by Slavoj Zizek
Is this not our predicament today? And by “our” I mean those who remain faithful to the radical emancipatory (in short, Communist) political vision. Are we to be dismissed as dangerous utopians harboring new catastrophes, or—to quote your wonderful concluding thought—will there always be a miracle at the right moment in the lives of those with a childlike faith in the triumph of truths over lies? We should not be ashamed to evoke here, as you do, the tradition of the “fools for Christ.” Is our position utopian? I am more and more convinced that today’s real utopians are those pragmatic-rational experts who seem to believe that the present state of things can go on indefinitely, that we are not approaching the moment of an apocalyptic choice. If nothing in fact changes, then all of a sudden we will find ourselves living in a much darker society.
You are right to question the idea that “Only the experts can solve our problems.” Maybe there are certain kinds of problems they can solve, but what they cannot do is to identify and formulate the true problems. Experts are by definition the servants of those in power: they don’t really THINK, they just apply their knowledge to problems defined by the powerful (How to restore stability? How to crush the protest?, etc.). So when, dear Nadya, you ask: “How can we resolve the opposition between experts and innocents?”, my first answer is that, in a way, it has already been resolved by contemporary global capitalism. That is to say, are today’s capitalists, especially the so-called financial wizards, really the experts they claim to be? Or are they not rather stupid babies playing with our money and our fate?
Here I can’t help but recall a cruel joke from Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be Or Not to Be: when the Nazi commanding officer nicknamed “Concentration Camp Ehrhardt” is asked about the camps in occupied Poland, he snaps back: “We do the concentrating, the Poles do the camping.” Something similar holds for the Enron bankruptcy back in January 2001, which can be interpreted as a kind of ironic commentary on the notion of the risk society, and indeed on the much greater financial catastrophes that were to follow. The thousands of employees who lost their jobs and savings were certainly exposed to risk, but without having had any real choice in the matter—the risk appeared to them like blind fate. Those who, on the contrary, did have a genuine knowledge of the risks involved—as well as the power to intervene in the situation—minimized their exposure by cashing in their stocks and options before the bankruptcy. While it is true, then, that we live in a society of risky choices, it is one in which only some (the Wall Street managers) do the choosing, while others (the people with mortgages) do the risking …
But I would like to raise some questions with regard to your Nietzschean notion of the power of truth and creativity embodied in “the children of Dionysus, floating by in a barrel, accepting nobody’s authority.” You rely here on Nietzsche’s couple of the Apollonian and the Dionysian: “there are architects of Apollonian equilibrium in this world, and there are (punk) singers of flux and transformation. One is not better than the other … Only their cooperation can ensure the continuity of the world.” Here, I must admit, I see some problems.
First, is it enough to just oppose the two principles and then postulate the need for some kind of balance between them? The least one can add is that there are different kinds of “Apollonian stasis”—Stalinist, fascist, capitalist, etc. For me, the true and most difficult task of radical emancipatory movements is not just to shake people out of their complacent inertia, but to change the very coordinates of social reality such that, when things return to normal, there will be a new, more satisfying “Apollonian equilibrium.” How does contemporary global capitalism fit into this scheme? The Deleuzian philosopher Brian Massumi clearly formulated how today’s capitalism has already overcome the logic of totalizing normality and adopts instead a logic of erratic excess: the more varied, and even erratic, the better. Normalcy starts to lose its hold. The regularities start to loosen. This loosening of normalcy is part of capitalism’s dynamic. It’s not a simple liberation. It’s capitalism’s own form of power. It’s no longer disciplinary institutional power that defines everything, it’s capitalism’s power to produce variety—because markets get saturated. Produce variety and you produce a niche market. The oddest of affective tendencies are okay—as long as they pay. Capitalism starts intensifying or diversifying affect, but only in order to extract surplus-value. It hijacks affect in order to intensify profit potential. It literally valorizes affect. The capitalist logic of surplus-value production starts to take over the relational field that is also the domain of political ecology, the ethical field of resistance to identity and predictable paths. It’s very troubling and confusing, because it seems to me that there’s been a certain kind of convergence between the dynamic of capitalist power and the dynamic of resistance.
One can supplement this analysis in many directions. For instance, the very process of creating “liberated territories” outside the domain of State has itself been reappropriated by capitalism. Exemplary here are the so-called “Special Economic Zones”: geographical regions within a (usually) Third World state enjoying more liberal economic laws designed to attract greater foreign investment—low or zero taxes, free flow of capital, limitation or prohibition of trade unions, no minimum wage requirement, etc. The SEZ label covers a whole range of more specific zone types such as Free Trade Zones, Export Processing Zones, Free Zones, Industrial Estates, Free Ports, Urban Enterprise Zones, etc. With their unique combination of “openness” (as free spaces partially exempt from state sovereignty) and closure (discipline unencumbered by legally guaranteed freedoms), which renders possible the heightened exploitation, these Zones are the structural counterparts of the celebrated communities of “intellectual labor”; they are the fourth term in the tetrad of high-tech intellectual labor, gated communities, and slums.
What happens then, when the system no longer excludes the excess, but directly posits it as its driving force—as is the case when capitalism can only reproduce itself through a continual self-revolutionizing, a constant overcoming of its own limits? Then one can no longer play the game of subverting the Order from the position of its part-of-no-part, since the Order has already internalized its own permanent subversion. With the full deployment of “late capitalism” it is “normal” life itself which, in a way, becomes “carnivalized,” with its constant reversals, crises, and reinventions, such that it is now the critique of capitalism, from a “stable” ethical position, which increasingly appears as the exception. Of course, the egalitarian-emancipatory “deterritorialization” is not the same as the postmodern-capitalist one, but the latter nonetheless radically changes the terms of the struggle insofar as the enemy is no longer the established hierarchic order of a State. How, then, are we to revolutionize an order whose very principle is one of a constant self-revolutionizing?
More than a solution to the problems we are facing today, Communism is itself the name of a problem: of the difficult task of breaking out of the confines of the market-and-state framework, a task for which no quick formula is at hand: “It’s just the simple thing that’s hard, so hard to do,” as Brecht put it in his “In Praise of Communism.”
The key here is to maintain a proper sense of orientation, and it’s here that I totally agree with your profound insight that the fundamentalists are merely “the tip of the iceberg. There’s a powerful antifascist dictum that ‘the fascists do the killing, the authorities the burying.’ ” This is the crucial point always to bear in mind when those in power try to deflect our critical energies towards different forms of (religious, nationalist …) fundamentalism: from the Tea Party in the US to the West Bank settlers in Israel and the Orthodox nationalists in Russia, “fundamentalists” are, for all their apparent passion, ultimately puppets used and manipulated by the cold logic of state power. The task is not to crush them, but to try to redirect their passion against those who use and manipulate them. Did you notice how the religious fundamentalists in the US took over the very form of Leftist popular protest (grassroots s
elf-organization against State power) and redirected it against the Leftist tradition?
But, my dear Nadya, I feel a certain sense of guilt in writing these lines: who am I to explode in such narcissistic theoretical outbursts when you, as a concrete individual, are exposed to very real empirical deprivations. So please, if you can and want to, do let me know about your situation in the prison: about the daily rhythm, about (maybe) the small private rituals which make it easier to survive, about how much time you have to read and write, about how the other prisoners (and the guards) treat you, about your contacts with your child … I have always thought that true heroism lies in these apparently small ways of organizing one’s life so as to survive in crazy times without losing one’s dignity.
With all my love, respect, and admiration, my thoughts are with you!
Slavoj
“I write you from a Special Economic Zone”
Nadya to Slavoj, April 16, 2013
Dear Slavoj,
You really think “today’s capitalism has already overcome the logic of totalizing normality”? I say maybe it hasn’t—maybe it just really wants us to believe it has, to accept that hierarchization and normalization have been exceeded.
You mention places where the legal rights that limit exploitation are suspended in the name of the world capitalist order. At this very moment, I write you from a Special Economic Zone. Seeing it with my eyes, feeling it on my skin.
As a kid I wanted to work in advertising. I had a whole romance with it. So now I know how to evaluate advertisements and commercials. I get the finer points. I even appreciate the things that by definition they have to keep silent about.
Late capitalism’s anti-hierarchic and rhizomatic posture amounts to good advertising. You and Brian Massumi are right to point out that capitalism today has to appear loose, even erratic. That’s how it captures affect—the affect of the consumer. When it comes to manufacturers (especially the ones who aren’t located in high-tech business parks) this ‘velvet’ capitalism can afford to change its stripes. But the logic of totalizing normality still has to continue its work in those places whose industrial bases are used to shore up everything dynamic, adaptable, and incipient in late capitalism. And here, in this other world hidden from view, the governing logic is one of absolutely rigid standards, of stability reinforced with steel. Erratic behavior is not tolerated from workers here; homogeneity and stagnation rule. No wonder authoritarian China has emerged as a world economic leader.
Modern capitalism has a deep interest in seeing that you and I believe the system runs completely on principles of free creativity, limitless growth, and diversity, and that the flip side—millions of people enslaved by all-powerful and (take it from me) fantastically stable standards of production—remains invisible. We have an interest in exposing this deception, which is why I insist on unmasking the static, centralized, hierarchic basis of what advertising will later sanctify as a product of unbridled creativity alone.
That’s why I take exception to your distrust of thinking that is posited within the frameworks of binary oppositions, and even insist on the use of such binaries as a heuristic—one that is situational and, when it must be, even burlesque. This is exactly how I deploy the opposition between Apollonian equilibrium and Dionysian flux. And given the broad expansion of fundamentalist tendencies in politics and economics, I’m sure we can’t yet write off the suggestion of militant workers that economic growth and ecological conservation must be antithetical.
With regard to the techniques that the global economy’s intellectual and ad-industry core has developed for escaping static identities of subjugation, my feeling is that we need to find a way of joining this game without checking our beliefs at the door. We can definitely profit from the ping-pong being played between an egalitarian-emancipatory “deterritorialization” and the postmodern, capitalist one. But we have to stay brave, energetic, and stubborn—we can’t walk away from the fight. Sparring is how you build endurance, how you learn to be quick on your feet and develop a sense of humor. Unlike the old Left, we can’t just reject capitalism out of hand—we’ll get further by playing with it, teasing till it’s been perverted. Perverted, I mean, in the sense of being turned to face us, enlisted into our cause.
Don’t waste your time worrying about giving in to theoretical fabrications while I supposedly suffer “empirical deprivations.” There’s value to me in these inviolable limits, in my being tested this way. I’m fascinated to see how I’ll cope with all this, how I’ll channel it into something productive for my comrades and myself. I’m finding inspiration in here, ways of evolving. Not because but in spite of the system. Your thoughts and anecdotes are a help to me as I negotiate this conundrum. I’m glad we’re in touch.
I await your reply.
Wishing you luck in our common cause,
Nadya
“Beneath the dynamics of your acts, there is inner stability”
Slavoj to Nadya, June 10, 2013
Dear Nadya,
Let me begin by confessing that I felt deeply ashamed after reading your reply. You wrote: “Don’t waste your time worrying about giving in to theoretical fabrications while I supposedly suffer ‘empirical deprivations.’ ” This simple sentence made me aware of the falsity of the final turn in my last letter: my expression of sympathy with your plight basically meant, “I have the privilege of doing real theory and teaching you about it while you are basically good for reporting on your experiences of hardship” … Your last letter abundantly demonstrates that you are much more than that, that you are an equal partner in a theoretical dialogue. So my sincere apologies for this proof of how deeply entrenched male chauvinism can be, especially when it is masked as sympathy for the other’s suffering, and let me go on with our dialogue.
First just a minor remark. I deeply appreciate your point about the advertising industry—I am myself so tired of the purist pseudo-Marxist critique of advertising as part of commodity fetishism that I am almost tempted to propose the following guideline: a critical social theorist who is not able to enjoy advertisements should not be taken seriously … But let me now pass to our key differend. (Sorry that I use so many quotes—but others have formulated things much better than I am able to.) Your central point is that the anti-hierarchical structures and rhizomes of late capitalism are a deceiving facade that conceals hierarchical structures and normalization: beneath all the glitz of free creativity there is the same old static, centralized, and hierarchic material production base. With this I fully agree … up to a point. I, of course, agree that beneath the much-celebrated postmodern dynamics of global capitalism lie deeply entrenched structures of domination and exploitation. But are these structures of domination and exploitation still “the same old static, centralized, and hierarchic material production base”? Permit me to quote here a well-known passage from The Communist Manifesto which is valid today more than ever:
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.
It is this crazy dynamic of global capitalism that makes effective resistance to it so difficult and frustrating. The rage exploding across Europe today is, as Franco Berardi put it in After the Future, “impotent and inconsequential, as consciousness and coordinated action seem beyond the reach of present society. Look at the European crisis. Never in our life have we faced a situation so charged with revolutionary
opportunities. Never in our life have we been so impotent. Never have intellectuals and militants been so silent, so unable to find a way to show a new possible direction.” Berardi locates the origin of this impotence in the explosive speed of the functioning of the big Other (the symbolic substance of our lives) and the slowness of human reactivity (due to culture, corporeality, diseases, etc.): “the long-lasting neoliberal rule has eroded the cultural bases of social civilization, which was the progressive core of modernity. And this is irreversible. We have to face it.” Recall the great wave of protests that spread all over Europe in 2011, from Greece and Spain to London and Paris. Even if for the most part there was no consistent political program mobilizing the protesters, their protests did function as part of a large-scale educational process: the protesters’ misery and discontent were transformed into a great collective act of mobilization—hundreds of thousands gathered in public squares, proclaiming that they had enough, that things cannot go on like this. However, such protests, although they constitute the individuals participating in them as universal political subjects, remain at the level of a purely formal universality: what they stage is a purely negative gesture of angry rejection and an equally abstract demand for justice, lacking the ability to translate this demand into a concrete political program. In short, these protests were not yet proper political acts, but abstract demands addressed to an Other who is expected to act …