Slavoj Žižek on

Marx & Lenin

Dr. Rey Ty’s Notes

Description of Žižek• “The four pillars of Slavoj

Žižek are (Lacanian) psychoanalysis, (Hegelian) philosophy, a (Marxist) theory of ideology, and (Christian) theology.” Source: Slavoj Žižek. (2008). The ticklish subject: The absent centre of political ontology. New York & London: Verso, p. ii.

In His Own Words: Žižek on Marx• “All this, of course, Marx ‘knows very well… and

yet’: and yet, in the crucial formulation in the Preface to the Critique of Political Economy, he proceeds as if he does not know it, by describing the very passage from capitalism to socialism in terms of the above-mentioned vulgar evolutinist dialectics of productive forces and the relations of production: when the forces surpass a certain degree, capitalist relations become an obstacle to their further development: this discord brings about the need for socialist revolution, the function of which is to co-ordinate again forces and relations; that is, to establish relations of production rendering possible the intensified development of the productive forces as the end-in-itself of the historical process.” Source: Slavoj Žižek. (2008). The sublime object of ideology. New York & London: Verso, p. 54.

In His Own Words: Žižek on Lenin• “As Lenin had already emphasized, the

history of philosophy consists of an incessant, repetitive tracing of the difference between materialism and idealism; what one has to add is that, as a rule, this line of demarcation does not run where one would obviously expect it to run—often, the materialist choice hinges on how we decide between seemingly secondary alternatives.” Source: Slavoj Žižek. (2008). The ticklish subject: The absent centre of political ontology. New York & London: Verso, p. 42.

In His Own Words: Žižek on Lenin• “In his Philosophical Notebooks, Lenin

made the well-known statement that everyone who aims at really understanding Marx’s Capital should read the whole of Hegel’s Logic in detail. He then did it himself, supplementing quotes from Hegel with hundreds of ‘sics’ and marginal comments like: ‘The first part of this sentence contains an ingenious dialectical insight; the second part is theological rubbish!.” Source: Slavoj Žižek. (2008). The ticklish subject: The absent centre of political ontology. New York & London: Verso, p. 172.

In His Own Words: Žižek on Lenin• “Marxist (or utopian Socialist) meta-

politics: political conflict is fully asserted, but as a shadow-theatre in which events whose proper place is on Another Scene (of economic processes) are played out; the ultimate goal of ‘true’ politics is thus its self-cancellation, the transformation of the ‘administration of people’ into the ‘administration of things’ within a fully self-transparent rational order of collective Will;” Source: Slavoj Žižek. (2008). The ticklish subject: The absent centre of political ontology. New York & London: Verso, p. 224.

In His Own Words: Žižek on Lenin

• “It is only the Leninist revolutionary, not the Jacobin, who thus occupies the properly perverted position of the pure instrument of historical Necessity made accessible by means of scientific knowledge.” Source: Slavoj Žižek. (2008). The ticklish subject: The absent centre of political ontology. New York & London: Verso, p. 228.

In His Own Words: Žižek on Marx & Lenin

• REPEATING LENIN: Lenin's Choice• "The first public reaction to the idea of reactualizing Lenin is, of

course, an outburst of sarcastic laughter: Marx is OK, even on Wall Street, there are people who love him today - Marx the poet of commodities, who provided perfect descriptions of the capitalist dynamics, Marx of the Cultural Studies, who portrayed the alienation and reification of our daily lives -, but Lenin, no, you can't be serious! The working class movement, revolutionary Party, and similar zombie-concepts? Doesn't Lenin stand precisely for the FAILURE to put Marxism into practice, for the big catastrophe which left its mark on the entire XXth century world politics, for the Real Socialist experiment which culminated in an economically inefficient dictatorship? So, in the contemporary academic politics, the idea to deal with Lenin is accompanied by two qualifications: yes, why not, we live in a liberal democracy, there is freedom of thought... however, one should treat Lenin in an "objective critical and scientific way," not in an attitude of nostalgic idolatry, and, furthermore, from the perspective firmly rooted in the democratic political order, within the horizon of human rights - therein resides the lesson painfully learned through the experience of the XXth century totalitarianisms.“ Source: Slavoj Žižek. http://www.lacan.com/replenin.htm .

In His Own Words: Žižek on Lenin• REPEATING LENIN: Lenin's Choice• “What are we to say to this? Again, the problem resides in the implicit qualifications which can

be easily discerned by the "concrete analysis of the concrete situation," as Lenin himself would have put it. "Fidelity to the democratic consensus" means the acceptance of the present liberal-parlamentary consensus, which precludes any serious questioning of how this liberal-democratic order is complicit in the phenomena it officially condemns, and, of course, any serious attempt to imagine a society whose socio-political order would be different. In short, it means: say and write whatever you want - on condition that what you do does not effectively question or disturb the predominant political consensus. So everything is allowed, solicited even, as a critical topic: the prospects of a global ecological catastrophe, violations of human rights, sexism, homophobia, antifeminism, the growing violence not only in the far-away countries, but also in our megalopolises, the gap between the First and the Third World, between the rich and the poor, the shattering impact of the digitalization of our daily lives... there is nothing easier today than to get international, state or corporate funds for a multidisciplinary research into how to fight the new forms of ethnic, religious or sexist violence. The problem is that all this occurs against the background of a fundamental Denkverbot, the prohibition to think. Today's liberal-democratic hegemony is sustained by a kind of unwritten Denkverbot similar to the infamous Berufsverbot in Germany of the late 60s - the moment one shows a minimal sign of engaging in political projects that aim to seriously challenge the existing order, the answer is immediately: "Benevolent as it is, this will necessarily end in a new Gulag!" The ideological function of the constant reference to the holocaust, gulag and the more recent Third World catastrophes is thus to serve as the support of this Denkverbot by constantly reminding us how things may have been much worse: "Just look around and see for yourself what will happen if we follow your radical notions!" And it is exactly the same thing that the demand for "scientific objectivity" means: the moment one seriously questions the existing liberal consensus, one is accused of abandoning scientific objectivity for the outdated ideological positions. This is the point on which one cannot and should not concede: today, the actual freedom of thought means the freedom to question the predominant liberal-democratic "post-ideological" consensus - or it means nothing.” Source: Slavoj Žižek. http://www.lacan.com/replenin.htm .

In His Own Words: Žižek on Lenin• REPEATING LENIN: Interpretation versus Formalization• So where are we to begin? In the present climate of the New Age

obscurantism, it may appear attractive to reassert the lesson of Lenin's Materialism and Empiriocriticism: in today's popular reading of quantum physics, as in Lenin's times, the doxa is that science itself finally overcame materialism - matter is supposed to "disappear," to dissolve in the immaterial waves of energy fields.4 It is also true (as Lucio Colletti emphasized), that Lenin's distinction between the philosophical and the scientific notion of matter, according to which, since the philosophical notion of matter as reality existing independently of mind precludes any intervention of philosophy into sciences, the very notion of "dialectics in/of nature" is thoroughly undermined. However... the "however" concerns the fact that, in Materialism and Empiriocriticism, there is NO PLACE FOR DIALECTICS, FOR HEGEL. What are Lenin's basic theses? The rejection to reduce knowledge to phenomenalist or pragmatic instrumentalism (i.e., the assertion that, in scientific knowledge, we get to know the way things exist independently of our minds - the infamous "theory of reflection"), coupled with the insistence of the precarious nature of our knowledge (which is always limited, relative, and "reflects" external reality only in the infinite process of approximation). Does this not sound familiar? Is this, in the Anglo-Saxon tradition of analytical philosophy, not the basic position of Karl Popper, the archetypal anti-Hegelian? In his short article "Lenin and Popper,"5 Colletti recalls how, in a private letter from 1970, first published in Die Zeit, Popper effectively wrote: "Lenin's book on empiriocriticism is, in my opinion, truly excellent." Source: Slavoj Žižek. http://www.lacan.com/replenin.htm .

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Slavoj Žižek

on

Dr. Rey Ty’s Notes

Marx & Lenin