"images are the true reality today...if we discard the images, nothing remains; just some pure abstraction."
Responding to allegations that the current economic collapse is owing to failure to let capitalism flourish - i.e. state intervention awarded those who should have failed, saved them, and enabled them to compete with those who were "smart" or "able" enough to last without state intervention. This action was, according to the speaker, like socialism.
Zizek: This is precisely how communists behind the Iron Curtain responded to failures of communism. The communism was not "pure enough". This is the fundamentalist answer. Blame not the system but rather how we were not faithful enough to the fundamentals of the system.Pressure to make massive amounts of money overrides ethical practice. A small bank cannot resist the urge to make bad loans.
Zizek: It's not a crisis of our ethical values, but the global capitalist system urges violation of basic ethical rules.Perhaps it's not a personal corruption (Madoff) but he is being pushed by the system!Making money replicates the same reward process as taking a drug.
Zizek: Let's not appraoch capitalism as a psychological problem - we aren't trying to rid addiction to money, but see how this attitude is generated by "an objective social system" part of which are such attitudes.On nature:
Let's compare canned laughter, where laughter is part of the soundtrack. In the experience of watching a television sitcom, you don't even have to laugh - the television laughs for you. But after the experience, even if you (personally) have not laughed, you feel "relieved, as if I have laughed." It's a psychological discharged, objectivized.
Staying in these coordinates, the most we can do is charity. But it's part of the logic of the system - it depoliticizes the problems. Through charity, capitalism can redeem itself; be itself the medicine to the evil it causes. It becomes the panacea over, e.g. new social systems. That's disgusting, but a crucial ideological phenomenon.
Zizek: Humanity is no longer one among the living species, but is literally becoming a geological factor.Afghanistan: Americans have no interest for the country. But now not only the Taliban but others are wondering wtf these Western troops are doing here, busting into homes and roughing people up? This is the Russians again! You need to tell the Afghans what you're doing and when you're leaving, not "we're looking for al-qaeda." Al-qaeda is not in Afghanistan anymore.
We should accept that nature doesn't exist; i.e. the image of nature as a balanced, harmonized circulation destroyed through excessive human agency. Nature is in itself a series of mega-catastrophes.
1. We should accept our full alienation from nature. Science & technology, though causing problems, are the only solution (better than going "back to nature"). We are already within technology. We should remain open and patiently work. How?
2. With much stronger social discipline. Maybe a consequence of ecological crisis will be that the American way of life (free spending, individualist liberty) is wrong and we will have to invent a new mode of living together as humans, with more solidarity, togetherness and social discipline.
Zizek: Yes, Afghanistan is the symptom of what is wrong with US politics. But it is perceived as the ultimate fundamentalist country, but remember 40 years ago, the same country was probably the most tolerant and secular of all Muslim Near East states. Pro-West modernising, a strong communist party, but through getting caught in global politics (Cold War) that Afghanistan became fundamentalist. Today's fundamentalism is not a dark remainder of the past but generated as part of the global process,OK America went there to fight their enemy, but far from demonstrating their power, they've revealed their impotence. They took on a small defenseless country bc they can't attack Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, where al-qaeda really is, as they are their allies.Religion and human rights:
The real problem in Afghanistan is that with the corruption of the existing Afghani puppet regime, if US withdrew the Taliban will take over, which is a fiasco the US can't afford.
Zizek: All religions are basically opportunistic in the sense that God, or whoever wrote the texts, writes contradictions - "don't kill, but as Jesus said, if you don't have a sword, sell your clothes to buy a sword"Should we stay or leave Afghanistan?
The problem is not this fundamentalist terror grounded in Islam. It's a contemporary phenomenon so the stories about big democratic potenital in Islam are true but the same goes for practically every religion. But we shouldn't look for democratic potential in religion but elsewhere. e.g. in the people, authentic explosion as in Iran.
Zizek: The solution is not to quickly simply leave. You've turned it into a more fundamentalist country than it ever was, then leave? That's worse.So you're a communist? Let's take a look back at the weird servility of 20th century Communist Party by seeing a clip of Romanians obsessing over Ceausescu.
If nothing else, after all the US did there, ruining the whole place, it's too easy just to simply leave.
Today's left is offering this option just to get easy morality, clear conscience. This is actually a revelation of lack of ideas.
Zizek: Of course there is no realistic prospect for this to return. The story of 20th c. communism is over.Can democracies find a way to tackle the issues that need to be tackled for long-term prosperity for countries? If not, and democracies fail, you're discrediting democracy as a system. This is already happening with declining voter rolls, declining voter participation, declining support for mainstream political parties.
How to prevent this from returning? Remember that this is returning in contemporary China, which is actually a more efficient capitalism than capitalism itself. So we should worry about Western models actually adopting this.
Only the radical left can provide a good theory of what went wrong with communism. The 20th c. left in all versions (state socialism, social democracy, self-managmeent, local self organization) is over. The left will have to begin from the beginning.
Zizek:Liberal democracy as we know it (as an element of global capitalism) is in a crisis and will become more and more in a crisis.The "right wing" takes over the vocabulary of "left intellectuals" and seems to be "infinitely better" as using it against "the opponent," i.e. the left.
Fukuyamist terms: His point was that with the rise of the latter, a certain social and political form remained at the only realistic option. It is as if today's left is now dreaming of "global capitalism with a human face." Ask this: can we step out of capitalism? Can we imagine a society not organized by state mechanisms? instead of thinking about how to introduce new laws, make societies more tolerant, more health care, help minorities within the system.
Zizek: There's truth here. The central event in the political process is that till 3 decades ago, one of the key tactics of leftists: the mass mobilization of civil society (e.g. for struggle against racism, women's rights, etc.) is now more and more integrated into the right wing populist "rebellions." And this is worrisome part of process where the left limited itself to cultural topics (gay, women, ecology) leaving all this appeal, even class appeal to right wingers. The danger for democracy is that there's a new shift: the basic formula of politics was 2 big popular parties (aiming at entire body) - center left (liberal sociaql democratic) and center right (Christian conservative). SD is disappearing and the new dualism is centrist (depending on circumstance) technocratic liberal capitalist party and the right wing populist reaction to it. The reason this is dangerous is we obviously live in discontent with liberalism, but who will articulate this discontent? Unfortunately the only channel for more radical forms of discontent is the right wing populism.Berlusconi?
Zizek: He's an option for future: the neutral technocratic liberalist party. Maybe he'll combine that with the populist. Capitalism with Italian values: Berlusconi is not only representative of politics as empty spectacle/depoliticization of politics - political debate proper disappears and what's left is expert/spectacle/corrupt economic measures. It is a self-destruction of minimal dignity of state authority, and this is not a joke. It's as if the state is discovering that it can function in a totally cynical way (making ajoke of itself) but this shouldn't blind us of the other side: Italy has been in "emergency state" for a year and a half, rendering the government able to deploy military and use it. And people have accepted it. It's not old authoritarianism where all of a sudden you awake one morning and a voice tells you all the freedoms are suspended. Small individual freedoms are left to us! Perverse sex, consumerism, life as a spectacle BUT the new (Groucho Marx) authoritarian state lingers.The core problem is we are emerging as subjects deprived of our symbolic substance. We should redefine proletarian communism.
Zizek: We aren't looking to achieve an old state socialism. We are confronting problems which concern our commons (hence keeping the term communism): only some kind of popular mobilization outside state and outside the market can do the job. Who will voice the discontent at liberalism? We can't leave it to right wing populists. My message to liberals: Are you aware that the dynamic of your own system is generating this reaction? The only way to save what's worth saving in liberalism (freedoms,solidarity, etc.) will be saved only through revitalized, more radical left. The future will be fight to the utmost.
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