Slavoj Žižek webchat – as it happened

First, I'm not defending Lenin. I'm just saying that October Revolution was an authentic emancipatory event. But at the same time I'm well aware, that Stalinism was from the very beginning inscribed at least as a possibility in October Revolution. Second, I don't just criticise liberalism. I have great appreciation for the freedoms about which liberalism is talking. I'm not repeating this old pseudo-Marxist point that we just have formal freedoms, but not actual freedom. Form matters. When we are formally free, only then we become aware how limited this freedom actually is. The problem is effectively who is a possible agent of change today. It can no longer be the traditional working class. Because to be a traditional worker, let's say I'm employed by a big factory or company and I have a safe long term job. Ok, I am exploited, but in a stable way. This is almost a privilege today. What about permanently unemployed. What about precarious workers? What about all those living outside of our cupola, our universe? So the only agency of possible change I think can rise with the combination of all these dispossessed, marginalised and so on. Illegal immigrant workers, permanently unemployed, those living under ecological threat, the task is to somehow join all these multiple points. And there is no Marxist teleology that guarantees the success. Maybe we'll just go on and end up in a new apartheid nightmare. But nonetheless I'm not a total pessimist. I think that strength comes only from admitting defeat, or the full extent of the crisis in which we're in. We have to become aware, finally, that the 20th century is over. All 20th century answers to capitalism no longer really work. With regard to Stalinist communism, it's a supreme ironic fact that where today communists still in power, they are the most efficient ruthless managers of capitalism. The ideal place to be a capitalist is China: they control trade unions and guarantee workers will not rebel.

Unfortunately I think the era of social democratic welfare state is over - it is only possible in strong nation states. But today with the free global flow of capital, it's almost impossible for a nation state to guarantee the condition for universal welfare. Then as I already said, I think the appeals to grassroots democracy don't work.

But this is not all the truth. There are multiple signs that something new is possible. Let me conclude with one example. Free downloading. Aren't we almost entering communism there? Even DVDs are disappearing. I think capitalism will not be able to integrate so-called intellectual property. Intellectual achievements are in their very nature communists, able to circulate freely. And this free availability of products is already opening up a non-capitalist space, even if it is the product of the most advanced capitalism. Again, just look for the signs. There are signs of an alternative. We just have to be patient and wait. We should act, but not in the old Marxist way that we are instruments of higher historical necessity. We should fight all our struggles, against sexism here, racism there, and so on. But we should nonetheless keep open a sense of risk. There is always a mystery in political activity. You think you are engaged in a big project and nothing comes out of it. But often you make just a small demand, and if you insist on it, everything changes. We cannot master in advance the consequences of our acts. We should act and keep our mind open.

So let me finish with a militaristic phrase from Napoleon: on attack, then we shall see. That should be our motto.

I remember when Fukuyama published his book on The End of History, it was very fashionable to mock him. But in a certain sense, almost all of us were Fukuyamaists. Even the left, most of the left, was not raising fundamental questions, the big questions about the future of capitalism or state. They were just trying to make the existing system more just. And more efficient. And I think the big question today is: is this enough? It is clear, common sense tells us, that we humanity, all of us, are approaching a series of potential catastrophic problems, antagonisms. Ecology, the problem of finances and how to control them, intellectual property, who will control biogenetics, and especially new forms of apartheid in our societies. People say our society is becoming global: Berlin Wall fell down. Yes, but new walls are emerging everywhere, even literally. United States and Mexico, Israel and West Bank. And so on.

Here I want to refer to a rightwing philosopher who I appreciate, the German Peter Slotterdijk. He made a very intelligent observation about globalism. He said that globalism doesn't mean we are all in one big global society, he said that globe also means globe in the sense of cupola, grouping us and isolating us from the rest. Like he was probably referring to films like Elysium, where the privileged elite live under a protective cupola. And this is more and more our situation today. Go to LA: you have the symbolic cupola of Hollywood, Santa Monica, and then you have Inglewood, and literally if you are within the privileged part you are rationally aware there are slums but you don't really see them, they are not part of your world. You just become aware of them when violent riots, protests, explode.

So the Fukuyama problem is: can liberal democratic capitalism, in the long term, can it deal with these problems? I think not, unfortunately. And interestingly enough, even Fukuyama himself is no longer a Fukuyamaist, he admitted that The End of History is dated. So this is the problem today, how even to imagine an alternative. Even Hollywood knows that what is awaiting us, if things go on just the way we are now, is a new apartheid society. Hunger Games, Elysium and so on. But what to do? That remains a problem. I don't have easy solutions here.

By anarchocommunism, it is probably meant this appeal to non representative direct democracy, where at the local level, people are directly engaged in solving their problems. I think this is good, as far as it happens, but it doesn't work as the global solution. First thing. Let's take Venezuela, where they did try to implement a grassroots democracy, but the other necessary part of the same project was a strong authoritarian leader who made the terms. This is always a problem with these grassroots movements. They are fine up to a certain point and then you cannot go further and the problem today, for me, is precisely how to go further. What we need are large decisions, actions, and so on. To fight ecological threats for example, it's not enough to organise in our local communities recycling and so on. We need in the long term radical restructuring of our entire industrial civilisation.

The second problem I have with this grassroots participatory democracy may appear just a personal one. But I think there is a universal truth in it. Can you imagine living in a society where you would have to be engaged all the time in some stupid local problems? Debating this and that, how to organise healthcare, schooling, parks, whatever. It would be hell. I want a certain degree of alienation. I want some nameless agency just to do these relatively efficiently, so that things function, and I can do what I really want to do. Read books, watch good movies, and so on. I don't think that active participation of the majority should be kept as an ideal, it is something that works only in states of emergency.

As with everyone I of course admire Piketty's book. But I think that his solution, raising the taxes for the rich, is utopian. Why? For two reasons. First, Piketty is very clear about this point. He think capitalism is the only system that works. So he wants to keep the capitalist dynamics but just make it more just through higher taxes. I think in today's global capitalism you cannot do this. So would have to have some kind of global government which would be able to impose these higher taxes universally. But if we have this then we, radical left, already won. Then we no longer live in the same capitalist world. So Piketty's solution presupposes that we already won.

Next point: even if, let us say, some social democratic government were to introduce higher taxes, in order to elect and maintain this measure other changes will have to follow. You cannot have capitalism the way we have it, just with higher taxes. And here I see the problem. I am more of a pessimist - this doesn't just go for Piketty, this goes for Paul Krugman, Joseph Stieglitz and so on. Yes, we should begin with what they propose, but we should be aware that this is just the beginning. And the problem is what comes next. Where much tougher measures are needed.

I do support academic boycott, but only Israel's state institutions. To boycott Israel in the sense of not visiting it, not having contact with people there, I totally reject this. The reason is double. First, there is recently in Europe a new wave of anti-semitism. For example in countries like Hungary, Slovakia, Poland and others. So for a European who remembers the Holocaust, anything to do with boycotting the Jews brings out terrible memories. We are playing with fire here.

But nonetheless, the reason why I support a boycott, BDS and all that, is that it is a common project of Palestinians, and Jewish progressive critics of Zionism. This unity is absolutely crucial. The moment we abandon this unity and say oh no, Israel is so bad that we have to be directly against Jews, we all deserve to die. Life is over for me.

And another thing which is important and which people tend to forget: boycott is a non-violent measure. Better boycott than terrorism, than bombs. So although I am absolutely on the Palestinian side, I think we should be very careful to make Palestinian resistance into part of a modern universal emancipatory project. Without this we are lost.

Of course, this question probably refers to Adorno's book of philosophy on new music. And I agree with it totally. I am against Stravinsky, for Schoenberg. I think that when we get a breakthrough in art, like with Schoenberg, we always get then accompanying it, a figure like Stravinsky. Renormalising the breakthrough. Cutting off the subversive edge of the breakthrough. And I think again the same goes for other arts, for example, in modern painting, it would have been Picasso vs Braque. I think Picasso is Stravinsky in painting, with his eclecticism, while Georges Braque is the thorough modernist ascetism. Even in literature, although the homology is not perfect, I'm tempted to say Joyce vs Beckett. Joyce is I think too bright for his own good. It's too pretentious in this encyclopaedic approach, like using all languages in Finnegan's Wake; the true genius is for me Samuel Beckett. If I were to choose one novel of the 20th century, it's his Unnameable. I think that the three absolute masters of 20th century literature are Beckett, Kafka and the Russian Andrei Platonov. If you put the three of them together, I'm ready to burn, sacrifice all other books just to keep these three. I think even much of high modernist writing is overrated. For example, if I were to choose between Virginia Woolf and Daphne du Maurier, I would immediately choose du Maurier. We shouldn't be afraid to admit this.

I think yes, it has become unhinged from the pursuit of wisdom, and I think it's the best thing that could have happened. Wisdom is basically a conformist stupidity. The best embodiment of wisdom are proverbs, and with them you can justify everything. If you take a risk and then succeed, there is a proverb. If you fail, you have another proverb, like in our language, it is: you cannot urinate against the wind. That's wisdom. The ultimate lesson of wisdom is don't try too much, don't aim too high, at the end everything ends up in dust. But I think for example Christianity, and I define myself as a Christian athiest, Christianity is not wisdom. From a standpoint of wisdom, it is madness. It's the hope that a radical break can happen, we can be redeemed, and so on. So I think that all today's form of wisdom, usually new age wisdom, although they pretend to open up a way, to save us from our crisis, they only deepen the crisis. Wisdom is one of the names of our enemy today.

I think philosophy will become more important than ever, even for so-called 'ordinary people'. Why? The incredible social dynamics of today's capitalism, as well as scientific and technological breakthroughs, changed our situation so much that old ethical and religious systems no longer function. Think about biogenetic interventions, which may even change your character, how your psyche works. This was no even a possibility considered in traditional ethical systems, which means that we all in a way have to think. We have to make decisions. We cannot rely on old religious and ethical formulas. Like: are you for or against biogenetic interventions? In order to decide, to take a stance, you have somehow implicitly to address questions like: do I have a free will? Am I really responsible for my acts? And so on. So I think that 21st century will be the century of philosophy.

First as to the threat to Europe. The real threat to Europe is not an external one. Islamists or other external enemies, it comes from within. It's the anti-immigrant populism which on behalf of defending Europe rejects precisely what is worth fighting for in the European legacy. As for Islam, I think it's basically the same as with other religions, all religions are opportunistic. Their founder usually said some great things about love and tolerance, but then just to make it safe, he added something about the right to kill those who don't believe. Like Christ said, love your neighbour, but then also said I don't bring peace, I bring war. So to be very clear, I do totally oppose today's Muslim fundamentalism.

But with a couple of additions: first, we should be aware that we also have in our highly developed societies, our own Christian fundamentalism which can also be violent. According to the FBI, they have 2 million Americans under observation, as potential Christian fundamentalists. So the problem is what is it in today's capitalism that generates fundamentalism?

Second point: it's interesting to look a little bit at the history of Islam. For example today of course, the position of women at least in many Muslim states is intolerable for us. But in medieval times, the position of women in Muslim states was at least marginally better than in Europe of that time. As for tolerance, and anti-semitism, I remember that in ex-Yugoslavia, the only city with really large percentage of Jewish population was Sarajevo. Why? Because the Muslims tolerated them, in contrast to us Christians! So again, I do not reject analysing how today's fundamentalist violence is justified by Muslim fundamentalism. I think it's the same as with paedophilia and the Catholic church: I'm just saying we have to be historically specific, and we have to apply the same criteria to all religions.

The question asks: why can't the rioters control the streets at least for a night? That's precisely the problem for me. I think it's easy to have this ecstatic carnival-like uprisings, which last for a short time, and then a little bit later things return to normal. The measure of a successful revolution or revolt, is what happens a day after. How do ordinary people feel the difference, when things return to normal? That's why I don't like carnivals. I like order and discipline. I like changes in everyday life, I don't like big ecstatic moments that we then afterwards remember fondly when we return to our everyday corruption. So this is what I was missing in the UK riots. Even a minimal positive vision. To put it in an even more brutal way, if I were to be a member of some secret capitalist organisation, trying to discredit the left, I would have organised and financed precisely such riots.