Where to start with Zizek if I am pro-capitalist and I want to know if/why I'm wrong?

Where to start with Zizek if I am pro-capitalist and I want to know if/why I'm wrong?
Should I read more recent books, or it is better to read early works as I get more insight?
Or maybe I should go to goodreads and pick the one with most stars?

To start with, why are you pro-capitalist in at least a few paragraphs? From there on (use your own text) you can read prefaces on Google or some shit like that and work your way through his writings.

Or just read early Land and become the borg harbinger of capital and anime buttfuck.

implying zizek will tell you why you are wrong

>What you're referring to is what's called "theory." And when I said I'm not interested in theory, what I meant is, I'm not interested in posturing--using fancy terms like polysyllables and pretending you have a theory when you have no theory whatsoever. So there's no theory in any of this stuff, not in the sense of theory that anyone is familiar with in the sciences or any other serious field. Try to find in all of the work you mentioned some principles from which you can deduce conclusions, empirically testable propositions where it all goes beyond the level of something you can explain in five minutes to a twelve-year-old. See if you can find that when the fancy words are decoded. I can't. So I'm not interested in that kind of posturing. Žižek is an extreme example of it. I don't see anything to what he's saying. Jacques Lacan I actually knew. I kind of liked him. We had meetings every once in awhile. But quite frankly I thought he was a total charlatan. He was just posturing for the television cameras in the way many Paris intellectuals do. Why this is influential, I haven't the slightest idea. I don't see anything there that should be influential.

t. chomsky

I would skip Zizek and read Marx's Capital Volume 1. Start at part 2 of the book. Your first step will be to dissociate yourself from the familial ties you have with "the capitalist"- this man is not you. You have been lead to believe you are him, but this is in error. Read him as the global economic elite, and discover his exploitation of the common man.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not an economist, sociologist or philosophy major.
I live in Eastern European country, get paid quite alright when compared to the rest of society and I read news from the West.
And in this news I hear that Americans are dissatisfied with capitalism.
It is shocking for me, as we are told, the more capitalism we will have, the better our lives will become, and for about 30 years it was true (fall of communism, only gets better from there).
So I get on Veeky Forums Veeky Forums, see that there is this meme guy who writes books about how marxism is ok and capitalism is not and I would just like to take a look at his point of view.
Of course, like any Eastern European, we have communist (now branded "socialist") parties, but noone takes them seriously, as they are full of people that only try to call to the memories of other old people, how good were old times.

In my limited experience when Zizek usually shows up on my radar he constantly references Lacan, Hegel and Deleuze. I'd say Hegel->Marx->Freud->Deleuze Lacan

And only then I can read Zizek?
Man, there has to be an "easy mode"! :)
I can pressume that because I watched all his "big think" videos and I think he has a point. Can I get to that in less than a couple of years? :)

Depends what you're looking for I suppose, I'm getting into Continental so that's the info I run into, he has a written and talked a lot about those thinkers in depth. Also worth considering is why the fuck would you read Zizek instead of Marx or even Deleuze? Who do you think might be better?

>Pro-capitalist
>Thinks he's wrong
lol. Capitalism is nature, user. Capitalism is God. You're not wrong. In fact, you've never been more right.

I just thought that more recent is better, as I cannot grasp the problems of people from 19th century very well.
They had pretty much different problems than we have.

But I see limitations of capitalism that Zizek proposed. What about ecology, what about dealing with poverty? We are having huge problems with intellectual property (patent wars) and more and more things we produce is intellectual property.

I think you meant barter economy, when you actually said capitalism. A common typo.

There's the Churchill quote that's something like "Anybody who wasn't a young liberal has no heart, anybody who doesn't become an old conservative has no head." I would change it to "When you're very young, you are conservative by default (believe in god, kinda grossed out by homo stuff, don't buy shitty memes like extreme utilitarianism inherent in collectivism, etc.), then you get a little smarter and become liberal, then you get a little older and realize you were right the first time, but now you can explain why."

Liberals are just smart enough to be dangerous. They are the fallacious mean, people who are smart enough to realize reality is more complicated than your 10 year old self believed and that it's good to question everything. But they never really progress beyond the tired old utilitarian ethics of collectivism and so they end up being commies who will cause devaluation of human life literally any time they become the establishment. Collectivism is cancer that inevitably means humans who do not bow to the Enlightened Collectivist System will find themselves "obsolete" in a ditch somewhere. Contrast with the absolute chaos of the cronyism that exists today in the west, it's also complete garbage but I'd rather take my chances with it.

I am conflating capitalism with conservatism here because they are ultimately the same in this context and neolibs aren't even humans, they are just weird dehumanized insectoid creatures who drain the life from everything.

unbelievably american post

>I cannot grasp the problems of people from 19th century very well.
>They had pretty much different problems than we have
You've got a lot to learn. And where do you think our problems came from? Might that be helpful to solve them

As it was intended to be.

read a book y*nk

Your problems with my post are that I went full freedom and used "liberal" in an amerifat context, then claimed that "conservative/capitalism" (not even the same lol) is less destructive than some whacky interpretation of "collectivism". I did this intentionally to be edgy and to push my own hot take of things between the lines, while avoiding vocabulary I do not like. Many conservative public figures also do this intentionally, you might be surprised to know they aren't unironic bookless bible thumpers.

So are you just gonna post an argument or... ?

It's in the best interest of everyone who's intelligent and not psychopathic to work for "sustainability", both for your own health, wealth and your future children. If you fish all the fish there's no fish for next year, so you you become poor.
More equal societies (contented poor people) leads to a safer and more prosperous society; it is in your best interest to have more potential buyers: mass poverty = less for you to take.

>>>/teen/

You can make a better post than that, I believe in you.

Why aren't amerilards banned already? Didn't their dumbass government repeal net neutrality?

This is also why high taxes are bad.
If people can't buy stuff the economy shrinks.

>if net neutrality is repealed, the US internet will be a wasteland of paid corporate websites where you have to buy specific packages and websites like Veeky Forums and reddit will be blocked!

imagine unironically believing this when runet has existed for years and is a perfect example of how it would go down, which is to say it's pretty much the same except they occasionally pull retard moves like ban vk so all the normies just go to instagram and everything remains exactly the same, and thousands of people suddenly learn how to VPN. imagine unironically believing this will change the internet at all except filter the youtube comment tier dialogue into better containment websites, and have almost no effect on the economic prospects of companies who use the internet for business or people who aren't complete retards sharing information they need

You misunderstand capitalism. Value is subjective and especially in our age, I would say this notion of 'an intelligent man' is more and more dubious

>I-it will be fine guys! No ethical or economic consequences at all I swear! I love being buttfucked by companies anyway! D-don't you? W Le Capitalismo
Americans

>kinda grossed out by homo stuff

This is false.

>And in this news I hear that Americans are dissatisfied with capitalism.

...sort of.

You aren't going to find any large group of American's advocating for revolution or seizing the means of production. When you hear American's talking about "communism" or "socialism" we're talking about universal healthcare or tax reform or some shit. Leftist sure, but not communism/socialism.

Figured I should give you some background on your "why" before you dove into the subject.

Read “First as Tragedy, Then as Farce”. That is his books which is meant for the general public to read and encapsulates his cultural commentary.

A lot of the rest of his work requires significant background to really appreciate. Nearly all his other books are going to give you very little unless you know who he is referring to.


In the broadest terms Zizek’s project is this; Zizek comes to philosophical maturity in a time when Actually Existing Socialism is on the decline and post-structuralist philosophers are on the rise, people like Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze and so on. The common theme among these very different thinkers is that they all in some way seek to negate “The Subject”, meaning Descartes ‘thinking thing’ basically the Being which has subjectivity, the Being which thinks and experiences the world. Zizek sees Lacan as the only one of this cohort which is dealing with these problems but has a theory of the subject.

Zizek also sees in Marx’s Materialism a failure to articulate a sufficient theory of subjectivity, which he sees as the reason for why Marx fails to understand how capitalist ideology works in keeping workers complicit in their own oppression. The view of Ideology as simply ‘false consciousness’ is wrong, and advancements made by Gramsci and Althusser have drawn attention to this.

He also sees the era of German Idealism as the period which had the most rich theorizing about subjectivity, producing incredible insights which were not fully realized in their own day.

So his project is this; start with Lacan’s Psychoanalysis and from this vantage point reinterpret the major works of German Idealism, following the Dialectical conversation from Kant to Fichte to Schelling and finally getting to Hegel.

From completing this he delivers a new theory of subjectivity, in which he explains how we are structured by capitalist ideology.

Before approaching Zizek’s proper philosophical work I’d recommend that you have at least a working familiarity with Lacan, Hegel, and Kant. It’s also helpful if you’ve read Althusser’s “Ideological State Apparatus”, and Saul Kripke’s “Naming and Necessity”. Having at least a vague notion of the work of Habermas, Derrida, and Foucault is also useful.

His first book “The Sublime Object of Ideology” is still regarded as his most major statement of his ideas.

user, it's very odd to be pro-capitalist, imo, but I believe you. But I think Zizek might be way too difficult to you if you think is strange to even talk about marxism. I recommend looking for his articles on contemporary issues as they pop up and also watching his interviews.

Yes and no. Marx describes a sort of idealized capitalism which if anything is far closer how it is today than it was in his own day.


If you want what I’d consider to be some of the tightest cutting edge critique, I’d say Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism. Or maybe Blog Theory by Jodi Dean.

Thank you very much for your post.
I think it's too much for me right now to dive that deep into philosophy as I have no prior preparation (read only some Plato works, with Republic and found it interesting, so there may be some hope), but I will try my best with "First as Tragedy, Then as Farce".
Thank you once again.

>get paid quite alright when compared to the rest of society
>It is shocking for me, as we are told, the more capitalism we will have, the better our lives will become, and for about 30 years it was true

it won't buttfuck me at all, if the US internet turned into runet today it would have zero effect on how I use the internet.

that is a hard thing to know, I would be wary of any source that claims "kids are naturally unperturbed by homosexual activity". the first time I ever heard about homosexuality, I was like 6 years old. nobody ever told me anything about sex, some girl in my neighborhood tried to get all handsy with me and I thought "wew this is weird and bad" but I sorta became okay with it after a while. then some other young kid in the neighborhood was rumored to be all kissy with boys like this and I thought "oh god, that is worse than death", I automatically figured in my head that being attracted to males like this was a horrible stain on your soul or something. despite not even knowing the word "girlfriend" yet or even understanding the concept of relationships. I felt bad for him, like he had some terrible disease or something. so idk, it could be different for different people, I do not ever remember a time when somebody told me gays were bad. maybe I thought it was weird because I saw my mom and dad together, and thought this was the only way it should be. in which case, many kids would think this.

>it won't buttfuck me at all
>doesn't consider it can potentially buttfuck tens of millions
>IT SEEMS QUITE FINE AND ALRIGHT TO ME

pure ideology

it won't buttfuck them either, if they can't shitpost garbage on tumblr it is better for them, better for everyone

win win

but that woudn't even happen. people still manage to do it on runet. they're just butthurt at the mere idea that they won't be able to make posts like "I like to think of myself as well-informed" on reddit, and Spread Ideas because le internet is the Foundation of Democracy. that's retarded and ebul ajit pai and co. understand that if they trash net neutrality basically nothing will happen except they make money, and the white noise of the internet takes a different form. it's nothing. pure static. life goes on and nothing major changes.

There has to be some sort of constant value underpinning economics, you can't just do away with it

die

>Liberals become commies

Do you even understand the words you're using. Why don't you stick to /pol/?

>I am pro-capitalist and I want to know if/why I'm wrong
Zizek is NOT the place to start. Get a collection of Marx and Engels. Every prior to that, you ought to begin studying history with a focus on economics.

Why would you skip the first part? It's dense but not that hard if you take your time with it.

>Why are you pro-capitalist?
Because I'm not economically illiterate?

>there has to be an "easy mode"! :)
Not if you are actually interested in knowing things. Btw: not starting with Hegel's predecessors IS easy mode.

do you wanna know how I know you're a marxist?

What a shitty post, wow.

>It is shocking for me, as we are told, the more capitalism we will have, the better our lives will become
Completely wrong, and the rest your country isn't any better is precisely because of capitalism.

Solid, well done user, though I wouldn't necessarily advise skipping part 1, unless one goes back to it.

It's not perfect thus we should violently overthrow everything to put in a system that has either never been tried or resulted in hundreds of millions of deaths if it has. Nothing is perfect, there will never be a utopia. Things are better now than ever. Grow up.

Capitalism is only 'better now than ever' because the third world is full of people poor and desperate enough to spend their lives working for nothing to make all of our shit so we don't have to. Pajeet and Wang stop making our phones and putting our cars and clothes and plastic water bottles together and who's gonna take that up, volunteer at the nearest FOXCONN plant? You? Oh, but capitalism also develops nations and lifts them out of poverty; right now in China factories are all moving to Vietnam and Cambodia because the Chinese are sick of being treated like shit and are revolting and protesting just like western workers used to do when they had the same lot. So when we're all developed and civilised and drowning in middle-class inertia like the west, who is it that makes all this shit? Where do we establish the Bantustans of the next round of global apartheid, huh? If it ends up being your country I'm pretty sure you won't be so defensive of an economic process that requires your destitution to function.

>Things are better now than ever
>Cost of living has sky-rocketed while wages remain stagnant
>Corporations have declared themselves citizens and determine the outcome of most political conflicts
>Living in a state of class warfare, corporations - comprising a larger part of government - have no interest in maintaining the illusion of a social contract
Capitalism without ethical oversight (whether personal or imposed) is bad for the majority of the world's population. It elevates them to the level of "working class" and then lets them rot there.

>extremely edgy opinion #1
any leftist politics that claim to oppose capitalism are not only aberrations, but actively counterproductive to the progressive cause. this is because "capitalism" and "progress" are so closely intertwined that they are effectively identical

>extremely edgy opinion #2
in this sense the socialist projects of the 20th century were usurped and supplanted by neoliberalism, which despite the objections of today's radical leftists, is the penultimate form of the progressive project, in terms of both ideology and praxis.

>extremely edgy opinion #3
The colloquial understanding of heat is that there exists a spectrum between "hot" and "cold", as though the the two poles constitute two discrete states. In reality, there is only heat, and the relative lack thereof. Such is the relationship between capitalism and communism. The two are not diametrically opposed; there are only degrees of dysfunction within a capitalist system. Ultimately, it is more accurate to conceptualize communism as a terminated node on capitalism's ancient phylogenetic tree.

Capitalism is responsible for far, far more needless deaths than communism could even dream of, dumb child.

The purest form of communism is hyper-developmental dictatorship. We are advancing into a future where Marx was half-right and the half he was wrong about has been corrected by Chinese autists, and the result will be nightmarish.

>you can’t oppose capitalism
>we are all capitalism nigger
>you can’t get out
>look we said its built right in
>you’re ours forever
>nope can’t leave, can’t even have a space away from us
delightful

this is a translation of your literati speak, rather than an objection to your sophistries

I'm not capitalism's cheerleader. I'm no more enthused by any of this than you are.

You have the scorn of a complainer but lack the imagination of a reformer.

If you can tell me the solution to this inherent feature of the capitalist mode of production and if it isn't just "let robots build the iphones", then I'm willing to listen.

Capitalism works despite the rational consumer being a poor approximation. Communism fails because the rational laborer is a great approximation. Turns out people don't like working unless there's an incentive to do so.

>Cost of living is lower than ever before, we just define it differently to reflect how fucking rich capitalism has made us, so now not being able to pay for internet, cellphone, a bunch of exotic goods, etc. is considered below standard
>Corporations are not actually citizens outside of tax purposes; if you want to change that change taxes in general
>They don't determine the outcome (see Trump) ((inb4 TRUMP IS A CORPORATE SHILL))
>believes what is currently going on can be called "class warfare"

Imagine being this dumb

capitalism is a useful tool
it is not a principle to organize your life around

Which is why no one ever did any work for the billions of years prior to capitalism.

do u know how feudalism works you fucking dummy

What is the incentive for working that magically exists in a feudal state and capitalist state, which are fundamentally distinct stages, but doesn't exist in a socialist state?

assuming you mean a welfare state, nobody in a pure feudal or capitalist economy is going to give you shit if you dont do something useful. any system that allows you to trade labor hours at their exchange value for the goods necessary for survival has, at least, the minimum requisite incentive.

Depending on your country, you might’ve been better off under communism.
>never out of job
>state provided healthcare
>alright pension
>free education
>tutorship for gifted students
>lots of grants
>affordable, sometimes state-provided holidays and holiday resorts
>affordable housing
>early retirement

My aunt and her family came from a small village. By age 30 they had their own 6 room flat in a nice area that has only seen development since then. It’s not even a blockhouse. I earn above the average salary and I’ll never have a flat that big. Shit, I can barely pay rent due to AirBnB faggots pumping up prices. I gave up on owning a home as soon as I started working.
Soviet socialism was not sustainable as we all know, but it was surely more comfortable.

Slavoj has written like 50+ books but you should probably just listen to him speak (though I don't know what are the 'greatest hits')

God, I love Chomsky.

Ask a homeless if he feels his life is valued by the establishment.
Ask the underpaid worker about the dreams of “making it” like the couple of self-made men you see on TV.
Ask the unemployed college grad if he sees a bright future ahead.
Ask the pensioner if his work paid off.

Capitalism devalues human life all the same. Our values inflate and deflate based on how much we can produce, we’re tools, sometimes on demand, sometimes not. Your chances of getting fucked by life are the same, only now you can watch rich dudes blow their money, thinking in “what if-s” and “could’ve been-s”. If only you got that job, that promotion, if you weren’t fired, if your company had more contracts, if you’d went for a different degree instead of following your passion. If you’ve won the lottery...

From a sentimental point of view, individualism glorified by capitalists is just sad. I’m a eurofag. I wish you could take a trip with me to work. We get on the subway, dressed in business-casual like the good boys we are, we stare into our phones for 20 minutes, get off, and March with the same rhythm to our soulless glass officebuildings to sit in a black, white and gray environment for the next 8 or 10 hours depending on how lucky we got. We finish at the same time and take the same route back home with the same rhythm.
Then I can write, read, be with my friends, and dress how I want. The next morning we can wonder if we could do the same in a different establishment, except with more handholding from the government and less hacks and sociopaths who “made it big” leeching on us.

>assuming you mean a welfare state
I didn't mention anything of the sort.

>nobody in a pure feudal or capitalist economy
Whatever "pure" is?
>is going to give you shit if you dont do something useful. any system that allows you to trade labor hours at their exchange value for the goods necessary for survival has, at least, the minimum requisite incentive.

I'm at a loss as to what you think is going on in a socialist state. What do you think "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" means?

Automation is the solution of the Japanese. Bill Gates wants to tax the labor of the robots.

Ora et labora

There is an incentive to work. You get jailed or starve in a socialist country if you could work, but chose not to.

A commie regime handing out free food and supplies to everyone and their mother is a meme. You work, you get your share. Same as capitalism, except the allocation of resources (in theory) is more just. If you work, you get all you need, and you get more out of your work in general, as opposed to the often underpaid and ostracized workers of a capitalist state, who have to provide -but sometimes cannot- make a humane living for themselves.

If you value culture and tradition you cannot at the same time be a capitalist, at least the free market kind. The fact is that capitalism is the most revolutionary economic system ever devised, as it slyly uproots all of our cherished customs. It saddens me how perverted the word conservative has become. Anyone with actual conservative values should be able to recognize how markets erode all they wish to preserve.

theft and murder is wrong

the united states is not capitalist. it is a mixed economy. it would look dramatically different if socialism was removed

you tell 'em adolf

>thus we should violently overthrow everything
nobody is saying this except edgelords
if you can't have the basic conversational decency to honestly present your opponent's case then fuck off back to whatever board you came from

>Cost of living is lower than ever before, we just define it differently to reflect how fucking rich capitalism has made us, so now not being able to pay for internet, cellphone, a bunch of exotic goods, etc. is considered below standard
yes retard, living standards have risen since victorian england, very bright of you to realize that
the internet and a cellphone are needed if you want to be a part of the modern world and earn a living
if you plan on living in the woods, eating what you kill and going to a well or stream for water every day then you don't need them

>if you plan on living in the woods, eating what you kill and going to a well or stream for water every day then you don't need them

except you do, because there is no "wild west" untouched land anymore and literally every inch of earth than you can reasonably subsist on will raise somebody's eyebrow if you try dicking around on it. maybe not immediately, but there is always the risk. which means you have to be a landowner to do this. which means you have to be wealthy. which means you have to be porkie enough to make money which means you have to be connected to infrastructure and own shit like cellphones. or you can be an illegal squatter and risk getting fucked as soon as you are detected.

What, lack of property rights for everyone but the 小天子 who own property in Vancouver, HK, and Sydney?
They're just capitalists with chinese characteristics, or at least closer to that than they are to the western idea of marxists

that Evangelicals who complain about 'taking the Christ out of Christmas' and chicanos who get mad about drinko-de-mayo don't realize that they're angry about the same thing, the commodification of culture and the need for ever broadening markets (or the death of a company to it's less moral competition) still hate each other so much is my favorite meme

the 'its not wrong to be white' crew will still lose though because they hate 'marxists' so much and they'll never be able to coordinate with other cultural groups struggling with the same economic pressures

Exactly, the western idea, which is rooted in either romantic 1800s workers' rights stuff or Soviet propaganda. Chinese Marxism is more a dystopian kind of accelerationism led by the enlightened vanguard of the CPC, a hypercapitalism bent torturous ways to serve their interpretation of how to advance history. It has its roots in Stalin and Lenin, in five year plans and the NEP and development of the productive forces. Calling it 'capitalism' makes it sound a lot less scary than it actually is.

You can hate the commodification of culture and other things at the same time, you massive faggot retard.

> I am pro-capitalist and I want to know why I'm wrong
Read Marx so you can realize why you're wrong and why communism will inevitably prevail, and also why it's the worst possible outcome . Then read Kaczynski's ISAIF and proceed to transcend politics forever. Politics keep your eyes off reality.

Chomsky is bang on here.

That said, I think there's something exciting in the idea of a bunch of ideologues and theorists battling it out in the media arena, each adopting personal brands and vying to attract followers. They're romantic in the way of mafiosi. Modern examples are Jordan Peterson and Camille Paglia; they straddle the line between legitimate intellectual academic and posturing media personalities spouting quotables. I think public intellectuals are much better rockstars than actual rockstars, because (if anything) they drive the public to debate and literacy rather than to drugs, sex, and rock-and-roll. From the standpoint of overall cultural dynamism, widespread cultural literacy and debate are unambiguously good.

Das Kapital

Robots?

Hence: anti-capitalism.

>Politics keep your eyes off reality.
This is true and why the /pol/tards are furthest away from being "red-pilled" as possible. Being obsessed with pundit-tier politics to the point where it has a negative affect on your life is absurd. People literally neglect their lives and let the years pass by under the guise of being wolves in a world of sheeple or some nonsense, which ultimately equates to them reading the same Reuters-sourced news as everyone else, the only difference is that their lives essentially revolve around such news and tangential conspiracies.

It becomes amusing when you consider these people are young white men who fool themselves into thinking they are doing it all to drive the white race further. They are eschewing any chance of gaining/honing social skills, a physique, or decent career path, which would actually result in their ability to have a family and genuinely perpetuate the white race and their genotype. How they don't see through their own transparent defense mechanism is beyond me.

>not being pro-capitalist because you are an accelerationist
>not consciously developing full-fledged ultracapitalism via socialist market economy as a means of creating the conditions for communism before actually attempting socialism
That's why communism failed in the USSR, you know. The application of socialist economics in a feudal country can only yield neofeudalist economics, meaning that party bureaucracy essentially becomes a new nobility which distributes goods in exchange for protection.

I like you, user.

wtf I love Twitter now

>not sharing is murder
>voluntary exchange is theft
It's like you want everyone to give your their shit and think anyone opposed should die.

I'm pretty sure Zizek has spoken in support of capitalism at times, that is the ways it does well. There would be a more ideal capitalist society than the current one.

>commies can't even form a grammatically correct sentence

>"look mom, I corrected someone's grammar on the internet"

>chomsky-fags

kek

Marxism has led to over 100 million deaths around the world. Anyone who has family that has lived under the totalitarian regimes can attest to how much of a living hell day to day life was. The sheltered kids online that advocate anything Marxist related are either cretins or deranged.

marxism didn't kill those people though, dictators and poor policy making did