In view of the difficult situation in 
which we all, in Europe, are, now I have 
quite many things to say. So, let me begin.
Today, the very idea of a radical social transformation
appears as an impossible dream, but this term
(impossible) should make us think. Impossible
and possible are distributed in strange ways
today. One the one hand, in the domain of
personal freedoms and scientific technology,
we are told, again and again, how nothing
is impossible: we can enjoy sex in all its
perverse versions; entire archives of music
[and] films are available for downloading;
going to space is available to everyone (OK-
everyone with money). There is even this prospect
of enhancing our physical-psychic abilities
of manipulating our genetic base, up to the
gnostic dream of achieving immortality by
way of transforming our identity into a software,
and then we just download ourselves into a
new hardware. So, again, everything is possible.
On the other hand, especially in the domain
of socio-economic relations, our era perceives
itself as the era of maturity in which, with
the collapse of communist states, humanity
finally has abandoned the old millenarian
dreams and accepted the constraints of reality-
which means, of course, capitalist reality,
with all its impossibilities: you cannot engage
in large, collective acts- which, we are told,
always end in totalitarian terror, cling to
the old welfare state, it makes you non-competitive,
and so on, and so on. So this is, for me,
the basic paradox: everything is possible.
Maybe, I don’t know, we will be able to
live eternally, you will be able - they are
already making experiments, I am not kidding,
in New York, I met some surgeons- for a man
to get three penises so that you can do it
with three- all of this is possible, but you
cannot raise the taxes to find us culture
for the one percent, that’s impossible you
ruin everything. So, again, our first task
is to be, always, aware that when we are told
“this is possible, this is not possible”
we are talking about ideology, not about cold
facts.
But, the crucial point to always bear in mind
here is that we live in what I am tempted
to call the post-political era of the naturalisation
of economy. Political decisions are, as a
rule, presented as matters of pure economic
necessity. When austerity measures are imposed,
we are repeatedly told that this is simply
how things have to be done. In such conditions,
the exercise of power -- no longer primarily
relies on censorship, but on unconstrained
permissiveness. I would like to quote here
my friend Alain Badiou, who wrote- passage
“to control the entire domain of the visible
and the audible via the loss governing commercial
circulation and democratic communication,
empire- today’s global society- no longer
censors anything.
All art, and all thought, is ruined when we
accept this permission to consume, to communicate,
and to enjoy. We should become pitiless censors
of ourselves.” And, effectively, today we
seem to be at the opposite point of the ideology
of the glorious 60’s. The mottos of spontaneity,
creative self-expression, and so on are taken
over by the system. The old logic of the system
of power, reproducing itself through repression
through rigidly channeling the subject’s
spontaneous impetuses, is left behind. Non-alienated
spontaneity, self-expression, self-realization,
they all directly serve the system- which
is why pitiless censorship is a sine qua non
- a necessary condition- of emancipatory politics.
I mean this quite seriously.
Today, we can clearly see how difficult it
is, really, to imagine another world; how,
when we think that our imagination exploded
into another dimension, it’s really just
the - what I like to call- the phantasmatic
core, the innermost dream-like structure of
our own society. I think that the lesson that
we have to assume today in our post-revolutionary
era. By this I mean the following, that’s
why I advocate a paradoxical return from Marx
to Hegel. Our situation is a very Hegelian
one, I claim. The revolution happened, not
all around but 20th century was the century
of communism, of reactions to communism. Basically,
the communist project failed, and our problem
is how to avoid the cynical conclusion: “ok,
it failed, let’s play the game, there is
no alternative” - how to remain faithful
to the radical emancipatory project without,
of course, repeating its mistakes.
And here, I claim, we have to go to the end,
which means to the beginning. Although the
analysis of capitalism elaborated by Marx
in his Kapital is still an unsurpassed mode,
it still has its failures, its limitations.
I think it can be demonstrated - which I will
not do here, of course- that the implicit
vision of post-capitalist - communist, however
you call it, society- that you found in Marx,
is still a capitalism without capitalism.
Marx correctly identified the core of capitalism
as this: permanent push towards self-reproduction,
self-expansion, and so on, and so on. And
his idea was that, even if you take away the
form of the capital, this expansive self-reproduction
will explode in an even more free way. So,
I think that, in a way, for Marx, literally,
his vision of communism was capitalism without
capitalism -- that is to say, this capitalist
dynamic of exploding productive power of humanity,
without the capitalist form. To go very quickly
through it, just a metaphor to hint, what
-- just an indication, this is of not an analysis
- what Marx did not see is the paradox which
Jacques Lacan, my teacher, identified as the
paradox of what he calls OBJET A -- objet
kleines a -- the object-cause of desire, which
is an obstacle, but at the same time, a positive
condition of what it is the obstacle to. Let
me give you a crazy example which, I think,
makes perfectly this point.
Once -- it happened in Latin America, I will
not tell you where -- a voluptuous elder lady,
I don’t know, maybe she was flirting with
me, she told me that; basically, her point
was that I am still beautiful and sexually
attractive in spite of. And she told me that
her last lover, when she saw her naked, told
her that if she just were lost two or three
kilos, her body would have been perfect. And
I told her, “just don’t lost two or three
kilos.” You often find this paradox that
“two or three kilos less and your body would
be perfect,” but this ideal of perfection
only arises when you do have two or three
kilos too much. You see my point? [If] you
take away the obstacle -- that small element
which seems to disturb the perfection -- and
you lose this potential, virtual, perfection
itself.
This is the paradox that Lacan is aiming at;
that, you have, let’s put it in abstract
terms, an ideal but some small element disturbs
it -- but what appears as a disturbing mediator
is really the condition of an object; and
it can happen at all levels, in eroticism
especially. For example, a good friend of
mine, when I was young, was in love with a
girl - and this was still a little more of
a patriarchal time, so in order to gain access
to the girl, he visited her family, and talked
to her Father often. He thought that the whole
point is that he has to talk with her father
just to have full access to the girl; but
then, when the father went on a long trip,
it no longer functioned with the girl. You
see, what he thought - “it’s just an obstacle-
oh my god, I have to go through this ritual,
talking with the Father,” was not really
an obstacle. The girl, as the object of his
desire, entered his fantasy of desire only
mediated through the Father. You take the
Father - the obstacle - away, [and] you lose
the object. OK; I will not go more into it
now; I just want to say, at this level, how
difficult it is to really imagine a new world;
how often, what we present to ourselves as
a radically new world is just some phantasmatic
core of the old world - which means we have
to abandon - break - many taboos here.
Now comes a little bit more problematic part
of my talk. First, I claim [that] we should
abandon not only the two main forms of the
20th century state socialism (the social-democratic
welfare state, and of course, the Stalinist
party dictatorship); but we should also abandon,
I think so, the very standard by means of
which the radical Left usually measures the
failure of the first two; this libertarian
vision of communism as free association, multitude,
councils, reite, the anti-represent Taosianist
direct democracy based on citizens’ permanent
engagement. I think that the critique of political
representation as passivization alienation
reaches, here, its limit.
The idea to organize society in its entirety
as a network of associations, councils, and
so on, ignores a triple impossibility. First,
there are numerous cases in which representing
- speaking for others - is a necessity: it
is cynical to say that victims of mass violence,
from Auschwitz to Rwanda, or the mentally
ill, not to mention suffering animals, should
organize themselves and speak for themselves.
No- somebody has to [also] speak for them.
Second: when we effectively get a mass mobilization
of hundreds of thousands of people self-organizing
themselves horizontally -- Tachrib square,
Guessed square, or Sentaga square in Athens
-- we should never forget that they remain
a minority, that the silent majority remains
outside - non-represented. I am, here, much
more of a pessimist: I think that the most
you can get from the majority is kind of silent
acceptance, but political activity is, by
definition, always constrained. The third
point: the permanent political engagement
of people has a limited time span: after a
couple of weeks, or maybe months, the majority
disengages, and the problem is how to safeguard
the results of the uprising at this point
in time, when things return to normal. This
is why I am - never was - too enthusiastic
about these great moments, you know - “oh
my god, we all cry; one million people on
square, whatever, Sintagma square, Tahrir
square - we were all one,” and so on. No!
What interests me is the morning after: that
is to say, the measure of a successful - whatever
we call it, revolution, rebellion, revolt,
social change -- is how ordinary people will
feel the change the morning after, when things
return to normal.
And here, our fantasies reach a limit. I hope
some of you saw the film, which I hate, V
for Vendetta - I mean, even Tony Negri fell
for it, “wonderful, multitude, rebellion”
- but do you remember the final scene? Thousands
of unarmed Londoners, they all wear the famous
Guy Faux masks, march towards Parliament,
and without orders, the military allows the
crowd to pass, [and] the people takes over.
OK; a nice, ecstatic moment; but to put it
in brutal terms - and then the film ends - but
I would be ready to sell my mother into slavery
to see V for Vendetta, Part 2: what happens
then? You know, it’s easy for the people
to win, [but] what happens then? This is why
- because, you know, you can see this precisely-
at least, it was like this when I was younger
in France -- every honest conservative, from
CCC or whatever, they are proud to say “yeah,
but of course, I was on the barricades in
‘68,” and so on, you know? How to break
out of this cycle where revolt - or whatever
we call it, a rebellion, [etc.] - is just
this momentary transgression - happy moment
- carnival - and then things return to normal.
All conservatives like these revolts, like,
you know, “people let off their steam,”
and so on.
And I think a whole list could be made of
these - what I call false, inherent transgressions
- like, coming from an ex-communist country,
I think that political jokes played this role
also, although people were arrested for telling
them. I think they - political jokes, jokes
against nomenclature itself, ruling nomenclature
- played a very constructive role. It simply
allowed people a small opening, telling the
jokes and so on, so you are ready to go on
in your miserable life. And there was a total
fantasy which was, I learned, operative in
all socialist countries. It’s wrong, for
theoretical reasons - and also empirically
it’s wrong - but it’s a beautiful fantasy
with some correct insight. Namely, the fantasy
is that, within the secret police, there was
an ultra secret department whose function
was to produce political jokes to keep the
people satisfied: not jokes against the West,
but jokes against their own party leaders,
and so on. You know where this idea came to
me? In Yugoslavia, which was a little bit
of a special case; throughout the 80’s,
when everybody saw the writing on the wall,
“this is them approaching its end,” still,
communist politicians tried to play this game
directly.
There were a couple of politicians who tried
to become more popular with the people by
telling, at official meetings, jokes about
themselves. I remember - I will not name him
- one Croat politician who made such a fun
of his visit to Germany. You must know the
joke, it’s the most brutal one. He was telling,
“you know what happened to me when I went
to Germany? I was on a train passing Baden-Baden,
and I asked my begleiter: what’s this, for
a city?” He said “Baden-Baden,” you
know the joke. And my reply was, “well,
I am not stupid, you don’t have to tell
me two times,” and so on. There is even
another version of this joke: he simply thought
that, in Germany, when you are asked where
you are from, you have to tell the name twice.
So, when the begleiter asked him where he
was from, he said “I am from Zaghrib Zagrib,”
but, again, my point is the absolute constructive
nature of these jokes.
So, two points to conclude this part: first,
we have absolutely to abandon, I claim, this
vision of “we live stiff, bureaucratic,
totally controlled lives; and then, carnival
freedom, you know, those who are kings are
now beggars, beggars are [now] kings, social
hierarchy dissolves.” I think, “No! Capitalism
is already a carnival of its own”. And,
from my friend Boris Groys, I learned something
wonderful. If some of you know, literary theory,
you know that the great theorist of social
carnival is Mikhail Bakhtin, one of the companion
de rout of Russian formalists, in his book,
on Francois Rabelais. But now, Groys told
me they found some archives of Bakhtin, where
you learn something quite unexpected; that
Bakhtin did not simply celebrate [the] carnival
as the wonderful moment of liberation, and
so on. NO! His secret model for carnival were
Stalinist purges in Gulag- that’s the true
carnival. Today, you are a member of the central
committee; tomorrow you are a traitor, nobody
in Gulag, and so on. So, even in racism or
fascism there is definitely a carnivalesque
aspect, even to Nazism, and so on, and so
on. So, that’s my first point.
The true problem is daily life: that’s really
difficult to change - the ordinary, daily
life - how things change there. The American
film producer Sam Godwin- he is an interesting
guy, he was always making stupid mistakes,
or nonsenses, but now we know they were all
planned, he had a nice irony - that’s one
of his legends. Once, some journals attacked
his films, produced by him, that there are
too many old cliches in them. You know what
was the memo he - Godwin - wrote to his scenario
department? We urgently need new original
cliches. And he was right. That’s the most
difficult thing to do: new cliches - new forms
which are, precisely, cliches for everyday
life.
And I am even here ready to go further: I
think all these dreams of local grassroot
permanent engagement. I even, personally,
don’t like it. Would you really like to
live in a community where, every afternoon,
you would have a meeting of how to organize
kindergarten, how to organize electricity,
this, that. No, thanks! I want to live in
a nice, alienated society where all of this
is done by an anonymous institution and I
- read my books, watch my films, and so on,
and so on. At this point we have to confront
the question of democracy - I am not against
democracy - the problem for me is only that
democracy - well - it’s not a word which,
how should I put it, divides. I claim - and
I agree here again with my friend Alain Badiou
- a true idea or concept divides, in the sense
that you use it in order to draw a distinction
between, naively, ideology and truth, or whatever.
Democracy doesn’t work like that; it can
designate something very authentic, I know,
but we all know what other things can be covered,
legitimized, with the appeal to democracy.
I claim that democracy, in a certain ideological
sense, often functions in a literal Freudian
sense as a fetish - you know, for Freud, fetish
is the last thing you see before you see the
castration, in the naive sense that a woman
doesn’t have a penis, and so on, and so
on. I think that, in our societies, in its
everyday use, democracy is also a fetish in
the sense of it’s that which prevents us
to see the radicality of our social antagonisms.
Let me give you an example from cinema. You
know all those big Hollywood leftist blockbusters:
All the President’s Men, The Pelican Grief,
and so on, and so on. The story is always
the same: a couple of normal people, lawyers,
journalists- discover a mega-scandal which
reaches up to the president of the United
States. So, corruption is shown to reach the
very top: so you will say, my god, wonderful,
it shows the truth about American democracy.
Why, then, do we feel so good after these
films?
We are satisfied because the message of the
film is, “what a great democratic country
is our country, where a couple of ordinary
guys like you and me can bring down the president,
the mightiest man on earth.” That’s what
false about these films. That’s why, but
I don’t have time for this, although politically
of course I am very sympathetic towards, Bilinke,
but I have a problem - theoretical, for practical
strategic reasons I have nothing against it,
with a term like “democratic socialism”.
Both words are suspicious for me. Democratic;
it’s, again, blurring, like what democracy?
Not everybody is for democracy today, it means
nothing. Socialism - it’s the same. My god!
I read an interview with Bill Gates, where
he says, in some deeper sense, “I am a socialist.”
Socialism, basically, means in its everyday
ideological [usage], only something like “yeah,
yeah, not just personal egotism - we should
also care about community,” and so on. No!
So, I agree with Autoveilingen, X K, that
guy, of course I mean it in the opposite sense
- that socialism is Aryan and Communism is
Jewish. That’s why I have a problem with
democratic socialism.
So, what do all these confusions indicate?
The basic problem is the following one: the
eternal story of contemporary left is that
of a leader or party elected with universal
enthusiasm, promising a new world - Mandela,
Syriza, and so on - but then, sooner or later,
they stumble upon the key dilemma: does one
dare to touch the capitalist mechanisms, or
does one decide to play the game? If one disturbs
the capitalist mechanisms, one is swiftly
punished by market perturbations, economic
calls, And so on. Today’s protests and revolts
are usually sustained by the combination,
or even overlapping, of different levels.
We fight for - if the country is authoritarian
- for normal parliamentary democracy, we fight
against racism and sexism, especially the
hatred directed at immigrants and refugees,
we fight for the welfare state against neoliberalism,
we fight against corruption in politics and
economy, we fight for new forms of democracy;
and, finally, questioning the global capitalist
system as such. Now, I claim, we have to avoid
here both extremes. On the one hand, the abstract
radical-leftist position, which basically
means nothing, which is what really matters
is the abolition of liberal parliamentary
capitalism: all other fights are secondary.
But, we should also avoid false gradualism;
now we fight for simple democracy, forget
your socialist dreams, they come later, and
so on, and so on.
The problem is, nonetheless, this one: let’s
take the big revolts of the last year, like
Takhrib square in Egypt. It’s easy to mobilize
the people against corruption, unfreedom,
humiliation, and so on. But then, the entire
strategy of global capitalist system is that
you get literally what you wanted but, at
a different- no, deeper - level, things do
not really change. This is the crucial moment
of disappointment that I designated in the
title of my talk today - as “How to go beyond
Mandela” - ANC in South Africa the price
was to accept global capitalist coordinates.
How to go further than that, without becoming
Mugabe- this ridiculous excess of false liberation,
of perverted liberation struggle.
The tragedy is that the ruling ideology today
uses all its instruments to block- to prevent-
this radicalization. They tell us that, uh-
i mean the latest theory is - my preferred
one- is the developed by Maurizio Lazzarato
in his The Rise of the Indebted Man- this
idea of self-entrepreneurship, that in a modern
democratic society, the difference between
capitalists and workers is basically only
a quantitative one. The idea is this- Let’s
say I’m a poor worker, and then you get
indebted, take a credit for 20k euros, and
then you are free to do whatever you want
with it, you can invest it into your health,
into a big holiday, into better healthcare
for your children, into universities for your
children. so the idea is, even a modest worker
is a self-entrepreneur, a small capitalist.
We are all capitalists, responsible for our
free choices, responsible for our destiny
and so on and so on. And this is where ideology
is operative today. For example, take the
so called theory, not of __, but the English
version with Anthony Giddens. His point- and
it’s a wonderful ideological trick- they
present you the very new forms of exploitation
as freedom. For example, its very difficult
- as we know, it’s less and less possible
today to get a permanent job. The tendency
of capitalism is to move towards the predominance
of so-called precarious work, you get one,
two years’ contract, you are never sure,
and so on and so on. This then is presented
to you as a new freedom. Anthony Giddens developed
this, like ‘isn’t this wonderful, you
are not like a cliche reduced to permanent
role - every two years you can reinvent yourself,
you can, you know? Oh, oh, for example you
don’t get universal healthcare. Isn’t
this wonderful you can make a free decision;
do you prefer healthcare or do you prefer
a holiday? Or whatever. You see the trick?
The trick is that actual unfreedom is presented
to you as the growth in your freedom. So,
what should we do?
Here comes my point, especially in times like
today. What works for us is that, nevertheless,
capitalism is inconsistent, it’s necessarily
inconsistent, it breaks its own rules all
the time. You have democracy but you have
places where there is no democracy, and so
on, and so on. What we should be doing today
mostly is not wait for the big revolution,
but find what I would like to call, again,
following Badiou, la poing do possible the
points of impossibility in the system. Which
means, apparently, small specific demands
which appear totally realistic but for a concrete
society they are the sensitive points.
Here i even have a soft spot for Obama, the
president. I mean, some of the leftist critics
of Obama are a little bit stupid- they behave
as if, what did they think, that Obama would
introduce communism into the united states?
No! Remember or, if you followed it, for example,
the point of impossibility for the United
States, already north for Canada, point of
impossibility in the sense of something which
is unbearably traumatic for the predominant
ideology was obviously universal healthcare.
You know what happened to Obama for insisting
on universal healthcare? He was brought to
the supreme court, and so on- it was traumatic.
And nobody can accuse him of socialism or
whatever- although many an idiot actor like
Chuck Norris did accuse him of introducing
communism.
But what I want to say is that- I want to
refer here to the wonderful scene of science
fiction films- you live in an artificial reality
and then, if you tax a wrong object, all of
reality di - like, you are in a room, and
there is a button. You press that button and
walls start to fall down, the )) disintegrates.
But it’ a modest point, and that works.
And of course different countries, situations,
have different points of impossibility. This
is where we should begin - because it’s
a demand which is totally legal- it’s not
prohibited - like there is nothing illegal
in demanding universal health service in US.
And again each situation has its each point
of impossibility. like in a country like turkey,
ordinary multiculturalism - the rights for
Croats and other minorities is another point
of impossibility, and so on and so on. But
what I want to tell you is, and this is also
my memory from – I wasn’t a great dissident
but some kind of dissident, smaller- in ex
Yugoslavia.
I remember there, at least in last decade
- this may shock you - communists easily tolerated
big demands. Like, if you wrote - I’m not
kidding, this literally happened - if you
wrote a treatise claiming “Yugoslav communism
is more oppressive than Stalinism, it’s
more refined way, Communist project is the
greatest catastrophe in humanity,” and so
on and so on. They basically give you for
the plane ticket to go to the West to some
anti communist congress - nobody cared about
that. But if you said, naively, like “as
a communist, I don’t like that specific
law. Change that specific law. Or that specific…”
Totally modest demand; totally justifiable
by the ruling ideology, even- and you risk
to be arrested, and so on. So, we had - that
was a big lesson for me - we have a whole
a small class - dozens, but nonetheless - of
let’s call them official dissidents, they
made a pact with nomenclature. Like, yes you
do- you know, all that open society, from
Plato, Rousseau, Marx, bad guys, catastrophes,
and so on- you do all this, we don’t care,
just don’t be too concrete here, with small
demands, and so on, and so on. And here, because
of this inconsistency of capitalism, it’s
worth - but we should be very careful which
fights we select.
It’s worth fighting this apparently modest
fights. Sometimes- this would be my ultimate
Hegelian -- self-referential irony - even
capitalism can be used against capitalism.
I remember one of my most depressing experiences
when, 15 years ago, I think I I watched on
CNN - CNN was a little bit better than it
is now, at that point - I remember a report
on Mali where the minister of agriculture
of Mali said, “listen, we don’t want any
state intervention or help from you; just
follow your own rules.” He said, “Because
Mali produces excellent cotton, and it’s
difficult for them to export it. why? Because
Americans subsidize their cotton producers-
they give to them as financial aid more money
than the entire state budget of Mali.” So
his message was “just follow your own market
rules!” You know? Anything can be used here.
Or another topic: slavery.
We know the paradox of capitalism: how slavery,
which more or less (careful) disappeared around
the 15th century, we know how, ever since
the beginning of capitalism onwards slavery
exploded; and I claim that now in a way it’s
returning- a slightly different form, but
its returning. I saw this when I visited,
Dubai, Qatar, and those places. These are
De facto slave societies. The majority of
people there are legal but apartheid-excluded
workers from Nepal to Indonesia and so on,
who are totally deprived of all rights and
so on, passports taken from them - they can
be arrested, deported, whatever. total exploitation.
Not to mention other forms. Not even only
in third world Arabia -- Africa, like massive
slavery, de facto slavery in Congo, and so
on. But do you remember in December of 2013,
when seven people died in a Chinese owned
clothing factory in an industrial zone close
to [Prato?]… why did they die? Because were
de facto slaves, they lived in a small house
made out of remainders of wood, and so on,
and then, shocked, they discovered that they
have the whole slave camps in the suburb of
[Prato]. So i think we shouldn’t be too
pessimistic. Again: the big art is to find
that button, to insist on small - well-chosen,
small - points where everyone has to agree
with you. Like today for example with the
refugees.
Of course, I am for refugees - their rights-
and I am glad to be here. I was glad to hear
what this theatre is doing for them, allowing
them to sleep here, helping them, and so on.
But isn’t the enigma - for example - refugees
escaping (from) Syria and Iraq. Ok, I will
not go through the usual story about how the
West is co-responsible for that crisis. But
what I wanted to say is but what about, do
you know what happens, why don’t they go..?
do you know that the countries which have
the same religion as many of the refugees-
Sunni Muslims- extremely wealthy countries,
let’s enumerate them - Saudi Arabia, Kuwait,
Qatar, Emirates- they practically accept no
refugees; and they are deeply involved in
the crisis which generates the refugees. Like,
we know the role Saudi Arabia plays in financing
some opposition to Assad in Syria, and so
on and so on. So, what about focusing on this
point?
For me, Saudi Arabia is almost a kind of ontological
abomination today - a country which is a kind
of political equivalent- you know, those monsters
which are sometimes born, like a cow with
two heads and three legs, or whatever. Why?
Because, on the one hand, it is, it presents
itself as a traditional Muslim country- Orthodox,
Sunni, Islam, and so on. But at the same time
it’s a country which is basically an outpost
of Western banks, investing money, it’s
a country which is financial capitalism at
its purest. Did you know that Saudi Arabia
owns almost ten percent of the entire value
- all factories, and so on- of the United
States. What about intervening a little bit
strongly there? I mean, when people criticize
Iran today - I am critical of Iran for curtailing
women’s rights, and so on- but I can tell
you that Iran is a feminist paradise compared
with Saudi Arabia, and so on. Do you see?
What I am aiming at- here we approach theory,
I do not have time to go into it- is how,
what opens up the space for radical political
interventions today is the fact that capitalism
can less and less stick to its own universality.
For example, idea of capitalism even for Marx
was we are all formally free- workers- the
slavery enters - we all have the same political
rights- slavery enters through wage labor,
and so on, and so on. Isn’t it clear that
now with all these new forms of Apartheid,
special economic zones and so on, and so on,
that world capitalism can, less and less,
afford even this ideological form of democracy?
We are getting newer and newer forms of Apartheid,
and so on and so on. So now I come to the
crucial point of my talk: how to coordinate
this multitude of struggles. I would like
to refer here to a wonderful new film - I
saw a rough version, it’s not yet finished
- of my friend, the Jewish, anti-Zionist,
pro-Palestinian movie maker Udi Aloni. He’s
just finishing the film, Junction 48, which
will be officially shown at the next - in
February now - Berlin film festival. It deals
with the difficult predicament of young Israeli
Palestinians - Palestinians who are settled
within Israel in the borders of 49 pre-67’
- and whose everyday life involves a continuous
struggle at two fronts: again Israeli state
oppression as well as against fundamentalist
pressures within their own community.
The main role is played by Tamer Nafar, a
well-known Israeli Palestinian rapper who,
in his music, not only deals with Israeli
oppression but also attacks - mocks - the
tradition of honor killings of Palestinian
girls by their families. Then, and that’s
why I’m telling you this story- a strange
thing happened to Nafar during a recent visit
to the United States. At some college - I
think it is UCLA I’m not sure - after Nafar
performed his song protesting honor killings,
some anti-Zionist students reproached him
for promoting the Zionist view of Palestinians
as barbaric primitives. Their line was that
‘if there are any honor killings among Palestinians,
Israel is responsible of them, since the Israeli
occupation gives Palestinians in primitive
conditions,’ and so on, and so on. You know,
this was typical pseudo-radicalism of white
wealthy students in a rich American university;
and Nafar gave them a dignified, wonderful
reply. I quote it literally: “When you criticize
me, you criticize my own community in English
to impress your radical professors. I sing
in Arabic to protect the women in my own hood.”
So an important aspect of Nafar’s position
is that he is not just protecting Palestinian
girls from family terror. He’s allowing
them to fight for themselves, to take the
risk. It’s not a patronizing position. And,
again, the film deals with all of it.
So, that’s the problem: this tension between,
you know that’s my problem- on the one hand,
struggle with the oppressed people, and so
on, and so on. On the other hand, we have
our own struggles: feminist struggles, struggle
against religious fundamentalism, and so on,
and so on. What I absolutely do not accept
is this idea that on behalf of a greater struggle-
anti-imperialist struggle- we should somehow
abstain from advocating our feminist, gay
rights, and so on, struggles. As my- now you
will say, “nobody advocates for this”
- no, maybe not publicly. Practically the
majority of my leftist friends tell me privately,
“you know, I know they have honor killings,
religious oppression, but you know it’s
not the time to emphasize this too much.”
It happens to me all the time, and I think
we should break this taboo. I think the multiculturalist
defense of different ways of life covers up
the antagonisms within each of these particular
ways of life.
Let me give you an example. Now we come to
Mugabe. Mugabe recently gave a talk at the
United Nations general assembly, and basically
his talk was a justification for brutal homophobia
but formulated in anti-colonial struggle terms.
A quote from Mugabe: “respecting and upholding
human rights is an obligation of states. And
it’s enshrined in the United Nations charter.
Nowhere does the charter arrogate the right
to some to sit in judgement over others in
carrying out this universal obligation. In
that regard, we reject the politicisation
of this important issue (homosexuality) and
the application of double standards to victimize
those who dare to act and think independently
of the self-anointed prefects of our time.
We reject the attempts to prescribe new rights
(he means gay rights) that are contrary to
our values, norms, traditions, and beliefs,”
and then he emphasized, “we are not gays.
Cooperation and respect for each other will
advance the cause of human rights worldwide.
Confrontation, vilification, and double standards
will not.” What can Mugabe’s emphatic
claim, “we are not gays,” mean with regard
to the fact that there are many gays in Zimbabwe?
It means, of course, that gays are reduced
to an oppressed minority whose acts are often
directly criminalized. But one can understand
the underlying logic; the gay movement is
perceived as the cultural impact of globalization
and as a way [that] globalization undermines
traditional social and cultural forms. So
the conclusion is, “the struggle against
gays is an aspect of the anti-colonialist
struggle,” and the same even holds for Boko
Haram. For certain radical Muslims, the liberation
of women appears as the most visible feature
of the destructive cultural impact of capitalist
modernization. Therefore, Boko Haram, which,
I hope you know what the name means - it can
be roughly translated as “Western education,”
of women specifically, is forbidden - Boko
Haram can perceive itself as the way of fighting
the destructive aspect of capitalist modernization.
But the idea is that hierarchic regulation
of the relation between the two sexes is how
you fight capitalism.
This paradox, I think, at least, should get
us to think: mainly, the paradox that we have
movements today - not only in Muslim countries,
up to a point even in Putin’s Russia, where
what they really find unbearable in the West
is not military interventions, is not global
capitalist economy, but what they call this
liberal dissolute immoral way of life. For
example, in the short book on Islam that I
published with Hornstein, I quote it there,
[Homoini?]- it’s a very important passage-
he said “we do not fear Western military
superiority, we can fight that, we have markets;
we do not fear Western economic imperialism,
we can organize ourselves; what we do fear
is the dissolute Western way of life.” And
the sad thing is that- and you can detect
this even in how Putin and the Russian establishment
reacted to the victory of that ridiculous
singer you remember Conchita Vous Eurovision-
I have no sympathy for him/her, here I am
a conservative. But nonetheless I know how
all of a sudden - and Boko Haram is the extreme
example of this - sexual became political
but not in sense of the 60’s, but in a very
paradoxical way- that the basic political
program of escaping capitalist decadence is
to re-introduce proper hierarchy in relations
between sexes.
Here, I will go to the edge of what is problematic
in what I’m saying; here I remain a Eurocentrist.
In what sense? Of course - I totally agree
with this - refugees should enjoy the same
rights as the members of diverse communities
that make up Europe. So, I admire what you
are doing, I am engaged in doing this, I am
even ready to adopt the radical leftist view
and make the claim that it’s even wrong
to treat them as foreign refugees- no! they
are part of us - we are co-responsible for
that situation. It’s not this Derridean-
Jacques Derrida- topic of hospitality where
a foreigner comes, and you have to be kind
to him. No! They are part of our world! We
do not even have the right to treat them as
coming from another world. But the catch for
me is this one: yes, they have to enjoy the
same rights as all of us, but which, exactly,
are these same rights? While Europe is now
fighting for full gay and women’s rights-
the right to abortion, same sex marriage,
and so on- should these rights also be extended
to gays and women among the refugees even
if they are in conflict with the customs they
bring with themselves, and again this aspect
should in no way be dismissed as marginal.
I am here, again, for a certain level of Eurocentrism:
yes, you should have the same rights, but
also your women should have the same rights,
also your gays among you should have the same
rights, and so on, and so on. Now, of course
they are quite justified in saying ‘but
this is Eurocentrism’- because, they will
say, ‘in our traditional universe, collective
rights play a stronger role than individual
rights; by allowing so much freedom to individuals,
you already undermine our culture’. No!
I think here we should insist on our own.
I am not afraid to say this, even if some
idiots are already proclaim me that I am passing
over to Bha-Gita. Oh my god.
Another taboo that must be overcome involves
the equation of any reference to European
emancipatory legacy as cultural imperialism
and racism. I know - I’ve written about
it - in what way Western liberalism justifies
colonialism, and so on, and so on. But I wonder
why is it exactly now that it is so fashionable
to be a critique of Eurocentrism. My claim
is that in this situation today a certain
degree of eurocentrism is worth defending.
Why? Because I see this globalization - almost-
of anti-eurocentrism as an indication of a
very sad fact: that today’s global capitalism
no longer needs democracy, equality, and so
on, but functions quite well with an authoritarian
structure. Today, for me, the ideal capitalist
would have been who? Like the Indian PM, Modi,
who is, at the same time, in economy a radical
neoliberal- he openly said “the chance for
India is to have even a cheaper labor force
than China- to sell them to Western companies
millions of Indians,” and so on and so on.
At the same time, he’s clearly a Hindu nationalist,
and so on. So, isn’t it, for me, so symptomatic
that one tends to reject western cultural
values at very the moment when, critically
re-interpreted, many of those values - egalitarianism,
and so on - can serve as a weapon against
capitalist globalization.
Did we already forget that the entire idea
of communist emancipation, as envisaged by
Marx, is a radically Eurocentric one? I claim,
paradoxically - and I am ready to defend to
death this paradox - that enlightened self-critical
Eurocentrism is the only way to really break
out of Eurocentrism. I agree with the basic
point - I repeated it endlessly - that the
true danger to Europe are not Muslim terrorists
or Muslim invasions - the true danger to Europe
are the fundamentalist anti-immigrant defenders
of Europe. Let’s be clear: that’s what
I fear, no doubt about it; but precisely because
of this. I am not afraid to claim ‘no, sorry,
it’s not enough to just play this endless
game of self-humiliation’. ‘Yes, we europeans
are guilty for everything, all our values
are fake values, the more we think we are
free, the more we are enslaving others,’
and so on and so on. Don’t we see that the
very way we criticize ourselves is rooted
in European tradition?
I think that the best way to criticize actual
imperialism is through being faithful to the
emancipatory core of European tradition. Because,
you know, cultural imperialism never had any
problem with cultural diversity. I discovered
in India that - you know that, in 18th century,
traditional Hindi hierarchy was already disappearing.
Then, when the British colonized India, they
had a very intelligent idea - that the only
way to control Indians, it’s not to let
Indian society to disintegrate into modernization-
in this way you would have proletarians, you
would have Western politicization- but to
take care that the majority of Indians will
remain faithful to their caste society, and
so on. So, one of the most horrible books
of ideology of all time- the lost legal system
of Manu-- the total manual with all sub-differences
of caste society with all the rules - was
resuscitated in 19th century by the British
colonizers.
So, now to conclude, if you allow me a little
bit more time, and this will be a little bit
more amusing, but also I hope, problematic
for you. I want to move at the deeper level
of, let’s say, anthropological level. I
find when precisely we are dealing with refugees
and other foreigners- what makes me absolutely
tired, and although it sounds nice, it’s
politically catastrophic, I claim; is this
accent on humanitarian compassion and so on,
and so on. No! This idea of- let me give you
the formula which condenses the evil, for
me. It sounds like a very deep formula. The
formula is, “an enemy is someone who’s
story you have not heard’, it sounds so
deep, you know? Other people are foreigners
for us, but listen to their story, and you
will see. This is one of the greatest stupidities
that you could imagine. How? Just apply it
to a guy, a well known German politician who,
I was told by Carl Heines, the myth is that
he stayed at the same hotel I am stay here
at: Reichshof. Hitler. Are you ready to say
Hitler was our enemy because we were not ready
to listen his story?
No! Sorry, there are enemies, real enemies.
What does this mean? That the truth of what
you do is not in the story - they read too
much deconstructionism, these idiots - it’s
not that we are the stories we are telling
ourselves about ourselves. We are the horror
we are doing and we construct the stories
to obfuscate the true horror of what we are
doing. The truth in what we are doing - there
is always a story. It is always wonderful
to read - I have written a text on it - how,
behind every ethnic cleansing, there are some
poets. Why? Because, you know, basically - I
hope so- we are not totally bad; like, if
someone were to tell me now to go pick out
that guy’s eyes and eat them, well, I would
find it a little bit difficult. So what I
need is a strong poetical-religious myth which
enables me to perceive the horror that I will
do as the ultimate ethical sacrifice. And
for this, you need mythologists, you need
poets - it’s not only a caricature of Bosnia,
everyone has its own caricature. So, my point
is what? That we don’t need more understanding,
and so on.
This is, again, this liberal trick of ‘oh,
we never enough understand the other,’ and
so on, and so on. I am here, for a return
to, in all provocative content, of this Judeo-Christian
notion of neighbor. Neighbor in Judeo-Christian
tradition is not a fellow man, is not a guy
who is like you. You encounter a neighbor
when you see the abyss in the Other. You know?
Let’s say I have a friend; I think I know
him. Then all of a sudden that friend does
something either horrible or maybe sublime,
but he appears as a stranger to me, like ‘my
god, I didn’t know he was like that.’
At that point, you see the neighbor. In this
sense, that stupid postmodern phrase has some
truth in it: we are not only strangers to
others but strangers to ourselves. This is
why whenever you hear of universal love, and
comprehension, and so on, there is something
false about it.
I would like to live in a society where - and
I often did - in a big apartment house where
there is an Indian here, an Arab there, a
Jew there, a Latino American there - but I
don’t want to understand them. I want polite
distance; respect. Maybe, from time to time,
I get close to someone, but it’s a miracle.
How can we understand each other fully when
we don’t even understand ourselves? I don’t
think 
a foreign culture, ours included, should focus
on some hidden core that we should fully understand,
and so on, and so on. No! The whole point
is to maintain a proper distance- and especially,
I think, this holds for refugees. You know,
this idea of ‘but refugees are not so bad
- listen to them, they are people like us.’
Oh, I am so afraid of this - no, no, precisely
because I am for refugees. Because, you know,
then you always discover, of course, that,
my god, refugees are shitty people like us:
some are good, many are bad, of course if
you get hundreds of thousands of them, there
will be rapists, and so on, among them. Respect
their otherness, not their sameness. Don’t
play this game - which is always an ideological
game - of ‘we are all humans.’
You know where I learned this lesson? When
I was in Israel, a weird thing happened - reported
in all the media there - an Israeli anti-terrorist
unit entered a Palestinian home because they
suspected the father of the family is a terrorist.
And he was not at home, the father- but there
was the mother with some children. And, of
course, when soldiers brutally enter your
apartment you are in a panic, so the girl
starts to shout and cry and the mother called
her - I don’t know what - by name, “oh
come to me, everything OK.” And then came
the kitsch: you know, like, ‘an Israeli
soldier discovered that, my god, this girl
has the same name as my own girl, and she
showed the mother the photo: you see, we are
human, all, and so on, and so on.’ This
is falsity at its purest. The true ideology
is not ‘we are not just figures of ideology,
we are all humans’. No! Differences matter;
we are not all humans in this same sense.
That’s the respect to the others: where
you don’t accept this simple universalization,
and so on, and so on. The most - again- the
most dangerous thing is to idealize the other-
that’s through actual racism, for me. Like,
open yourself to them, and so on. No! Treat
them respectfully, absolutely admit them in
their otherness, and so on, and so on.
So, just to, now, really to conclude, with
two problematic points concerning the refugees.
Another way of idealizing the refugees is
- and many of my radical leftist friends play
this game, I am horrified at this - the idea
is this one. I will not name them, it would
be embarrassing. Many of my radical leftist
friends - they tell me this secretly, privately,
very well known names, but I will not mention
them - is that, you know, today there is such
a crisis that we cannot arouse people to be
more radical, that we need a mega catastrophe-
ecological, or atomic incident, millions dead-
the only thing that will move people. And
some of them now included refugees into this.
Like, a friend recently wrote to me, ‘let’s
bring ten million refugees in europe, and
they will form the base of the new revolutionary
working class.’ And I said, ‘Ah! That’s
it. you are a Marxist, [but] you don’t have
a revolutionary working class, so let’s
import one.’ I mean, it’s... absurdity.
The second thing: precisely out of respect
for the refugees, I claim that I am tired
of this Habermasian - and of some others - motif
of so-called ‘democratic deficit’ of European
Union. The basic idea is, ‘European Union
is okay, it just has a democratic deficit.’
This reminds me of my old communist colleagues,
from the times of real socialism, when they
said ‘Soviet Union, it’s basically okay,
it just has a little bit of a democratic deficit.’
No! The point is that this democratic deficit
is part of the system. And I am even ready
to go further here. I had, recently, a debate
- two or three days ago - with Yanis Varoufakis
and Assange in London where, I think Varoufakis,
my very good friend, was a little bit naive;
because his point (of Varoufakis) was that
Europe has to democratize itself- render all
of it transparent, and so on, people should
decide. But then I told him about my very
sad experience; maybe some of you read it.
I gave it about a month ago when at [..?], and
then they asked me to answer some leaders’
questions. Then they told me one question
addressed at me which evoked most of the interest
among the leaders - they gave hundreds of
replies to it. It was precisely a democratic
question, but an anti-immigrant democratic
question. It was the question, “if we live
in democratic society, who authorized angle-America
to call hundreds of thousands of people to
move to Germany? He should be prosecuted!”
and so on, and so on.” Now, Varoufakis’
answer was, “this is confusion. If there
really were to be a referendum, Mercel would
have won here.” I doubt it, I am simply
more of a pessimist. I simply think, “No!
Majority can be wrong, and most of the time,
maybe even, it is wrong.” This doesn’t
mean we need an enlightened communist party
to lead them. We have to accept this - that,
you know, to make democracy work, many other
things have to work. Democracy in itself doesn’t
necessarily change things for the better.
So, to conclude, just two things - I hope
you will find them amusing - two quotes. The
first one: the best reply [to the question
of] what to do for the refugees is - I hope
you know, you should read it - Oscar Wilde,
his wonderful short text the soul of man under
socialism where, in the opening lines, he
points out that, “it is much easier to have
sympathy with suffering than it is to have
sympathy with thought”. And here is the
quote: “people find themselves surrounded
by terrible poverty, by ugliness, by starvation-
it is inevitable that they should be strongly
moved by all of is. Accordingly, with admirable
though misdirected intentions, they very seriously
and very sentimentally set themselves to the
task of remedying the evils that they see.
But their remedies do not cure the disease
- they merely prolong it. Indeed, the remedies
are part of the disease. They try to solve
the problem of poverty by, for instance, by
keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of
a very advanced school, by amusing the poor.
But this is not a solution- it is an aggravation
of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try
and reconci- reconstruct society on such a
basis that poverty will be impossible, and
the altruistic virtue have really prevented
the carrying out of this aim.” That’s
my point of capitalism, and so on. Of course,
we should unconditionally help the refugees,
but the solution is not the world to the same
and we just help the refugees.
We will have to do more- change the economic
system - I do not know in what way. And my
last point- this is the saddest point- there
is genuine hatred, Jews-Palestinians, third
world, and so on. What came to my mind here
is a very sad lesson. Look- it’s the last
page, don’t be afraid. I recently read Ruth
Kruger- she survived, as a girl, Auschwitz.
Her memoir is Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood
Remembered where she describes, after she
survived after world war two Germany, a conversation
with some doctoral student here in Germany.
Here is the quote: “one reports how in Jerusalem
he (this student) made the acquaintance of
an old Hungarian Jew who was a survivor of
Auschwitz - and yet this man cursed the Arabs
and held them all in contempt. ‘How can
someone who comes from A talk like that?,’
The German asks. I get into the act and argue.
But what did he expect? Auschwitz was no educational,
instructional institution: you learn nothing
there. And list of all humanity and tolerance:
absolutely nothing good came out of the concentration
camps. And there is no catharsis - the sort
of thing you go to theatre for - they [the
camps] were the most useless, pointless, establishments
imaginable.” I think this is a crucial prejudice
that we have to abandon. No! There is nothing
noble in suffering as if when you sin that
you will emerge as a wise man, understanding.
No! Auschwitz- and that’s also the horror
of Auschwitz- it’s not just what it does
to you from the outside. There is no ethical
greatness in it, like this heroism enabled
people survive it, and so on, and so on.
This is what is so horrible about suffering:
it doesn’t produce poor people but poor
people who, because they experienced suffering,
they know how to be good. No, it ruins you
from the inside. That’s why the worst thing
you can do is - [while] dealing with refugees
or with poor among us - is to idealize them,
‘they are poor, but they have a certain
nobility,’ and so on and so on. No; the
problem is to accept that they don’t have
this nobility - but precisely because they
were ruined by the system, and so on? No!
It’s not as easy as that, as it is, you
know the classic Hollywood Kitsch Frank Capper
films, where the idea is, ‘poor people are
really wonderful, good- you just have to hear
them to discover their inner beauty.’ No,
there is no inner beauty. Thank you very much.
