“Like a Thief in Broad Daylight –
Power in the Era of Post-Human Capitalism,” by Slavoj Zizek, 2019
This is
another ‘far-ranging’ Zizek thought-muffin, giving just enough to chew on. He tackles the present sad
state of the Left; ‘post-human’ rumblings of direct computer-human implants;
disastrous identity and multi-culturalist politics and also the current Me-Too
movement; old 1930s -1940s Ernst Lubitsch movies and their hidden sexuality; and lastly
nationalism, war and nuclear weapons. He
retains his fascination with Lenin and Hegel while contradicting conventional
clichés and on occasion, himself. Freud
and Lacan retreat into the distant background while Trotsky seems to be having
a renaissance. For Zizek, besides liberals and Trump, Stalinism remains the
biggest cruel ‘joke’ on the Left.
Zizek’s
goal is world-wide revolutionary and universal emancipation. The ‘non-Marxist’ again references Marx
dozens of times. This book creates Marxist straw-men he can knock down,
attributing positions to Marx he did not have. So I’ll use his 'psych' method. This position seems to be almost psychological – his
philosophic revolt against ‘big daddy.’
I’ll
bullet-point some more obvious parts of the book so you get an idea of what it
contains:
1. He sees the Shanghai Commune, ended
by Mao, as a model to supplant corrupt parliamentary ‘democracy.’
2. Science is needed for profits, but
the capitalists do not want it applied to society.
3. “Capital is openly disintegrating
and changing into something else.”
4. Bill Gates admitted capital could
not deal with climate change.
5. Zizek thinks China is
capitalist, but then admits that a “non-capitalist state could have strong
elements of capitalism.” I.E. he’s
confused about China.
6. He throws shade on typical liberal ideas of migration,
instant land reform or the ‘romanticization of refugees.’ As I noted years ago, refugees of whatever
kind do not really want to leave their home countries, so the key issues are
actually war, climate change and economic collapse.
7. He thinks the main task of
trade unions is retraining workers for new jobs, which is a Democratic Party
attitude.
8. Some ostensibly right-wing
governments institute social gains, as in present-day Poland.
9. The
transitional programs of the Communist International and the 4th
International are invisible to Zizek.
10. Tech and IT workers now have immense power if
they follow Trotsky’s strategy in the Bolshevik seizure of power – control of the
technical levers of capital prior to any political seizure. As a
consequence, Zizek thinks the web is now ‘the most’ important commons and
controlling it is the struggle for today.
11. Biogentics is his name for superseding the
purely human with computerization contained in the human body. I.E. a ‘terminator’ like being, a plan of the
‘cognitive-military complex.’ This he
calls ‘post-humanity.’
12. He’s against pay for housework, because he thinks it
just commodifies another area of life.
In that vein, the Communist
Manifesto pointed out that ‘patriarchy’ had been dominated by capitalism. At the same time, Zizek understands that
women are now in the forefront of many emancipatory struggles.
13. Of course automation would be a key part of
socialism – allowing less work, not unemployment and starvation as in the
present system.
14. Zizek has a long section on the film “Blade Runner 2049” which goes nowhere
that I can tell.
 |
| Zizek's hero and cadre of the Greek KKE in St. Petersburg, Nov. 2017 (CGG) |
15. In discussions of Lenin, he shows that
revolutionaries are in a completely new situation with no clear roadmap.
16. Lenin’s “April
Theses” and “State and Revolution”
broke through the inertia and tailism of the Bolshevik Party.
17. Identity politics opposes the universal. Republican “white Identity” politics are the
mirror image of Democratic Party identity politics. Yet class cuts across them all. Zizek: “The only reality is the universal capitalist system.”
18. Making the right ‘diabolique” (La Pen,
Trump, Orban etc.) is actually a strategy to keep out the Left. New capitalist parties (I.E. Macron and Five
Star, etc.) are signs of weakening capitalist politics.
19. Tax havens, like slavery, are integral to late
capital.
20. Europe
carries the enlightenment and French Revolution values of post-national
universality, which must be advanced against liberal ‘tolerance,’ religious fundamentalism
and capitalist nationalism. Europe could lead the way in getting rid of the dollar as
the dominant global currency.
21. He opposes an alliance between Western ‘leftists’
and ostensibly ‘anti-imperialist’ political Islam. He calls it ‘an ideological abomination.’
22. There are instances where two emancipatory
issues collide, which is the difficult nature of class struggle.
23. The British embraced the caste system in India by law.
24. “Catholicism offers a devious stratagem to
indulge in our desires without having to pay the price for them.”
25. Deception is now out in the open. (Trump et al…)
26. Sexual contracts are mostly unworkable. Manners are not matters of law.
27. Zizek looks at the films “La La Land” and “Black Panther.” His analysis
of Black Panther follows a
traditional Marxist line (I beat him to it…) while pointing out that at the end of
the film the reviled revolutionary Killmonger / Eric becomes a bit of an
anti-hero.
28. Modern millionaire liberal comics (Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, John
Oliver, etc.) merely ‘dust the balls’ of the ruling class – they do not actually
threaten them.
Again, the
title of the book only touches on what it’s partly about, as every Zizek book
is really about the same thing – revolutionary emancipation from capital, its
ideology and its culture in a somewhat unique, dialectical and quirky way.
Prior
reviews of Zizek books, along with others referenced, use blog search box upper
left: “Living in the End Times,” “Did
Someone Say Totalitarianism?” “Violence,” “First as Tragedy, Then as Farce,” (All
by Zizek) “Black Panther,” “October,”
“The Struggle for Power – Russia in 1923,” “A People’s History of the Russian
Revolution,” “Maoism and the Chinese Revolution, A Critical Introduction,”
‘What Can You Say About Bill Maher?” “Multi-millionaire
Comedians,” "Blade Runner 2049."
And I
bought it at May Day Books, where we carry a deep bench of Zizek.
Red Frog
November
21, 2019
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