It's a pretty short opinion piece but here's the last paragraph that sums up Zizek's thoughts.
The big question that haunts us is of course: can you abolish market freedom without abolishing political freedom? You certainly can abolish political freedom without abolishing market freedom — China proved it. Yet the final result of its rule seems to be to provide a new form of authoritarian capitalism which will replace liberal capitalism. Is China then today the biggest threat to a genuine democratic emancipation? Should China therefore be the enemy of the left?
He's looking at the collapsing USSR of his childhood and all socialist projects ever and insisting that they're the same picture. Guy's allergic to trying to figure out the history but he doesn't seem to mind drawing conclusions and abstract knowledge from his limited personal experience of it.
Is China then today the biggest threat to a genuine democratic emancipation? Should China therefore be the enemy of the left?
:bugs-no:
economic liberalization gave birth to political demands for democratization
Shut the fuck up.
Always the same question for Zizek on AES: why in the world should we expect handing everyone the freedom to wreck as much as possible an avenue for fixing anything? Either we're all really fucked up because the Puritanical psychology annihilated social relations over the last 150 years as a force of late Capitalist imperialism and need some specific force to bring us back, or we aren't. People aren't going to just magically get over being reactionaries and revisionists just because capitalism is deeply unsustainable.
can you abolish market freedom without abolishing political freedom?
Who fucking cares about the oh so sacred "market freedom", people is fucking dying, fuck you. And those aren't even fucking related anyways.
You certainly can abolish political freedom without abolishing market freedom — China proved it
Hmmmm I think there has been many other countries that proved that before le evil Chyna.
You certainly can abolish political freedom without abolishing market freedom — China proved it.
:data-laughing:
How can anyone calling themselves a marxist write that?
never read a Zizek article, they're always lib bait shit
Should China therefore be the enemy of the left?
.
Oh No Baby! What Is You Doin???
But what if we make the opposite move and define capitalism itself as a socialist New Economic Policy, as a passage from feudalism (or premodern societies in general) to socialism? With the abolishment of premodern relations of direct personal relations of servitude and domination, with the assertion of principles of personal freedom and human rights, capitalist modernity is in itself socialist — no wonder that modernity again and again gave birth to revolts against domination which already pointed towards economic equality (large peasants’ revolts in Germany in early 1500s, Jacobins, etc.). Capitalism is a passage from pre-modernity to socialism in the sense of a compromise formation: it accepts the end of direct relations of domination, i.e., the principle of personal freedom and equality, but (as Marx put it in his classic formulation) it transposes domination from the relations between people to the relations between things (commodities): as individuals, we are all free, but domination persists in the relationship between commodities that we exchange on the market.
Ow. That's a lot to take in.
Again and again: the so-called "freedom" enjoyed in the west vis-a-vis the market is literally destroying the planet. So, while the west doesn't need to emulate China in all respects, because it does not exist in a state of seige and has, through massive exploitation, created a modern infrastructure (which is often now rotting), could theoretically do a socialism should the current system be overthrown. But that is to say that the west, as is anyway, must be destroyed, and be made to assist the global south like China is, as well as abandon it's current world-ending trajectory.
don't ask zizek his opinion on China or nonbinary + trans people. Worst mistake of my life
His China takes are pretty yikes, as seen here, but what's up with his opinions on nonbinary and trans people? I recall him saying that he supports the LGBTQ+ community in some talks that he gave
https://differentcolouredhats.wordpress.com/2016/08/03/slavoj-zizek-is-wrong-about-stuff/
