>>> Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> 04/13/00 12:10PM >>>
[Two excerpts from Slavoj Zizek's The Fragile Absolute, advance
copies of which just hit the Verso office. It will no doubt irritate
people who don't like phrases like "Marx's fundamental mistake."]
_________
CB: Well, don't you want us to think critically about Zizek's claim ? Or should we just accept it on faith, unquestioningly, mindlessly. What is the evidence that Zizek presents in support of his claim that :
"if we abolish the obstacle, the inherent contradiction of capitalism, we do not get the fully unleashed drive to productivity finally delivered of its impediment, we lose precisely this productivity that seemed to be generated and simultaneously thwarted by capitalism - if we take away the obstacle, the very potential thwarted by this obstacle dissipates"
The facts of the last 80 years of world history do not support this proposition. __________
Slavoj
like Marx, they perceive unbridled productivity as something that is ultimately i.ndependent of the concrete capitalist social formation.
________
CB: This is inaccurate. Marx recognized the anarchy of capitalist production as unique to the capitalist social formation, and that the aim of socialism is to overcome it with planned production of the economy as a whole.
________
Slavoj
...even if we remove the teleological notion of Communism (the society of completely unbridled productivity)
__________
CB: This is inaccurate. Communism is not the society of completely unbridled productivity. It is the society of "mastery of necessity = freedom". Bridling the productivity, controlling it is communism.
________
_________
Slavoj and 'actually existing Socialism' failed because it was ultimately a subspecies of capitalism, an ideological attempt to 'have one's cake and eat it' to break out of capitalism while retaining its key ingredient.
__________
CB: No, actually existing European socialism was destroyed by capitalist war, including the biggest wars in history, Nazis and U.S. Cold War.
Slavoj doesn't give an accurate portrayal of Marx's understanding of communism, so he is criticizing a strawMarx.
CB