition of assange will turn out at the end of february? and how do you think the outcome would affect that sign of a possible communist future?
Slavoj Žižek
this
this
Tyler Cowen
32 second answer.
32 second answer.
Slavoj Žižek
a very difficult question because i hope julian, he doesn't have a tv, he cannot watch it, no, because i'm more of a pessimist. we are trying to do what can be done, organize things here and there, but the entire establishment is against him and so on and so on. but nonetheless, there are good signs here and there, even paul r, the previous australian prime minister. turned against extradition and so on and so on so if you ask me about his concrete fate i will do but what can i do all possible i am a pessimist i think we should just hope that at least the after effect will be
a very difficult question because i hope julian, he doesn't have a tv, he cannot watch it, no, because i'm more of a pessimist. we are trying to do what can be done, organize things here and there, but the entire establishment is against him and so on and so on. but nonetheless, there are good signs here and there, even paul r, the previous australian prime minister. turned against extradition and so on and so on so if you ask me about his concrete fate i will do but what can i do all possible i am a pessimist i think we should just hope that at least the after effect will be
Tyler Cowen
twitter question, super quick, 30 second answer. norway too suffers from the stigmatization of communists. and even though the poor are getting poorer and the rich getting richer, with far-right parties in parliament, workers are reluctant to turn to the left. how can we best turn the proletariat towards our cause? 30 seconds, please.
twitter question, super quick, 30 second answer. norway too suffers from the stigmatization of communists. and even though the poor are getting poorer and the rich getting richer, with far-right parties in parliament, workers are reluctant to turn to the left. how can we best turn the proletariat towards our cause? 30 seconds, please.
Slavoj Žižek
. e. you know first when you say poor are getting poorer rich getting richer but still you know norway is still an ideal for many of us if i may say this you know this i got from my good friend varouakis who said you know everybody protests austerity and so on but for us or you in the developed west austerity means oh my god purchase power fell for half a percent and so on. austerity is what happens in greece, where it fell for 30% and so on. what i would say is, again, alessandria ocasio-cortes formula. don't uh... i'm totally against for all this new identity but feminism and so on gay rights and so on but don't fall into this gap of cultural politics find a way to find a link with the majority because poor are getting poorer and so on and so on is there a political party talking for them, but not in this traditional marxist way doesn't work. but, you know, because so many in united states, politically correct people, you can see that their political correctness quite often has a secret class bias. they don't say it, but the politically incorrect are the poor primitive people, working class, and so on and so on. it's a much more complex situation and i will say now something that you will like. for this you will get to good luck for life. the problem is a much bigger one thus the left, i always i was there in occupy wall street, and i was asking them, what do you want? do you have a project? many of them, just a vague idea, less corruption, big banks are corrupted. what do you want? are you fukuyamaist, a little bit more efficient system? do you want old social democratic welfare? do you want old-style communism? and i will be very critical left. i am the first one to that the left doesn't have i'm not talking about legalistic details, but a general vision of a future society. i don't see.
. e. you know first when you say poor are getting poorer rich getting richer but still you know norway is still an ideal for many of us if i may say this you know this i got from my good friend varouakis who said you know everybody protests austerity and so on but for us or you in the developed west austerity means oh my god purchase power fell for half a percent and so on. austerity is what happens in greece, where it fell for 30% and so on. what i would say is, again, alessandria ocasio-cortes formula. don't uh... i'm totally against for all this new identity but feminism and so on gay rights and so on but don't fall into this gap of cultural politics find a way to find a link with the majority because poor are getting poorer and so on and so on is there a political party talking for them, but not in this traditional marxist way doesn't work. but, you know, because so many in united states, politically correct people, you can see that their political correctness quite often has a secret class bias. they don't say it, but the politically incorrect are the poor primitive people, working class, and so on and so on. it's a much more complex situation and i will say now something that you will like. for this you will get to good luck for life. the problem is a much bigger one thus the left, i always i was there in occupy wall street, and i was asking them, what do you want? do you have a project? many of them, just a vague idea, less corruption, big banks are corrupted. what do you want? are you fukuyamaist, a little bit more efficient system? do you want old social democratic welfare? do you want old-style communism? and i will be very critical left. i am the first one to that the left doesn't have i'm not talking about legalistic details, but a general vision of a future society. i don't see.
Tyler Cowen
thank you very much. and thank you all for coming.
thank you very much. and thank you all for coming.
Slavoj Žižek
you see him! you see him how evil he is. he interrupted me exactly at this pessimist point, you know. and then he stifled and brutally with his fascist boots oppressed the good message that i wanted to finish it. thank you very much.
you see him! you see him how evil he is. he interrupted me exactly at this pessimist point, you know. and then he stifled and brutally with his fascist boots oppressed the good message that i wanted to finish it. thank you very much.
Moderator / Host
thank you. thank you. this concludes this concludes the program for this afternoon. i want to thank slavo zijk and tyler cohen for their insightful and thought-provoking contributions and for making the 2019 holberg debate a truly memorable event. thank you also to the audience in the aula and for those of you who followed us on live streaming and for taking part in the discussion either in person or which didn't happen via twitter and last but not least thank you to adrian johnston jody dean paul taylor and rebecca comey for sending the video questions. critique of europe.
thank you. thank you. this concludes this concludes the program for this afternoon. i want to thank slavo zijk and tyler cohen for their insightful and thought-provoking contributions and for making the 2019 holberg debate a truly memorable event. thank you also to the audience in the aula and for those of you who followed us on live streaming and for taking part in the discussion either in person or which didn't happen via twitter and last but not least thank you to adrian johnston jody dean paul taylor and rebecca comey for sending the video questions. critique of europe.
Slavoj Žižek
yes, i severely criticized you. you were not hegelian enough. hegel means that you turn into self-relating, self-reflection. you know what would have been a hegelian step here? when you said end at the end, end, why didn't you say it? i would love you. and thanks to myself for doing all this. one step to be hegelian.
yes, i severely criticized you. you were not hegelian enough. hegel means that you turn into self-relating, self-reflection. you know what would have been a hegelian step here? when you said end at the end, end, why didn't you say it? i would love you. and thanks to myself for doing all this. one step to be hegelian.
Moderator / Host
mea culpa, mea culpa. thank you.
mea culpa, mea culpa. thank you.