But the persuasive link, which I could not ignore, concerned his characterization of the Roma population.

To me, he lied about the situation, or misrepresented it in order to present an ‘authentic’ Slovenian voice to service his argument against multiculturalism.

It exposed to me a side of Zizek which I cannot tolerate. I was very happy, and even enjoyed Zizek’s contradictory assertions. Even the occasionally errors in his work (as in his plot description of Rashomon in ‘The Parallax View’) did not deter me, as his work was innovative in putting cultural phenomenon into a Lacanian perspective in an entertaining way.

But it is risible for such a social agitator like Zizek to resort to the type of support of openly racist locals in Slovenia in their Nazi scare tactics on the Roma there. And it suggests to me a certain model of bravo machismo, leaving out all the nationalism, socialism or whatever, that rings all too familiar.

Lacan, yes. Perhaps his early interest in the National Front puts him into question also, but his work is sufficiently apolitical for that not to have exposed itself as an issue (if I were to find such sympathies, then gone). Heidegger, for me, was stupid politically. This is not to excuse his collaboration with the Nazis and betrayel of colleagues. But for me, he has been sufficiently de-Nazified.

I think its time for Zizek to undergo a similar process.

as exciting as i find much of heidegger’s thinking to be, and the critical use that people like jean-luc nancy and derrida have made of his work; ontology as politics is an incredibly problematic rabbit hole to find oneself traveling down, and i think there’s little urgency behind developing literacy of his work for polemical or concretely political purposes. but if you’re inclined to dirty your hands with “nazi theory”, i’m surprised that carl schmitt has not been mentioned yet. his work is of central importance to foucault’s thinking on biopolitics, particularly in his 1975-’76 lectures ‘society must be defended’, and schmitt’s 1962 ‘theory of the partisan’ engages with lenin and mao. the connection between schmitt and maois politics is further explored in michael dutton’s book ‘policing chinese politics’.

I’ve read almost no Heidegger. I’m embarrassed to say that as someone who considers themself pretty well read. But its true. He’s a major 20th century thinker who was a major influence on many thinkers I hold in quite high regard (Marcuse, Foucault, Badiou). But I haven’t gotten around to reading more than a couple short pieces from a collection of essays that I don’t remember understanding very well.

I don’t think we are entitled to “verdicts” on the works of writers we haven’t read. We can choose for various reasons not to read them and indeed we have to make such choices all the time. But when we do we give up the right to speak authoritatively on those works.

I have no problem passing a verdict on Heidegger’s politics. He was undisputably a Nazi. And as John Belushi said, “I hate those guys.” But on his philosophy, ít would be ridiculous for me to pass such a verdict. Even if we stipulate that there is a relationship between his politics and his philosophy, as one should presume. But that tells us practically nothing. Of course they are “related.” The question is how and what are the implications for his various philosophical views. And of course there is no way to determine that without understanding what his views are and that, in turn, requires that one read him.

Like Mike, I don’t think its incumbent on every communist to read the whole canon of 20th century continental philosophy. I believe that a division of labor is neccesary and inevitable. But I also believe that we should promote a general ethos of reading broadly which includes reading writers who various reasons might be noxious. Most communists don’t need to read Heidegger OR Zizek. But they should probably take a stab at Gramsci and Althusser after they have read some Marx. And those who WANT to read Heidegger should be encouraged to do so, so that as a movement we have some folks in our ranks who are literate in such an important figure.

“Still Kasama is a revolutionary website. If we’re making the basic point that revolutionaries should read more theory including Zizek. I agree. And we can go deeper on that tip. But again I think this at some point its okay to render some verdicts and move ahead. I don’t think this is unreasonable.”

Thanks, sister, for drilling sharply into some of the key questions. Let me a bit contrarian in hopes of sharpening things up.

Some people here on this thread have argued something like this (I’m paraphrazing):

“Since Zizek has influence among academics we need a verdict on him, to know what to think and say when he comes up. To those who say revolutionaries should burrow themselves into these books, we say we are sceptical about the whole field of academic Marxism because these are a circle of armchair theorists who don’t link their ideas to practice or the working class, and who write in obscure and jargony ways that confirm their elitism and spaciness. And who are trying to spin out new philosophical theory, when in fact, the world needs everyone to study and apply dialectical materialism, which was more or less laid out for us all by Engels in the late 1800s. But Zizek in particular needs to be called out because his political practice is (in our opinion) particularly agregious, since he was one of the Slovene political figures who helped pull Yugoslavia apart, destroying one of the socialist countries of Eastern Europe, triggering a horrific civil war, and leaving the socialist Milosovic government open to armed assault by Nato. And, if we give his work a read, we can see all over the place ways that he crosses the bounds of progressive discourse, posting questions and problems in ways that are offensive and may play into overt racism.”

That is my understanding of the argument.

And I just want to say that every part of this, piece by piece, argument by argument, seems mistaken.

Particularly starting with two assumptions:

a) That our main job is to “evaluate” Zizek — i.e. walk away from this investigation with a summation of him (is he reactionary, is he progressive, should we include him on all study plans, should we ignore his work?)

b) That our main method of evaluation should be his participation in southern Slav politics (especially of the late twentieth century).

This is not JUST about each of us reading more theory

Saoirse writes:

“If we’re making the basic point that revolutionaries should read more theory including Zizek…”

On one level, yes, of course, most revolutionaries are really larguly untrained about theory of any kind — and yes, our movement (as a whole) could read more theory (and more news, and more history, and more economics…).

But to reduce our discussion to that advice is a bit primitive.

For what purpose are we suggesting to read more theory? Do we have a division of labor? ARe we just urging everyone to “read everything” in some aimless self-cultivating way? No.

As we develop a revolutionary movement and revolutionary practice, we also need to engage in theoretical creative development (in its own right), which does not mean reading random theory (for its own sake).

Our point around theory is not to “take it all in” — but to end up “putting something OUT” — i.e. the revolutionary theory that will serve our attempt to destroy imperialism.

So that sharpens the argument of WHY we should all “read more theory” and also WHAT theory we should read, and also WHAT (precisely) we should do (collectively, not individually) with this theory we are putting in front of ourselves.

So yeah, read more theory. And don’t restrict it to your canon of “five head classics.” But that is not really even the start of understanding our task.

Mike’s view: This is not about “each of us read more theory.” Our goal is to CREATE a new coherent updated communist theory, not just “read” what others have created. We need to be WRITING, not just READING, theory. And we need to WRITE it in order to guide a revolutionary practice that (currently) does not have a SUFFICIENT communist theory to animate it.

Our Main Job is Not Grading Writers as if They are Schoolchildren & as if We are the Teachers.

Our main task in the reading is not to “evaluate” the various figures.

“Thumbs up on lucky Professor A. Thumbs down and frowny face for Latin American theorist B and her divergencies.”

We will (inevitably) develop some evaluations (which will not be binary up-or-down). But thinking that evaluation of the person is the main thing that we are here to do would leave us equally impoverished, especially if our standard of appraisal was simply do they agree with some self-invented pre-existing checklist of what is true.

If you start and end your “evaluations” by comparing everyone to a checklist of your already-existing ideas — then (by the nature of your process) you will learn nothing. You will simply be asking “are they already one of us, or not?”

And if someone has a very new, shocking and innovative insight — your method will force you to treat it with a conservative hostility and suspicion. And what good is that?

Mike’s View: Our main task is two fold:

First to understand (collectively, not each of us individually) the theoretical work, innovations and questions raised. (Not just in philosophy, but in political economy, history, revolutionary strategy, science, etc.) And extract from that innovative ideas and insights that we should critically assimilate into our own attempt to “know things to change things.” This is mainly a learning and critical assimilation process for us.

Our second task is to understand influential ideas (whether we “like them” or not) in order to be able to constructively engage other forces, who are animated by, attracted by and influenced by non-communist forms of radical thought.

This is not a Call for Perpetual Mass Study of Academic Marxism

Sure It’s Hard, It’s Obscure — but Does That Make It Gibberish?

After the 60s upsurge, some currents of academic left thought embraced obscure and non-popular forms of expression — in part as a reaction to the dumbed down popularization that characterized much of the mass movements. We can criticize this trend toward obscurantism (in form) — but that does not mean that these works have nothing to teach us (nonetheless). And we also need to respect that sometimes the difficulty of these works is not obscurantism — but is the necessary precision and language of a developed field (and Badiou is the example of someone famous for clarity and precision who is, nonetheless, very difficult for non-specialist readers to understand). And in those cases, it is quite possible that the communist investigations of those specific works should be assigned (especially) to those comrades who have such specialized training.

In short: For us to say there is value in studying Hegel or Badiou, does not mean that every recruit or organizer or communist should set aside days and weeks to study his works. (That is, once again, so binary and primitive a view. Non-strategic and simplistic.)

This is a Theortical Project that Serves a New Revolutionary Practice

A theoretical project means that as a revolutionary movement we should see what we have to learn from a surrounding world of investigations, debate and creative work. This can mean teams of specific people extracting what is of value — giving the time to go deep.

It doesn’t mean (as someone assumed in an almost cartoonish way) that Zizek is now “our hero” and has replaced Lenin, and now we hand everyone his key works and portrait.

(Again, dogmatists see others through their own eyes. If some of us read Zizek they assume he must be our new idol and hero. Because THEY view the writes they read as “heroes,” idols and icons. If we find value in Althusser, they believe we must now be his “followers.” And so one. It is an impoverished and religious outlook, where you don’t examine examine ideas you don’t intend to worship, and where there is no sense of ‘one divides into two.”

IN other words, we need critical assimilation (both affirmation and negation) — or (as Mao put it) “one divides into two.”

It is not like we want to emerge with some grade school pass/fail report card: “Samir Amin is a petty bourgeois, Leontiev is an orthodox Marxist Leninist like us, Althusser is half communist but too intellectual, and Badiou doesn’t seem to like the party state.”

Such fractures and infantile mini-verdicts are useless (and by that I mean, useless to the process of making real-world revolution). And we can add to that: the method of judging theoretical works by the episodic political activism of their writers is a bad method (Althusser was not enthusiastic about the riots of May 1968, Zizek was initially for the secession of Slovenia, Marx/Engels supported Germany in the Franco-Prussian war, Lenin liked the American Taylor system for factories, Bill Hinton initially supported the revisionist coup in China, Carl Oglesby slept with female students when he was a professor, Mao’s foreign ministry felt compelled to recognized Pinochet’s new government, and so on.) If you want to judge a theoretical body of work by resurrecting specific episodes, it is a cheap and easy method of proving whatever you want. this is not to say that specific political episodes are “irrelevant,” they aren’t — but it is to say that you have to judge theory-as-theory.

This is about revolution

The snide remarks about “armchairs” are revealing and lame: Yes, people who actually read sit in armchairs. Just like people who fish sit in boats.

But revolutionary communists, activists and leaders are people who read. And if you don’t have an armchair, you prolly will have a hard time helping rebuild a new revolutionary movement.

Let’s put it like this, soberly:

There is (now) no well-defined revolutionary movement. There is (not yet) a sufficient, creative, identified and well defined revolutionary communist theory (with strategy, tactics, program, analysis of the enemy, approaches to internationalism etc.) for the work that we urgently need to start. There is no existing country-wide core of organized revolutionaries — with common approaches, and a commitment to a common project.

We have to build ALL of that.

And it simply won’t do to think our main task is to rush toward routinized, ill-considered activism — and give these tasks of re-creation just a passing nod.

We are passing through a period where every revolutionary has to take responsibility for building a movement of revolutionaries (not just a mass base for low-level resistance).

Think about it. We have major tasks, new tasks (that this generation has not really thought about deeply), and that some people just don’t want to allow anyone to think about.

Some think we can grab snippets of theory and graphic icons (from the comintern, or the old CPUSA, or a few classics) and jump back into “being the best organizer in the social movements.”

This will lead (literally) nowhere — except the repetition of deadends that have been explored over and over in past generations. It’s like someone insists on going into that part of the maze where all the passages lead to dead ends.

We have specific tasks for uncovering how to initiate and guide practical revolutionary work that fuses communism with oppressed people. (We are not just a propeller that “stirs up” the oppressed. We actually have to fuse a new revolutionary movement with the oppressed.)

And we have initial ideas, and directions, and proposals…. it’s not like we start with blank slates and dull eyes.

And to do those tasks, we have to be awake, thinking critically, engaged, open-minded, well-read, aware of the world around us, organized into a division of labor, and not consumed by familiar rutted routines of stereotypical “activism.”

“And it continues to amaze that anyone on the left who dare try to justify reading Heidegger.”

as an argument against revolutionaries utilizing Heidegger and trying to disentangle Heidegger the national socialist from Heidegger the philosopher.

There are many philosophers and authors I will read and re-read but I think its not unfair to suggest that a verdict, of sorts, can be made on the political and philosophical thinking of Heidegger or Rand, etc. I don’t see this as an argument for an anti-intellectualism.

Taking it further and again this my own reading of May 9th posts, they are arguing a similar verdict is now appropriate for Zizek’s work. That he has a long history extending back two decades of supporting bad politics. Of supporting organizations, policies and practices that are against liberation.

TNL has questioned the root of these politics, questioning:

” it is not obvious to me that Zizek has dedicated himself to “destroying socialism” because it is not obvious to me that what existed in Yugoslavia in the 1980s or 90s was socialism. You act as if this is a non-controversial claim that any idiot can see. But among socialists and communists it is actually passionately disputed.”

Point taken.

I also agree with TNL that many folks call themselves Marxists and I am not about to start policing the people that do if they don’t fit my brand of Marxism.

Still Kasama is a revolutionary website. If we’re making the basic point that revolutionaries should read more theory including Zizek. I agree. And we can go deeper on that tip. But again I think this at some point its okay to render some verdicts and move ahead. I don’t think this is unreasonable. That said when I first read Judith Butler’s gender trouble 15 years ago I had a different take on her theory of the “performity of all gender expression” than I do today. my views have changed but I have also had many years to see how her rather challenging to read theory has impact to political landscape of the LGBTQ community. In a similar way I think recognizing the potential that our verdicts might change on a think like Zizek is important too.

“And it continues to amaze that anyone on the left who dare try to justify reading Heidegger.”

Are you kidding? What is wrong with reading ANYBODY. Do you think ignorance is good, or “revolutionary”?

I’ve even read Hitler and a number of other fascists, and the history books put out by David Irving. You learn things by reading, including things by negative example.

How are you going to counter fascist arguments if you don’t even know what they are? How will you understand their appeal if you don’t study them?

No one needs to “justify” reading anyone, or apologize for doing so. Are you afraid of being contaminated?

I’ve read all of Ayn Rand (at times a daunting joyless task) but it didn’t turn me pro-capitalist. It did, however, come in handy in many political discussions with libertarians, including at least a few who I managed to turn to the left.

http://heavysideindustries.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/88-nazi.pdf

Is this how far people will go to de-link theory from practice?

“‘One may term “Byzantianism” or “scholasticism” the regressive tendency to treat so-called theoretical questions as if they had a value in themselves, independently of any specific practice. … In short the principle must always rule that ideas are not born of other ideas, philosophies of other philosophies: they are a continually renewed expression of real historical development. . . . Identity in concrete reality determined identity in thought, and not vice-versa. It can further be deduced that every truth, even if it is universal and even if it can be expressed by an abstract formula of a mathematical kind (for the sake of theoreticians) owes its effectiveness to its being expressed in the language appropriate to the specific concrete circumstances. If it cannot be expressed in specific terms, it is a Byzantine and scholastic abstraction, good only for phrase mongers to toy with”

Now, it’s rather exhausting to have repeatedly point out that Zizek’s bad practice is not limited to the damn 1980s. I don’t know how many times this has been said. It’s apparent that no amount of commentary about Zizek’s politics in the 1990s and the present will satisfy you, so you can continue to stick your fingers in your ears and pretend that I’ve provided enough evidence.

Even if Yugoslavia wasn’t socialist according to your orthodoxy in the 1980s, it cannot be denied in any way shape or form that Zizek’s party, the party that he founded and helped led, the party on whose label he ran for President, the party with which he maintained contact and supported throughout the 1990s and 2000s, savagely privatized the Slovenian economy. They did this immediately with the Enterprise Act – which replaced social property relations with capitalist property relations; the Law on the Circulation and Disposal of Capital – which gave work councils the right to sell their companies to private owners; the the Law on Social Property which transformed socially owned companies into private companies through internal shares and buyouts; and the Law on the Transformation of Social Ownership – who provided for a wide variety of mechanisms by which property could be handed over to private control. This can’t be disputed. If it’s not a big deal to you, fine. But stop pretending this didn’t happen or that Zizek didn’t have a role in it. It’s equivalent of saying it’s not counterrevolutionary to support Yeltsin even Yeltsin gutted any vestige of publicly owned property in Russia, because, after all, Gorbachov’s USSR wasn’t ‘socialist’.

Zizek’s political party rapidly shifted the wealth of Slovenia into the hands of private owners. Fact. Stop harping on the 80s as if that’s where it all stopped. I don’t know how many times this has to be repeated before it sinks in.

Nothing Zizek writes, as a counterrevolutionary and enemy of socialism, can help build socialism. As a charlatan and entertainer, the best he can do is “raise awareness” about the theoreticians he claims to support. Fine. He raises awareness about the existence of Lenin and Mao among philosophy students. Great.