but what solutions does he offer?
I recently watched his interview with the BBC. He advocated a more welfare orientated state governed society without ties to Communism.
But is that all he has to offer? I like him a lot but he doesn't seem to offer any practical solutions for the future. He does a brilliant job of explaining desires, dreams and ideology but he doesn't seem to provide a well formulated plan for the future.
Anyone disagree?
He can't offer solutions, really. He's a philosophy, not a policy guy. Neither can Badiou or hundreds of other Marxists beyond theorizing what revolution might look like. Marxism is worth reading critically but it's not a blueprint for action anymore.
He's told us how ideology works, and that's a pretty good contribution. He knows it's techno-dystopian nightmare from here and basically wants us not to be completely seduced by the ideological Matrix as it happens. Which it will.
"Think capitalism so that it doesn't think you." I read that today, it made sense. Mass social action beyond hysterical idpol virtue-signaling (or the Islamic State) is done. Just don't be a mindless neoliberal retard, plan for the future and use ya head. Beyond this what could anybody propose?
This is not to say something won't happen. Invariably it will. Bannon is mobilizing his team just as much as the left is. But it's ideology on both sides.
> aging population
> depleting resources
> environmental catastrophe on the horizon
> a higher proportion of retards in positions of power than usual.
There are no positive solutions for the future.
"Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself."
So basically what the Scandinavians have going on then?
>but what solutions does he offer?
I'm not quite sure it's possible or even desirable to offer a solution before the practice of dissolving ideology and escaping the ubiquitous tentacles of Capital are accomplished, else what's the point? Who could possibly layout a post-Western world when the end state isn't seen?
I'm pretty sure he advocates a type of Stalinism, though, or at the very least says "we ought not give up on Stalinism because of its historical implementation."
>what solutions does he offer?
nothing. This is why in every one of his talks he mentions the same line:
"I would sell my mother into slavery to see v for vendetta part 2"
because he has absolutely no idea how to reconstruct society after a revolution. If anything, Zizek has effectively proven that revolutions only change those things that are NOT important. Revolution is not possible, all you can accomplish is rebellion with minor cosmetic changes.
Scandinavians slurp ideology harder than they slurp somalian cock
He doesn't have any political solutions. And his political thoughts in general tend to be low quality (because he feels he needs to remain a leftists at all costs--although he does seem to appreciate conservatism at times).
I guess if you pressed Žižek hard enough he'd end up somewhat like Jordan Peterson. It would be fun seeing those two debate, because I don't know how Žižek could disagree that much and still remain a leftist in any real sense.
His problem is like other intellectuals that have gotten high off their own supply. They still buy the meme that there is such a thing as bottom up people's revolution, when in reality revolutions are nearly always financially or logistically backed by some part of the elite or outsider elites. After the slaughter of the alleged internal enemies (usually rival elites and their political faction puppets), these elites then move into their positions and continue on their elite porky ways (usually with a purge of the useful idiots and smug retards who believe they are fightin da man). This is why retard /pol/lacks are half-right about NGOs and Soros-types backing leftists. Though after a real revolution, Soros-types would be left standing among the wreckage, while fat dumb skinhead /pol/lacks and Veeky Forums nuanced nu-male hipsters would be gulag'd.
He's a Marxist, of course he has no solutions. The Marxist """"""""solution""""" is literally:
> dude just kill your boss lmao
> dude we have like a monpoly on every revolution!
> dude just like forget about money!
> dude just like let the state take over completely
> dude just like trust the vanguard!
> dude the state will dissolve itself naturally!
> dude were like guaranteed to win!
Marxists have no clue.
>arguments
Marx is objectively wrong and the sooner the left realizes this the sooner the state of capitalism can be changed. But Marxists are too proud to admit their theory has massive holes which cannot be repaired by """""""rereading Marx."""""
>I'm pretty sure he advocates a type of Stalinism, though, or at the very least says "we ought not give up on Stalinism because of its historical implementation."
He's probably right.
There's no need to shit on Marx. Marxism, maybe. I think people get these things mixed up. And, honestly, who gives a fuck? Ideologies are built to fail. The reason why things are so fucked up today is because people like to construct ideologies which are obviously fragile and then *immediately turn on the critic* and blame them for pointing out those aspects of them which are obviously solipsistic and embarrassingly fucking stupid.
Marx is the great author of capital, which now is basically the whole of our lives today. Of course heroic bourgeoisie-smashing revolution seems ridiculous. Nobody's going to say it isn't, because inevitably one totalitarian/communitarian state is going to replace another. And obviously neoliberal cynicism/hedonism isn't going to work either, except for those at the very top (and not necessarily always for them.)
Everybody should read Marx. Capital exists. Capital links together and unifies everything. Marx discovers this. Whether or not your response to this is either to go further down the rabbit hole into Zizek's psychoanalysis, or whether you refuse it and want to dial it back to Austrian economics, or decide to be a heroic Nietzsche impersonator or whatever the fuck is up to you.
Marxism is played, but in my experience the most boring cunts in the world are the ones who like to shit on it for the sake of shitting on it to prove their fedora score. Not every great philosopher is required to supply a Big Plan For The People. We blame them for not doing so when the fact is that it is *lazy as fuck* to want something like this.
Absolutely stellar post.
Best thing of seen on Veeky Forums in months.
> having kids leads to their suffering when shit hits the fan and also responsibility for me
> not having kids guarantees the collapse instead of just making it probable
The West ia finished, no matter how much some scream white genocide or whatever.
> that whole post
> > Don't shit on Marx
> Who gives a fuck that he was wrong!
You've said absolutely nothing.
The problem is that Marx's conception of history and money is flat-out wrong and holding back the left. I'm not saying 'don't read Kapital' but that Marxist apologists like you (and Zizek) are demanding that people stick their thumb up their asses.
Cheers. I've recently been reading some people who are substantially more intelligent than myself on this kind of stuff, so credit for whatever you find insightful there belongs to them and not really to me. Generally speaking I'm an idiot but sometimes there is osmosis.
But I'd like to add one more thing.
The clearest sign of the pseud - and I include myself in this category - is the subtle or not-so-subtle tendency to identify what they are by reference to what they are *not.* This is the great attraction to identity politics, which is to say, virtually all politics today: a kind of counter-deconstructionism. Postmodernism, in other words, hits the critical stage of where we are today: with everyone being crammed in a boat together and trying to elbow out a little more room for themselves while being unable to actually expand the boat, work together, swim, and so on. Not a terrible definition of a ship of fools would be that everyone on it believes that they are the captain. Much like a lunatic asylum in which everyone believes that they are the real Napoleon Bonaparte. That is the world today.
The idea is to affirm something, but not in a private or solipsistic sense. There's only one big process at work and it includes us all. It's tempting to hide and that is what I think ideology does: it is that magical margin where we can replace our anxious individual selves with an imaginary sense of community. The best place to do this is in a panopticon, and of course whenever anyone else attempts to get in, we punish them for transgressing, but only I would say ever out of a sense of guilt. And Zizek would know this also.
And that kind of stuff is paranoid nonsense. Ideology is pure ressentiment. But none of us are Nietzsche, either. The times are dark and fucked up but they call for as much intelligence as emotion. And probably a lot more of the former than the latter.
I don't think Marx was wrong. I think he unearthed something massive about human behaviour, technology, all of it. Saying that people should read him and pay attention doesn't make me an apologist.
In terms of 'holding back the left,' I am profoundly skeptical of there being A Left which could be held back. Rather I would say that left politics holds itself back through an increasing reference to idpol which is only a kind of stonewalling that will lead nowhere except to increasingly hysterical forms of radicalism that will undermine all of their own goals and projects.
As for thumbs/asses, my feeling would be: acknowledge the presence of one's own thumb in one's own ass before one accuses the other of doing the same. It's not quite the Sermon on the Mount but it will do.
That I seem to be saying nothing I am going to take as a compliment. What I'm attempting to do is avoid saying something incredibly stupid.
i agree. this is exactly why i stopped paying attention to him. don't get me wrong. i loved this guy. watched his films and showed them to my friends. read 5 books by him including his magnum opus less than nothing.but then i realized, that he was in a fucking deadlock. no only doesn't he have an idea how utopia could look like, but he disempowers and obfuscates anyone that does.
i remember a talk he gave in toronto i think, when some student ask him, what he thought about anarcho-syndicalism.
his reply: "tell me one instance, where it worked" this is the most conservative reaction possible. i think he is so fucked up about his own uncreativeness, that he cannot accept anyone having a positive idea about the future.
sedonly his narrowly defined space of future possiblity is a total mess.
his answer to genetics/environmental degradation etc is some kind of super police, when it is blatantly clear, that large contralized bureaucracies are exactly those institutions that brought us here. in the end it is the state, that is keeping it all together.
futhermore he is falling for the same fallacy as the fascists according to his percert'S guide.
while commenting on the riefenstahl film he sais: the fascists dream is to have a cake and to eat it. namely: to have industrial capitalism and "progress" and still live in a volksgemeinschaft with strong familial ties and hierarchic organisation, which of course is not possible, since the antagonisms are inherent to capitalism, which can be veiled for some time by blaming some foreign element, but is ultimately self-destructing
and on the other hand he wants some kind of alienated alternative modernity. this, i claim, is pure ideology.
either you live in some post-apocalyptic part anarcho-primitivist, part libertarian-socialist community, where you have close ties to neighbours, friends, familiy, where you keep each other in check and care for nature and so on or you live in an alienated, anonymous kind of society, where because of specialization in labour and hierarchy power abuses will again be ubiquitious.
tldr; he wants to claim some radical auro for himself,but when push comes to shove he wants us to "demand the impossible", which in his eyes is something like a little more welfware please, but in turn criticizes exactly this reformist stance. he is just unimaginative, which can also be deduced from the fact, that he doesn't even have a real philosophy of his own and just criticizes and copies others.
Interesting points and I believe you're right but I agreed with his critique of that anarchist student. Zizek can see through so much and critiques so well that no solution is viable for him. He even contradicted what he said in the OP in a video back in November he denounced the "good ol' welfare state" as one of the failing ideas of 20th century leftism.
I have tried getting in touch with him but he has no means of communication outside of these obscure events.
> Rather I would say that left politics holds itself back through an increasing reference to idpol which is only a kind of stonewalling that will lead nowhere except to increasingly hysterical forms of radicalism that will undermine all of their own goals and projects.
I know "classical Marxists" like to claim identity politics is secondary to class struggle but identity politicians are being quite faithful to the Marxist critique of bourgeois cosmopolitanism. SJWs are as much faithful, if not more, to the Marxist project as are the classical Marxists who spout shit like "I like fascist discipline." (Zizek).
Marxism isn't a theory you dimwit it's a method of analysis
To me it seems that finding yourself a job you like and making more moneys than your neighbors is actually "not that hard".
It's hard to drop the Capitalism game when it's actually not THAT hard.
>decide to be a heroic Nietzsche impersonator
That'll do me, thanks.
Cool distinction, you semi-literate mongrel.