Socialism or Communism? (1)

Slavoj Žižek, First as Tragedy, then as Farce (London: Verso, 2009), pp. 94-95:

Such apocalyptic proletarianism is, however, inadequate if we want to deserve the name of "communist." The ongoing enclosure of the commons concerns both the relation of people to the objective conditions of their life processes as well as the relation between people themselves: the commons are privatized at the expense of the proletarianized majority. But there is a gap between these two kinds of relation: the commons can also be restored to collective humanity without communism, in an authoritarian-communitarian regime; likewise the de-substantialized, "rootless" subject, deprived of content, can also be counteracted in ways that tend in the direction of communitarianism, with the subject finding its proper place in a new substantial community. In this precise sense, Negri's anti-socialist title, Goodbye Mr. Socialism, was correct: communism is to be opposed to socialism, which, in place of the egalitarian collective, offers an organic community (Nazism was national socialism, not national communism). In other words, while there may be a socialist anti-Semitism, there cannot be a communist form. (If it appears otherwise, as in Stalin's last years, it is only an indicator of a lack of fidelity to the revolutionary event.) Eric Hobsbawm recently published a column with the title: "Socialism Failed, Capitalism Is Bankrupt, What Comes next? The answer is communism. Socialism wants to solve the first three antagonisms without addressing the fourth--without the singular universality of the proletariat. [The four antagonisms, from p. 91 of Žižek's First as Tragedy, then as Farce, are "the looming threat of an ecological catastrophe; the inappropriateness of the notion of private property in relation to so-called 'intellectual property'; the socioethical implications of new techno-scientific developments (especially in biogenetics); and, last but not least, the creation of new forms of apartheid, new Walls and slums." Socialism doesn't address new forms of apartheid.] The only way for the global capitalist system to survive its long-term antagonism and simultaneously avoid the communist solution, will be for it to reinvent some kind of socialism--in the guise of communitarianism, or populism, or capitalism with Asian values, or some other configuration. The future will thus be communist ... or socialist.