[lbo-talk] Zizek speech to OWS

Eubulides paraconsistent at comcast.net
Mon Oct 10 17:18:41 PDT 2011


On 10/10/2011 8:05 AM, John Gulick wrote:
>
> M Pollak asked:
>
> Do you have a link to a transcript to his speech?
>
>
> J Gulick replied:
>
> Sorry Michael, I do not and I don't know if one is available. All I know is that Wolff was making multiple appearances down there.
> I assumed (with a high degree of confidence) that he was offering a stripped-down version of the talk he's given before popular
> audiences for a couple years running, on capitalism as a "broken" system that needs replacing, in a very down-to-earth manner.
> An excellent part of that shtick IMO is his common-sense appeal to worker-owned, worker-managed firms. I'm also assuming (with
> a lower degree of confidence) that he's tying this part of his presentation to the "anarchist"/"pre-figurative" element of OWS, an
> element which I believe to be wildly overestimated by some of the occupation's theorists/observers/supporters/critics etc.
>
> Anyway, per usual I'm going on about a lot of stuff about which I have only partial knowledge or insight, so I'll quiet down. Someone
> here must know more about this than I.

================

No claims, but folks interested in the worker ownership/control issue can check out the video of RW with Gar Alperovitz and others at Left Forum:

http://rdwolff.com/content/left-strategies-exit-crisis

Also, Gregory Dow's text "Governing the Firm" [Cambridge U. Press] is indispensable for arguing with/learning from as he uses mainstream categories like adverse selection and such to come to some very interesting conclusions. He's got a lot of hard data on Mondragon and Lega as well as stuff on Yugoslavia. Also worth a peek although showing some age is Robin Archer's "Economic Democracy: The Politics of Feasible Socialism" [Oxford U. Press].

Perhaps there's a way to arrange a friendly airlift of some workers from Argentina to NYC to chat?

Ian



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