Zizek & Machiavelli, Not Hegel (was Re: Montesinos)

Gordon Fitch gcf at panix.com
Sun Oct 8 21:21:07 PDT 2000


Yoshie Furuhashi:
> ...
> In other words, "revolutionary defeatism": it is "the duty of
> Marxists in imperialist countries to oppose the war efforts of their
> own governments," as Ken Lawrence reminded us a while ago. The
> leftists who have failed to do so energetically in the case of the
> Yugoslav affairs, in my opinion, are beautiful souls (if they are not
> cruise-missile liberals, that is).
>
> Yoshie
>
> P.S. BTW, Machiavelli has a better position on necessity and
> morality than Hegel, William Blake, etc. What Machiavelli says is
> that what is necessary may be nevertheless unjust (whereas, for
> Hegel, what is historically necessary is rational and justifiable).
> This is about moral & political responsibility. ...

Alas, Machiavelli merely begs the question. In the end one chooses not against beauty but one beauty (greatness, Realpolitik, power, maybe) against some other (vague idealism or a caricature thereof). In the end, one still mysteriously says "Behold _to_kalon_" or "God wills it" or "This is what _I_ will." Some additionally utter the word "reality" with the sound of a man drawing a pistol, although the _to_kalon_ folks are fond of having the servants do it for them.

William Blake was the most concrete: he said that one could do another good only in minute particulars. Think innumerable- globally, act minutely. That was _his_ beauty -- he liked sharp outlines.

But I do like "revolutionary defeatism" even if its outlines are vague. Defeatism against all states, governments, parties and bosses, by means of subversion, seduction, sabotage, deflection, absence, negation, dancing in the moonlight, or talking a walk. Hence my visceral opposition the the war against Serbia (or Colombia or Vietnam). Those defeatism fans had the beginning of a good idea. Victory is death. Defeat opens the possibility of life, of beauty.

G.



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