Wednesday, October 24, 2018
Will Future Generations Ask How Americans Let Authoritarianism Take Hold?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4BswdnP1Q0
Gaza Water Crisis: Political Solution Needed, not a Technological One
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbW4qU_zpN0
Will our future be Chinese 'capitalist socialism'?
Despite occasional exceptions,
it was once considered almost gospel that democracy and capitalism went hand in
hand. China's successful rise knocks the notion on the head.
Official Chinese social
theorists paint a picture of today's world which basically remains the same as
that of the Cold War.
Thus, the worldwide struggle
between capitalism and Socialism goes on unabated, the fiasco of 1990 was just
a temporary setback and, today, the big opponents are no longer the US and USSR
but America and China, which remains a Socialist country.
Here, the explosion of
capitalism in China is read as a gigantic case of what in the early Soviet
Union they called New Economic Policy, so that what we have in China is a
new "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" but still
Socialism. The Communist party remains in power and tightly controls and direct
market forces.
Indeed, Domenico Losurdo, the
Italian Marxist who died in June this year, elaborated this point in detail,
arguing against the "pure"Marxism which wants to establish a new
Communist society directly after the revolution, and for a more "realist" view
which advocates a gradual approach with turnarounds and failures.
Rationalising Reality
Roland Boer, a Beijing-based
professor, evokes the memorable image of Losurdo drinking a cup of tea on a
busy Shanghai street in September 2016: "In the midst of the bustle,
traffic, advertising, shops, and clear economic drive of the place, Domenico
said, 'I am happy with this. This is what socialism can do!' To my quizzical
look, he replied with a smile, 'I am strongly in favour of the reform and
opening up'."
Boer then goes on to resume
the argument for this "opening up": "Most efforts had
been directed at the relations of production, focusing on socialist equality
and collective endeavour. This is all very well, but if everyone is equal
simply because they are poor, few would see the benefit. So Deng and those
working with him began to emphasise another dimension of Marxism: the need to
unleash the forces of production."
For Marxism, however, "unleashing
the forces of production" is not "another dimension" but
the very goal of transforming relations of production.
And here is Marx's classic
formulation: "At a certain stage of development, the material
productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of
production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the
property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto.
From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into
their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution."
The irony is that, while, for
Marx, Communism arises when capitalist aspects of production became an obstacle
to the further development of the means of production. Which means this
development can be secured only by (sudden or gradual) progress from a
capitalist market economy to a socialized economy.
But Deng Xiaoping's "reforms" turn
Marx around. At a certain point, one has to return to capitalism to enable the
economic development of Socialism.
Complete Change
Of course, there is a further
irony here that is difficult to surpass. The 20th century Left was defined by
its opposition to two fundamental tendencies of modernity: the reign of capital
with its aggressive individualism and alienating dynamics and authoritarian-bureaucratic
state power.
What we get in today's China
is exactly the combination of these two features in its extreme form: a strong
authoritarian state and wild capitalist dynamics.
Orthodox Marxists liked to use
the term "dialectical synthesis of the opposites": suggesting
true progress takes place when we bring together the best of both opposing
tendencies. But it looks like China succeeded by way of bringing together what
we considered the worst in both opposing tendencies (liberal capitalism and
Communist authoritarianism).
Years ago, a Chinese social
theorist, with links to Deng Xiaoping's daughter, told me an interesting
anecdote. When Deng was dying, an acolyte who visited him asked him what he
thought his greatest act was, expecting the usual answer that he will mention
his economic opening that brought such development to China.
To their surprise, he
answered: "No, it was that, when the leadership decided to open up
the economy, I resisted the temptation to go all the way and open up also the
political life to multi-party democracy." (According to some sources,
this tendency to go all the way was pretty strong in some Party circles and the
decision to maintain party control was in no way preordained.)
Test case
We should resist here the liberal
temptation to dream about how, in the case China were to open up also to
political democracy, its economic progress would have been even faster: what if
political democracy would have generated new instabilities and tensions that
would have hampered economic progress? Such as were witnessed in most of the
old USSR?
What if this (capitalist)
progress was feasible only in a society dominated by a strong authoritarian
power? Recall the classical Marxist thesis on early modern England: it was in
the bourgeoisie's own interest to leave the political power to the aristocracy
and keep for itself the economic power. Maybe something homologous is going on
in today's China: it was in the interest of the new capitalists to leave
political power to the Communist Party.
The German philosopher Peter
Sloterdijk remarked how if there is a person to whom they will build monuments
a hundred years from now, it is Lee Kuan Yew, the Singaporean leader who
invented and implemented so-called "capitalism with Asian
values." (Which, of course, have nothing to do with Asia and all to
do with authoritarian capitalism.)
Nevertheless, the virus of
this authoritarian capitalism is slowly but surely spreading around the globe.
Before setting in motion his reforms, Deng Xiaoping visited Singapore and
expressly praised it as a model all of China should follow.
This change has a
world-historical meaning. Because, until now, capitalism seemed inextricably
linked with democracy. There were, of course, from time to time, recourses to
direct dictatorship, but, after a decade or two, democracy again imposed itself
(recall just the cases of South Korea and Chile).
Now, however, the link between
democracy and capitalism is broken. So it is quite possible that our future
will be modelled upon a Chinese "capitalist socialism" –
definitely not the socialism we were dreaming about.
Friday, October 19, 2018
Žižek. Capitalism and its Threats. 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwvpLG89lwg&feature=em-uploademail
Sunday, October 14, 2018
Tragic deaths inspire a Bosnian miracle
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/440974-zizek-bosnia-balkan-croatia/
The violent deaths of two
young men have united Bosnians, crossing rigid ethnic lines. Could something
finally be stirring in the divided Balkan country?
When we think of miracles and
Bosnia, the first association that pops up is the appearance of the Virgin Mary
a couple of decades ago in Medjugorje – an event that brought millions of
pilgrims to the area.
However, a week ago, a much
greater and more important miracle took place in Banja Luka, the capital of the
Serb part of Bosnia ("Republika Srpska"), and then also in other
Bosnian cities across the ethnic divide.
The miracle is not the
elections which took place this Sunday. As usual, Bosnian elections (with all
the accompanying irregularities) were marked by apathy and indifference, and
just confirmed the tripartite division of the state along ethnic lines.
Today, the Serb part is more
and more acting as a sovereign state, while in the Muslim Sarajevo,
Islamization progresses, evidenced by how it's more and more difficult to get a
beer in a restaurant or bar, among other things.
Meanwhile, a specific form of
the much-publicized PPP (public-private partnership) is flourishing in all of
Bosnia: local political elites intertwined with half-legal private businesses,
their rule legitimized as protectors of ethnic entities (Bosnians, Serbs etc.)
against the "enemy." In such a situation where poverty is everywhere
and young people are migrating to Western Europe in search of jobs, nationalism
thrives and defense of ethnic identity easily prevails over economic
issues.
Lessons from past
The problem facing Bosnia is
best exemplified by what took place a couple of years ago in Croatia. There,
two public protest gatherings were announced: trade unions called for a protest
against exploding unemployment and poverty (felt very much by ordinary people).
At the same time, rightist nationalists announced a gathering in order to
protest the re-introduction of the official status of Cyrillic writing in
Vukovar (because of the Serb minority there).
Of course, at the first
gathering, a couple of hundred people came, and to the second gathering, over
100,000 people came. Poverty was experienced as a daily life problem much more
than the Cyrillic threat by ordinary people, but nonetheless trade unions
failed to mobilize the masses.
Wise commentators like to
evoke such stories to cynically mock leftist claims that our goal should be to
defeat local nationalism and to bring about a transnational coalition of those
who are manipulated and exploited by the ruling ethnic elites. They patiently
explain how, especially in an area like the Balkans, "irrational"
ethnic hatred runs all too deep to be overcome by "rational" economic
concerns – meaning the transnational coalition of the exploited is a miracle
that will never happen.
Well, suddenly this miracle is
happening now. And it makes Medjugorje pale by comparison.
Human toll
David Dragicevic, a young
Serb-Bosnian hacker, disappeared in the night from March 17 to March 18 this
year, and his body was found in the vicinity of Banja Luka on March 24; it was
clear from his heavily disfigured body that he was killed by protracted brutal
torture.
From March 26, daily protests
have taken place in the main square of Banja Luka, organized by his father
Davor under the title "Justice for David." Police first declared
David's death a suicide, and only after strong public pressure began to
investigate it as a case of murder, but with no results yet.
Eventually, it became clear
that David had discovered traces of corruption and other criminal activities of
the ruling clique. So he had to disappear.
A week ago, the continuous
protests erupted into a large mass gathering, with tens of thousands
participating, and dozens of buses bringing people from all of Republika Srpska
into Banja Luka. The ruling clique reacted with panic: thousands of policemen
controlled the streets and blocked entry to the city.
Now comes the true miracle.
Unexpectedly, in a wonderful display of trans-ethnic solidarity, similar gatherings
took place in other Bosnian cities where Muslims are a majority. In Sarajevo,
the capital of Bosnia, hundreds demanded justice for a similar case that
happened in their midst: the death of Dzenan Memic, who disappeared in the
night of February 8 to February 9, 2016, which was never seriously
investigated, although his body was also disfigured by traces of torture.
Alone together
Protesters in Banja Luka,
Sarajevo, and other Bosnian cities exchanged messages and emphasized their
solidarity across ethnic divides, since they all share the same fate of being
controlled by corrupted PPP elites.
So, finally, they became fully
aware that the true threat does not come from other ethnic groups but from the
corruption in their own group, and that they can get rid of this malignant
tumor only by acting together. And then the impossible and
"unimaginable" (for cynical realists) happened.
Of course, one should not
expect too much from such explosions. A similar trans-ethnic movement against
economic poverty already took place a couple of years ago, in an echo of the
Arab Spring, and gradually dwindled.
However, the fire continues to
burn beneath the surface, and this fire is the only beacon of hope in Bosnia.
In this, it reconfirms the truth of Abraham Lincoln's old saying: You can
deceive some people all the time, you can deceive all the people for some time,
but you cannot deceive all the people all the time.
Slavoj Žižek is a cultural
philosopher. He’s a senior researcher at the Institute for Sociology and
Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana, Global Distinguished Professor of
German at New York University, and international director of the Birkbeck Institute
for the Humanities of the University of London.
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