by
Slavoj Žižek
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The difference between liberalism and the radical Left is that, although they refer to the same three elements (the liberal centre, the populist Right, and the radical Left), they locate them in a different topology: for the liberal centre, the radical Left and Right are two forms of the same 'totalitarian' excess, while for the Left, the only true alternative is the one between itself and the liberal mainstream, with the populist 'radical' Right as nothing but the symptom of liberalism's inability to deal with the Leftist threat. When we hear today's politicians or ideologists offering us a choice between liberal freedom and fundamentalist oppression, and triumphantly asking a (purely rhetorical) question 'Do you want women to be excluded from public life and deprived of their elementary rights? Do you want everyone who mocks religion to be punished by death?', what should make us suspicious is the very self-evidence of the answer--who would ever want that? The problem is that such a simplistic liberal universalism lost its innocence long ago. This is why, for a true Leftist, the conflict between liberal permissiveness and fundamentalism is ultimately a false conflict--a vicious cycle of two poles generating and presupposing each other. One should take a Hegelian step back and question the very measure from which fundamentalism appears in all its horror. [...]
This is why every revolution has to be repeated. It is only after the first enthusiastic unity disintegrates that true universality can be formulated, a universality no longer sustained by imaginary illusions. It is only after the initial unity of the people falls apart that the real work begins, the hard work of assuming all the implications of the struggle for an egalitarian and just society. It is not enough simply to get rid of the tyrant; the society which gave birth to the tyrant has to be thoroughly transformed. [...]
The paradox is that, precisely because it lacks democratic legitimacy, an authoritarian regime can sometimes be more responsible towards its subjects than one that was democratically elected: since it lacks democratic legitimacy, it has to legitimize itself by providing services to the citizens, with the underlying reasoning, 'True, we are not democratically elected, but as such, since we do not have to play the game of striving for cheap popularity, we can focus on citizens' real needs.' A democratically elected government, on the contrary, can fully exert its power for the narrow private interests of its members; they already have the legitimacy provided by elections, so they don't need any further legitimization and can feel safe doing what they want--they can say to those who complain, 'You elected us, now it's too late.'
that's of course assuming they don't focus on their own needs, but interesting point
[...] the great lesson of state socialism is that the direct abolition of private property and market-regulated exchange without concrete forms of social regulation of the process of production necessarily resuscitates relations of servitude and domination. If we merely abolish the market (inclusive of market exploitation) without replacing it with a proper form of Communist organization of production and exchange, domination returns with a vengeance, and with it direct exploitation.
this is a result of analysing Ayn Rand's 'hymn to money' in Atlas Shrugged (violence, or money)
[...] Perhaps the Left should learn fully to assume the basic 'alienation' of the historical process: we cannot control the consequences of our acts--not because we are just puppets in the hand of some secret Master or Fate which pulls the strings, but for precisely the opposite reason: there is no big Other, no agent of total accountability that can take into account the consequences of our own acts. This acceptance of 'alienation' in no way entails a cynical distance; it implies a fully engaged position aware of the risks involved--there is no higher historical Necessity whose instruments we are and which guarantees the final outcome of our interventions. From this standpoint, our despair at the present deadlock appears in a new light: we have to renounce the very eschatological scheme which underlies our despair. There will never be a Left that magically transforms confused revolts and protests into one big consistent Project of Salvation; all we have is our activity, open to all the risks of contingent history. [...]
In short, what Marx overlooked is, to put it in standard Derridean terms, that this inherent obstacle/antagonism as the 'condition of impossibility' of the full deployment of the productive forces is simultaneously its 'condition of possibility': if we abolish the obstacle, the inherent contradiction of capitalism, we do not get the fully unleashed drive to productivity finally delivered of its impediment, we lose precisely this productivity that seemed to be generated and simultaneously thwarted by capitalism. [...] Marxian Communism, this notion of a society of pure unleashed productivity outside the frame of Capital, was a fantasy inherent to capitalism itself, the capitalist inherent transgression at its purest, a strictly ideological fantasy of maintaining the thrust to productivity generated by capitalism, while getting rid of the 'obstacles' and antagonisms that were--as the sad experience of 'really existing capitalism' demonstrates--the only possible framework for the effective material existence of a society of permanently self-enhancing productivity. [...]
need reflect on this more but it seems interesting
[...] The Christian church faced a common problem from the fourth century onwards, when it became the state religion: how does one reconcile feudal class society, in which rich lords ruled over impoverished peasants, with the egalitarian poverty of the collective of believers as described in the Gospels? The solution of Thomas Aquinas is that, while, in principle, shared property is better, this holds only for perfect humans; for the majority of us, who dwell in sin, private property and difference in wealth are natural, and it is even sinful to demand the abolition of private property or to promote egalitarianism in our fallen societies, i.e., to demand for imperfect people what befits only the perfect. [...]
kinda brilliant
[...] Only a strong political intervention can counteract the exploding inequality--Piketty proposes an annual global wealth tax of up to 2 per cent, combined with a progressive income tax reaching as high as 80 per cent. An obvious question arises here: if capitalism's immanent logic pushes it towards growing inequality and a weakening of democracy, why should we not aim at overcoming capitalism itself? For Piketty, the problem is the no-less-obvious fact that the twentieth-century alternatives to capitalism didn't work: capitalism has to be accepted as the only game in town. the only feasible solution is thus to allow the capitalist machinery to do its work in its proper sphere, and to impose egalitarian justice politically, by a democratic power which regulates the economic system and enforces redistribution. One should not underestimate Piketty here: in a typically French way, the naivety (of which he is fully aware) of his proposal is part of his strategy to paint the bleak picture of our situation--here is the obvious solution, and we all know it cannot happen ...
[...] Piketty is well aware that the model he proposes would only work if enforced globally [...]; such a global measure presupposes an already existing global power with the strength and authority to enforce it. However, such a global power is unimaginable within the confines of today's global capitalism and the political mechanisms it implies--in short, if such a power were to exist, the basic problem would already have been resolved. [...]
interesting ... wonder what Piketty thinks of this
[...] colonialism is not overcome when the intrusion of the English language as a medium is abolished, but when the colonizers are, as it were, beaten at their own game--when the new Indian identity is effortlessly formulated in English, i.e., when English language is 'denaturalized', when it loses its privileged link to 'native' Anglo-Saxon English-speakers. [...]
[...] fidelity to pre-modern ('Asian') values is paradoxically the very feature which allows countries like China, Singapore and India to follow the path of capitalist dynamics even more radically than Western liberal countries. Reference to traditional values enables individuals to justify their ruthless engagement in market competition in ethical terms ('I am really doing it to help my parents, to earn enough money so that my children and cousins will be able to study,' and so on).
this isn't even just a pre-modern value (I can think of lots of Western people who fit this mold)