Blogs Jul 9, 2010 at 12:13 pm

Comments

1
This is maddening to watch because it's always difficult for Zizek to finish a sentence (with his brain firing 3x the speed of his mouth), but it's even worse that the producer of this show tries and cram him into 6 minutes. Pity because he's one of the few philosophers that actually get any air time, and philosophy isn't represented well when under the gun of "concision."
2
Does he ever address the classic flaw in Marxist theory? That of transitioning society from (dictatorial) communism to the usual goal of pure socialism? Marx nearly buried himself in exegesis trying to connect those two dots and was never successful. And history shows us that is where implementation gets hung up as well. Eventually some bright person will "prove" that there are no perfect, or even good, solutions to a society comprised of imperfect individuals, only ones of lesser evil.
3
Marxism doesn't even make sense in philosophy, let alone in practice. Social classes amongst humans didn't come into being from some particular political/economic system in a society. The political/economic systems we have today are simply intended to manage our Darwinian instincts of property and power.
4
I think it's pretty amazing that people even feel comfortable using the words "Marxism" or "Marxist" and yet have barely read one of his pamphlets, let alone the majority of his work.

Marx advocated for many things political, but mostly was bothered by inherent, irrefutable contradictions in the capitalist system. Contradictions that reliably (and continue) to lead to needless human suffering. He was a philosopher and an economic theoretician. He was not a political FIGURE, although he became a political SYMBOL.

You can be a Marxist because you agree that there are contradictions in our current system that hurt us and have to be dealt with. That doesn't make you Stalin.

Marxist = Lenin = USSR = failed = Stalin = Oppression and secret prisons.

This is the way most people's brains work. Simplistic association and packaging of ideas such that the benign (the intellectual debate about capitalism) is EXACTLY THE SAME THING as the Gulag.

Lazy thinking. Too bad so few talk to us like we're grown ups.
5
@4 - What is a classic example of a contradiction in capitalism that Marxists like to cite?
6
3 - interesting that you call this an instinct when there's various cultures (killed off, dying but extant today) that share power and don't have a western conception of property.
7
@6 - What is the classic example of a culture that doesn't have a human conception of property that Marxists like to cite?
8
Sorry, not citing Marxists' classic examples; I am citing your errant attribution of a Darwinian instinct to all humanity--an unproven generality to say the least. Speaking of generalities, I'd also like to know what a human conception of property is--I said "western."

Ever hear of indigenous cultures? I know, they're brown, red, yellow, and black and they don't mean much, but they have various views of property that differ even from Western views which includes Marxism (gasp, a Western philosophy) by the way. I won't wander into broad generalities by saying "indigenous peoples were collectivist" but they had a different view of person, land, and property.
9
Marxism recognizes the inherent class conflicts which we tend to try to ignore in our 'anyone can become anything' delusion. It's important to be aware of that. Even easy money cannot take away class conflict and actually intensifies it. The banking class owns us and now we see the demand that we implement austerity when what we need is to implement regulation that may involve more rational allocation of resources (will look more austere but really will be serving are real basic needs first) rather than austerity used to prop up the broken reserve system.

Here's an entertaining video about the problem.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2…

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