The December
2011-January 2012 issue of The Platypus Review features an interview
with philosopher and cultural theorist Slavoj Zizek. [1] It is a fusillade of distortion of the historical
experience of revolution and socialism in the 20th century, accompanied by an
egregiously uninformed and unprincipled attack on Bob Avakian's new synthesis
of communism.
Zizek's musings about communism are dressed up as new and nuanced thinking, but
on display is a rather old and clunky anti-communism of a piece with the
dominant bourgeois narrative of communism as "failure" and "horror." Zizek portrays himself as "anti-capitalist," but on parade are apologetics for
capitalist-imperialism.
This is the fruit of what Slavoj Zizek calls his "honest pessimism."
In what follows, I respond to Zizek's central claims and misrepresentations.
But at the outset I call on Slavoj Zizek to take part in a public debate with
me about the nature of imperialism, and the history and prospects of the
communist project.
I. Real Stakes,
Real Alternatives, and Real Responsibilities
The world is a
horror. An environmental emergency threatens the very ecosystems of the planet;
neocolonial wars waged by Western imperialism produce death, destruction, and
dislocation; malnutrition and hunger stalk one billion human beings; women,
half of humanity, are objectified, shrouded, trafficked, and degraded. The
development of technology and the accumulation of human knowledge have brought
human society to a threshold in which it is now possible to put an end to this
and provide for a decent material and rich cultural life for all of
humanity--and yet the profit-above-all system of world capitalism constrains and
chokes this potential.
Growing numbers of people, from Egypt to the Occupy movements, are resisting
and questioning the existing social order. People are raising their heads and
searching for solutions and alternatives.
The responsibility of revolutionaries and all radical thinkers in relation to
these movements is, most definitely, to unite with and work to build them in
their overwhelmingly positive thrust. But it is also crucial to engage the
obstacles and contradictions that these movements and struggles face--and work
to provide direction to divert things onto a more fully and consciously
revolutionary path. At the same time, there is pressing need to demarcate
between genuinely radical and revolutionary discourse and politics--and that
which would consign us to the world as it is.[2]
There is a way out of the suffering and madness of this world. It is
revolution, communist revolution. The first attempts in modern history to
create societies free of exploitation and oppression--the Soviet revolution of
1917-56 and the Chinese revolution of 1949-76--were led by visionary vanguard
parties and instantiated new liberating economies and governing institutions,
new social relations based on cooperation and overcoming inequality, and tackled
old ways of thinking--all against incredible ideological and material obstacles.
These revolutions represent historic watersheds for oppressed humanity. Their
accomplishments were both unprecedented and monumental. At the same time, there
were problems and shortcomings in conception, method, and practice--some quite
serious, some even grievous. How should all this be evaluated? This first wave
of communist revolution was eventually defeated and capitalism restored. What
were the underlying causes and factors?
Bob Avakian has produced a body of work that in summing up the overwhelmingly
positive but also negative lessons of this first wave of revolution, while also
drawing from diverse spheres of human experience and endeavor, opens new
pathways to go further and do better in a new stage of communist revolution.
This is a new synthesis of communism. A radically transformative
communism...that is unflinching in its determination to lead millions to take
power through determined revolutionary struggle once the conditions emerge to
do so...and that aims at nothing less than using that power to emancipate
humanity and achieve a world where human beings can truly flourish.
There is a monumental challenge, but a real basis, to fight for and to bring
into being such a world. The stakes are real, as are the intellectual
responsibilities. Professor Zizek shrinks from this challenge. What we get
instead is his ill-founded and misdirected dabbling in analysis unmoored from
the struggle to radically transform reality, a studied stance of "let's not
take ourselves too seriously," and, ultimately, conciliation with this world
with all its misery.
II. Refusing to
Engage While Irresponsibly Attacking Bob Avakian's New Synthesis of Communism
Early in the Platypus
interview, Zizek comments on Bob Avakian's new synthesis of communism: "there
is no theoretical substance: it doesn't do the work." [3] Do the work? There is not a shred of theoretical
engagement from Zizek in this interview with critical elements of the new synthesis,
with:
Issues of philosophy. In works such as Observations on Art and Culture,
Science and Philosophy and Making Revolution and Emancipating Humanity,
Avakian has further ruptured with some teleological and semi-religious notions
that have been carried into communism, along with some pragmatist and
empiricist tendencies, and has put communism on a more scientific foundation.
What it means to be an internationalist in the world in which we live today. In
works as early as Conquer the World? The International Proletariat Must and
Will (1981), Avakian has explored how the overall global dynamics of the
imperialist system set the terms for what goes in each individual country. He
has developed orientation for how revolutionaries have to approach everything,
including making revolution in the countries in which they live, from the
standpoint of the world revolution first, and how--and why--the leaders of the
first stage of communist revolution strayed from and even at some junctures
acted counter to this understanding and orientation.
Vital new understanding of the nature of socialism as a transitional society
and with what is needed to go from the deeply rooted inequalities and
disparities of the world today to a communist society and world without classes
and class distinctions, without the oppressive institutions that enforce them,
and without the ideas that flow from and reinforce those divisions. While
deeply learning from Mao, Avakian has recognized and emphasized the need for a
greater role for dissent, a greater fostering of intellectual ferment, and more
scope for initiative and creativity in the arts in socialist society. He has
criticized a one-sided view in the communist movement toward
intellectuals--toward seeing them only as a problem. This bears profoundly
on the search for the truth, on the transformative character of the communist
project, and overcoming the ages-old divide between intellectual and manual
labor. How the new synthesis re-envisions
socialism as a vibrant period of transition is elaborated in such works by
Avakian as "The End of a Stage--the Beginning of a New Stage," Dictatorship
and Democracy, and the Socialist Transition to Communism and "Views on
Socialism and Communism: A Radically New Kind of State, A Radically Different and
Far Greater Vision of Freedom."
Revolutionary strategy and the need for communist movements to resist the pull
to become just another part of the political scenery of bourgeois society,
instead of working to make revolution. Making Revolution and Emancipating
Humanity is a critical work in this regard. The RCP has developed a
strategy that speaks to the real problems and difficulties of making revolution
in an imperialist country like the U.S. This includes the existence of a large
middle class in the U.S.; overcoming deep divisions, racial and sexual, among
different sections of the people; bridging gaps and effecting positive synergy
between intellectuals and those on the bottom of society; and the challenge of
hastening the development of a revolutionary situation at a time when there is
no revolutionary crisis while preparing people to seize the opening when it
does occur.
Fitting the masses to change the world and themselves. Avakian has stressed
that communist revolution must be carried out with the orientation that the
masses must be the driving force but as "emancipators of humanity." This is not
a revolution about revenge or changes in position in a "last shall be first,
and the first shall become last" framework--this revolution is about transforming
the entire world, so there will no longer be a division of society into "first"
and "last."
What does Slavoj Zizek have to say about these elements of the new synthesis?
Nothing.
Zizek charges that Avakian and the RCP "always have the answers: no questions,
only answers." [4] In other words, he would have
readers believe, there is no grappling with difficult and vexing contradictions
on the part of the RCP--only self-knowing certitudes. He brands us as
"perverts," claiming that we seek to impose on others what their desires are or
should be.
This, it must be said, is an astounding "perversion" of truth. An entire
section of Bob Avakian's Birds Cannot Give Birth to Crocodiles, But Humanity
Can Soar Beyond the Horizon speaks precisely to this contradiction,
particularly as it is posed in socialist society between the fundamental
interests and needs of the masses of people, on the one hand, and what some of
the people may want at any given time, on the other--and the challenges involved
in handling this contradiction, with its many complexities, in a way that
continues the advance toward communism while at the same time fundamentally
relying on the masses of people to consciously carry forward this struggle.
Indeed, the whole of the above-cited work, along with Making Revolution and
Emancipating Humanity, are rich examinations by Avakian of many of the key
contradictions and complexities involved in making revolution--and doing so in
any particular country as part of the overall struggle toward the ultimate goal
of communism worldwide.
Zizek also accuses Bob Avakian and the RCP of simply talking about taking power
and then dealing with the problems, and not addressing how all this will come
about and "what it will mean in regard to the masses." This is yet another
hollow charge. In addition to the works I've already mentioned, the Constitution
for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal) and the
RCP's statement "On the Strategy for Revolution" are highly relevant in
speaking to these issues.
From Zizek there is neither substantive engagement with nor principled
criticism of the new synthesis--just cheap distortions of Avakian's work and the
line of the RCP. But Professor Zizek, have another go at it, let's debate
communism and the new synthesis in a public forum.
III. Rabid
Anti-communism Masquerading as New Thinking
In the Platypus
interview Zizek tells us that "the lessons [of the 20th century] are only
negative." He speaks of socialism in the Soviet Union and the Stalin period as
"brutal direct domination." [5] In his introduction to a Verso edition of several of
Mao's essays on philosophy, Zizek charges Mao with "reducing people to a
disposable means." [6] In his October
talk at Occupy Wall Street, Zizek obsesses that "communism failed absolutely." [7]
It is hard to discern what is more at work here: willful disregard for
historical accuracy, or anti-communist pandering to the powers that be. In any
case, Zizek's declarations are wrong and cause great harm. To get at the truth
of the Bolshevik and Chinese revolutions, I would commend to readers writings
by Avakian, some of my research and speeches, the Set the Record Straight
website, and the polemic "Alain Badiou's "Politics of Emancipation': A
Communism Locked Within the Confines of the Bourgeois World." But a few points
of specific response are in order:
"Only negative"? The Soviet and Chinese revolutions achieved amazing things in
liberating women, overcoming national inequalities, moving with decisive
resolve to address the material needs of the people, seeking to forge new
values and culture. The Cultural Revolution in China of 1966-76 effected
unprecedented transformations in education, in industrial-management practices,
in healthcare, in grass-roots governance, and in the arts. In no society in the
world has there been such conscious political struggle and transformation.
Zizek's screed against Stalin and what he labels "Stalinism" is stunning for
the absence of materialist analysis. No sense of unrelenting encirclement and
threat, or the effect of persisting social divisions and other remnants of the
old society, and the continuation of classes and class struggle within the
conditions of the new Soviet state. Nor the real and decisive questions and
struggles of line and program: the policies and road that Stalin represented
and fought for, and the lines and policies that others in leadership stood and
struggled for--and the consequences of this for the direction of society.
Instead we get Stalin the despot.
Zizek pronounces the Great Leap Forward in China of 1958-60 to be a
"mega-tragedy." [8] Never mind what the Great Leap
Forward was actually about and actually accomplished in terms of
collectivizing agriculture, overcoming urban-rural inequalities and technological-cultural
gaps, developing a more decentralized system of economic planning, challenging
feudal and family tradition, and, yes, contributing to solving China's historic
food problem. Zizek would have the unwary reader believe that this so-called "mega-tragedy"
(he's referring to famine deaths that Mao supposedly perpetrated) is
"demonstrated" by "archives being opened." Nonsense! What is widely circulating
in the name of "archival research" is organized vilification of Mao and
sensationalistic history by body count based on all manner of spurious
extrapolation and flat-out lies.
For Slavoj Zizek, a defining component of "new" and "innovative" radical
theorizing is repudiation and slander of the historical experience of communist
revolution.
IV. Zizek's Anti
Anti-Imperialism
Zizek proposes
to "rethink the critique of political economy" in light of today's global
capitalism. Where does his "rethinking" lead him? Let's consider some of
his findings:
"The biggest result of the Bush presidency is that the U.S. is becoming merely
a local superpower." [9] Am I hearing
this right? Sadly, yes. Now it would be one thing to "credit" George W. Bush
with leading U.S. imperialism into serious difficulties, but to claim that the
U.S. is no longer a true hegemonic power, and is reduced to being merely a
local superpower, not only flies in the face of reality but actually disorients
and disarms people in fully recognizing, and opposing, the reality of what U.S.
imperialism does in the world. And I would be eager not only to debate Zizek's assessment of U.S. imperialism but also his excuses for Nelson Mandela's
conciliation with imperialism and objective betrayal of the masses of South
Africa, as well as prettification of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in the name of
supposed opposition to Islamic fundamentalism. [10]
In the same Platypus interview Zizek makes the claim that "in today's
global capitalism...there is no longer the metropolis screwing the Third World
countries." [11] The global network of sweatshop
labor, export processing zones, and child labor in Asia, Africa, and Latin
America that are integral and critical to the profitability of Western
capital--somehow this has disappeared or lost its significance in the political
economy of Slavoj Zizek. The minerals and raw materials often mined in
slave-like conditions in vast regions of the Third World, international
property rights that keep medicines out of reach of the world's impoverished,
Western agribusiness that destroys peasant agriculture--these apparently are
artifacts of a receding neocolonialism. For Zizek the great, oppressive, and
enforced divide between imperialism and the oppressed nations is no longer one
of the most profound contradictions marking the world.
Zizek cannot let go of bourgeois democracy. He offers this paean to leaders of
the bourgeois revolution: "radical bourgeois freedom fighters were well aware
that freedom comes only insofar as it is truly social freedom." [12] He tells Charlie Rose that he is not "blindly
anti-capitalist" and appreciates the fact that "so many people lived such
relatively free lives and safe lives, in relative welfare as...in Western
Europe in the last fifty to sixty years." [13] There you have it: while communism "absolutely failed,"
imperialism is a partial success. Zizek can only be bedazzled by consciously
blinding himself to the reality that bourgeois freedoms and social welfare
stand on a platform of super-exploitation, wars of aggression and conquest, and
a system of neocolonial rule that includes the propping up of viciously
repressive client regimes the likes of Saudi Arabia.
I would encourage people to contrast Zizek's social-chauvinistic views on
imperialism and democracy, views by the way that are consistent for their lack
of any scientific understanding of the relationship of the superstructure to
the material base of society and the world system, with such works by Bob
Avakian as Democracy: Can't We Do Better Than That?, Communism and
Jeffersonian Democracy and, once again, Birds Cannot Give Birth to
Crocodiles, But Humanity Can Soar Beyond the Horizon.
V. Conclusion:
A Reckoning and a Call for Sharp and Honest Debate
Slavoj Zizek wrongly and unscientifically negates the whole experience of communist
revolution. He agonizes over "no easy solutions" and "honest pessimism" but can
comfortably align himself with imperialism. It is political and moral
capitulation writ large. It has everything to do with why Slavoj Zizek does not
acknowledge--and quite possibly does not, and cannot, recognize--what is in fact
new and of decisive importance in the new synthesis of communism brought
forward by Bob Avakian. In a world that cries out urgently for radical change,
this new synthesis is both viable and vital for carrying forward the struggle
for the emancipation of humanity.
Once again, and in closing, I challenge Slavoj Zizek to publicly debate these
questions.
NOTES
Works by Bob Avakian Cited in This Article
Birds Cannot Give
Birth to Crocodiles, But Humanity Can Soar Beyond the Horizon.
Communism and Jeffersonian
Democracy (Chicago: RCP Publications, 2008).
Democracy: Can't We Do Better Than That? (Chicago: Banner Press, 1986).
Dictatorship and
Democracy, and the Socialist Transition to Communism .
"The End of a Stage--the Beginning of a New Stage," Revolution magazine,
RCP Publications, Fall 1990.
Making Revolution and
Emancipating Humanity , Revolution, October 2007-February
2008. Also included in Revolution and Communism: A Foundation and Strategic
Orientation, pamphlet (Chicago: RCP Publications, 2008).
Observations on Art and Culture, Science and Philosophy (Chicago:
Insight Press, 2005).
" Views on Socialism and
Communism: A Radically New Kind of State, A Radically Different and Far Greater
Vision of Freedom ," Revolution, March-April 2006.
Other Works and
Sources
Communism: The Beginning of a New
Stage, A Manifesto from the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA ,
(Chicago: RCP Publications, 2009).
Constitution for
the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal) ,
(Chicago: RCP Publications, 2010).
" On the Strategy
for Revolution ," Revolution, #226, March 6, 2011.
Set the Record Straight website with materials from Raymond Lotta, at thisiscommunism.org
Raymond Lotta, Nayi Duniya, and K.J.A., Alain Badiou's "Politics of
Emancipation': A Communism Locked Within the Confines of the Bourgeois World," Demarcations: A Journal of Communist
Theory and Polemic , Summer-Fall 2009 (1).
1. " The Occupy
movement, a renascent Left, and Marxism today: An interview with Slavoj Zizek,"
The Platypus Review (42) December 2011-January 2012.
2. It is worth noting that in his discussion of the upsurge in Egypt, Zizek contents himself with tailing this movement, even making a principle out of
some of its weaknesses and narrow aspects, including (so far at least) the
neglect, or negation, to too far a degree of the Palestinian question. See Zizek interview, p. 4.
3. Zizek interview, p. 2.
4. Ibid., p. 2.
5. Ibid., p. 5.
6. Slavoj Zizek Presents Mao: On Practice and Contradiction (New York
and London: Verso Books, 2007), p. 10.
7. "Slavoj Zizek at OWS Part 2," October 9, 2011.
8. Zizek interview, p. 2.
9. Ibid., p. 3.
10. In the Platypus interview, p. 4, in his commentary on anti-Iraqi war
protests, Zizek faults the U.S. left for not working with the Iraqi left,
particularly the Iraqi Communist Party. This utterly revisionist party took
part in the elections for the first post-invasion government--elections that
were carried out under the auspices and in the service of U.S. occupation. Zizek notes the participation of the Iraqi Communist Party and goes on to say: "The
standard narrative was that the Iraqi people should liberate themselves,
without the U.S. occupation. But they had the same problem, and got into a
deadlock. With attacks on the Green Zone: which side should you take, there? I
was not ready to do what some did, to claim that, since they opposed the
American occupation, they should side with the resistance. I don't think these
radical Islamists should ever be supported."
Under the
mantle of not giving quarter to Islamic fundamentalism, Zizek is effectively
legitimizing the U.S. invasion and occupation. Contrast this social-chauvinist
position with the orientation of the RCP, USA, which is based on the
internationalist stand and analysis of Avakian. This analysis a) points to the
existence of "two outmodeds": imperialism and Islamic fundamentalism; b)
identifies both as being reactionary; c) calls for bringing forward a genuine
revolutionary movement in opposition to both; while d) making it crystal clear
that, of these "two outmodeds," it is imperialism, and above all U.S.
imperialism, that does greater harm to, and constitutes a far greater obstacle
to the emancipation of, the masses of people in the world. See Bob Avakian, " Bringing Forward Another Way ."
11. Ibid., p. 4. By contrast, see my
discussion of the persistence of the savage contradiction between the
imperialist metropoles and the Third World in Part 1 of the series " Shifts and
Faultlines in the World Economy and Great Power Rivalry ."
12. Ibid., p. 4.
13. " Charlie Rose with
Slavoj Zizek," October 26, 2011.
______________________
Raymond Lotta is a political economist, a writer for Revolution
newspaper, and advocates for Bob Avakian's new synthesis of communism.