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- Slavoj Žižek: Democracy and Capitalism Are Destined to Split Up
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Philosopher Slavoj Žižek argues that our current brand of global capitalism is quickly outgrowing democracy and that a divorce between the two is inevitable. This leads to an array of social and geopolitical concerns regarding the public commons. These problems include but are not limited to ecology, biogenetics, finance, neo-apartheid, crisis management, intellectual property rights, and personal freedom. Žižek touches on all these topics and more in this epic delivery of political and social theory.
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SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK:
Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic. He is a professor at the European Graduate School, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London, and a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. His books include Living in the End Times, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, In Defense of Lost Causes, four volumes of the Essential Žižek, and Pandemic!: COVID-19 Shakes the World.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Slavoj Zizek: Well people often ask me how can you be so stupid and still proclaim yourself a communist. What do you mean by this? Well, I have always to emphasize that first I am well aware that let’s call it like this - the twentieth century’s over. Which means all not only communists solution but all the big leftist projects of the twentieth century failed. Not only did Stalinist communism although there its failure is much more paradoxical. Most of the countries where communists are still in power like China, Vietnam - their communists in power appear to be the most efficient managers of a very wildly productive capitalism. So okay, that one failed. I think that also and here I in a very respectful way disagree with your - by your I mean American neo-Keynesian leftists, Krugman, Stiglitz and so on. I also think that this Keynesian welfare state model is passé. In the conditions of today’s global economy it no longer works. For the welfare state to work you need a strong nation state which can impose a certain fiscal politics and so on and so on. When you have global market it doesn’t work. And the third point which is most problematic for my friends, the third leftist vision which is deep in the heart of all leftists that I know - this idea of critically rejecting alienated representative democracy and arguing for local grass root democracy where it’s not that you just delegate to the others. Your representatives to act for you, but people immediately engage in locally managing their affairs and so on.
I think this is a nice idea as far as it goes but it’s not the solution. It’s a very limited one. And if I may be really evil here I frankly I wouldn’t like to live in a stupid society where I would have to be all the time engaged in local communitarian politics and so on and so on. My idea is to live in a society where some invisible alienated machinery takes care of things so that I can do whatever I want - watch movies, read and write philosophical books and so on. But so I’m well aware that in all its versions radical left projects of the twentieth century came to an end and for one decade maybe we were all Fukuyamaists for the nineties. By Fukuyamaism I mean the idea that basically we found if not the best formula at least the least bad formula. Liberal democratic capitalism with elements of rebel state and so on and so on. And even the left played this game. You know we were fighting for less racism, women’s right, gay rights, whatever tolerance. But basically we accepted the system. I think and even Fukuyama himself is no longer a Fukuyamaist as I know that if there is a lesson of September 11 if other event is that no we don’t have the answer. That not only is liberal democratic capitalism not the universal model and is just a time of slow historical progress for it to be accepted everywhere. But again try now in Singapore and other examples of very successful economies today demonstrate that this, let’s call it ironically eternal marriage between democracy and capitalism it’s coming to an end.
What we are more and more getting today is a capitalism which is brutally efficient but it no longer needs democracy for its functioning. That’s my first point. My second point is that the problems that we are confronting today we can list them in different ways but my point is they are all problems of commons. For example...
Read the full transcript at bigthink.com/videos/slavoj-zi...
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Lol you don't think these videos will make people smarter faster 😂
I don't think this will happen and people have always bin mercantile. Only difference now is reorganized how we trade
smarter? faster? joker? indeeder!
He means the capitalist class not capitalism!
Trust me people, the comments are not going to be worth your time, go ahead and scroll right back up.
Most of the fun from big think comes from the comments.
yeah... it hasn't been a lot more than randroids so far
oh man. I couldn't help myself. but yeah not exactly.... academic.
All but one comment ;) good looking out
Thx for the reminder!!! For reminding me not to stare into the black hole of stupidity that youtube's comment section most often is.
Zizek's mind is so powerful that he can totally ignore the bugs he's hallucinating and keep them out of his nose while speaking eloquently about 5 subjects at once.
🤣
my dude was supposed to deliver two claims, A: "it's a matter of commons"/B: "..." (never actually happened)
the daffy duck effect...you're dithpickable!
@@augustusomega4708 he does have a daffy duck vibe for sure, lol
Zizek always leaves me in a state of existential crisis and I love it.
You have obviously never been in a true state of existentialist "angst"
I cant tell if I am stupid or what I honestly can't listen to him without asking what are you talking about if I dont i might not get my own conclusions
@@GodsWheat
Not just you. He says things in a way that implies "Hey! How about that?!" without giving any context.
Also, I wish he'd blow his nose. 🤧
DD
ok female
truth.
'We should also talk about the United States, even if the control is worse in China, Russia, and so on. Because there is one problem, and I can tell you, I was in China and in Russia. There, people are well aware of the limitation of their freedom. Nobody in China has the illusion that they are actually free.' Wow, so powerful.
Same as the west.This slavok is just im14andthisisdeep material. Hurr durr the tragedy of the commons but private property is unthinkable
We have nothing but freedom in this country and that's the problem. There is no sense of social solidarity or the common good. The strong oppress the weak because of decades of individualism and deregulation. Capitalists like Ron Paul are against global american military intervention and mass incarceration even though they support an economic system that causes it. Capitalists and socialists call each other fascists because they don't agree on each other's definition of liberty.
@@ProlificThreadworm That's nothing like the West. Here, we think we are free.
I'd argue the chinese are more free than Americans. I went to the states last year and china several months ago and I found the surveillance state to be rather comforting after the abundance of crime I witnessed in the United states, in comparison to a country where the government has been brutally affective in suppressing criminal activity
@@ProlificThreadworm ? Private property *is* the tragedy of the commons did you not watch the video?
literally nothing better than zizek's summaries:
"you know, we were fighting for less racism, women's rights, gay rights... whatever... tolerance... "
AKA "distractions from being economically ass-raped"
And so on and so on...
"Marx said 'religion is the opiate of the people'. I think it's time to drop that. Today, there are two opiates of the people: the first is opium itself. The majority of people are taking some substance just to function in society, from various prescription drugs all the way up to opium itself. The second opiate of the people is _the people_ themselves...as we see in populism."
I loved that one. Taken from one of his talks at Cambridge.
Fighting for tolerance is still important. The exploitation of women and minorities is related to capitalism.
@ 5:22
I don't think the "local' vs "global" distinction is important. Both exist, and both can be exploited when appropriate by citizens. Here, a false dichotomy
In some ways, his over the top comic persona takes the pressure off the ideas. If you don't feel like you have to take him seriously, you can listen and post some stupid comment about his accent and nose-wiping tics, but you aren't confronting the content. We ARE at a dead end now politically and culturally, _globally_, and no one has a solution yet. Who is happy, contented, safe, now? Who sincerely thinks that a slightly better smartphone is a serious mode of progress? No one. What paths are open to us to make an actual difference? None, without breaking with business as usual in some way.
***** Every country, however subtly, is moving towards austerity. (In the US nowadays it mostly takes the form of public sector union-busting rather than direct obvious cuts to the social wage, but eventually it amounts to the same thing.) That's the outcome of the liberal-capitalist centrist consensus now. And even when there's a semi-serious challenge, as in Syriza in Greece, it gets absolutely nowhere, because the levers of power have already been entirely removed from democratic control. They couldn't do anything because the EU institutions already had the power to shut them down at will.
This too shall pass? Sure, probably. Nothing can stop the clock from ticking. But is there any conceivable path toward improvement with the institutions we currently have? They've already shown us what they want, demand. We're fools if we don't see what's in front of our faces.
+HebaruSan The dissatisfaction is biological. The Genesis story of humans being cursed to toil unhappily is more accurate than this desperate flailing about how we're at some new dead end, as if people were way more happy before capitalism. The Genesis story is probably more wrong in thinking that Neanderthals or the people on North Sentinel Island were/are happier than us than in thinking happiness is ephemeral. The grass is always greener on the other side, and yet people fear and hate change, just as how the body must maintain homeostasis, and yet be regularly exercised and pump blood ceaselessly. Either people develop emotional resilience and buy into stagnating stories about how things won't get much better once they realize repeating patterns of history, or someone blinds them to the past and agitates them into a frenzy. "What paths are open to us to make an actual difference? None, without breaking with business as usual in some way." How vague. It's like how the Occupy crowd couldn't agree on goals because everyone knew that if X or Y was achieved they'd still be pissed off and depressed. Religions can at least deal with the endless yearning of our brains by saying we can be at peace after death and then accept the inevitable imperfections of life while working to improve things in someways. But when you allow an alien government's propaganda arm to ruin your autonomic nervous system's functioning, the road to hell is paved with vague, or even no intentions. If you feel like you want to watch a movie, and have a great variety of them in front of you, but you find a problem with all of them, the problem is with you. Decision fatigue or depression could be the culprit. It's the same thing with politics and culture. If you can't even come up with a clear idea of what you'd like to see, your exhaustion is what is evident.
+ggeatworld It's not that "you" or "you" or anyone else are worried. It is the system that worries everyone who understands it and its consequences. I am truly sorry if it is not yet common knowledge - it soon will be.
Gyula Csapó The Epic of Gilgamesh, Ecclesiastes, the system of life and death worries those for whom it is fresh and those who fantasize of alternatives.
+HebaruSan I don't think anyone has bitched about his accent, but they make jokes about his tics. Also, i think a lot of peopl making those jokes are communists lol
I always found it amusing how so many people think x form of government or capitalism could never fail. If there's one thing history has taught is that everything eventually fails somehow.
The history you know is fake. 10 of the most rich people who control 90% of wealth are always come to agreement of how to manipulate you and everything that you know. .
I couldn't agree more. Everything eventually fails.
"If there's one thing history has taught is that everything eventually fails somehow"
yup. and the fall of the USSR is a good example of that in regards to communism. not so sure about the capitalist nations that have been capitalist since the middle ages and still are tho.
@@thechunkytrucker5111 Remember: The feudalism existed for a millenium ;)
@@thechunkytrucker5111
When the biosphere gets destroyed at the expense of profit we will see what happens with capitalism then.
😉
Wow I love the fact that some people are commenting on this video without actually watching and understanding it. Like jeez guys it's painfully obvious you just saw Žižek and immediately commented something about 100 million dead from Communism.
Žižek is not supporting Stalinism, Maoism, Jucheism, etc. That was the entire point of the very beginning of the video.
@Sam Farza
Liberal democracy does not stay liberal for very long. It typically devolves into just democracy.
Actually, "ineptocracy" is a better word.
@Sam Farza
I am pretty much a Churchillian democrat. Its only saving grace is that any other system is worse or offers no protection whatsoever against taking a turn for the worst.
He's still propagating pacifism to an economy based on material commodity, like communism and socialism are any different than capitalism in any way except for the terminology they use.
Hes admitted that if he was given power he would be a stalinist, the guys out of his mind and he somehow fools eveyone into thinking he's smart with his nonsensical ramblings.
even if it were true that communism killed 100 million people, capitalism kills 10 million from poverty and hunger every year. every single decade, capitalism enacts a century of communist destruction.
People who lived in the middle ages looked around at saw their systems as the pinnacle of human achievement. At the time, they were, but obviously we have moved far beyond those times and the ideas that they had. Why is our age any different? Why do people assume that we are finished growing? I don't know what is coming next as far as general political systems, but I know that there will be something new eventually. There is always room for refinement.
Government during the Middle Ages wasn't even close to the pinnacle of human achievement at the time. They were in most ways worse than the Roman Empire.
Finally common sense. I remember my latin teacher telling me the romans thought they were supercivilized and technologically developed. They were IT.
Boy, they were wrong...
There's always change
^The Romans were super civilized and technologically advanced for their time.
You're right, just switch Middle Ages with Roman Empire and the point remains. I was talking about from the perspective of someone who was experiencing the middle ages, who may well have been ignorant of the Romans and thought that the things they were doing were as advanced as things could get.
Spencer Chudyk exactly. for there time.
I really enjoy Zizek, but I notice he is better at critiquing things than he is at actually formulating solutions. Which is fine, criticism is important and his criticisms are thought provoking. Just an observation.
I think he admitted that he dont know the exact communist solutions. He knows and can argue why capitalism doesnt work and comunism could. But real efficient solutions and simulations require genial economists and psychologists/philosophers... probs too much for one guy/lifetime to formulate
That’s the job of a philosopher, to formulate questions and problems.
The solution is democratization of the workplace
@@Krooksbane If you let your employees decide bussiness things, how would that help?
Filip Maxin just think about it. You spend the majority of your week at the workplace. The structure of the workplace is hierarchical, verging on totalitarian control by a board of directors (non-democratic). Assuming that you live in a democratic society, can that society be said to be truly democratic if the place where we spend the majority of our fruitful hours is in a strictly non-democratic setting? Of course not. If you actually democratize the workplace, you obviously allow for greater socioeconomic equality which can then lead to greater political involvement from the population among other things. These sorts of worker co-ops have been shown to significantly improve worker productivity, happiness, and fulfillment. Put simply, people work better when they feel appreciated and that they actually control their own fate (actual autonomy).
I really hate that we still call China communist.
I know right?? I hate when people refer to the Soviet Union and China as communist
I mean, China fullfils a lot of the social changes and policies that Marx espicified on the Communist Manifesto.
Machi Nami no.
Elexie Munyeneh yes.
yes
3:35 "Eternal marriage between democracy and capitalism is coming to an end"
4:38 Ecology
8:30 Finances & intellectual properties
9:44 Biogenetics
11:54 New form of apartheid
the only good comment
@@maxonmendel5757so fucking true
His nose is the source of his knowledge. He needs to turn it right to release his words of wisdom.
😂😂😂😂😂
Slavoj Zizek recalibrates his nose for 17 minutes and 19 seconds
That's the funniest thing I've heard in a while.
Oh good; I'm not the only one. Don't they have tissues in Slovenia?
Some Dr. drain this man's sinuses
Thought he was on coke for a sec lol
I think he's sending a coded message to a communist sleeper cell in america.
The more serious his ideas the more his ticks.
Hahahh
I am so happy. This is the first Zizek video I've actually understood. And I've been trying since 2008.
maybe you had a concussion before that
HAHAHAH
Summary:
Which big communist projects/leftist solutions have failed and how?
1. China, Vietnam: Their communists in power appear to be the most efficient managers of a very wildly productive capitalism.
2. Keynesian welfare state model: It proposes to increase government expenditures and lower taxes so that demand is stimulated enough to pull the global economy out of the depression. It works only in the presence of a strong nation state that can impose fiscal policies. But in the presence of global market it doesn’t work.
3. Local grass root democracy: Here people immediately engage in locally managing their affairs. It doesn't work because people cannot be engaged in local communitarian politics all the time.
So? Is Fukuyamaism a solution?
Fukuyamaism: We look for if not the best formula at least the least bad formula (e.g., liberal democratic capitalism with elements of rebel state, i.e., accept the system but keep fighting for rights).
The problem: Liberal democratic capitalism not the universal model and the economic success (that was attained under Lee Kuan Yew's more than 30 year long rule) in Singapore shows that "ironically eternal marriage between democracy and capitalism it’s coming to an end" (the point emerges).
Why will democracy and capitalism split up?
Because the duo cannot solve a lot of contemporary problems:
1. Emergence of the forms of capitalism that are efficient and doesn't need democracy.
2. Problems of commons, e.g., ecology: Local democracy cannot solve it, needs glocal solution. On the other hand, capitalism in this regard blames the consumers and tries to make money by capitalizing on their guilt (e.g., buy eco-friendly products etc).
3. Finances: The way banks function today doesn't work and new set of regulations is needed (Zizek didn't elaborate on this point).
4. Intellectual property: Capitalism cannot control illegal download.
5. Biogenetics: It's advancing so much that it can tinker with the wiring of our brain and can be used to control society. Global control and regulation are needed.
6. Apartheid: The United States vs. Mexico. West Bank vs. Israel occupied territories, full citizens vs. immigrants etc.
Two claims form Zizek:
1. "All these problems are the problems of commons."
2. "New forms of circulation of knowledge even of commodities which no longer follow the market model." We can download stuff for free which is like communism. But on the other hand, WikiLeaks tells that people are not free and being surveilled by taking advantage of the free flow of data. So, the people in West experiences unfreedom ("The unfreedom which is not even aware of itself as unfreedom. Unfreedom which is experienced as freedom.") in contrast with people in China and Russia, who are well-aware of the limitation of their freedom.
TISA agreement: New regulations of markets, exchange of data etc in neo-liberal line, but the agreement is done in secrecy.
We need actual freedom, which is the freedom to regulate the very basic coordinates of your life, rather than only making superficial choices ("You have a choice between this and that but how is the entire field which offers you these choices and not other choices - how is it structured?").
.
I was not a Fukuyamaist in the 90s... When the wall came down, within a few months I was working on the idea that the French Revolution had just been defeated and in fact -- not being a Hegelian at that point -- we were returning to feudalism... And so it was... the greed unleashed by Reagan's policies, by trickle down economics, was creating a class of superrich people whose connection to human life was tenuous at best., and we were returning to a feudal society...Those lords are named Gates, Bezos, Arnault, Cook, Zuckerberg, Crow, Singer, etc...
Why do communists focus on the super rich rather than seeing if the middle class and working class have it reasonable or not? Why do you care of someone started an enterprise which the public loves and results in that person becoming extremely wealthy? Who starts these enterprises when there is no incentive to invent? Even communist governments use the tools from enterprising economies. A leader or a politiburo can’t just image useful stuff. You need the market to do that and people decide what wins and what doesn’t. There is no way to do this in a state run society. Also communism requires force or it doesn’t work.
@@Pezzerd What does this have to do with Communism. I am talking about a return to feudalism. Nothing to do with Communism. Why don't you open a few books, like Lichthein's Marxism, or a few biographies written by people who lived in communist countries? I actually visited several countries of the East Bloc, and correcting a market to avoid huge corporations occupying the market is perfectly in the free market mode. When companies like Facebook or Amazon or (especially) Google totally dominate a market, it's bad for the market. Don't be so narrow-minded as to think that everything can be passed through the anti-Communist filter.
A Golden Cage is Still A Cage...
Aloha
DESPITE MY RAGE IM STILL JUST A RAT IN A CAGE.
and now you can scare them with the threat of a silver cage!
I heard that on a song in a phone that I buy
Awesome guy. He is always thought provoking and stimulating, whether you agree or not.
he always says just enough to make you think, but not to guide you in a specific direction on how to think it.
Guy is a brain dead coke head.
Can he go 10 seconds without fiddling his nose?
“Sniff”
- Slavoj Zizek
Zane Bennett 😂
He knows many Colombians
Booooo get new material
Slavoj is looking healthier these days. Good to see.
Nice profile pic dude, great band
@@zacharyp10 what's the band
This guy is begging to be used as a South Park character.
Lol _well played_...
That would be amazing but most people don't know him so it wouldn't necessarily be well received.
yes, but that show is peak centrism
you should write a paper about it
i can't wait for the great and thoughtful analysis and clever humor of marxist philosophers by edgy "both sides are stupid!" libertatians
I like how Big Think creates space for all ideas, does not matter how crazy:D
I grew up in "communism" and I can only shake my head. Marx was mandatory here, but still we could not get it to work. You can remove the Planned Economy part of communism, exchange it with capitalism insert as much computing power as you want (so you can dabble in the planned economy nonsense again), but you won't change human nature which is impulsive and sometimes greedy or stupid.
Take his Starbuck example. I think it is a bad example, because he just brushed over one critical fact. He didn't mention how do you use this small percentage from the price of the drink to support your planet when those consumerist donates. And I think it could be perfectly used to show some flaws in his logic.
Let's say the money goes to a gold miner in the jungle who pollutes it with chemicals. You will give it to him, as a good communist, as subsidy, just like that so he has something to live off. Do you think he will stop mining? And do you think that your money on its way to him won't get chewed on by local governments, some local landlords? How do you want to enforce it, do you go into the jungle, or hire some locals? We tried all that, we are doing all this measures, do you think illegal gold mining declines? And what if capitalism kicks in and customers start to avoid Starbucks because the percentage they are donating is too high, maybe somebody offered starbucks quality coffee, but cheaper. Are we all that rich, can we really all donate every day?
The gold miners would all need to be intelligent and conscious of this jungle as our commons, in a free wealthy society, to make it work. How do you get them there? By having drones monitoring them 24hours a day or showering them with money?
To make communism work, people all need to be intelligent at once (unrealistic, this is a long term process and I am not sure it will ever happen) or you really need to clamp down, and that creates a vertical of power that will be misused and will create a bunch of fat lazy bureaucrats with too much power. I nearly forgot them. How do you deal with all these entrepreneurs looking for every mean to gain success and power, legal or illegal, folks that have the urge to hoard money? Do you think they will disappear? Do you want live like in china? Or are you planning to replace them with computers?
I am an idealist, I like to listen to this, but when I get down to earth, I am glad this is just a idea. Stick with Democracy and capitalism.
Hey, I am in the mood for an idea, here is a wild one on my end, maybe I can match Slavoj. Lets say we are looking for a huge bunch of money so we can support our planet, what if we would just annex all the tax havens on this planed and pull out the useless money hoarded there illegally and just use it for some good cause, maybe stopping all the coal seam fires of this world, wouldn't that be nice project, reducing CO2, wouldn't that be wonderful? Hehe just joking, just an idea, don't worry our elites, we are not touching your tax havens;)
You've provided the only thoughtful comment to this video. Thank you.
Zizek believes that "20th century communism had failed"(his words) (he also used to live in Yugolsavia),
He did not show us a solution. He is only presenting the problems.
Michael Sawyer There's only so much you can put into a 17 minute video.
Michael Sawyer but they are all capitalism problems, human nature problems. Sorry, libertarianism does not work with capitalism.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."(c)
This dude is absolutely great!! Truly. That said, if one can contract COVID via cell-phone viewing, I think I just caught it.
Yeah someone get this man a tissue
I agree that the internet is kind of communist. Maybe thats why I like it so much.
I noticed that you're saying that on a computer that was built thanks to capitalism and through an ISP that charges for it's services like a capitalist company does. In capitalism, information and ideas are not property. They are under socialism and communism though.
Joe11Blue Pardon me where are u getting your information, To quote Karl Marx " In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of property". www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm
Joe11Blue
Actually intellectual property definitely exists. Were you born yesterday or what?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property
Joe11Blue 'In capitalism, information and ideas are not property.'
Wha?
Amir Farookh Qazi
Why does TH-cam exist? Google? Yahoo? Facebook? It's not because some guys got appointed and funded by the government to create a system for sharing videos, finding websites, and socializing with friends. It's because a few highly intelligent and highly-motivated people were able to create innovation that they knew would make themselves very rich. That's not to say that they didn't have some personal reasons for pursuing the websites mentioned, but there's no way they would have grown to the size they have without the help of venture capitalists that invested millions of their own dollars for the sole purpose of making many times that amount back by owning a percentage of the corporation that seeing it go up in value over time.
"Whatever tolerance" - Slavoj Zizek
I believe in capitalism. But this man makes a lot of good points. It makes myself to question the way we live. I think he’s brilliant. Things these days are so black and white... I enjoy gray.
Why do you believe in capitalism? Rather, what does that mean? Do you think it believes in you?
I can't believe in capitalism because money limited actually power, how got the money, they got the power. But how many destruct have been produced by this? From spirital to cultural. We will need to change this because resoruces are limited too and the ilusion of freedom is actually dictated by money and power.
I would like to know as well OP. As someone who appears to not be fully indoctrinated by capitalism (indicated by your comment as far as I’m concerned) yet still prefers it, I would enjoy to hear your perspective on why you’d still prefer it. The typical pro capitalist perspective that I hear is from people unwilling to acknowledge the kinds of points Slovaj makes in this video
What does this even mean? You believe that working towards the ends of profit is the same as working towards the ends of everyone else? What would be reasonable (but still unimaginative) is if you said you think capitalism is the least worst system.
@@tylerb4723 Because capitalism is essential to freedom and every other system hinders freedom. Now that's a fact, you can argue that said freedom shouldn't exist but I don't believe so, I love and fight for freedom.
Thank you so much for transcribing.
Ecology, intellectual property, biogenetics, banking, and immigration (which he refers to as apartheid) are large scale problems that capitalism is going to struggle with. Greedy governments want to strengthen borders but as Zizek points out these are global problems. I just hope we are able to maintain or increase our freedom, safety, and health along the way.
He mentioned very relevant points, good critics. But I think that problems he mentioned are often general problems of the whole world and it just happened that we are having capitalism at this time. Why would be a biogenetics problem of capitalism? Communist countries don't do biogenetics? Of course there is a risk of abuse of these technologies, but it would be in every system. Problem like pollution isn't problem of capitalism either. It is a general problem of all systems. Building walls against migration? Because people want to emigrate into the most capitalist state USA? Capitalist countries are so terrible that everybody wants to emigrate to them? At least he admits that he doesn't have better solution.
@@MyArtsProduction They are problems in a capitalist society because they put huge amounts of power and control in the hands of people motivated by profit.
In any other case, there is a chance that those powers might be wielded improperly, but under capitalism? It's not a chance, it's guaranteed.
Capitalism wants open borders to expand the consumer horizons and to get access to low cost workforce.
His point about no need for democracy I found very interesting. I find that politics nowadays is just a game of painting a different looking facade so that people will easily see what party they are voting for. But this is just a facade and really comparing the last eight years being red or blue would not be any different. In the 20th century politics was essential since we had to choose between two widely different systems. Now we have reached a new equilibrium and politics is loosing the it's relevance.
when did capitalism "need" democracy? It never did.
The idea of free markets was always branded in combination with civil freedoms so as to galvanize the common man and lend support to a movement that was really about overthrowing the monarchy.
Capitalism predates democracy.
so you're saying capitalism, which really solidified as a social system at the intersection of the industrial revolution and european colonial expansion, predates democracy, which was first thought up by the ancient greek patricians in the 6th century BC, yes, good point
The Greeks used capitalism too. And the Egyptians. And the Mesopotamians, Mayans, ancient Chinese etc etc. Almost as far back as we've been able to find a language that could talk about money, we've also found the use of money to facilitate trade.
capitalism isn't some placeholder term you can use to refer to any economic system or social order which utilizes money, nor is the use of currency unique to capitalism. please learn more about these things before you go and run your mouth over the internet.
It's really hard to stay up in the realm of ideas for this long.
This man never fails to show me something I haven't seen before. Just brilliant.
I think independently if one is conservative or leftist Žižek makes some incredible work by crossing crucial points that any ideology can share..
In a way, he exposes the current or future issues of the economy or the social medium in a way we can all join as a unified collective disregarding ideology.
That's brilliant
I'm pretty cool with just choosing where to live, what to buy, and where to work. If you had to choose from an array of different options that each determined how those choices were offered to you it would be a game of 4D chess on hard mode.
7 years on and I still think about this every few weeks.
to all of the degenerate comments down here:
- no he's not on cocaine
- if his nose touching bothers you just listen to him, you can do smth else meanwhile listening, you might learn something
How do you know he is not using cocaine. He might be using. That does not mean that he is stupid. All that means is that he needs a crutch to make him focus more intensely.
Sherlock Holmes did cocaine.
You have no evidence he's not riding the white lines. We have tons (grabbing my nose for effect) of evidence he's sniffing powder.
Cocaine doesn't make you stupid. Bill Clinton is evidence of that.
@@Confusione_Infinito_Absurdum
But Clinton is stupid.
@@Confusione_Infinito_Absurdum And that comment is evidence of your stupidity. . . .
This talk would have given me a powerful sense of validation if, for example, I had been sharing 'pirated' content since the early days of 56K internet availability. It is interesting in the context of Žižek's ideas about 'the commons' that in the capitalist IT industry itself the unregulated territory where hackers and pirates roam is commonly referred to as 'in the wild'. Occupy the planet.
every time i found something new....or recognize what others don't ....there is someone else on internet explaining it....thats means that we think parallel because of all the information flowing freely among us....thinking similarly at least on most subjects
This guy plays in another league, his arguments displays an overwhelming logic, people who won't believe this have been captured by the system
Imagine this whas how platos talked lol
inget angett I always think of Gilbert Godfrey’s voice when I imagine Socrates discussing profound ideas amongst his Greek brethren.
As George Carlin once said: "You think you are free? With 2 or 3 banks, 5 to 6 insurrance companies, 3 oil companies which will soon become 2? But you have 23 flavours of bagel, so you think you have a choice."
That’d be very powerful if it was remotely true, and we didn’t have thousands of choices for all of those lol, 4,300 FDIC insured banks just in the US
@@tropinnka and do you know who owns those 4300 banks? And who owns those owners?
If you engage in a conversation with this guy: 1) do more listening than talking, 2) bring an umbrella
The good thing about Zizek is he upfront shows his idealistic ideas. Plenty can be constructed from that basic honesty.
The only freedom we have is to choose what we consume. We are consumers not citizens
To recap all of today's big problems are problems of commons, data behaves "communistically", we need new regulation of emerging technologies to specifically prevent them from being used to orchestrate horrors and there's less and less freedom in the structure of markets. On point in each one.
I find Slavoj a very good speaker, even with his lisp, but he jumps too quickly from large ideological proof to large ideological proof. For example, he talks about his own different definition of freedom, without explaining it clearly.
Yeah, it wasn't well organized. But what he said was insightful.
He does the same about happiness in his video "why be happy when you can be interesting"
Maybe his books are more coherently organized?
I like his ending statement on the understanding of freedom... I will say they system’ at its core is the claim of ownership and possession of private property of the land, this is what essential the US government at its inception was regulating, the buying and selling of land and then taxing the person who has the title of ownership of the land, and that is why the US functions as more of a economic business corporation vs a public service agency for the rights of the people. And that is humanities true problem at hand, the restriction and regulation of access to water, food, land, and shelter; that is what is truly unequal within the social economic community of the people. You have one person with access to a house and land with the best view, huge house, etc.. then you have a foreign business man buying property/homes which automatically displaced another with access to shelter/home/safety... than you have people paying rent within apartment complexes to people who have ownership over buildings, etc... the entire system is set up as a game of monopoly, but the game was set up so the players of the game must give up any natural moral instinct, and is forced to play a competitive strategy that sacrifices their own quality of character. So you see the problems in the world are complex, but only because the system has set up a psychological warfare on intellectual property, and it is here in the intellect that we are all compromised, because we will sacrifice the goodness of our own character, just to protect our intellectual identity...
So what can we do to move forward? I think the place that's getting better now is California/Oregon/Washington. We have lots of immigration, strong personal freedoms, a fearless regulatory regime, and relatively good local democracy (often derided as NIMBYism). How did it become so great? Idealism, radical activism, immigration, and education.
I must say that zizek always gives new amazing insight on how we are acting today.
Awww how cute! Right wingers and so called "Libertarians" (In America) trying to pretend they understand Zizek. haha. Trust me guys.. He's a bit more sophisticated and complicated than Ron Paul LOL.
No he's not. He's just doing mental gymnastics to defend undefendable all the time...
Really hard to take a comment coming from a user called "White Patriarch" seriously
+Cigol Simons and if I called it "Antifa Marx" it would be more suiting to you?
A very generalising and pretentious comment with next to no input or sustainable argument. "Cute".
I’m a right leaning libertarian and I’m a fan of zizek.
COVID was a good example of why we need global cooperation, global strategy
Apart form the sneezing and the twitching and the fact he looked high as hell, this was one great intervention...I loved it.
“3% for helping Mother Earth, 5% for Guatemalan children, and so on” 😭😭
Man, he is distracting to watch but I am so interested to hear what he has to say being someone who proudly wears communism as an ideology.
You would be surprised that he doesn wear communism as is as an ideology. Watch his debate with peterson, he explains his stance more clearly.
@@Laroac Its on my list the second summer ends. I guess i fell for the label media put on him, and as a huge JP fanboy i should know how hard they mislabel people they don't understand.
@@skaterdude7277 I’d like to know what you think now
He isnt communist. I mean, i’m a dengyst myself, but he is just a revisionist. He want to adapt the communist ideology to the bourgeoise and nowadays imperialist power.
In Zizek's ideal communist country, everyone gets 1 kilo of coke per month.
it's difficult to concentrate on what he says because of his body language....but he is a great philosopher....
10:57 **How will this useful in social control?** And his tongue goes left and right 😛😂
I love this man. Ticks..who gives a fuck. He makes great points about our society that need to be considered, whether or not you agree. I believe that capitalism is not the answer...see his Fukuyama argument!
Problem is not in capitalism but in democracy. He said it himself, capitalism functions best in non-democratic societies. Why? Because West has universal suffrage. Morons electing wolves who deliver their rights and interests to highest bidder. Asian communists are much more like monarchies, their attention spans are longer so their policies are more rational. West needs to abolish universal suffrage and reserve democracy for people who understand it and contribute to it. Or hello idiocracy.
White Patriarch so fuck freedom right?
Always great to hear what he has to say
5:30 loved this.
These are deep analysis that illuminated me, I am honored to live with you in the same Era Sir. High five Bro 🙏
LMAO
He's 100% right that all of the big problems today are problems of commons. Therefore we need better systems of collective sensemaking and choice making, which are not 'communism' in the historical sense. It just needs to be something where more people listen, understand, and contribute to solving these problems. But it's going to take new systems of communication, info sharing, problem solving, and policy making.
I agree, we need to share more, listen more and be free to problem solve by creating a better socio-economic system structure. One of the most oppressive forces we still have today is the oppression of labor in a monetary-market based society where labor is required for income, we are not free until everybody is free from labor-for-income. It may seem radical, but to be non-radical at this point is to accept status quo misery and environmental destruction.
We should talk about a Natural Law resource based economy system. It means we don't have or need politicians to pretend to represent us and then not actually help us. We can use the methods and tools of science to solve problems, ensure our basic needs are met. We can create localized, self-sustaining regions of the world. The basic needs are met by using automation wherever possible and increasing sharing systems. This can be done. And it would only get better the more people that helped create the change in system.
i mean, anarcism is still available, just not palatable to authoritarians. more people would be able to listen understand and contribute. it isn't that what your saying will take new technology or new science, it's that it will take not only new policy, but new policy maker types as well. then again, capitalism would rather suicide through MAD than even let state capitalists take power, let alone communists, let alone anarchists.
@@ethanstump True capitalism = anarchy, anarchy = true capitalism
@@ethanstump u get it bro. Extra pts for “state capitalism”. Most ppl think our govt is not only democratic, but CANNOT be capitalistic. 🤦
I could listen to him talk all day.
always enlightening Slavoj Zizek, and kind of terrifying. I think what the world really needs is Waber's Charismatic leader/Plato's Philosopher King, with a brutish violent style succession practice so its very easy to kill and remove despots.
"If you wanna hang out you've got to take her out"
14:35
compare the subtitles to what zizek says.
i see what you did there
Maybe it’s a problem of identity. You make the point that Fukuyama is no longer a “Fukuyamaist”-neither was Marx a Marxist, or Jesus a Christian, for that matter-but the guy who just gave his entire company, Patagonia, for ecological efforts to save the planet, shows that even an arch-Capitalist isn’t only a Capitalist, either. The implied lesson is that what’s in the head can change, suddenly and definitively.
OMG.. so not disappointed with this offering.
He's totally right. "Systems" have to be changed, not ppl!
"problems of commons"
spot on!
This a good time to bring in this: Resource based economy and the venus project by Jacque Fresco. I feel this a viable and a better solution than what we have now.
Almost 18 minutes waiting for Zizek to sneeze…
I don't think you should necessarily blame comma's for everything?
Ben Wherlock commons like the resources
this guy is a genius. i cant believe i never heard of him before
Thank you.
Those points around 11:00 are really scary.
Democracy will ultimately fail if our current flavor of Capitalism continues. At least in the United States, we have two crony parties. Both cause some kind of monopoly, they just favor different kinds. Now, we all know that monopolies are incredibly inefficient and bad for society. Concentrated wealth has a tendency to increase its power. High levels of inequality (due to corporate wealth) increase the influence of big money in governments. This decreases the "purchasing power" of each vote, and the average citizen, now disenfranchised, abstains from democracy. If Capitalism continues in this fashion, Democracy will dwindle away.
In order for Democracy to thrive, you need an inclusive society governed by the free market (or some combination of the free market and socialism). Now, the possibilities for establishing such a society are endless, from anarchism (although a government wouldn't exist per se) to third way socialism. But whatever way you think it should be done, the goal is to reduce monopoly power and make markets more competitive.
We have more than 2 parties. You just choose to vote in the system even though you're not forced to
Spencer Chudyk Well, voters are indirectly forced to vote for one of the two due to strategic voting. Take the Bush v. Gore campaign. Many people voted Nader of the Green Party. However, had these people's second choice would be Gore, who has somewhat similar views on the environment to the Green Party. So, in essence, they "stole" votes that would have otherwise gone to Gore, causing him to lose. Nader voters now are worse off, because Bush (their least favorite candidate) won. Next election they vote Democrat.
The US has had many "third-parties," but they all die out or have minimal influence. You could solve the issue through political reform. Germany, for example, has a great voting system that eliminates the need for choosing the candidate that you like most who is most likely to win (strategic voting). Allowing citizens to rank their choices and have two effective votes is why Germany has many major parties. However, it still doesn't address the fundamental issue of lobbying and money.
Exactly! th-cam.com/video/XvCT5_o23Ok/w-d-xo.html
11:37 "My God"
Fantastic. Never mind the "sounds". Focus on the meaning, and enjoy a great thinker and a moral human being.
Very insightful
Let me get on my academic soapbox for a moment:
You would think that a channel with an intellectual and occasionally academic focus would have *a* meaningful and satisfying comments section with a robust discussion of ideas. You would be horribly wrong.
Edited for grammar
Perhaps Freud is right when he suggested human thought is irrational if not organized.
Most people watching TH-cam simply aren't intellectually capable of partaking in constructive dialogue, and most people capable of said dialogue aren't watching TH-cam.
horribly wrong indeed :)
There has never been a robust discussion on youtube.
Comment boards are off the cuff out of guts: but don't need too much research to see zizek knows nothing about China or America. Trump is the best we have not zizek. America is OK for the moment. Intellectuals got nothing to offer.
Has Zizek done analysis on The Matrix? If yes, I'd like to read/watch it.
www.lacan.com/zizek-matrix.htm
"and you feel good, and so on"
clear and well-reasoned.
What people forget to realise or are unaware of.. Is that Zizek is a master of Morse Code, his truth falls on deaf eyes.
Is that why he fiddles his nose every 3 seconds? He's sending a Morris code. Thought it was his raging coke habit that caused that
Dan Harmon is looking rough as fuck these days.
He made very valid points, though it was a bit of a struggle to understand him at times.
If he stopped doing so much coke he might be able to go more than 3 seconds without fiddling his shonze 🐽
@@jeupater1429 ever heard of ticks? Nothing to do with drugs necessarily
This guy is amazing. How did he learn so much about such a vast number of topics. I wish his health was better so he could talk more freely. I totally agree about how people in general are not aware of the secret agreements that limit their freedoms and they consider themselves totally free. That's how the US government gets people to vote in things that are against their best interest. They just don't trick us into believing it is good, they get us to campaign for it and silence those who oppose it as if the detractors are somehow evil.
If he stopped doing coke 50 times a day he'd probably be able to go then more 10 seconds without fiddling his nose. 🐽. He might be a little less brain dead as well
I have been watching Zizek for years now and I still don’t understand why he sniffs and rubs his nose so much
OK he drivelled but made 2 very good points after all: IP being intrinsically non-capitalist, and then right at the end about how the real freedom disappears when you have these large scale market (esentially lifestyle) shaping acts going on in secret (the Trans-Pacific Partnership).
Very interesting.
14:38 awareness of limitations
2:41 , thats called post-scarcity anarcho-communism
Thanks, guys. I took a shot every time he rubbed his nose. I am now in Heaven. And dying.
His nose isn't the point his thoughts are the point, the attempt to solve complex problems is the point. His nos is just a nose
Would you salute stalin for me there?
Brilliant segment. It's great to see someone speak about what they care about freely. This speech mirrors the philosophy of Matrix 4, scarcity in the commons creates a whole new paradigm.
The first thing people consider when thinking about freedom is action and choice but thats the surface of freedom, the parts we can see. The factors that influence those actions and choices are the real source of freedom. If we're not left with the opportunity to choose and act of our own accord, without manipulation, then its not freedom by our American definition.
He pumps his ideas from his nose.