In this short RSA Animate, renowned philosopher Slak investigates the surprising ethical implications of charitable giving.

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I generally agree with the efforts of Alain Badiou and Slavoj Zizek to renew the idea of communism and the communist hypothesis. The concept of communism, like that of democracy, has been corrupted so that today in standard usage it has come to mean its opposite, that is, state control of economic and social life. I would like to shift the discussion slightly, however, or recenter it from Badiou’s and Zizek’s focus on the political decision to the critique of political economy and the project for the abolition of property. To realize the communist hypothesis for our times we need to move, so to speak, from Lenin to Marx. Indeed one of the reasons that the communist hypotheses of previous eras are no longer valid is that the composition of capital – as well as the conditions and products of capitalist production – have altered. Most importantly the technical composition of labor has changed. How do people produce both inside and outside the workplace? What do they produce and under what conditions? How is productive cooperation organized? And what are the divisions of labor and power that separate them along gender and racial lines and in the local, regional, and global contexts? In addition to investigating the current composition of labor, we also have to analyze the relations of property under which labor produces. Along with Marx we can say that the critique of political economy is, at its heart, a critique of property. “The theory of the Communists,” Marx and Engels write in the Manifesto, “may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.”1

In order to explore the relationship and struggle between property and the common, which I consider to be central to communist analysis and proposition, I want to read two passages from Marx’s 1844 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts. By referring the Manuscripts I do not intend to pose the early Marx against the late, celebrate Marx’s humanism, or anything of the sort. These are arguments, in fact, that continue throughout Marx’s work. The Manuscripts provide a model for reading the common in communism and measuring the distance between Marx’s time and our own.

In the first passage, titled “The Relation of Private Property,” Marx proposes a periodization that highlights the dominant form of property in each era. By the mid-19th century, he claims, European societies are no longer primarily dominated by immobile property, such as land, but instead by mobile forms of property, generally the results of industrial production. The period of transition is characterized by a bitter battle between the two forms of property. In typical fashion Marx mocks the claims to social good of both property owners. The land-owner emphasizes the productivity of agriculture and its vital importance for society as well as “the noble lineage of his property, the feudal reminiscences, the poetry of remembrance, his high-flown nature, his political importance, etc.”2 The owner of movable property, in contrast, attacks the parochialism and stasis of the world of immobile property while singing his own praises. “Movable property itself, “ Marx writes, “claims to have won political freedom for the world, to have loosed the chains of civil society, to have linked together different worlds, to have given rise to trade, which encourages friendship between peoples and to have created a pure morality and a pleasing culture” (339). Marx considers it inevitable that mobile property would achieve economic dominance from immobile property. “Movement inevitably triumphs over immobility, open and self-conscious baseness over hidden and unconscious baseness, greed over self-indulgence, the avowedly restless and versatile self-interest of enlightenment, over the parochial, worldy-wise, artless, lazy and deluded self-interest of superstition, just as money must triumph over the other forms of private property” (340) – and, I will add soon to this list, profit over rent. Marx, of course, mocks both of these property owners, but he does recognize that movable property, however despicable, does have the advantage of revealing “the idea of labor as the sole essence of wealth” (343). His periodization, in other words, highlights the increased potential for a communist project.

I want to analyze a parallel struggle between two forms of property today, but before doing that I should note that the triumph of movable over immobile property corresponds to the victory of profit over rent as the dominant mode of expropriation. In the collection of rent, the capitalist is deemed to be relatively external to the process of the production of value, merely extracting value produced by other means. The generation of profit, in contrast, requires the engagement of the capitalist in the production process, imposing forms of cooperation, disciplinary regimes, etc. By the time of John Maynard Keynes profit has such dignity with respect to rent that Keynes can predict (or prescribe) the euthanasia of the rentier. This conception of an historical movement within capital from rent to profit also corresponds to the purported passage in many analyses from primitive accumulation to capitalist production proper. Primitive accumulation might be considered, in this context, an absolute rent, expropriating entirely wealth produced elsewhere.

The passages from rent to profit and from the dominance of immobile to that of mobile property are both part of a more general claim by Marx that by the mid-19th century large-scale industry has replaced agriculture as the hegemonic form of economic production. He does not make this claim, of course, in quantitative terms. Industrial production at the time made up a small fraction of the economy even in England, the most industrialized country. And the majority of workers toiled not in the factories but in the field. Marx’s claim instead is qualitative: all other forms of production will be forced to adopt the qualities of industrial production. Agriculture, mining, even society itself will have to adopt its regimes of mechanization, its labor discipline, its temporalities and rhythms, its working day, and so forth. E. P. Thompson’s classic essay on clocks and work-discipline in England is a wonderful demonstration of the progressive imposition of industrial temporality over society as a whole.3 In the century and a half since Marx’s time this tendency for industry to impose its qualities has proceeded in extraordinary ways.

Today, however, it is clear that industry no longer holds the hegemonic position within the economy. This is not to say that fewer people work in factories today than 10 or 20 or 50 years ago – although, in certain respects, their locations have shifted, moving to the other side of the global divisions of labor and power. The claim, once again, is not primarily quantitative but qualitative. Industry no longer imposes its qualities over other sectors of the economy and over social relations more generally. That seems to me a relatively uncontroversial claim.
More disagreement arises when one proposes another form of production as successor to industry as hegemonic in this way. Toni Negri and I argue that immaterial or biopolitical production is emerging in that hegemonic position. By immaterial and biopolitical we try to grasp together the production of ideas, information, images, knowledges, code, languages, social relationships, affects, and the like. This designates occupations throughout the economy, from the high end to the low, from health care workers, flight attendants, and educators to software programmers and from fast food and call center workers to designers and advertisers. Most of these forms of production are not new, of course, but the coherence among them is perhaps more recognizable and, more important, their qualities tend today to be imposed over other sectors of the economy and over society as a whole. Industry has to informationalize; knowledge, code, and images are becoming ever more important throughout the traditional sectors of production; and the production of affects and care is becoming increasingly essential in the valorization process. This hypothesis of a tendency for immaterial or biopolitical production to emerge in the hegemonic position, which industry used to hold, has all kinds of immediate implications for gender divisions of labor and various international and other geographical divisions of labor, but I’ll have to leave those for another occasion.

What I want to focus on here is the new struggle between two forms of property implied by this transition, which takes us back to Marx’s formulations. Whereas in Marx’s time the struggle was between immobile property (such as land) and moveable property (such as material commodities), today the struggle is between material property and immaterial property – or, to put it another way, whereas Marx focused on the mobility of property today at issue is centrally scarcity and reproducibility, such that the struggle can be posed as being between unreproducible versus reproducible property or, rather, property that is easily shared. The contemporary focus on immaterial and reproducible property in the capitalist economy can be recognized easily from even a cursory glance at the field of property law. Patents, copyrights, indigenous knowledges, genetic codes, the information in the germplasm of seeds, and similar issues are the most actively topics debated in the field. The fact that the logic of scarcity does not hold in this domain poses new problems for property. Just as Marx saw that movement necessarily triumphs over immobility, so too today the immaterial triumphs over the material, the reproducible over the unreproducible, and the shared over the exclusive.

The emerging dominance of this form of property is significant, in part, because it demonstrates and returns to center stage of the conflict between the common and property as such. Ideas, images, knowledges, code, languages, and even affects can be privatized and controlled as property, but it is more difficult to police ownership because they are so easily shared or reproduced. There is a constant pressure for such goods to escape the boundaries of property and become common. If you have an idea, sharing it with me does not reduce its utility to you, but usually increases it. In fact, in order to realize their maximum productivity, ideas, images, and affects must be common and shared. When they are privatized their productivity reduces dramatically – and, I would add, making the common into public property, that is, subjecting it to state control or management, similarly reduces productivity. Property is becoming a fetter on the capitalist mode of production. Here is an emerging contradiction internal to capital: the more the common is corralled as property, the more its productivity is reduced; and yet expansion of the common undermines the relations of property in a fundamental and general way.

This contradiction is clearly evident in terms of scientific knowledges and code: free access to information and free exchange of ideas – in other words, the autonomy of the common – is necessary for future creation. The same is true, I argue, for all forms of biopolitical production, such as linguistic or affective production. You can produce affects and social relations on command, but productivity and creativity will be severely limited.

We could say, in rather broad terms, that neoliberalism has been defined by the battle of private property not only against public property but also and perhaps more importantly against the common. Here it is useful to distinguish between two types of the common, both of which are object of neoliberal strategies of capital. (And this can serve as an initial definition of “the common.”) On the one hand, the common names the earth and all the resources associated with it: the land, the forests, the water, the air, minerals, and so forth. This is closely related to 17th century English usage of “the commons” (with an “s”). On the other hand, the common also refers, as I have already said, to the results of human labor and creativity, such as ideas, language, affects, and so forth. You might think of the former as the “natural” common and the latter as the “artificial” common, but really such divisions between natural and artificial quickly break down. In any case, neoliberalism has aimed to privatize both these forms of the common.
One major scene of this has been the extractive industries, providing access to transnational corporations to diamonds in Sierra Leone or oil in Uganda or Lithium deposits and water rights in Bolivia. Such neoliberal privatization of the common has been described by many authors, including David Harvey and Naomi Klein, in terms that mark the renewed importance of primitive accumulation or accumulation by dispossession. 4

The neoliberal strategies for the privatization of the “artificial” common are much more complex and contradictory. Here the conflict between property and the common is fully in play. The more the common is subject to property relations, as I said, the less productive it is; and yet capitalist valorization processes requires private accumulation. In many domains, capitalist strategies for privatizing the common through mechanisms such as patents and copyrights continue (often with difficulty) despite the contradictions. The music industry and computer industry are full of examples. This is also the case with so-called biopiracy, that is, the processes whereby transnational corporations expropriate the common in the form of indigenous knowledges or genetic information from plants, animals, and humans, usually through the use of patents. Traditional knowledges of the use of a ground seed as natural pesticide, for instance, or the healing qualities of a plant are made into private property by the corporation that patents the knowledge. Parenthetically I would insist that piracy is a misnomer for such activities. Pirates have a much more noble vocation: they steal property. These corporations instead steal the common and transform it into property.

In general, though, capital accomplishes the expropriation of the common not through privatization per se but in the form of rent. Several contemporary Italian and French economists who work on what they call cognitive capitalism, Carlo Vercellone most prominently, argue that just as in an earlier period there was a tendential movement from rent to profit as the dominant mode of capitalist expropriation, today there is a reverse movement from profit to rent.5 Patents and copyrights, for example, generate rent in the sense that they guarantee an income based on the ownership of material or immaterial property. This argument does not imply a return to the past: the income generated from a patent, for instance, is very different from that generated from land ownership. The core insight of this analysis of the emerging dominance of rent over profit, which I find very significant, is that capital remains generally external to the processes of the production of the common. Whereas in the case of industrial capital and its generation of profit, the capitalist plays a role internal to the production process, as Marx claims, particularly in designating the means of cooperation and imposing the modes of discipline, in the production of the common the capitalist must remain relatively external.6 Every intervention of the capitalist in the processes of the production of the common, just as every time the common is made property, reduces productivity. Rent is a mechanism, then, to cope with the conflicts between capital and the common. A limited autonomy is granted the processes of the production of the common with respect to the sharing of resources and the determination of the modes of cooperation, and capital is still able to exert control and expropriate value through rent. Exploitation in this context takes the form of the expropriation of the common.

This discussion of rent points, on the one hand, to the neoliberal processes of accumulation by dispossession insofar as primitive accumulation can be called form of absolute rent. On the other hand, it casts in a new light the contemporary predominance of finance, which is characterized by complex and very abstract varieties of relative rent. Christian Marazzi cautions us against conceiving of finance as fictional, in opposition to the “real economy,” a conception that misunderstands the extent to which finance and production are both increasingly dominated by immaterial forms of property. He also warns against dismissing finance as merely unproductive in contrast to an image of productivity roughly tied to industrial production. It is more useful to situate finance in the context of the general trend from profit to rent, and the correspondingly external position of capital with respect to the production of the common. Finance expropriates the common and exerts control at a distance.7

Now I can bring to a close and review the primary points of my reading of this first passage from Marx’s early manuscripts, “The Relations of Private Property,” in which he describes the struggle between two forms of property (immobile versus moveable) and the historical passage from the dominance of landed property to that of industrial capital. Today we are also experiencing a struggle between two forms of property (material versus immaterial or scarce versus reproducible). And this struggle reveals a deeper conflict between property as such and the common. Although the production of the common is increasingly central to the capitalist economy, capital cannot intervene in the production process and must instead remain external, expropriating value in the form of rent (through financial and other mechanisms). As a result the production and productivity of the common becomes an increasingly autonomous domain, still exploited and controlled, of course, but through mechanisms that are relatively external. Like Marx, I would say this development of capital is not good in itself – and the tendential dominance of immaterial or biopolitical production carries with it a series of new and more severe forms of exploitation and control. And yet it is important to recognize that capital’s own development provides the tools for liberation from capital, and specifically here it leads to the increased autonomy of the common and its productive circuits.

The brings me to the second passage from the Manuscripts that I want to consider, titled “Private Property and Communism.” The notion of the common can help us understand what Marx means by communism in this passage. “Communism,” he writes, “is the positive expression of the abolition of private property” (345-346). He includes that phrase “positive expression” in part to differentiate communism from the false or corrupt notions of the concept. Crude communism, he claims, merely perpetuates private property by generalizing it and extending it to the entire community, as universal private property. That term, of course, is an oxymoron: if property is now universal, extended to the entire community it is no longer really private. He is trying to emphasize, it seems to me, that in crude communism even though the private character has been stripped away, property remains. Communism properly conceived instead is the abolition not only of private property but property as such. “Private property has made us so stupid and one-sided that an object is only ours when we have it” (351). What would it mean for something to be ours when we do not possess it? What would it mean to regard ourselves and our world not as property? Has private property made us so stupid that we cannot see that? Marx is searching here for the common. The open access and sharing that characterize use of the common are outside of and inimical to property relations. We have been made so stupid that we can only recognize the world as private or public. We have become blind to the common.

Marx arrives at the common (as the abolition of property) about 20 years later in Chapter 32 of Capital, volume 1, on the historical tendency of capitalist accumulation. He still poses this development from property to the common in dialectical form. “The capitalist mode of appropriation, the result of the capitalist mode of production, produces capitalist private property. This is the first negation of individual private property, as founded on the labor of the proprietor. But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negation. It is the negation of negation. This does not re-establish private property for the producer, but gives him individual property based on the acquisition of the capitalist era: i.e., on co-operation and the possession in common of the land and of the means of production.”8 Capitalist development inevitable results in the increasingly central role of cooperation and the common, which in turn provides the tools for overthrowing the capitalist mode of production and constitutes the bases for an alternative society and mode of production, a communism of the common.

What I find dissatisfying about this passage from Capital, though, aside from its dialectical construction, is that the common Marx refers to – “co-operation and the possession in common of the land and the means of production” – grasps primarily the material elements in question, the immobile and moveable forms of property made common. This formulation does not grasp, in other words, the dominant forms of capitalist production today. If we look back at the passage in the early Manuscripts, however, and try to filter out Marx’s youthful humanism, we find a definition of communism and the common that does highlight the immaterial or, really, biopolitical aspects. Consider, first, this definition of communism, which Marx proposes after having set aside the crude notion: “Communism is the positive supersession of private property as human self-estrangement, and hence the true appropriation of the human essence through and for man; it is the complete restoration of man to himself as a social, i.e. human, being” (p. 348). What does Marx mean by “the true appropriation of the human essence through and for man”? Clearly he is working on the notion of appropriation against the grain, applying it in a context where it now seems strange. No longer appropriation of the object in the form of private property but appropriation of our own subjectivity, our human, social relations. Marx explains this communist appropriation, this non-property appropriation in terms of the human sensorium and the full range of creative and productive powers. “Man appropriates his integral essence in an integral way,” which he explains in terms of “all his human relations to the world – seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, thinking, contemplating, sensing, wanting, acting, loving” (351). I think the term “appropriation” here is misleading because Marx is not talking about capturing something that already exists, but rather creating something new – this is the production of subjectivity, the production of a new sensorium. Not really appropriation, then, but production. If we return to the text we can see that Marx does, in fact, pose this clearly: “Assuming the positive supersession of private property, man produces man, himself and other men” (349). On this reading Marx’s notion of communism in the early manuscripts is far from humanism, that is, far from any recourse to a pre-existing or eternal human essence. Instead the positive content of communism, which corresponds to the abolition of private property, is the autonomous human production of subjectivity, the human production of humanity – a new seeing, a new hearing, a new thinking, a new loving.

This brings us back to our analysis of the biopolitical turn in the economy that I described briefly. In the context of industrial production, Marx arrived at the important recognition that capitalist production is aimed at creating not only objects but also subjects. “Production thus not only creates an object for the subject, but also a subject for the object.”9 In the context of biopolitical production, however, the production of subjectivity is much more direct and intense. Consider a few examples of contemporary economists who analyze the transformations of capital in just these terms. “If we had to hazard a guess on the emerging model in the next decades,” posits Robert Boyer, “we would probably have to refer to the production of man by man and explore right away the institutional context that would permit its emergence.”10 And, Christian Marazzi explains that the current passage in capitalist production is moving toward an “anthropogenetic model.” Living beings as fixed capital are at the center of this transformation and the production of forms of life is becoming the basis of added value. This is a process in which putting to work human faculties, competences, knowledges, and affects – those acquired on the job but more importantly those accumulated outside work are directly productive of value.11 One distinctive feature of the work of head and heart, then, is that paradoxically the object of production is really a subject, defined, for example, by a social relationship or a form of life. This should make clear at least the rationale for calling this form of production biopolitical, since what are produced are forms of life.

If we return to Marx in this new light, we find that the progression of definitions of capital in his work actually give us an important clue for analyzing this biopolitical context. Although wealth in capitalist society first appears as an immense collective of commodities, Marx reveals that capital is really a process of the creation of surplus value via the production of commodities. But Marx develops this insight one step further to discover that in its essence capital is a social relation – or, even further, the ultimate object of capitalist production is not commodities but social relations. From the standpoint of biopolitical production we can see that the production of the refrigerator and the automobile are only midpoints for the creation of the labor and gender relations of the nuclear family around the refrigerator and the mass society of individuals isolated together in their cars on the freeway.

What I have been doing here is pointing out the correspondence or proximity between Marx’s definition of communism and the contemporary biopolitical turn of the capitalist economy, both of which are oriented toward the human production of humanity, social relations, and forms of life – all in the context of the common. At this point I need to explain how I regard this proximity and why it is important. But before doing so let me add one more element to the mix.

Michel Foucault appreciates all the strangeness and richness of the line of Marx’s thinking that leads to the conclusion that “l’homme produit l’homme” (using like Marx the gender defined formulation). He cautions that we should not understand Marx’s phrase as an expression of humanism. “For me, what must be produced is not man as nature designed it, or as its essence prescribes; we must produce something that does not yet exist and we cannot know what it will be.” He also warns not to understand this merely as a continuation of economic production as conventionally conceived: “I do not agree with those who would understand this production of man by man as being accomplished like the production of value, the production of wealth, or of an object of economic use; it is, on the contrary, destruction of what we are and the creation of something completely other, a total innovation.”12 We cannot understand this production, in other words, in terms of the producing subject and the produced object. Instead producer and product are both subjects: humans produce and humans are produced. Foucault clearly senses (without seeming to understand fully) the explosiveness of this situation: the biopolitical process is not limited to the reproduction of capital as a social relation but also presents the potential for an autonomous process that could destroy capital and create something entirely new. Biopolitical production obviously implies new mechanisms of exploitation and capitalist control, but we should also recognize, following Foucault’s intuition, how biopolitical production, particularly in the ways it exceeds the bounds of capitalist relations and constantly refers to the common, grants labor increasing autonomy and provides the tools or weapons that could be wielded in a project of liberation.

Now I can explain the point of recognizing the proximity between the idea of communism and contemporary capitalist production. It is not that capitalist development is creating communism or that biopolitical production immediately or directly brings liberation. Instead, through the increasing centrality of the common in capitalist production – the production of ideas, affects, social relations, and forms of life – are emerging the conditions and weapons for a communist project. Capital, in other words, is creating its own gravediggers.

It would be interesting to investigate relation between this economic discussion of the common and the way the common functions centrally in Jacques Rancière’s notion of politics. “Politics begins precisely when one stops balancing profits and looses and is concerned instead with dividing the parts of the common” (Disagreement, p. 5 ; La Mésentente, p. 24). The common is the terrain of the partage, division and sharing. “Politics is the sphere of activity of a common that can only ever be contentious, the relationship between parts that are only parties and credentials or entitlements whose sum never equals the whole” (p. 14; p. 34-35).

There are two primary points of my intervention. The first is a plea for the critique of political economy or, rather, a claim that any communist project must begin there. Such an analysis makes good on our periodizations and reveals the novelties of our present moment by conducting an investigation of not only the composition but also class composition – asking, in other words, how people produce, what they produce, and under what conditions, both in and outside the workplace, both in and outside relations of wage labor. And all this reveals, I maintain, the increased centrality of the common.

The second point extends the critique of political economy to the critique of property. And, specifically, communism is defined by not only the abolition of property but also the affirmation of the common – the affirmation of open and autonomous biopolitical production, the self-governed continuous creation of new humanity. In the most synthetic terms, what private property is to capitalism and what state property is to socialism, the common is to communism.

Putting my two points together – that capitalist production increasingly relies on the common and that the autonomy of the common is the essence of communism – indicates that the conditions and weapons of a communist project are available today more than ever. Now to us the task of organizing it.

Notes:

1 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, London: Verso, 1998, p. 52.

2 Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts in Early Writings, trans. Rodney Livingstone and Gregor Benton, London: Penguin, 1975, p. 338.

3 E. P. Thompson, “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,” Past and Present, vol. 38, no. 1, 1967, pp. 56-97.

4 See David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005; and Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine, New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007. For an excellent analysis of neoliberalism’s focus on extractive industries in Africa, see James Ferguson, Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order, Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.

5 See, for example, Carlo Vercellone, “Crisi della legge del valore e divenire rendita del profitto,” forthcoming.

6 See Marx’s discussion of cooperation in Chapter 13 of Capital, volume 1, trans. Ben Fowkes, London: Penguin, 1976, pp. 439-454.

7 See Christian Marazzi, Capital and Language, trans. Gregory Conti, New York: Semiotext(e), 2008.

8 Capital, vol. 1, p. 929.9 Marx, Grundrisse, trans. Martin Nicolaus, London: Penguin, 1973, p. 92.

10 Robert Boyer, La croissance, début de siècle, Paris: Albin Michel, 2002, p. 192.

11 Christian Marazzi, “Capitalismo digitale e modello antropogenetico di produzione” in Jean-Louis Laville, ed., Reinventare il lavoro, Rome: Sapere 2000, 2005, pp. 107-126.

12 Michael Foucault, “Entretien” (with Duccio Tromadori), Dits et écrits, vol IV, Paris : Gallimard, 1994, pp. 41-95, quote p. 74. Published in English as Michel Foucault, Remarks on Marx, New York: Semiotext(e), 1991, pp. 121-122. At this point in the interview Foucault is discussing his differences from the Frankfurt School.

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«L’idée de communisme» retrouverait-elle, par temps de crise, une vigueur inattendue? Alain Badiou [1], Slavoj Zizek [2], Toni Negri [3], Michael Hardt [4], Jacques Rancière [5] et plusieurs autres grands noms de la philosophie politique radicale mondiale étaient réunis, ce week-end, à Londres, pour un colloque sur cette notion. Aude Lancelin a suivi les débats

On ignore si la tombe de Marx [6], située au cimetière de Highgate à Londres, a été spécialement fleurie durant ce week-end. Il est certain en revanche qu’un hommage autrement plus stimulant vient d’être rendu au penseur au cœur même de la capitale britannique. Trois journées durant, du vendredi 13 au dimanche 15 mars 2009, les plus prestigieux noms de la philosophie politique radicale mondiale, de Slavoj Zizek à Alain Badiou, Toni Negri, Michael Hardt, Jacques Rancière et bien d’autres, se sont succédé à la tribune de la «Birkbeck university of London» [7] pour réfléchir ensemble à l’avenir de l’idée communiste. Un amphithéâtre de neuf cent places avait été mis à disposition pour ce colloque à tous égards exceptionnel, sobrement intitulé «On the idea of Communism». Il aura à peine suffi à contenir une foule spectaculairement jeune, attentive et rieuse, venue de l’Europe entière avec carnets de notes, canettes de Coca light et caméscopes high-tech pour entendre les grandes figures d’un concept politique qu’on disait salutairement mort.

Doit-on voir dans cette étonnante affluence une conséquence des convulsions que connaît actuellement l’économie capitaliste mondiale? Il est certain que la désorientation actuelle se montre suffisamment profonde pour redonner un nouveau lustre aux objections marxistes. Ce n’est du reste pas le moindre de ses dégâts collatéraux, ne manqueront pas de grincer certains penseurs médiatiques hexagonaux. Prudence toutefois. On sait que les crises de cette ampleur peuvent faire sauter certains verrous idéologiques comme elles peuvent aussi déboucher sur le pire. Les Britanniques le savent bien, qui ont récemment connu des grèves ouvrières d’une ampleur inédite contre l’embauche de travailleurs étrangers. Une agitation inquiétante, vivement condamnée par Gordon Brown. Surpris par la réussite de leur propre démonstration de force, les organisateurs de ce week-end «rouge» non loin d’une City londonienne dramatiquement sinistrée se gardaient donc de tout triomphalisme.

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Slavoj Zizek

[2]

Un tabou est bel et bien en train de tomber cependant. Celui qui pesait sur le mot même de «communisme», criminalisé depuis la fin des années 70, usé et définitivement ringardisé au cours de la décennie suivante. Le 7 mars dernier, une semaine avant le colloque de Londres, le «Financial Times» lui-même, peu suspiciable de complaisances gauchistes, posait sans précautions la question: «Communism: an alternative to capitalism once again?» [9]. La veille, le journal avait déjà consacré un long portait au slovène Slavoj Zizek [2], présenté en véritable rock star marxiste. De plus en plus populaire en Angleterre, désigné parmi les 25 «top leaders» intellectuels mondiaux par les lecteurs du «Foreign Policy» l’an dernier, Zizek a également été nommé directeur international dudit «Birckbek Institute», faculté ayant toujours maintenu une tradition d’accueil à l’égard des intellectuels communistes blacklistés pendant la guerre froide(1). Une fonction honorifique qui lui aura permis de lancer l’idée de ce colloque avec le philosophe Alain Badiou [1], lui aussi en voie de médiatisation accélérée au Royaume-Uni.

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Alain Badiou

[1]

Quelques jours avant le début de la manifestation, ce dernier apparaissait d’ailleurs à la BBC dans un célèbre talk politique pour y défendre son best-seller post-élections présidentielles, «De quoi Sarkozy est-il le nom?» [10], qui vient de paraître en anglais chez Verso. Détail cocasse, si le célèbre auteur de «l’Etre et l’événement» est aussi l’objet de polémiques en Grande-Bretagne, c’est pour une raison inverse aux motifs français ordinaires. Le samedi 14, une petite manifestation anti-Badiou accueillait en effet à l’entrée le public… mais celle-ci était organisée par un quarteron de vieux militants du PC britannique, reprochant au philosophe sa supposée trahison social-démocrate et sa rupture avec les objectifs révolutionnaires. Badiou go home, en somme. Un comble pour le grand platonicien d’Ulm, encore caricaturé par beaucoup de médias français en sulfureux promoteur d’un maoïsme muséifié refusant de tirer les leçons des tragédies passées. Une opinion que ne semblait pas en tout cas partager le public du week-end, dont certains étaient venus de très loin pour observer de près le dernier maître lacano-althussérien issu des années 60, comme on vient toucher un morceau de la Sainte croix.

Loin de tout folklore bolchevique cependant, l’heure n’était pas à la rumination nostalgique ni à la provocation anti-libérale grossière durant ces trois journées de haute densité conceptuelle. L’humeur n’était évidemment pas davantage à une tentative de sauvetage partiel du bilan indiscutablement calamiteux des Partis-Etats communistes du XXe siècle. Sur ce plan-là, tous les intervenants étaient d’emblée d’accord. Deux conditions sine qua non déterminaient leur présence à cette manifestation. Être disposé à envisager positivement un renouveau de l’hypothèse communiste aujourd’hui, et n’être le porte-voix d’aucune formation politique institutionnelle. Non à la militance hargneuse, place à la «patience du concept», selon l’expression du grand hégélien Gérard Lebrun citée par Zizek.

©Waechter/Caro Fotos/Sipa

Toni Negri

[3]

Moyennant quoi, et c’est en soi un événement, la totalité des personnalités conviées avaient accepté l’invitation, à l’exception de Giorgo Agamben, aux abonnés absents, et de la grande genderiste américaine Judith Butler [11], longtemps hésitante. Le philosophe Jean-Luc Nancy [12], prévu au programme, avait finalement dû renoncer la veille pour raisons médicales. Ainsi la gauche intellectuelle radicale était-elle représentée lors de ce meeting londonien dans ses multiples nuances, et ce jusqu’aux plus irréconciliablement opposées.

Rien de commun en effet entre Toni Negri [3], ancien activiste italien devenu depuis la parution d’«Empire» – une référence théorique majeure pour le mouvement altermondialiste et certains collectifs de précaires ou d’intermittents – et Slavoj Zizek [2], aux antipodes de l’acharnement negriste contre l’Etat-nation. Tous deux auront d’ailleurs une légère prise de bec au sujet de la politique menée par Lula au Brésil, défendue par Negri au détriment de Chavez. Rien de commun non plus entre son concitoyen Alessandro Russo et le même Negri, ardent promoteur du «oui» au traité constitutionnel européen.

D.R.

Bruno Bosteels

[13]

Avec son coauteur Michael Hardt, spécialement venu des Etats-Unis pour l’occasion, tous deux défendent en effet une forme de deleuzisme mutant, incarné en France par la revue «Multitudes» [14], qui tend à envisager positivement certaines formes du capitalisme avancé comme une possible production de «commun», le paradigme de cela étant fourni par Internet. Rien qui puisse donc les rapprocher des vues d’un Badiou, ni de sa garde rapprochée représentée ici par Alberto Toscano ou le jeune professeur de littérature à Cornell, USA, Bruno Bosteels, auteur le vendredi après-midi d’une remarquable intervention sur le «communisme à l’âge de la terreur», très informée de la situation passée et actuelle du gauchisme français.

Rien de commun entre eux non, hormis l’horizon communiste justement. Hormis le souhait de ne pas laisser l’adversaire continuer à proclamer l’échec et la souillure définitive de cette idée émancipatrice sans laquelle, «il n’y aurait rien dans le devenir historique et politique qui puisse être d’un quelconque intérêt pour un philosophe», selon la phrase d’Alain Badiou [1] reprise sur l’affiche pourpre du colloque de Birkbeck. Ce souci-là, «le souci de ne pas se laisser imposer l’idée d’échec par l’autre camp, c’est de Gaulle qui me l’a inspirée», glisse le philosophe français. «Nous avons perdu? Non, nous n’avons pas perdu, a-t-il dit en 1940… Il est alors parti à Londres, avec rien dans les poches, rien sous la manche. Et quelques années plus tard, c’est en vainqueur qu’il est revenu à Paris.» Ici Londres, les communistes d’hier parlent à ceux de demain.

A.L.

(1) L’historien britannique marxiste Eric Hobsbawn, auteur de «l’Âge des extrêmes», y a notamment longtemps enseigné.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/opinion/09zizek.html

TODAY is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Duringthis time of reflection, it is common to emphasize the miraculousnature of the events that began that day: a dream seemed to come true,the Communist regimes collapsed like a house of cards, and the worldsuddenly changed in ways that had been inconceivable only a few monthsearlier. Who in Poland could ever have imagined free elections withLech Walesa as president?

However, when the sublime mist of the velvet revolutions was dispelledby the new democratic-capitalist reality, people reacted with anunavoidable disappointment that manifested itself, in turn, asnostalgia for the “good old” Communist times; as rightist, nationalistpopulism; and as renewed, belated anti-Communist paranoia.

The first two reactions are easy to comprehend. The same rightists whodecades ago were shouting, “Better dead than red!” are now often heardmumbling, “Better red than eating hamburgers.” But the Communistnostalgia should not be taken too seriously: far from expressing anactual wish to return to the gray Socialist reality, it is more a formof mourning, of gently getting rid of the past. As for the rise of therightist populism, it is not an Eastern European specialty, but acommon feature of all countries caught in the vortex of globalization.

Much more interesting is the recent resurgence of anti-Communism from Hungary to Slovenia. During the autumn of 2006, large protests againstthe ruling Socialist Party paralyzed Hungary for weeks. Protesterslinked the country’s economic crisis to its rule by successors of theCommunist party. They denied the very legitimacy of the government,although it came to power through democratic elections. When thepolice went in to restore civil order, comparisons were drawn with theSoviet Army crushing the 1956 anti-Communist rebellion.

This new anti-Communist scare even goes after symbols. In June 2008,Lithuania passed a law prohibiting the public display of Communistimages like the hammer and sickle, as well as the playing of theSoviet anthem. In April 2009, the Polish government proposed expandinga ban on totalitarian propaganda to include Communist books, clothingand other items: one could even be arrested for wearing a Che GuevaraT-shirt.

No wonder that, in Slovenia, the main reproach of the populist rightto the left is that it is the “force of continuity” with the oldCommunist regime. In such a suffocating atmosphere, new problems andchallenges are reduced to the repetition of old struggles, up to theabsurd claim (which sometimes arises in Poland and in Slovenia) thatthe advocacy of gay rights and legal abortion is part of a darkCommunist plot to demoralize the nation.

Where does this resurrection of anti-Communism draw its strength from?Why were the old ghosts resuscitated in nations where many youngpeople don’t even remember the Communist times? The new anti-Communismprovides a simple answer to the question: “If capitalism is really somuch better than Socialism, why are our lives still miserable?”

It is because, many believe, we are not really in capitalism: we donot yet have true democracy but only its deceiving mask, the same darkforces still pull the threads of power, a narrow sect of formerCommunists disguised as new owners and managers — nothing’s reallychanged, so we need another purge, the revolution has to be repeated…

What these belated anti-Communists fail to realize is that the imagethey provide of their society comes uncannily close to the most abusedtraditional leftist image of capitalism: a society in which formaldemocracy merely conceals the reign of a wealthy minority. In otherwords, the newly born anti-Communists don’t get that what they aredenouncing as perverted pseudo-capitalism simply is capitalism.

One can also argue that, when the Communist regimes collapsed, thedisillusioned former Communists were effectively better suited to runthe new capitalist economy than the populist dissidents. While theheroes of the anti-Communist protests continued to dwell in theirdreams of a new society of justice, honesty and solidarity, the formerCommunists were able to ruthlessly accommodate themselves to the newcapitalist rules and the new cruel world of market efficiency,inclusive of all the new and old dirty tricks and corruption.

A further twist is added by those countries in which Communistsallowed the explosion of capitalism, while retaining political power:they seem to be more capitalist than the Western liberal capitaliststhemselves. In a crazy double reversal, capitalism won over Communism,but the price paid for this victory is that Communists are now beatingcapitalism in its own terrain.

This is why today’s China is so unsettling: capitalism has alwaysseemed inextricably linked to democracy, and faced with the explosionof capitalism in the People’s Republic, many analysts still assumethat political democracy will inevitably assert itself.

But what if this strain of authoritarian capitalism proves itself tobe more efficient, more profitable, than our liberal capitalism? Whatif democracy is no longer the necessary and natural accompaniment ofeconomic development, but its impediment?

If this is the case, then perhaps the disappointment at capitalism inthe post-Communist countries should not be dismissed as a simple signof the “immature” expectations of the people who didn’t possess arealistic image of capitalism.

When people protested Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, the largemajority of them did not ask for capitalism. They wanted the freedomto live their lives outside state control, to come together and talkas they pleased; they wanted a life of simplicity and sincerity,liberated from the primitive ideological indoctrination and theprevailing cynical hypocrisy.

As many commentators observed, the ideals that led the protesters wereto a large extent taken from the ruling Socialist ideology itself —people aspired to something that can most appropriately be designatedas “Socialism with a human face.” Perhaps this attitude deserves asecond chance.

This brings to mind the life and death of Victor Kravchenko, theSoviet engineer who, in 1944, defected during a trade mission toWashington and then wrote a best-selling memoir, “I Chose Freedom.”His first-person report on the horrors of Stalinism included adetailed account of the mass hunger in early-1930s Ukraine, whereKravchenko — then still a true believer in the system — helped enforcecollectivization.

What most people know about Kravchenko ends in 1949. That year, hesued Les Lettres Françaises for libel after the French Communistweekly claimed that he was a drunk and a wife-beater and his memoirwas the propaganda work of American spies. In the Paris courtroom,Soviet generals and Russian peasants took the witness stand to debatethe truth of Kravchenko’s writings, and the trial grew from a personalsuit to a spectacular indictment of the whole Stalinist system.

But immediately after his victory in the case, when Kravchenko wasstill being hailed all around the world as a cold war hero, he had thecourage to speak out passionately against Joseph McCarthy’s witchhunts. “I believe profoundly,” he wrote, “that in the struggle againstCommunists and their organizations … we cannot and should not resortto the methods and forms employed by the Communists.” His warning toAmericans: to fight Stalinism in such a way was to court the danger ofstarting to resemble their opponent.

Kravchenko also became more and more obsessed with the inequalities ofthe Western world, and wrote a sequel to “I Chose Freedom” that wastitled, significantly, “I Chose Justice.” He devoted himself tofinding less exploitative forms of collectivization and wound up inBolivia, where he squandered all his money trying to organize poorfarmers. Crushed by this failure, he withdrew into private life andshot himself in 1966 at his home in New York.

How did we come to this? Deceived by 20th-century Communism anddisillusioned with 21st-century capitalism, we can only hope for newKravchenkos — and that they come to happier ends. On the search forjustice, they will have to start from scratch. They will have toinvent their own ideologies. They will be denounced as dangerousutopians, but they alone will have awakened from the utopian dreamthat holds the rest of us under its sway.

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Dubbed by the National Review as “the most dangerous political philosopher in the West” and the New York Times as “the Elvis of cultural theory,” Slovenian philosopher and public intellectual Slavoj Žižek has written over fifty books on philosophy, psychoanalysis, theology, history and political theory. In his latest book, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, Žižek analyzes how the United States has moved from the tragedy of 9/11 to what he calls the farce of the financial meltdown. [includes rush transcript]

JUAN GONZALEZ We continue on the subject of the financial crisis with a man the National Review calls “the most dangerous political philosopher in the West.” The New York Times calls him “the Elvis of cultural theory.” Slovenian philosopher and public intellectual Slavoj Žižek has written over fifty books on philosophy, psychoanalysis, theology, history and political theory. His latest, just out from Verso, is called First as Tragedy, Then as Farce. It analyzes how the United States has moved from the tragedy of 9/11 to the farce of the financial meltdown.

Žižek’s latest offering, also excerpted in the October issue of Harper’s Magazine, opens with the words, quote, “The only truly surprising thing about the 2008 financial meltdown is how easily the idea was accepted that its happening was unpredictable.” He goes on to recall how the demonstrations against the IMF and the World Bank over the past decade all protested the ways in which banks were playing with money and warned of an impending crash. They were met with tear gas and mass arrests.

AMY GOODMAN: The message, he writes, was, quote, “loud and clear, and the police were used to literally stifle the truth.”

Well, Slavoj Žižek addressed a full house at Cooper Union here in New York City on Wednesday night and joins us now in our firehouse studio.

Welcome to Democracy Now!

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: Thanks very much. It’s my pleasure.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. Relate the protest to the—

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: You are even better than Fox News, which I usually watch. More amusing.

AMY GOODMAN: Relate the protests to the meltdown and why—how it was predictable.

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: No, what interests me is, for example, Paul—sorry, Paul Krugman said basically the same thing, which tells us a lot about how ideology works today. He said, what if we make a mental experiment, and all the leading bank people, managers and so on, were to know how it would end two years ago? He said, let’s not delude ourselves; there would have been no change. They would have acted in exactly the same way.

This brings me, as a psychoanalyst, into the play, because I think this makes us aware as to what extent our everyday dealing is controlled by what in psychoanalysis we call the mechanism of fetishist disavowal. “Je sais bien, mais quand même…” “I know very well, but…” You know, we can know very well the possible catastrophic consequences, but somehow you trust the market, you think things will somehow work out, and so on and so on. It’s absolutely crucial to analyze this, not only in economy, but generally. This is the focus of my work: how beliefs function today. What do we mean when we say that someone believes?

So that I don’t get lost, let me tell you a wonderful story, which is my favorite story. I quote it also in the book. You know Niels Bohr, Copenhagen, quantum physics guy. You know, once he was visited in his country house by a friend who saw above the entrance a horseshoe, you know, in Europe, the superstitious item allegedly preventing evil spirits to enter the house. And the friend, also a scientist, asked him, “But listen, do you really believe in this?” Niels Bohr said, “Of course not. I’m not an idiot. I’m a scientist.” Then the friend asked him, “But why do you have it there?” You know what Niels Borh answered? He said, “I don’t believe in it, but I have it there, horseshoe, because I was told that it works even if you don’t believe in it.”

That’s ideology today. We don’t believe in democracy—nobody. You make fun of it and so on, but somehow we act as if it works. It’s a very strange situation, because there are—some of us old enough still remember them, old days when the public face of power was dignity, belief. And privately you mocked it, you made fun, and so on, no? Now we are, I think, approaching a very strange state, where the public face of power is becoming more and more openly indecent, obscene. Look at Sarkozy in France. Look at Berlusconi in Italy, who is systematically undermining, for over five years now, the minimum of dignity of the state power. I mean, you are again and again surprised how is this possible. You know, after those sex scandals, two weeks ago, his lawyer, Berlusconi’s lawyer, made a public official statement, where he said that the claims that Berlusconi is impotent are lies and that Mr. Berlusconi is ready to prove this in court. Now, how? How—what did he mean? You know, there is a level of obscenity, but this shouldn’t deceive us. We really live in cynical times, not just in this cheap sense they don’t take themselves seriously, but in the sense that—how should I put it?—the ironic self-undermining, making fun of yourself, is in a strange way part of the game. It’s as if the system can function even if it makes fun of itself.

JUAN GONZALEZ Well, I’d like to ask you, you say you are also critical of the progressive or the left response here. You say in your article in Harper’s, “There is a real possibility that the primary victim of the ongoing crisis will not be capitalism but the left itself, insofar as its inability to offer a viable global alternative was again made visible to everyone.” Could you elaborate?

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: I am a radical leftist. I like to call myself, in a very conditional way, a communist even. But I think one should, as a leftist, really concede the amount of the defeat of the left in the last twenty years. That’s the sine qua non condition of a possible review. So, yes, apart from very sympathetic things suggested by people like Stiglitz, Krugman, which are basically a return to Keynesian welfare state, and apart from some interesting—but I don’t think they are the solution—economic ideas, like the basic income or so-called renta básica in Brazil, basic rent, which is a utopia of its own, I think, I sometimes, apart from this, have a strange paranoiac idea that maybe this crisis was manufactured so that people will see that even if there is a crisis, the left really doesn’t have a global answer.

I see—what worries me is two things about the left. First, it’s more and more legalistic moralization. You know, it’s kind of a pure form of protest against injustice. Then the only thing you can do is legal forums and so on. In this sense, many of the ex-leftists are getting depoliticized. They no longer ask the truly basic questions. Like even now, all the outcry was, “Oh, those bank profiteers,” and so on. I totally agree with what we just heard. But don’t you think that the truth is a little bit more complex, in the sense of—you know much more about this than me, but the way I see it is that one of the roots of the present crisis is not just greed. It’s that after the digital bubble at the beginning of our millennium, the idea was how to keep prosperity, how to keep economy alive. And it was, as far as I remember, even a little bit of a really bipartisan decision: let’s make it easier in real estate, and so on, to keep it moving. So, you know, there is a structural problem beneath all this psychological topic of the greedy bankers, which is, that’s how capitalism works, my God, which is why even concerning our beloved model—Bernard Madoff, no?—I didn’t like it how they focused on him. Wait a minute. He was just the radical version of where the system is pushing you. Now, I’m not saying—I’m not crazy—“which is why we need to nationalize all banks and introduce immediately socialist dictatorship” or what. What I’m just saying is, let’s not get rid of the problem by too easily making it into a psychological problem. You know, you can be an evil guy, but there must be very precise institutional, economic, and so on, coordinates, background, which allows you to do what you do.

The second thing, I also didn’t like the cry shared by left and right-wing populists of “help the Main Street, not the Wall Street.” Well, sorry, but those bank managers who emphasized, in capitalism there is no Main Street without Wall Street. In today’s industry, because of the competition and immense investment into new inventions and so on, without large accessibility, availability of credits, there is no prosperous Main Street. So this is a false choice. So, again, with all respect for the left and so on, I think we should avoid quick moralization, if we mean it seriously.

AMY GOODMAN: You write, “Is the bailout then really a ‘socialist’ measure? If it is, it takes a peculiar form: a ‘socialist’ measure whose primary aim is to help not the poor but the rich, not those who borrow but those who lend.”

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: Yeah. I mean, this is my whole thesis, that capitalism always was socialism for those who are on the top. This is the basic paradox of it, no?

AMY GOODMAN: What about healthcare?

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: Oh, now you touch my favorite topic. You know why? Because I think that here we see, when people—when I write on ideology, and people laugh at me—“Haha, didn’t you know this? We live in post-ideological era.” No, here you see ideology in its material force. We can—we should distinguish here two levels. On the one hand are those ridiculous right-wing paranoias, which, incidentally, I like to listen. They amuse me, you know, like that Sarah Palin idea of death panels. Some mysterious bureaucracy will decide, does your uncle live or not. That’s funny, I hope; at least for the time being, we can laugh at it. But then—

JUAN GONZALEZ Not in a big part of America, unfortunately.

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then the real problem, where the Republican critique of healthcare plan really works is by appealing to this basic gut notion of freedom of choice. And I think this is a problem; we have to confront it. The first we should make it clear is that in order to exercise the freedom of choice—one has to repeat this again and again—an extremely—to really exercise this, an extremely complex network of social, legal regulations, even, I would say, ethical rules, which are somehow accepted, and so on, has to be—have to be here. In other words, often less choice, at least less public choice, at a certain level means more choice at a different level.

Let me return precisely to healthcare. My idea is that healthcare should be at a certain level, like water and electricity. You can also say that you usually don’t choose your water supplier, no? OK, now we can play the Republican game and say, “What a horrible terror! They are depriving us of the fundamental choice to choose the water supply.” But we somehow accept that there are some things where it is much more practical that you are able to count on them. Sorry, but I gladly refuse the big freedom to choose my water supplier, the same as for electricity, although there things can get more tricky. Why not add to this series health? Europe demonstrates it can be done effectively, not to diminish our freedom, but to leave you much more space of much more greater actual freedom, and so on.

So, you see, this is the danger of this ideology of choice, because, you know, this is, in one sense, a central category today. There is an old Marxist card, which is played again and again, of we are only offered false choices, not real choices, like Pepsi or Coke, whatever, instead of the real choices. OK, there is a truth in it. But there is also another problem of ideology of choice, that often we are bombarded by choices—you really are free to choose—without being given the proper background to make a reasonable choice. John Gray, the British cynical skeptic, whom I otherwise admire, wrote very nicely that we are today more and more forced to act as if we are free. And this causes a lot of anxiety and so on. You know, one should be very specific apropos of choices. I’m all for the freedom of choice. I would just like to see the small—those, you know, in the footnote, the small print, what are the precise conditions of choice, and so on and so on.

And so, again, although I have no illusions about what Obama can do and so on, I am still proud that already before elections I supported him, although this had no great impact here, of course. But in contrast to my very more radical leftist friends whose motto was “he’s just a nice human face on the same imperialism,” “he will even serve better the interest of capitalism,” or whatever, no, I think we see now, apropos the healthcare reform, that we are fighting the central battle here.

JUAN GONZALEZ I’d like to ask you, in terms of the somewhat pessimistic view you have of how the response to the crisis has been, there seems to be, continues to be, an entire continent that is heading in a somewhat different direction, South America and Latin America, in general.

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: Here comes my critical leftism.

JUAN GONZALEZ Well, I’d love hear it, in terms—because there does seem to be in many of these areas, while the rest of the world is—the gap is increasing, at least there are governments throughout Latin America that are trying to decrease the gap and take a different role.

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: They are trying. Are they really doing it? You know, I am—this is my skeptic. Some people already accuse me of being a covert neoconservative for what I will say now. Let’s not have any illusions. I claim that much of the attraction of the recent wave, Hugo Chavez and so on, of Latin American populism comes from this old desire of the left. Let’s be clear, many leftists today in the United States are relatively well-paid academics who fight all the dirty department career war, but they like to feel warm in their hearts. So it’s good to have as far away as possible another country where you can sympathize. “Oh, but things are really happening there.” You know, at some point in the ‘30s it was Soviet Union, Cuba, Chinese Cultural Revolution, Nicaragua. I’m afraid now that it is Venezuela a little bit. And I don’t buy the standard liberal critique, Chavez dictator and so on.

I just think Chavez started well. He did something of world historical importance. As far as I know, he was the first one of truly trying to mobilize people who were in favelas and so on, who were excluded from the public domain. He really tried to bring them into the political process. I claim if we don’t find a way to do this, we are slowly approaching a kind of a new apartheid society, where we will live in a kind of a permanent low-level civil war, where we will have some kind of irrational explosions like in France, the car burning in the Paris suburbs.

On the other hand, I’m a little bit more pessimistic as to what in the long term he will really achieve. I think he is now losing his way approaching this standard Latin American populism, where he, because of the oil wealth, is allowed to play the game of fiddle with oil, fiddle with money. I think, if you ask me, a much more interesting phenomenon is Bolivia. It’s much more authentic. They’re really being forced to invent something new. I always think that the genuinely utopian moments are not when you are doing OK and why not even better, are when you are in a deadlock. Then, in order even to survive normally, you are forced to invent something. But I thought you would say entire—so, no, I don’t see too much hope in Latin America.

But I see more hope at this moment with you in United States than with Europe. Europe is now, I think, in great decline. I had some hopes about Europe. Why? Because, to put it very simply, it still looks that we have two models now which are in competition, if I simplify the analysis very much: the Anglo-Saxon liberal market model and what we poetically call capitalism with Asian values, which means authoritarian capitalism. This is what every leftist, as I repeat it, should worry about, because let’s concede to the devil what belongs to the devil. Wasn’t it that, ’til recently—I’m sorry to tell you again, as a strange communist, you will say—there was one good argument for capitalism? After. It may have been that capitalism needed dictatorship for ten, twenty years—Chile, South Korea—but when things started to move, capitalism always engendered a push toward some kind of democracy. No longer. I claim that what is now emerging in the Far East started—it started in Singapore, this kind of so-called, again, authoritarian capitalism. I think something new is emerging: a capitalism even more dynamic—

AMY GOODMAN: Ten seconds.

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: —than our own, but which, even in long term, doesn’t need democracy.

AMY GOODMAN: Slavoj Žižek, Slovenian philosopher, psychoanalyst, cultural theorist. His latest book is First as Tragedy, Then as Farce.

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Por ANALIA HOUNIE

“El capitalismo global es una abstracción que excluye a buena parte de la humanidad”, sostiene.

—A cuarenta años del Mayo Francés, ¿cuál es, según usted, su legado?

—La complejidad de la pregunta consiste en que no hubo un Mayo del ’68 sino cuatro. Mayo del ’68 fue un acontecimiento, precisamente, porque estuvo compuesto por elementos diferentes. Cuando hablamos entonces de este acontecimiento, debemos precisar siempre de qué Mayo del ’68 estamos hablando. Para decirlo brevemente, hay un primer Mayo del ’68 que es la rebelión de la juventud; de hecho, no de toda la juventud sino de los estudiantes: es la revuelta de una minoría. Es la parte más visible del Mayo del ’68. Debemos decir también que esta parte no fue completamente original porque hacia fin de los sesenta hubo revueltas de los estudiantes prácticamente en todo el mundo: en México, Alemania, Estados Unidos, China… El segundo Mayo del ’68 es la huelga más importante de toda la historia de Francia. Es muy diferente del primero pues concierne a los trabajadores, millones de ellos, y no a los estudiantes. El tercer Mayo del ’68 es algo así como una revolución cultural. Tiene que ver con la agitación de los teatros y de los cineastas, también con la transformación de las reglas sexuales y con la revuelta feminista. El cuarto Mayo del ’68 es, finalmente, el más interesante. Consiste en la búsqueda de una nueva concepción de la política –la búsqueda por crear, por ejemplo, una colectividad entre trabajadores, estudiantes, extranjeros, etcétera–. Creo que aquí yace el legado del Mayo del ’68. Porque la revuelta de los estudiantes en sí misma no es una cuestión universal, concierne a las universidades, a la relación entre la educación institucional y la educación pública. La huelga de trabajadores en sí misma es ampliamente controlada por el Partido Comunista y por los sindicatos tradicionales, no es un fenómeno nuevo. La transformación de las modalidades sexuales y la revolución cultural crean una modernidad, pero esta modernidad es compatible con el capitalismo. Hoy somos contemporáneos del Mayo del ’68 en la búsqueda de una nueva definición de la política. El problema clave es encontrar una forma de organización política que no se halla en la forma del viejo Partido Comunista (organización jerárquica, participación en las elecciones clásicas, etc). Este problema aún no esta resuelto.

—“De quoi Sarkozy est-il le nom?”, su último libro, va más allá de la figura de Nicolas Sarkozy: propone una teoría de una característica constante de la política francesa –Sarkozy es sólo el último en una línea que incluye a Thermidor y a Marechal Petain–. ¿Podría, por favor, definir esta constante?

—Para describir esta constante, debemos comprender que la historia de Francia no es simple. Hay una primera historia de Francia –la más conocida mundialmente– que comienza con la Revolución Francesa a fines del siglo XVIII y continúa con las grandes insurrecciones de los trabajadores en 1830 y en 1848, con la comuna de París en 1871, con la Francia popular en 1936, con la fortaleza del Partido Comunista francés, con la resistencia al nazismo y, finalmente, con el Mayo del ’68. Es la historia de las insurrecciones, revueltas, revoluciones y demás. Pero hay una segunda historia francesa: la historia de la contrarrevolución, del poder conservador y reaccionario, la historia de la restauración de la monarquía después de la Revolución Francesa, el segundo imperio de Napoleón, la represión de los trabajadores en junio 1848 o después de la Comuna de París, la terrible secuencia de Petain… burguesía francesa, temerosa de la Francia popular, prefirió el nazismo a la posibilidad de la revolución comunista: ésta es la definición de Petain. Francia puede ser vista como el país de las insurrecciones histéricas pero también como el país de las contrarrevoluciones obsesivas (risas). Nombro el petainismo a esta dimensión de la historia francesa que llega hasta nuestros días. Sarkozy es la expresión de esta tendencia reaccionaria. Es el último petainista.

—Además de despertar el interés del público masivo, su último libro desencadenó una nueva ola de acusaciones contra usted como el “filósofo del terror” antidemocrático. ¿De qué son síntoma estas acusaciones?

—Creo que hay un problema después de todo. No sostengo el sistema democrático contemporáneo porque sé que esta forma del Estado es apropiada al gobierno de los ricos, de los capitalistas. Las elecciones libres son una ficción. Toda la massmedia está controlada por grupos capitalistas. No soy, pues, democrático en este sentido. La democracia es el poder de la gente, no el poder de los partidos, de la oligarquía financiera, del capitalismo. Hay democracia cuando la gente se organiza en movimientos o en huelgas para declarar algo en el campo político. Pero hoy no hay un poder real de la gente. Por ejemplo, sabemos que la armada francesa está comprometida con la guerra de Afganistán. Nadie consultó a la gente sobre este asunto. Fue una decisión consensual tomada por un pequeño grupo de hombres y de mujeres de todos los partidos. El segundo punto concierne al terror. En muchas circunstancias donde la gente está realmente relacionada al poder, presenciamos secuencias de violencia (es el caso de la Revolución Francesa, de la Revolución Bolchevique, etc.). Cuando sostengo que la intervención popular en el campo político debe ser violenta en algunos casos, no puedo aceptar que esa suerte de gobierno me acuse de terrorista. Después de todo, los Estados democráticos actuales son absolutamente violentos: tenemos una guerra absurda y criminal en Irak, una guerra en Afganistán, intervenciones militares en muchos otros países… Entonces, en ciertas circunstancias, la elección es entre dos tipos de violencia: la elección no es entre violencia y no violencia. Sabemos eso. Acepto la posibilidad de la violencia. La violencia de la acción popular es diferente de la pura violencia de Estado. Nombro terror a la violencia de Estado.

—En “De quoi Sarkozy est-il le nom?” usted defiende también la actualidad del comunismo, de la idea comunista. ¿Por qué cree que hoy deberíamos ser fieles a esta palabra?

—La idea comunista, a comienzos del siglo XIX, era la idea de la completa emancipación de la humanidad. El comunismo era el nombre de otra posibilidad para la organización de la sociedad. Después surgió la pregunta de los medios políticos para realizar esta nueva posibilidad. El medio más importante era la revolución con la dirección, finalmente, de la clase trabajadora. Esta es la visión clásica, la visión de Marx en el Manifiesto de 1848. Progresivamente, en una segunda etapa, el comunismo se convierte en el nombre no sólo del fin (una nueva sociedad) sino también en el nombre de un medio político específico para alcanzar esta meta: el Partido Comunista. Hay, en esta segunda etapa, algo positivo y algo negativo. Algo positivo: el comunismo se convierte en una realidad más concreta –en la primera etapa era una visión–, en nuevos medios para triunfar en la revolución. Estamos en una nueva etapa de la historia, dijo Lenin al crear el Partido Comunista: la etapa de la revolución victoriosa. Y era verdad. La victoria ha sido posible con un fuerte Partido Comunista. Con una gran visión pero con una organización débil, ha sido imposible durante el siglo XIX. El lado negativo es que después de eso tenemos una definición estrecha del comunismo: el Partido Comunista y el Estado comunista. Y esta visión estrecha fue, finalmente, un fracaso. Porque el Partido fue bueno para organizar una revolución victoriosa pero no para organizar una nueva sociedad. Resultó algo burocrático, terrorista, violento. Este fracaso puso en peligro la palabra comunismo. Prácticamente desapareció. Creo que sin esta palabra tenemos una carencia en la política de emancipación. Para mantener una política de emancipación, debemos tener una gran visión y esta idea, finalmente, es la idea comunista. Sin esta gran visión, somos débiles: nos sumergimos en pequeñas experiencias políticas, en pequeñas luchas cotidianas. No podemos de este modo unificar la lucha política. Planteo abrir una tercera etapa del comunismo después de la primera etapa (la concepción marxista) y después de la segunda (la concepción leninista): una nueva definición de la palabra que retiene el aspecto positivo de la noción, que critica el aspecto negativo de la segunda etapa y que propone una nueva forma del comunismo para hoy.

—¿Cómo se sitúa frente a los filósofos contemporáneos que mantienen viva la idea de la política de emancipación?

—Mis colegas que mantienen viva la idea de emancipación son Slavoj Žižek, Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Rancière, Judith Butler, Antonio Negri y yo. El “grupo de los seis” (risas). No hay una diferencia fundamental entre Žižek y yo. Hay diferencias conceptuales y filosóficas. Pero en relación con la necesidad de la palabra comunismo, con el reconocimiento de los aspectos positivos en el leninismo mismo y demás somos parientes cercanos. La palabra comunismo también es usada por Negri pero en otro sentido. El sujeto constitutivo del capitalismo es, en última instancia, la masa de nuevos productores. Con Internet, con las comunicaciones globales, con el trabajo de las multitudes, tenemos dentro del capitalismo mismo la creación espontánea de algo que es de esencia comunista. El problema con Butler es que está del lado de la política de la identidad, que se halla, en mi opinión, a un solo paso en dirección a la política de la diferencia. Debemos crear una colectividad política que sea universal, que absorba todas las diferencias y todas las identidades. Agamben no usa realmente la palabra comunismo. Está más interesado en el sueño de la humanidad. Su figura fundamental es la del homo sacer, y toda la discusión atañe a la creación de esta figura. La relación entre esa suerte de visión y las políticas concretas no está clara. Es demasiado ontológica para mí. En cuanto a Rancière, ciertamente está de nuestro lado en lo que concierne al legado del ’68, a qué es la verdadera democracia (que no es la democracia representativa). No comparte la visión de Žižek ni la mía en relación con la segunda etapa del comunismo, tampoco la necesidad de la violencia en determinadas ocasiones. Es un hombre precavido. La suya es una filosofía siempre descriptiva, nunca prescriptiva. La diferencia entre los seis atañe, precisamente, a la naturaleza prescriptiva de la política, no sólo a su característica histórica descriptiva. Debemos decir algo acerca de qué hacer. La política no sólo es crítica y negación, también es afirmación. La segunda diferencia concierne a nuestros juicios acerca de qué es la democracia. Creo que Žižek y yo somos menos democráticos que los otros (risas).

—Usted escribió en “Logiques des mondes” que el capitalismo es una civilización sin mundo. ¿Qué quiere decir esto?

—Creo que el capitalismo global es una universalidad abstracta porque el mundo que construye es un mundo donde una amplia parte de la humanidad no está presente. Estar presente en el capitalismo global significa no estar excluido de la riqueza de este mundo. Hoy no estamos por la construcción de un mundo unificado, por el contrario: la desigualdad es la ley del capitalismo. El mundo está completamente dividido no sólo entre países ricos y países pobres sino, en los países mismos, entre hombres pobres y hombres ricos. Actualmente, la idea de un mundo para la gente de todo el planeta es una idea prescriptiva. Nos falta un mundo en este sentido. Es una cuestión de orden político, no de existencia empírica.

—Recientemente, usted propuso una alianza entre la filosofía y la poesía, después de siglos de tensiones que comenzaron con el destierro de los poetas de la República por Platón. ¿Por qué opina que hoy es el momento para este pacto?

—La historia de la filosofía despliega dos grandes posiciones contradictorias con respecto a la relación entre la poesía y la filosofía. O bien hay una diferencia fundamental entre ellas (esto está claro en Platón y, también, en muchos otros), o bien la poesía entra en igualdad con las formas más importantes del pensamiento. Es algo así como el debate entre Platón y Heidegger.

Podemos cambiar la estructura del problema diciendo que hay un lugar para la poesía como procedimiento de la verdad porque en éste hay siempre un momento poético. Es el momento donde debemos encontrar nuevos nombres para un acontecimiento. La nominación de un acontecimiento es una necesidad, y esta necesidad, en cierto sentido, es siempre una poética. Por ejemplo, cuando estalla una revolución política, irrumpen nuevos nombres, un nuevo vocabulario. Y esta tarea es tarea de la poesía –no está realizada siempre en los poemas, pero es una determinación poética–.

Creo que ésa es la razón por la que la poesía ha sido parte del lenguaje filosófico mismo. La invención y transformación del lenguaje filosófico es también una tarea política. Por esto, propongo un nuevo pacto, una nueva paz.

El amor como principio político

—¿De qué hablamos cuando hablamos de amor?

—Creo que el amor es un procedimiento de la verdad; entonces, es una condición natural para la filosofía. (Reconozco cuatro tipos de procedimientos de la verdad: la ciencia, el arte, la política y el amor.) En el amor podemos rastrear todas las características de un procedimiento de la verdad: comienza con un acontecimiento, el encuentro entre dos personas. Después debemos encontrar la forma y las consecuencias de este encuentro, debemos encontrar un nuevo lenguaje. ¿Por qué la verdad? Porque el amor es, en mi opinión, la invención de la verdad acerca de la diferencia. Naturalmente, es la diferencia entre dos individuos, la diferencia absoluta entre la posición masculina y la femenina. Como dijo una vez Lacan, la relación sexual no existe. Hay una ilusión en la pura libertad sexual: la ilusión de que allí podemos encontrar una experiencia de conexión con el otro. Entonces, se compromete con la repetición y no con la creación. ¿Qué es la verdad acerca de la diferencia? Es la experiencia de la diferencia mediante la construcción de un nuevo punto de vista sobre el mundo mismo. Es una nueva experiencia del mundo desde el punto de vista de los Dos. El amor no es una suerte de negociación entre dos individuos. Es la creación de un nuevo punto de vista sobre el mundo mismo: el punto de vista de los Dos. (La amistad también es la experiencia de los Dos pero es una experiencia mucho más débil que el amor. Por eso explicamos la amistad desde el punto de vista del amor y no a la inversa.) El amor es el ejercicio de la diferencia en relación con el desarrollo de la vida misma. Es, pues, la experiencia del mundo no desde el punto de vista del Uno –individual– sino desde el punto de vista de los Dos, no desde el ángulo de la identidad sino desde el ángulo de la diferencia. En este sentido, es el principio de una idea poderosa que puede devenir, finalmente, en una idea política. Que es posible construir una experiencia colectiva del mundo. Y el comienzo de esta experiencia colectiva es la experiencia de los Dos. El amor puede ser visto, en este sentido, como el principio de la política.

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Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba and raised in Athens, Georgia, 29-year-old writer and filmmaker, Astra Taylor is a good case study for a life well-lived.  Unschooled until she was a preteen and raised by two independent thinkers to become one herself, Taylor currently occupies herself with wrangling high intellectual pursuits and philosophical theories into wonderful pieces of cinema.  Her non-traditional upbringing, or as she calls it, her  “super weirdo hippy background,” stood her in good stead, providing a strong sense of confidence and an affirmation in her own abilities and artistic vision.

When she was just 23, Taylor made her first nonfiction feature about Slavoj Zizek, called Zizek!, a post-Marxist sociologist, philosopher and cultural critic, and all around wild man.  This film was the second feature-length project of the Documentary Campaign, a nonprofit organization that worked to combine progressive politics with artistic filmmaking.  The film premiered in ’05 at Toronto and is distributed in North America by Zeitgeist Films.

Wanting to make another film about philosophers, Taylor luckily met with producer Ron Mann, who as it turned out, had been wanting to make an anthology film about philosophers, too.  (As mom always said, “There’s a lid for every pot.”)  Examined Life, as I reported earlier after seeing the film at the Woodstock festival, is an exceedingly well-conceived, visually stunning piece, linking together some of the most brilliant creative thinkers in modern society, taking what is usually reserved for the hallowed halls of academe and putting it out on the streets for public consumption.  It’s a very rich feast of ideas, theories and social and ethical quandaries told in ten-minute vignettes as we accompany each of these philosophers on a walk through very concrete places–parks, lakes, bridges, city streets, airports and yes, even a garbage dump.  Most of the subjects that appear in Examined Life (Cornel West, Avital Ronell, Peter Singer, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Martha Nussbaum, Michael Hardt, Slavoj Zizek and Judith Butler) are people Taylor has worked with or studied under and to whom she feels a strong connection.  Ultimately, it was a graduate seminar led by Avital Ronell and the late Jacques Derrida that inspired her to try and take philosophy out of the university and into quotidian life.

On a lovely fall morning, Taylor and I met, appropriately, in Tompkins Square Park in the East Village for our chat.  She was accompanied by her sister, Sunaura, who also appears in the film in the Judith Butler segment, and is a staggeringly talented artist in her own right.  (Click here to see some of Sunny’s work.)  As life went by, we sat on a park bench and talked about her unique upbringing, her discovery of expressing herself through making movies, and what and who inspires her as an artist and a human being:

Still in Motion (SIM):  The subject matter you’re choosing to use in the medium of cinema is really interesting, quite a departure from the kinds of stories to which we’ve become accustomed.  What was the genesis of that idea, to talk to modern-day philosophers about the world in which we’re living, of trying to cinematically tell philosophical stories?

Astra Taylor (AT):  I’ve made two films that are explicitly about philosophy.  I don’t see myself doing films in the future that are as explicit, but are more, perhaps, implicitly philosophical.  I always see myself grappling with ideas, whether it’s in my work as a writer of nonfiction or as a filmmaker. It wasn’t so much a passion for cinema that drove me to pursue filmmaking.  Instead, it’s more of a curiosity about ideology and culture and ideas that has always been with me.  As a child, I had this one intense creative pursuit and it was one of the happiest phases of my life.  I had a magazine called Kids for Animal Rights and the Environment (KARE). I published it every other month for three years.  I put so much love and work into this thing so, in a way, I’m just trying to recreate that experience as an adult.

SIM:  How old were you when you started it?

AT:  I was eleven.  I didn’t go to school so I got to work on it everyday and I was such a stickler for the whole presentation.  It was the beginning of desktop publishing programs.  My whole purpose for doing this magazine was to reveal the fact that children were innate vegetarians, were innately kind beings and that we were systematically misled by propaganda from adults.  Old MacDonald’s happy farm and the cows that gave us milk—it was just lies that the adults were perpetrating against us. I really thought that I was leading this kid revolution and that the magazine would cause a generation of people to overthrow the meat-eating adults.  By the time I was twelve, I discovered that there might be some flaws in my theory.  And then, out of loneliness, I finally went to public school; I’d been unschooled up until that point. When I got to public school, I became friends with kids who weren’t from my immediate super weirdo hippy background.

SIM:  Were you home-schooled with just your siblings?

AT:  There were, maybe, three other families we hung out with. This was in Athens, Georgia so most of the homeschoolers were conservative Christians, which we were resolutely not.  When I enrolled in school, I had this amazing friendship with this girl who ate meat.  How could I be friends with someone who eats meat?  I had this little crisis of moral relativism and a good deal of confusion about what’s right and what’s wrong.  I can’t overstate the profound nature of that crisis for me as a kid, and my dedication to this animal rights trip.  I didn’t know the word “ideology,” but I think that’s what it was.  How is there this ideology that makes it okay to kill and hunt and farm animals?  Animal liberation was something I believed in so strongly, and I was surrounded by people who didn’t share my belief system at all.  I was raised in such an intense bubble of affirmation.

SIM:  Did you want to go running back to that bubble, or was it too late?

AT:  No, I didn’t want to be sheltered.  It was just that I became fascinated by belief systems and how my beliefs do—or do not—correspond to those of most people. I think that’s really my motivating question.  I have these strong values and strong principles, but don’t see them reflected everywhere in the world. Maybe my beliefs aren’t correct.  For example, when it comes to animal rights, many smart, intelligent people don’t agree with me at all.

SIM:  Did that undermine your confidence in these strict ideologies?  Some might become yet even more fundamentalist in their beliefs in reaction to that.

AT:  It certainly made me less strident, I think.  Anyway, all this was the reason why I eventually got into theory and philosophy when I was a teenager, exploring ideology, exploring the history of ideas.  Why do people think what they think?

SIM:  Who were the first philosophers you discovered on your own that resonated with you in a profound way?

AT:  It was [Gilles] Deleuze and [Félix] Guattari’s, A Thousand Plateaus.  I think I was seventeen when I found this book.  It’s really a surrealist, Dada-esque work of philosophy.  It’s this creative, inventive hodgepodge that I thought was just the most mysterious, delightful thing I’d ever seen and in it were all these references to Marx and Beckett and James Joyce and Kafka and Lacan and Freud.  And I would pursue all of those references doggedly.  This book was really responsible for opening up a whole intellectual world.  Years afterward, I came upon this interview with Deleuze who said that his ideal reader was an ignorant sixteen year old for whom this is all new.  I was that reader.  It just so happened that the first American to ever write a book on Deleuze and Guattari worked at the University of Georgia at Athens and he was teaching a seminar; so I got to take a semester-long course with all these Ph.D. students just studying A Thousand Plateaus.  I was in heaven. At that point, I was on the path to graduate school and I went to the New School in New York to do theory.  I soon wearied of it, you know?

SIM:  Wearied of academia?

AT:  Yeah, deeply.  I’d gone to Brown University for a year right out of high school.  I thought it was horrible.  The place wasn’t for the smartest kids in the world; it was for the kids who most wanted to get A’s.  I was disappointed.  I thought I was going to find this intellectual community or something and I just didn’t fit in.  Long story short, I got an MA in Liberal Studies from the New School, but my final semester was spent dabbling in documentary.

SIM:  You’re not a very passive person or student, either. You’re demanding a lot when you seek and search.  You go to the mountain.  A lot of students feel like just because they’re physically there, sitting in a chair in a classroom, that that’s somehow enough to call it learning.

AT:  They do—they hand off their agency when they walk through the door in a way that I was never taught to do.  I was never indoctrinated into that.  Just last week when I was guest lecturing that really struck me, the passivity of otherwise intelligent people in the classroom.  How do you learn when you’re passive?

SIM:  What kinds of backgrounds do your parents have?

AT:  My dad’s a professor of medicinal chemistry.  I don’t think he got his Bachelor of Science, though, until he was 31.  He spent years as an undergraduate, partially dodging the draft but also pursuing a degree in classical music and playing in rock bands. He’s one of those wunderkinds that started college at fourteen but didn’t finish until he was 31. My mom was raised in this extremely counter-cultural environment in the 60s.  She didn’t go past seventh grade.  She did some community college studying theater and video and stuff like that.  They have very unusual backgrounds.  For me, especially when I was studying high theory in New York City, I was interested in the material but it felt so disconnected, so rarefied.  At the same time, there is still something valuable, intrinsic and wonderful about the subject matter. I just didn’t relate to the institution, the academy. It wasn’t where I wanted to be. During that time, I was also working at Verso Books, an independent publishing house, where I was publicizing these nonfiction books.  It was there that I started to see some examples of people who were public intellectuals, independent writers who didn’t have teaching gigs or writers who didn’t really have formal training in the field in which they were working.  These people became role models.

SIM:  I think that’s actually a very particular talent, to translate one’s thoughts and mental wanderings into something that you can share with other people.  We hope our teachers have that ability, but a lot really don’t.  Watching your films, I sense a generosity there to really want to share in that way.

AT:  I hope so.  My whole aspiration in both films was to build this inquisitive, affirmative momentum that carries on after the movie is seen.  The whole purpose is to take these intellectual pursuits off the pedestal.  I’m not trying to “impress” the audience at all.  In fact, I’m kind of trying to do the opposite.  People go into these films with such fear, certain expectations about how turgid and stuffy the subject matter’s going to be.  I’m trying to take it down a few notches but I also want to be inspiring at the same time, welcoming and inviting people into the process of critical thinking.  That’s really what I’m trying to do.

SIM:  When you were working on the conception of the film and its structure and the way it would play out on screen, what was the most important thing to you in terms of communicating with your audience?

AT:  I’m always thinking about audience.  This is not a work of self-expression coming from a place of personal conflict or desire.  I love those types of works of art.  I wish I could do that but that’s not my personality.  Certainly, I’m trying to communicate and inspire people to question things.  The audience is always there for me.  I’m constantly trying to balance the different audiences I imagine seeing the film.  For example, I want it to be accessible to the 16 year old who hasn’t been exposed to this stuff before.  But I also need to invite Ph.D.s, with a lot of expertise, into the film, as well.  Striking a balance for these different viewers is really first and foremost.

SIM:  With Examined Life, in particular, do you feel like you succeeded in doing that?

AT:  I had a really great moment just the other day.  I showed the film in Columbia, Missouri and this punk rock nine year old little kid watched the whole movie by himself without his mom and dad [laughs].  I thought, “Wow, maybe I did it.”  I’ve had lots of teenagers reflect on it and they pick up on exactly the sequences I thought would resonate with them—Peter Singer and Michael Hardt.  Revolution and consumerism!  I really thought of those two sections as being for younger viewers.

SIM:  That’s interesting because we don’t really think about that when we leave that stage of our lives behind.  How we’re taught to relate to the world and then, in turn, how we teach our kids to do that, is all about what we imbibe, what we buy, what we wear.  That’s a form of victimization that no one really talks about in the public sphere too often.

AT:  When you do meet socially aware young people, they’ve been raised in this neo-liberal society, a culture with a lot of libertarian sympathies, so you often hear them say, “fuck the government,” “fuck the Man,” and move towards this, sort of, anarchist perspective.  I think the revolution bit speaks to that.  I thought of my own sixteen year old sister when I was editing that section, who just joined Food Not Bombs and was discovering those kinds of politics for herself for the first time.  It also made me reflect back on myself, too.  And consumerism is definitely a central issue for youth.  They’re constantly being marketed to and are trying to find or express their identities through what they purchase.  Those two sections were the ones I assumed would resonate with young people the most.  (Peter Singer, pictured.)

SIM:  What de-radicalizes us, do you think?

AT:  This is probably the bias of my background, but I think it’s at least partly formal education or what has been called “compulsory” education.  Again, people don’t necessarily feel active in the learning process; instead, they’re like receptacles being filled with information, facts and figures.  There’s such an emphasis on learning by rote, on memorization, on testing, as opposed to experience-based learning or learning for its own sake. I’m always struck by the irony that I’m making films that are about Ph.D.s, people who are at the pinnacle of the academic system.  They’ve mastered the university universe, many of them teaching at Ivy League schools. My intention is to really bring them out into the everyday world, which I think is important since we live in such an anti-intellectual culture.

SIM:  Yes, we do.  This kind of fare that you’re offering is a tricky proposition.  You do have to be a bit clandestine about it, don’t you?  You also offer something visually quite rich.  The film is beautiful to look at and the aural and visual aspects play off one another in a really satisfying way.  You’ve taken advantage of how powerful cinema can be in reflecting and parsing these notions of who we are as human beings and all those funky questions we have all the time, passive folk excepted.

AT:  I think that’s why I’ve been so happy to discover this line of work. There was a period where I thought I was going to be a painter.  Then I realized that I couldn’t put any messages in my paintings that I found compelling enough; it wasn’t literal enough for me.  But months and months and hours and hours of my life I’ve spent painting and dabbling in music, too.  When I discovered documentary filmmaking, I was amazed. I got to frame things and think about color and think about sound.  One of the greatest lessons from filmmaking, for me, is learning about sound design.  I now experience the world in a new way—as a soundscape.

SIM:  Sound is where emotion lies—it’s through the ear, not through the eye.

AT:  I had this huge epiphany one afternoon when I worked on the first video project in which I was involved.  The sound was terrible. I realized that the picture can be bad and that’s okay; but if the sound is bad, your movie’s ruined.  I’ve read that with sight we gaze upon the world, but with sound, we’re in the world.  Blindness or deafness must disconnect a person in very different ways.  So yeah, working in film, you get to be a visual artist, a sound artist, an intellectual provocateur—it’s a great field.  I’m surprised everyone else isn’t trying his or her hand at this, too.

SIM:  Actually, everyone I know is trying!  If you do spend time in Brooklyn, you will find that everyone, and their mom, is pursuing filmmaking. Not too many passive folks you run into, that’s for sure.  I think it’s quite wonderful.

AT:  I do, too.  It delights so many of our senses.  Cinema is a really special medium.  But you’re right.  Most doc makers are not passive; neither are philosophers.

SIM:  These philosophers that you chose for this film, all to a person are people one would want to hang out with.

AT:  I’m glad you think so.  I feel that way, too.

SIM:  There’s such vibrancy, such an emphatic way of communicating in the way they all speak to us; it’s extremely dynamic and exciting.  Some even almost dramatize their thoughts.  How much directing did you have to do to get those kinds of “performances”?

AT:  I’m glad you use the word “dramatize.”  I had a nice moment with Martha Nussbaum where we were talking about her background as an actress when she was an undergraduate and how drama and philosophy aren’t at odds.  We’re trying to dramatize the human condition and I, too, find that really exciting. Performing for a good cause, making ideas engaging—to me, that’s a high calling.  I don’t assume that seriousness equals this brittle, bland form of communication.  Especially when you’re making a movie, you want to capture and convey emotion, movement, energy, beauty, excitement.  I think my subjects really understood this and so the directing part was great fun.  I’m often asked what my criteria for casting philosophers were and there was a whole constellation of concerns I was trying to navigate.  But, first and foremost, they had to be enthusiastic about the process and be willing to perform.  They also all had to be of a certain status as far as their careers were concerned; they all had to be people who focused on ethics and social responsibility, which are the main themes of the film, in a way, the heart of the film.  They had to be a mix of genders and races.  I did not want to make a philosophy film that consisted only of all old, white men.  I’m not here to reaffirm that as the image of the great intellectual.  I’m tired of that image.

SIM:  We all are; even the old, white guys are tired of it, I think.

AT:  There was affirmative action happening in the best possible way in my casting.  That was the case with my crew, as well, which was very diverse.  My producer is a black woman [Lea Marin], my cameraman is a Vietnamese immigrant [John M. Tran], my sound guy is half-Japanese and half-Indian [Sanjay Mehta] and our camera assistant was a white guy.

So, yeah, what was on someone’s CV was a factor.  But, there was also the personal, intuitive thing of asking myself if I connected with their work.  With almost every subject, there was some point in my life where they influenced or provoked me. I wagered that they would, in turn, have an influence on the audience.  Their work had to be intellectually rigorous, but it also had to be impactful.  The intellectual world isn’t disconnected from the emotional world, the embodied world.  I’m trying to embody ideas, to show that they emerge from human beings who are in the world, who move through space, who feel sad, hopeful, angry.  Again, the most important piece of criteria is what they answered when I asked them if they wanted to do this and if they thought it would be fun.  If they weren’t into the performative aspect of it, into going on an adventure, then it wasn’t going to work.

SIM:  It was, indeed, a fun journey because of that energy coming off the screen.  I think I was surprised at all the moments of humor; so yes, it was a good time.  I sensed the audience members at Woodstock were really enjoying themselves.  It was like being at a really cool dinner party where one could sit and eavesdrop on all these scintillating conversations with brilliant people.  It was a very life-affirming treatment.

AT:  I’m happy about that because I really don’t think that’s the assumption when people hear that it’s a film about philosophy.  They either think all the philosophers are dead and that I’m doing a historical piece, or they ask me how I’m going to keep the audience awake.  They expect a stilted, boring, stagnant, suffocating film.  Otherwise vibrant, engaged, curious, smart people respond like this is just the most deadly concept for a movie they’ve ever encountered.

SIM:  How do you overcome that and convince people to come see the film?

AT:  There is a whole subculture of people that live and breathe this sort of stuff.  There’s a captive audience; that’s a start.  But obviously, I’d like to reach beyond them, so I’m thinking about marketing and it’s tricky.  I’m trying to present these materials and the film itself as something that is the opposite of pretentious, to make it inviting, accessible, playful, entertaining.  That was my intention all along.  After all, I find this entertaining; it’s how I entertain myself.  I don’t think it’s such a huge leap that others might enjoy it.  However, there’s such intimidation and such a culture of fear around intellectual matters.  We’re so obsessed with credentials and that goes back to the whole academic trip.  I get asked that all the time: where did you go to school?  Which I hear as, who gave you permission to talk about this?  That is not how I was brought up to think.  Nobody gave me permission to be a filmmaker.  I decided one day to become a filmmaker with total hubris.  I’ve watched enough movies in my life to try and make one.

SIM:  For the first time, I’m living in a place where calling yourself an artist or a creative is not a snotty or pretentious thing to call yourself.  It can actually be a viable way you can construct a life and do important work and be satisfied in that work in a very profound way.  And that’s not to say it isn’t an exceedingly uncomfortable existence to lead, with your ass out in the wind all the time, no IRA in sight, or health insurance, for that matter.

AT:  Last week, I went to three different film classes as a guest lecturer.  To suddenly be on the other side of the podium, if you will, really struck me and got me thinking about that sanctioning from society and the credentialing process and all that.  It really bothers me.  I’m on the other side and I’ve been sanctioned.  I’ve been given permission.  I’ve been credentialed.  That happened to me when the film got to a film festival.  When my first film premiered at Toronto, I was recognized as a “filmmaker.”  This is something that Judith Butler and other theorists have written about, the speech act, the declaration.  When the authority says to you that “you are x,” you officially become “x.” Or another way we too often judge someone’s legitimacy is whether or not they make money doing their art.  I feel this reluctance, this ambivalence, a bit of reticence about that because I think you make films for yourself and if nobody accepts your films into a festival, you’re still a filmmaker, you’re still an art maker.  It’s about the act of doing it.

I’m certainly not against mentorship.  I’ve been very blessed with always having mentors.  I’m very curious about other people, very good at approaching people who are doing things I’m fascinated by.  It’s why I’m comfortable working with the philosophers.  I’ve always had amazing mentors and I’ve always pursued people for feedback, whom I feel could give me good advice.  So I don’t think we need to be totally self-made and autonomous and independent.  It’s just that we don’t need to get so hung up about going through the “proper” training and the “proper” credentialing to legitimize ourselves.

SIM:  Let’s talk about your active and passive presence in the film.

AT:  That’s something I feel very ambivalent about.

SIM:  Well, I wanted to talk to you about that because your presence in the film could be described as ambivalent.  It was clear to me that you were trying to work out where, physically, you placed yourself in these scenarios.  It changed from segment to segment.  Sometimes we don’t see you at all or we see a sliver of you, a hand, your back.  Sometimes we hear you as part of some dialogue with your subject and sometimes we don’t hear you at all.  That was interesting to watch, you grappling with those decisions.  It was a physical representation of how we move through the world, how comfortable or uncomfortable we are in insinuating ourselves into any given situation.  Sometimes we know that we should hang on the periphery, that that’s somehow important, although we don’t know why, but we know that whatever is going to happen is probably going to be best served by us being “outside” the action.  There was a really interesting dynamic in the segments with Cornel West driving around in the car. I know that happened out of necessity for the most part, but his eye line looking directly into the rear view mirror was really interesting to me [West sits in the back seat directly behind the driver’s seat].  He engages you through that sliver of reflective glass and so the camera had to insinuate itself in a particular way in relation to him, but also in relation to you, the “hidden driver.”

AT:  This might seen a bit of a banal answer, but basically, the whole issue of my presence in these segments goes back to Zizek!, my first film.  I envisioned that as a film in which I was not present at all, partly because of the whole self-reflective filmmaking trip, showing the crew, etc.  It’s all been done before and it’s a dicey proposition.  And the film wasn’t about me.  But we were in production with Slavoj and I kept trying to arrange scenarios where we’d encounter people, where he would have to interact with someone to show what it is he does when he meets someone, to act the way he acts all the time wherever he happens to be.  These encounters were not manifesting in the way I’d hoped.  There’s one scene where a fan approaches him for an autograph but that was about it. In the editing room, we cut something together in which I wasn’t present and it felt really claustrophobic.  So my editor and I made the decision to include me a bit. We did so much filming, so there were some things I was just in because we would be conversing about something and we happened to like that moment and wanted to keep it in the film.

But yes, I was ambivalent and self-conscious.  And then, that self-consciousness was affirmed when the New York Times reviewed it.  In that review, the critic [AO Scott] basically calls me “a groupie,” and that became the meme that went through every review.  You’ve got a 24 year old woman making a film about an older man, and the assumption is that she wants to sleep with that man, which is an insane assumption.

SIM:  The whole Svengali thing where you’re under someone’s “spell.”

AT:  Yeah.  There are lots of young men who make reverential portraits of other human beings and are never accused of the same thing.  The Amazon.com review says it’s a reversal of the love story, Harold and Maude.  What?  I love Harold and Maude as much as the next person, but come on.  However, I became really self-conscious after the film came out, even though I wasn’t at all self-conscious when I was making it.  When I began to propose my new movie, [Examined Life] I said that these are all going to be straight-up monologues, no presence of the director.  That would have been just fine; however, in my conversations with Avital Ronell (pictured with Taylor) leading up to the shoot, she basically told me that she wasn’t doing it unless I was on camera and we have a filmed conversation.  I asked her why.  She said, well, we’re going to talk about the fact that we’re filming because that’s what we’ll be doing and it just doesn’t make sense to me, it doesn’t fit my philosophy, to deny that you’re present there with me.  I said, well, Avital, I’ll tell you what: I feel very vulnerable and insecure doing this because of what happened with the last project. She said, too bad; I thought it was just fine that you were in your last film; don’t listen to all that.

Also, after Judith Butler invited my sister, Sunaura, to be in her section, Sunny told me that she wasn’t going to be in my film unless, at some point, I was in the film, as well. So I was kind of cornered!  In each scenario, I had a different position, sometimes due to geography or sometimes because of how I conceived of the specific sequence. In the Peter Singer segment, he’s speaking directly at the camera.  I’m not there.  It didn’t feel as though I should be there.  With Cornel West,  I had instructed the cameraman not to film me.  Now, I didn’t know what Cornel West would be like once that camera was on, but he was so intensely making eye contact into that rear view mirror just as you pointed out.  He was looking into my eyes with such urgency that the cameraman couldn’t help going back and forth between us, as you would do in a conversation. He told me that he just had no choice but to shoot me, that it was too bad that I told him not to [laughs].  Ultimately, I’m happy with it, mostly because I’m driving my 1990 Volvo and it shows how we were working.  We didn’t have the money to rent a town car for the evening.  That’s why he’s sweating; I don’t have AC.

SIM:  There is a real robust physicality in all the segments in various ways.  I think of the constant sound of the squeak the oars make as Hardt rows around the lake in Central Park.  And in the garbage dump with Zizek, you almost want to plug your nose; there’s a visceral quality to that, too.

AT:  Thoughts are visceral.  The motivations for thinking are often visceral ones, for example, when our body responds to what’s happening in the world and we’re overcome by grief or empathy or joy.  Deep feelings inspire us to think seriously about things.  This common perception of philosophy as something that just happens in the brain, as something that’s cold or calculated and emotionless, doesn’t make sense to me.

SIM:  Again, that speaks really well to your point of wanting to be as far away from the ivory tower way of approaching these great thinkers.

AT:  I do love the ivory tower approach in terms of seriousness, diligence, research, care and discipline.  I love all that.  I just don’t think those traits are exclusive to the ivory tower.  Now I see my presence in the film as still somewhat anonymous when I watch it and hopefully kind of low key.  Not “Astra’s having this great conversation and she’s so smart talking to these philosophers!” Instead, I am the inquisitive presence, interjecting here and there, raising a few down to earth questions.  I really tried not to be overbearing but sometimes there’s a tangent and it doesn’t make sense unless some sort of set-up or line of inquiry is established.  The only person to ask the question was me.  Thus, I’m in the film!

SIM:  I think you struck a good balance—as a viewer, I want to see and hear you sometimes; you’re our conduit into these worlds, our scout leader, if you will.  We want to know who’s driving the car; we want to see who West is speaking to.

AT:  We watched the first ten minutes in one of the classes in which I spoke last night and then when I came on screen, I had that uncomfortable feeling again, wanting to defend myself and say that I’m not that narcissistic; I’m not in the whole film!  But, then again, even if I’m not in it every minute, the whole film is me in that it’s a rather subjective film in terms of who I cast and in the way in which I approach them.  It’s a very gentle movie because I’m a gentle person.  I had certain ground rules.  I didn’t want to create any atmosphere of infighting or having them attack one another or directly debating one another.  There’s a lot of implicit debate happening and different perspectives, but it’s pretty subtle or understated. Philosophy is known for its argumentation and smack-downs, believe me.  It can be a brutal field.  But that stuff’s not in Examined Life (pictured, Taylor with Zizek).

SIM:  What inspires you cinematically?

AT:  The very first film I ever saw that resonated with me in the sense of me possibly doing something was Agnès Varda’s The Gleaners and I.  It occurred to me that I didn’t know the term “essay film.”  I had never come across anything like that in school or in life.  I walked out of the theater and thought, wow, you can write with a movie.  I always assumed I was going to be a writer, that that was my path.  Writing with a movie was such a cool idea; it’s like a book but with moving images. So she’s been a huge influence even though I was really disappointed by her latest movie (Les Plages d’Agnès).  I thought it was vain. She was constantly reminding us about how great she is, which is something we already know.  We’re at her movie. But it doesn’t matter.  She made The Gleaners and I, and I love Vagabond and Cleo From 5 to 7—I really love her movies.

Another filmmaker who’s actually had a big impact was Ross McElwee, the king of the personal documentary.  In Time Indefinite, he merges the personal and the philosophical so well and with such wonderful humor.  I have to say Examined Life would not exist without Bright Leaves.  There’s a scene where this rabid film theorist pushes him [McElwee] around in a wheelchair and screams at him that interviews should not be conducted while sitting down; you have to get out and move, cinema must move!  That caused a light bulb to go off in my mind.  I also love Manufacturing Consent, the Noam Chomsky film, because that was something that showed me that these intellectual subjects could be really fun and animated without being pedantic.

But, I’m not really an avid movie watcher.  I’m more of a reader.  I covet my ignorance as far as filmmaking is concerned.  I think sometimes you can study too much; you can study too hard and be overwhelmed by influences and other people’s techniques.  There’s something about approaching a project with nothing but my own inventiveness that’s really key for me.  But sometimes I feel a little ignorant at these film festivals.  Everyone’s talking about things I’m not really clued in about.  I feel dumb.

SIM:  I would wager to guess a lot of filmmakers experience that at festivals.  I’ve heard similar sentiments from a lot of first-timers.  It’s a bit of stage fright, maybe, and you’re getting a lot of attention (one hopes) in a very concentrated way—it can be overwhelming.

AT:  We all have imposter syndrome.

SIM:  What other films do you see yourself making?

AT:  I was just talking about this with Sunny yesterday.  She’s at a similar point in her painting.  I’m not sure what the content of my next film is but I can imagine its form.  I always approach things like this.  Before making films, I had this feeling of the kind of path I should be on—this kind of intellectual path but without a university.  I had this feeling that I wanted to create a specific sort of space for myself in which I could live a creative life of the mind, and I’ve kind of succeeded at that. Right now, I have this vague sense that I want to make a film that’s about ideas but with lots of emotion, without a conventional storyline.  I can sort of taste the direction I want to go in, but I really don’t know exactly what it is.  I’m also at a point where I’m being approached to do director-for-hire type projects that could be quite big by my current standards. I want to be able to feel confident enough to say no to that.  Even if my next film is very small, it should be the one I want to make.  These are not easy decisions.

SIM:  Those kinds of pressures can be confusing.  You feel like you might want to grasp those opportunities now since they’re being offered.  Maybe that won’t come around again, who knows?

AT:  It’s total insecurity.  You have to be realistic.  I’m a very pragmatic person.  I want to make movies and have a budget and a crew and all of that.  But I don’t want to make movies so badly that I would ever make anything I’m not totally connected to.  My desire isn’t to be a filmmaker, per se.  It’s a medium to explore a sensibility.  If it’s not the best medium, then I’ll do something else.

Going back to influences and the notion of whom I really want to be when I grow up: the person I really admire, as far as the form and content and productivity of his work, is John Berger.  I’d like to be a John Berger in the sense of his literary pursuits, his beautiful nonfiction books that are basically documentaries on the page.  I just watched Parting Shots from Animals [a film from 1980 based on Berger’s essays].  What a multifarious, unique and earnest body of work he’s produced.  I’m so envious of it.  He does it with such sincerity.  He can use this direct address to the camera and you just go with him.  I watched about five of his films the other day and I was having the nicest conversation with him in my mind.  I just loved it.  If I can give people something remotely analogous to that, I would be so happy.

SIM:  He fully engages you.  I love that phenomenon when you are convinced that the person you’re listening to and watching is speaking directly to you; it’s so personal.  You know that if you sat in a room together, there’d be a connection.  Those that are going to appreciate the kind of work you do are going to take it in in a very personal way.

AT:  Right. I mean if you’re not willing to go with John on this trip he’s offering to you, you’ll just ignore it.  I’m sure there are people for whom his work is just completely irrelevant and odd and some would exclaim, “That’s not a movie!  Nothing happens!”  But if you’re there and you’re submitting yourself to it, it’s really delightful.  He expects a certain level of seriousness and commitment and engagement from his viewer and I really like that.  You should expect the best from your audience.

SIM:  Again, we’re talking about the importance of a non-passive audience; you need an actively engaged viewer for your film to be successful.  I personally like when I have to work a bit and ponder things while they’re happening.  It can be kind of exhausting but you’re so much the richer for the experience so you can’t complain too much.  Those of us who create things rely upon that willingness to participate in our vision.  We’re not making car commercials here.

AT:  You want to start a conversation.  That’s why it’s amazing to have people come up and share a flash of insight or how they might disagree with something someone said in my film.  Moving beyond working with philosophers, for me, the question might be will I assume a more active role in terms of presenting the theories that fascinate me instead of having these proxies presenting them? When my parents watched my film they thought it was amazing.  They saw that I had gathered all of these philosophers together talking about all the things that have mattered to me since I was five years old!  Still, John Berger is certainly the person with the career I’m most intrigued by.  Again, I’m surprised that there aren’t a million people trying to do what he’s done.  How can there just be one?

SIM:  Maybe most of us don’t think it’s possible to do what he does, otherwise there might be more.

AT:  Or we assume that there’s no audience when there actually is.  Berger’s making these videos which he calls “television programmes,” that commissioning editors and producers and, even people on the street, would probably tell you are a terrible idea.  Typically, people in this line of work are obsessed with story and character development and all these things that are great, but we’ve shown that human beings can do them a million times over.  Why not try something different?

SIM:  When you and Ron pitched this at Hot Docs, how did it go over?

AT:  Oh my god, it was a disaster.  I meant to tell people this story last night.  I was trying to tell the class stories of my embarrassments and failures just to kind of keep it real a bit.  Not that I’ve been so successful really.  It’s just that I think it’s good to encourage people to be tenacious.

SIM:  Did you originally pitch Ron?

AT:  I had this proposal that I just hid in my desk assuming nobody was going to go for this.  It was just an ensemble piece with philosophers; I hadn’t devised the walking concept yet.  I met Ron for coffee and he said that he’d been wanting to do an anthology film about philosophers for a long time.  And I said, oh really?  Me, too.  And I emailed him my paragraph and he said that we were on the same wavelength; let’s go!

So we took off together and TVO (TVOntario) came on board, which was awesome.  Then we signed up for the Hot Docs pitching forum.  I was the only person out of about 30 people who had not even begun production.  So I had no footage to show which put me at a distinct disadvantage.  It just bombed, went over like a lead weight.  I was told by one person that people in the Netherlands weren’t into “this sort of thing.”  One guy literally attacked me for my attraction to these “ponderous academics!!!”  He wanted to know how I could even think about doing this.  What could possibly attract me to philosophy, was what he wanted to know. And he said all this in the most antagonistic way in front of 500 people.  It was a really negative experience. For the remaining three days of the festival, all kinds of people (all 500, seemingly) were coming up and patting me on the back, telling me, “Oh, so sorry, philosophy girl. That was brutal.”

In the end, I was lucky because I didn’t really need any other pre-sales because TVO, a public broadcaster in Canada, a channel that really takes risks and trusts its viewers, had signed on.  It would have been a real disaster if I had desperately needed the support of the commissioning editors that were seated around the table.

SIM:  Well, there’s more to life than the fabulous pitch.  There’s no guarantee a commissioned piece is going to be any good either; it’s just that you have a ton of people standing by to pummel it into some sort of watchable piece, if need be.

AT:  I felt participating in the pitching forum was a useful experience.  But will all this make it easier for me to do a similar project in the future?  I don’t know.  We don’t know where the economy is going.  We don’t know where documentary is going. The filmmakers seemed to like my pitch, though. To them, I was pitching this unmarketable, uncompromising film that didn’t fit into the conventional television box. But the commissioning editors, obviously, have a strong idea of what their audience wants to see. And I just picture John Berger.  His ideas would also bomb in that context.  Yet, I think they’re brilliant.  He’s found an enormous audience.  So I’m not sure anyone really knows what audiences do, or do not, want to see, after all.

SIM:  Well, regardless, it’s a beautiful gift to be able to give yourself the opportunity to realize something that’s imbued with so much meaning for you.  Even if you never make a film again, you made a very distinctive piece that only Astra Taylor could have made—two, actually.  To me, that’s what’s so amazing about nonfiction filmmaking.  You don’t really ever have to have much else but that seed, that idea, of the story you want to tell. And life brings it to you in very organic and serendipitous ways and it gets made.  To a person, every filmmaker that’s completed a film speaks to that phenomenon and their awareness that that was what was occurring.  That does not exist in any other kind of cinema, not in that way.

AT:  I would agree.  I was thinking about serendipity in the midst of trying to give more concrete advice to these filmmakers in the classes I visited.  Being open and making connections is everything.  That’s what it’s like when you’re shooting your documentary; you’re actively looking for those magical moments.  You’re directing and you’ve got your vision and you know what you want.  But at the same time, you’re waiting for something to happen because it would make it even better.  So much of it is that innate gut feeling and tapping into that.  It’s not something you can mastermind and control.  I’ve never made a fiction film, but I would imagine once you’ve gone through your creative process writing your script, then you’re actualizing it. It’s about control.  Documentary film is not like that, as far as I can tell.

SIM:  Or the control comes much later in the process.

AT:  Those can be horrible moments when you think you might have gone down the wrong path and you’ve wasted precious time.  Or you’re shooting and you know you’re never going to use it but you just keep going in the hopes that it’ll get better.  I quite like that.  The lack of control can be terrifying and anxiety provoking, but that’s what’s so much fun about it.  Who wants to know what the day’s going to look like?  It does cause me a lot of stress, though.  I’m a worrier.  But if I didn’t take things so seriously, I don’t think I’d do anything.  Part of that anxiety is because you know you want to do a good job.  You want something ineffable to go right.  So much of it, too, is luck, getting to do this professionally, finding the resources and support, meeting people who will help you.  That stuff is a little murkier.

Making something that’s so singular and personal and not being so overly concerned about how much money you raise or how well it does, I think it’s very important to keep that in mind.  I do see people with their careers going, and getting more and more frustrated at how difficult it is to find support or reach an audience.  That’s something that I’m thinking about as the future looms.  If you’re making work that is unusual and quirky then you kind of have to be prepared to have a very small audience.  It’s about managing expectations.  I often think about who my heroes were when I was younger and how few books they sold, how few albums they sold, how they truly fared in real life.  It’s so much better to resist the common expectation that every film you make has to be bigger and better and gain a wider audience. When you make this kind of work, it’s just as hard every time.  But, of course, it’s totally worth it.

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Capitalismo no es sólo una época histórica entre otras. En cierto modo, el alguna vez de moda y ahora medio olvidado Francis Fukuyama tenía razón: el capital global es “el fin de la historia.” Un cierto exceso que era mantenido bajo control en la historia anterior, percibido como una perversión localizable, como un exceso, una desviación, es en el capitalismo elevado al principio mismo de la vida social, en el movimiento especulativo del dinero que engendra más dinero, de un sistema que sólo puede sobrevivir revolucionando constantemente su propia condición, es decir, en que la cosa sólo puede sobrevivir como su propio exceso, excediendo constantemente sus propios constreñimientos “normales.” Y, quizás es sólo hoy, en el capitalismo global en su forma “posindustrial”, digitalizada que, para ponerlo en las términos hegelianos, realmente el capitalismo existente está alcanzando el nivel de su noción:

quizás, uno debe seguir de nuevo el viejo lema antievolucionista de Marx (a propósito, tomado literalmente de Hegel) de que la anatomía de hombre proporciona la clave de la anatomía del mono – esto es que, para desplegar la estructura nocional inherente de una formación social, uno debe empezar con su más desarrollada forma.

Marx localizó el elemental antagonismo capitalista en la oposición entre el valor-de-uso y el valor-de-cambio: en el capitalismo, se comprenden totalmente los potenciales de esta oposición, el dominio del valor-de-cambio adquiere autonomía, se transfiere en el espectro de la auto-propulsión del capital especulativo que sólo necesita las capacidades productivas y las necesidades de las personas reales como su encarnación temporal dispensable. Marx derivó la misma noción de crisis económica en este hueco: una crisis ocurre cuando la realidad se alcanza con lo ilusorio, el espejismo auto-generador del dinero que engendra más dinero – esta locura especulativa no puede seguir indefinidamente; tiene que explotar siempre en crisis cada vez más fuertes. La última raíz de la crisis es para él, el hueco entre el valor-de-uso y el valor-de-cambio: la lógica del valor-de-cambio sigue su propio camino, su propio baile enfadado, independiente de las necesidades reales de las personas reales. Puede parecer que este análisis es más real hoy, cuando la tensión entre el universo real y lo real está alcanzando proporciones casi palpablemente insufribles: por un lado, nosotros estamos locos, especulaciones solipsistas sobre los futuros, fusiones, y así sucesivamente, que siguen su propia lógica inherente; por otro lado, la realidad está alcanzándome la forma de catástrofes ecológicas, pobreza, enfermedades en el Tercer Mundo, el derrumbamiento de vida social, la enfermedad de las vacas locas.

Esta es la razón por la que los cyber-capitalistas pueden aparecer hoy como los capitalistas paradigmáticos; esta es la razón por la qué Bill Gates puede soñar el ciberespacio como aquello que mantiene el marco de lo que él llama “capitalismo sin fricciones.” Lo qué nosotros tenemos aquí es un corto circuito ideológico entre las dos versiones del hueco entre la realidad y la virtualidad: el hueco entre la producción real y el dominio virtual, espectral del Capital, y el hueco entre la realidad de la experiencia y la realidad virtual del ciberespacio. Parece efectivamente que el hueco entre el yo de la pantalla fascinante y la carne miserable que soy “yo” fuera de-pantalla se traduce en la experiencia inmediata como el hueco entre lo Real de la circulación especulativa del capital y la realidad pardusca de masas empobrecidas. Sin embargo, ¿esta es (este recurso a “realidad” que quiere más pronto o después alcanzar el juego virtual) realmente la única manera operacional de una crítica del capitalismo? ¿Y si el problema del capitalismo no es este solipsistico baile enloquecido sino precisamente lo contrario: que continúa repudiando su hueco con la “realidad”, qué se presenta como sirviendo a las necesidades reales de las personas reales? La originalidad de Marx es que el jugó con ambas tarjetas simultáneamente: el origen de las crisis capitalistas es el hueco entre el valor-de-uso y el valor-de-cambio, y el capitalismo reprime el libre despliegue de la productividad.

Lo qué todo esto significa es que la tarea más urgente del análisis económico de hoy es, de nuevo, repetir la crítica de Marx de la economía política, sin caer en la tentación de la ideología de las sociedades “posindustriales.” Es mi hipótesis que la clave del cambio concierne al estado de la propiedad privada: el último elemento de poder y mando no es ningún más amplio último eslabón en la cadena de las inversiones, las empresas o los individuos que “realmente poseen” los medios de producción. En el capitalista ideal de hoy funciona de una manera totalmente diferente: invirtiendo el dinero prestado, no “poseyendo realmente” nada – incluso es deudor, pero, no obstante, controlando las cosas. Una corporación es poseída por otra corporación, que está pidiendo dinero prestado a los bancos, los cuales pueden últimamente manipular el dinero depositado de las personas ordinarias como nosotros. Con Bill Gates, la “propiedad privada de los medios de producción” se vuelve sin sentido, por lo menos en el significado estándar de la palabra. La paradoja de esta virtualización del capitalismo es finalmente igual a aquello que pasa con el electrón en la física de las partículas elementales. La masa de cada elemento en nuestra realidad está compuesta de su masa en reposo más el sobrante proporcionado por la aceleración de su movimiento; sin embargo, la masa de un electrón en reposo es cero, su masa consiste sólo en el sobrante generado por la aceleración de su movimiento, como si nosotros estuviéramos tratando con una nada que sólo adquiere alguna substancia engañosa hilándose mágicamente con un exceso de sí mismo. ¿No funciona el capitalismo virtual de hoy de una manera homóloga: su “valor neto” es cero, él opera directamente sólo con el sobrante que pide prestado del futuro?

Esto, exactamente, es lo que Michael Hardt y Antonio Negri están intentando hacer en su Imperio (2000), un libro que se pone como meta escribir el Manifiesto Comunista para el siglo XXI. Hardt y Negri describen la globalización como una “deterritorialización” ambigua: la victoria del capitalismos global empuja cada poro de nuestras vidas sociales a la más íntima de las esferas, e instala en un presente siempre dinámico, qué ya no está basado en jerárquicas patriarcales u otras estructuras de dominación. En cambio, causa identidades híbridas. Por otro lado, esta corrosión fundamental de todas las conexiones sociales importantes libera al genio de la botella: libera las fuerzas potencialmente centrífugas que el sistema capitalista no es capaz de controlar. Es exactamente porque triunfo el capitalismo global que el sistema capitalista es más vulnerable que nunca. La vieja formula de Marx aún es válida: el capitalismo cava su propia tumba. Hardt y Negri describen este proceso como la transición del Estado-nación Imperio global, una entidad transnacional comparable a la Roma antigua en que las masas híbridas de identidades esparcidas se desarrollaron. Hardt y Negri merecen un elogio por iluminarnos sobre la naturaleza contradictoria del “turbocapitalismo” de hoy e intentar identificar el potencial revolucionario de su dinámica. Este esfuerzo heroico se pone en sí mismo contra la visión estándar de aquéllos en la izquierda que se esfuerzan por limitar los poderes destructivos de la globalización y rescatar (lo que de la izquierda se puede rescatar) el Estado de bienestar. Esta visión izquierdista estándar se imbuye de una desconfianza profundamente conservadora de la dinámica de la globalización y la digitalización, lo cuál es contrario a la confianza marxista en el poder del progreso.

No obstante, uno inmediatamente intuye los límites del análisis de Hardt y Negri. En su análisis social-económico, la falta de visión concreta es disimulada por la jerga deleuziana de multitud, deterritorialización, etc. No es ninguna sorpresa que las tres “propuestas prácticas” con las que el libro finaliza aparezcan de modo anticlimaticos. Los autores proponen enfocar nuestra lucha política en tres derechos globales: los derechos a la ciudadanía global, un ingreso mínimo, y la re-apropriación de los nuevos medios de producción (es decir el acceso a y el control sobre educación, información y comunicación). Es una paradoja que Hardt y Negri, los poetas de la movilidad, la variedad, la hibridación, y así sucesivamente, formulen tres demandas en la terminología de los derechos humanos universales. El problema con estas demandas es que ellos fluctúan entre el vacío formal y la radicalización imposible. Permítasenos tomar el derecho a la ciudadanía global: teóricamente, este derecho debe aprobarse, por supuesto. Sin embargo, si esta demanda significa ser tomada seriamente como una declaración formal típica de las Naciones Unidas, entonces significaría la abolición de las fronteras estatales; bajo las condiciones del presente, semejante paso activaría una invasión de la mano de obra barata de la India, China y Africa en los Estados Unidos y Europa Occidental, qué produciría una revuelta populista contra inmigrante – un resultado de tales proporciones violentas que harían parecer a figuras como Haider en modelos de tolerancia multicultural. Lo mismo es válido con respecto a las otras dos demandas: por ejemplo, el derecho universal (mundial) a un ingreso mínimo-por supuesto, ¿por qué no? Pero, ¿cómo debe uno crear las condiciones socio-económicas e ideológicas para que estalle semejante transformación?

Esta crítica no sólo apunta a detalles empíricos secundarios. El problema principal con Imperio es que el libro se queda corto en su análisis fundamental de cómo (si en todo) el presente proceso global, socio-económico creará el espacio necesario para tales medidas radicales: ellos no repiten, en las condiciones de hoy, la línea argumentativa de Marx de que la perspectiva de la revolución proletaria surgira fuera de los antagonismos inherentes al modo de producción capitalista. En este aspecto, Imperio sigue siendo un libro del pre-marxista. Sin embargo, quizás la solución es que no es suficiente retornar a Marx, y repetir los análisis de Marx, sino que nosotros debemos y necesitamos retornar a Lenin.

La primera reacción pública a la idea de reactualizar a Lenin es, por supuesto, un estallido de risa sarcástica: ¡Marx esta bien, incluso en Wall Street hay personas que hoy lo aman – el Marx poeta de los artículos que proporcionaron descripciones perfectas de la dinámica capitalista, el Marx de los Estudios Culturales que retrataron la alienación y la reificación de nuestras vidas diarias -, pero Lenin, no, usted no puede ser serio! ¿El movimiento de la clase obrera, el Partido Revolucionario, y los zombie-conceptos similares? ¿No representa precisamente Lenin el fracaso de poner en la práctica al marxismo, porque creo una gran catástrofe que dejó su marca en toda la política mundial del siglo XX, por el experimento del Socialismo Real que culminó en una dictadura económicamente ineficaz? Así que, en la política académica contemporánea, la idea de tratar con Lenin va acompañada de dos requisitos: sí, por que no, vivimos en una democracia liberal, hay libertad de pensamiento… sin embargo, uno debe tratar a Lenin  “de una manera objetiva, crítica y científica”, no en una actitud de idolatría nostálgica, y, además, desde la perspectiva firmemente arraigada en el orden político democrático, dentro del horizonte de los derechos humanos – en eso reside la dolorosa lección aprendida a través de la experiencia de los totalitarismos del siglo XX.

¿Qué decimos nosotros ante esto? De nuevo, el problema reside en los requisitos implícitos que pueden discernirse fácilmente por el “análisis concreto de la situación concreta”, como el propio Lenin lo habría formulado. La “fidelidad al consenso democrático” significa la aceptación del presente consenso liberal-parlamentario, que evita cualquier cuestionamiento serio del orden liberal-democrático, de cómo éste es cómplice de los fenómenos que oficialmente condena, y, claro, evita cualquier esfuerzo serio por imaginar una sociedad cuyo orden socio-político sea diferente. Para abreviar, significa: diga y escriba cualquier cosa que usted quiera – con la condición de que lo que usted haga no cuestione eficazmente o perturbe el consenso político predominante. Así que todo se permite, incluso se piden temas críticos: las perspectivas de una catástrofe ecológica global, las violaciones a los derechos humanos, el sexismo, la homofobia, el antifeminismo, la violencia creciente no sólo en lejanísimos países, sino también en nuestras megalópolis, la separación entre el Primer y el Tercer Mundo, entre ricos y pobres, el impacto de la digitalización que estalla en nuestras vidas diarias… hoy no hay nada más fácil que obtener fondos internacionales, corporativos o de Estados, para una investigación multidisciplinaria de cómo luchar contra las nuevas formas de la violencia étnica, religiosa o sexista. El problema es que todo esto ocurre contra el fondo de un Denkverbot fundamental, una prohibición-para-pensar. La hegemonía liberal-democrática de hoy se sostiene por un tipo de Denkverbot no escrito similar al Berufsverbot infame en la Alemania de los últimos 60s – en el momento en que uno muestra una mínima señal de comprometer un proyecto político que apunte a desafiar el orden existente en serio, la respuesta es inmediatamente: “es bondadoso, ¡pero esto necesariamente acabará en un nuevo Gulag!”

Y es exactamente esta misma cosa lo que la demanda por la “objetividad científica” significa: en el momento en que uno cuestiona seriamente el acuerdo general liberal existente, uno es acusado de abandonar la objetividad científica por posiciones ideológicas anticuadas. En cuanto a nosotros aquí, ninguno de nosotros está envuelto en ninguna actividad inconstitucional. Probablemente todos saben del sarcasmo de De Quincey sobre el “simple asesinato”: cuántas personas empezaron con un simple asesinato que a ese punto, no parecía para ellos en nada especial, y ¡terminaron comportándose mal en la mesa! A lo largo de las mismas líneas, no nos gustaría ciertamente seguir en los pasos de aquéllos que empezaron con un par de palizas inocentes a la policía y cócteles Molotov que, en ese momento, aparecía para ellos como algo que no tenía nada especial, y terminaron como ministros alemanes en el extranjero. Hay, sin embargo, un punto en el que nosotros no podemos conceder nada: hoy, la actual libertad real de pensamiento tendría que significar la libertad de cuestionar el predominante consenso liberal-democrático “pos-ideológico” – o no significa nada.

Aunque la mayoría de nosotros probablemente no está de acuerdo con Jürgen Habermas, nosotros vivimos en una era que podría designarse con uno de sus términos neue Undurchsichtlichkeit, la nueva opacidad. Más que nunca, nuestra experiencia diaria está mistificada: la modernización genera nuevos obscurantismos, la reducción de la libertad se presenta ante nosotros como la llegada a nuevas libertades. En estas circunstancias, uno debe tener especial cuidado para no confundir la ideología gobernante con la ideología que PARECE dominar. Más que nunca, uno debe tener presente el recordatorio de Walter Benjamín de que no basta con preguntarse cómo es que una cierta teoría (del arte) se declara a sí misma como legitima teniendo en cuenta las luchas sociales – uno también debe preguntarse cómo funciona eficazmente EN estas mismas luchas. En el sexo, la actitud hegemónica eficaz no es la represión patriarcal, sino la promiscuidad libre; en el arte, las provocaciones en el estilo de las conocidas exhibiciones  “Sensation” SON la norma, el ejemplo del arte totalmente integrado en el establishment.

Por consiguiente, uno esta tentado a invertir la tesis XI de Marx. Hoy la primera tarea es precisamente no sucumbir a la tentación de actuar, de intervenir directamente y cambiar las cosas (qué nos conduciría entonces inevitablemente al final de un callejón sin salida, a una debilitadora imposibilidad: “¿qué puede uno hacer contra el capital global? “). Más bien, la tarea es cuestionar las coordenadas ideológicas hegemónicas, o, como Brecht lo puso en su Me Te, “Pensar es algo que precede a la acción y sigue a la experiencia.” Si hoy uno sigue directamente el llamado para actuar, este acto no se realizará en un espacio vacío – será un acto dentro de las coordenadas de la hegemonía ideológica: aquellos que “realmente quieren hacer algo para ayudar a la gente” se involucran en (indudablemente honorables) hazañas como el de los Medecins sans frontiere (Médicos sin frontera), Greenpeace, feministas y campañas anti-racistas, todas las cuales no son sólo toleradas, sino incluso apoyadas por los medios, aun cuando ellos entran aparentemente en el territorio económico (diciendo, denunciando y boicoteando a compañías que no respetan las condiciones ecológicas o qué usan mano de obra infantil). Ellos son tolerados y apoyados con tal de que se mantengan dentro de un cierto límite. Permítanme tomar dos temas predominantes de la academia radical americana de hoy: los estudios poscoloniales y los estudios queer (gay). El problema del poscolonialismo es indudablemente crucial; sin embargo, los “estudios poscoloniales” tienden a traducirlo todo a la problemática multiculturalista de las minorías colonizadas y su “derecho para narrar” su experiencia de víctimas, de los mecanismos de poder que reprimen la “diferencia”, para que, al final del día, nosotros aprendemos que la raíz de la explotación poscolonial es nuestra intolerancia hacia el Otro, y, además, que esta intolerancia está arraigada en nuestra intolerancia hacia el “extraño en nosotros”, en nuestra incapacidad para confrontar lo que nosotros reprimimos en y de nosotros. La lucha político-económica se transforma así imperceptiblemente en un drama pseudo-psicoanalítico del sujeto que es incapaz de confrontar sus traumas internos. La verdadera corrupción de la academia americana no es principalmente financiera, no sólo es que ellos puedan comprar a muchos intelectuales críticos europeos (incluido yo – hasta cierto punto), sino conceptual: imperceptiblemente se traducen nociones de la teoría crítica “europea” al benigno universo chic de los Estudios Culturales. Con respecto a estos radicales chic, el primer gesto hacia los ideólogos y practicantes de la “tercera vía”, esto debe ser una alabanza: por lo menos ellos juegan su juego de un modo recto, y es honrado en su aceptación de las coordenadas capitalistas globales, en contraste con los Izquierdistas académicos pseudo-radicales que adoptan hacia los ideólogos vulgares la actitud de desdén absoluto, mientras su propia radicalidad finalmente equivale a un gesto vacío que no obliga a ninguno de ellos a algo determinado.

“Lenin” no es para nosotros el nombre nostálgico para la vieja certeza dogmática; totalmente lo contrario, para ponerlo en términos de Kierkegaard, EL Lenin que nosotros queremos recuperar es el Lenin-in-becoming, el Lenin cuya experiencia fundamental era arrojar una nueva constelación dentro de la catástrofe, en la que las viejas coordenadas demostraban ser inútiles, y que así fue obligado a reinventar al marxismo – recordemos sus mordaces y oportunos comentarios a propósito de algún nuevo problema: “Sobre esto, Marx y Engels no dijeron una palabra.” La idea no es retornar a Lenin, sino repetirlo en el sentido Kierkegaardiano: para recobrar el mismo impulso en la constelación de hoy. El retorno a Lenin no apunta nostálgicamente al renacimiento de los “viejos buenos tiempos revolucionarios”, ni al ajuste oportunista-pragmático del viejo programa a las “nuevas condiciones”, sino a repetir, en las presentes condiciones mundiales, el gesto Leninista de reinventar el proyecto revolucionario en las condiciones del imperialismo y el colonialismo, más precisamente: después del colapso político-ideológico de la larga era del progresismo en la catástrofe de 1914. Eric Hobsbawn definió el concepto de siglo XX como el tiempo entre 1914, el fin de la larga expansión pacífica del capitalismo, y 1990, la emergencia de la nueva forma de capitalismo global después del derrumbamiento del Socialismo Realmente Existente. Qué hizo Lenin con respecto a 1914, que nosotros debamos hacer con respecto a 1990. “Lenin” representa la libertad forzada para suspender la vieja y agotada existencia de las coordenadas (pos)ideológicas, el debilitante Denkverbot en que nosotros vivimos – simplemente significa que estamos autorizados para pensar de nuevo.

La posición de Lenin contra el economismo así como contra la política pura es crucial hoy, a propósito de la actitud hendida hacia la economía en (lo que queda de) los círculos radicales: de un lado, los antes mencionados “políticos” puros que abandonan la economía como sitio de lucha e intervención; por otro lado, los economistas, fascinados con el funcionando de la economía global de hoy, qué evitan cualquier posibilidad de una intervención política apropiado. Hoy, más que nunca, nosotros debemos retornar a Lenin: sí, la economía es un dominio importante, la batalla se decidirá allí, uno tiene que romper el hechizo del capitalismo global – pero la intervención debe ser propiamente política, no económica.

La batalla a ser luchada es así doble: primero, sí, anticapitalismo. Sin embargo, anticapitalismo sin problematizar la forma política capitalista (la democracia parlamentaria liberal) no es suficiente, no importa cuán “radical” sea. Quizás el señuelo hoy es la creencia de que uno puede minar al capitalismo sin problematizar efectivamente el legado liberal-democrático que – como algunos Izquierdistas afirman – aunque haya sido engendrado por el capitalismo, la autonomía adquirida puede servir para criticar al capitalismo. Este señuelo es estrictamente correlativo a su aparente contrario, la pseudo-deleuziana representación poética fascinante/fascinado de amor-odio del Capital como un monstruo/vampiro rizomatico que desterritorializa y traga a todos, indomable, dinámico, aumentando la vida del muerto, cada crisis lo hace más fuerte, Dionisos-Fénix renaciendo… Es en esta poética referencia (anti)capitalista de Marx que Marx es el realmente muerto: despojado de su aguijón político.

En todo esto, entonces, ¿dónde esta Lenin? Según la doxa predominante, en los años posteriores a la Revolución de octubre, la disminuida fe de Lenin en las capacidades creativas de las masas lo llevaron a enfatizar al papel de la ciencia y los científicos, con la confianza en la autoridad del experto: él aclamo “el principio de ese feliz tiempo cuando la política retrocederá al trasfondo… y los ingenieros y agrónomos tendrán la mayor parte de la palabra.” ¿Tecnocracia pos-política? Las ideas de Lenin sobre cómo el camino que el socialismo tiene que recorrer pasa a través del terreno del capitalismo de monopolio pueden parecer gravemente ingenuas hoy:

<<El capitalismo ha creado un aparato de contabilidad en la forma de los bancos, sindicatos, servicio postal, sociedades de consumidores, y uniones de empleados de oficina. Sin los grandes bancos el socialismo sería imposible… nuestra tarea consiste meramente aquí en amputar lo que mutila capitalistamente este excelente aparato, hacerlo aun más grande, aun más democrático, aun más abarcador… Será un registro nacional, una contabilidad nacional de la producción y distribución de los bienes, esto será, por así decirlo, algo así como la naturaleza del esqueleto de la sociedad socialista>> (Lenin 1960-70, 26: 106)

¿No es ésta la expresión más radical de la noción de Marx del intelecto general que regula toda la vida social de una manera transparente, del mundo pos-político en el qué la “administración de las personas” será suplantada por la “administración de las cosas”? Es, por supuesto, fácil jugar contra esta cita la carta de la “crítica la razón instrumental” y el “mundo administrado (verwaltete Welt)”: el potencial “totalitario” esta inscrito en esta misma forma de control social total. Es fácil comentar sarcásticamente cómo, en la época estalinista, el aparato de administración social se volvió efectivamente “aun más grande”. No obstante, ¿esta visión pos-política no es acaso el opuesto extremo de la noción maoísta de la eternidad de la lucha de la clases (“todo es político”)?

Sin embargo, ¿es todo tan inequívoco? ¿Y si uno reemplaza el ejemplo (obviamente anticuado) del banco central con la World Wide Web, el candidato perfecto actual para el papel del Intelecto General? Dorothy Sayers planteaba que la Poética de Aristóteles es efectivamente la teoría de la novelas de detectives avant la lettre – pero como el pobre de Aristóteles no conoció la novela de detectives, tenía que referirse a los únicos ejemplos a su disposición, las tragedias… Siguiendo las mismas líneas, Lenin estaba desarrollando efectivamente la teoría del papel de la World Wide Web, pero, como la WWW era desconocida para él, tenía que referirse a los infortunados bancos centrales. Por consiguiente, ¿podría decir uno que “sin la World Wide Web el socialismo sería imposible… nuestra tarea aquí es sencillamente amputar lo que mutila capitalistamente este excelente aparato, hacerlo aun más grande, aun más democrático, aun más abarcador”? En estas condiciones, uno se siente tentado a resucitar la vieja, abusiva y medio-olvidada, dialéctica marxiana de las fuerzas productivas y las relaciones de producción: ya es un lugar común afirmar que, irónicamente, fue esta misma dialéctica la que enterró al Socialismo Realmente Existente: El socialismo no pudo sostener el pasaje de la economía industrial a la economía pos-industrial. Sin embargo, ¿el capitalismo realmente proporciona  el marco “natural” de las relaciones de producción para el universo digital? ¿No hay también un potencial explosivo para el mismo capitalismo en la World Wide Web? ¿No es precisamente la lección del monopolio de Microsoft una lección leninista: en lugar de combatir su monopolio a través del aparato estatal (recordemos la división de la corporación de Microsoft ordenada por la Corte), no sería más “lógico” simplemente socializarlo, haciéndolo accesible libremente?

El antagonismo importante de la llamada nueva industria (digital) es así: ¿cómo mantener la forma de propiedad (privada), que es la única forma en la que puede mantenerse la lógica de la ganancia (veamos también el problema de Napster, la circulación libre de música). ¿Y las complicaciones legales en la biogenética no apuntan hacia la misma dirección? El elemento clave de los nuevos acuerdos internacionales de comercio es la “protección de la propiedad intelectual”: siempre que, en una fusión, una gran compañía del Primer Mundo toma a una compañía del Tercer Mundo, la primera cosa que ellos hacen es cerrar el departamento de investigación. (En Eslovenia-Henkel-Zlatorog, nuestra compañía tenía que firmar un acuerdo formal ¡para no hacer ninguna investigación!). Las Paradoja qué involucran a la noción de propiedad con las paradojas dialécticas son extraordinarias: en la India, las comunidades locales descubren de repente que las prácticas médicas y materiales que ellos han estado usando durante siglos son poseídos ahora por compañías norteamericanas, de manera que ahora deben comprárselas a ellos; con los compañías biogenéticas que patentizan genes, todos nosotros estamos descubriendo que partes de nosotros, nuestros componentes genéticos, ya son propiedad registrada, poseída por otros.

Hoy, ya no podemos discernir las señales de un tipo de malestar general – recordemos la serie de eventos normalmente agrupados bajo el nombre de “Seattle.” Los 10 años de luna de miel del capitalismo global triunfante han terminado, la largamente-retrasada “comezón del séptimo año” ya está aquí – atestigüemos las reacciones de pánico de los grandes medios de comunicación, – desde la revista Time a CNN – de repente, todos empezaron a advertir sobre la existencia de marxistas que manipulan a la muchedumbre de manifestantes “honestos.” El problema ahora es el estrictamente leninista – cómo actualizar las imputaciones de los medios de comunicación: cómo inventar la estructura organizacional que conferirá a esta inquietud la forma de una demanda política universal. De no ser así, el momento, la oportunidad se perderá, y lo que permanecerá será una perturbación marginal, quizás organizada como un nuevo Greenpeace, con cierta eficacia, pero también con metas estrictamente limitadas, con estrategias de marketing, etc. En otros términos, la lección “leninista” clave hoy es: política sin la forma organizacional de partido es política sin política, de modo que la respuesta para aquéllos que simplemente quieren los (atinadamente llamados) “Nuevos Movimientos sociales” es la misma respuesta de los jacobinos a los compromisarios girondinos: “Ustedes quiere la revolución sin revolución!” El obstáculo de hoy es que parece haber sólo dos caminos abiertos para el compromiso socio-político: o jugar el juego del sistema, comprometerse en una “larga marcha a través de las instituciones”, o actuar en los nuevos movimientos sociales, desde el feminismo a través de la ecología al anti-racismo. Y, de nuevo, el límite de estos movimientos es que ellos no son políticos en el sentido del Universal Singular: ellos son “un movimientos contra un sólo problema”, que carecen de la dimensión de la universalidad, es decir, no se relacionan con la totalidad social.

Aquí, el reproche de Lenin a los liberales es crucial: ellos sólo explotan el descontento de las clases trabajadoras para fortalecer su posición vis-à-vis frente a los conservadores, en lugar de identificarse con ese descontento hasta el final. ¿No es este el caso con los liberales de izquierda de hoy? Les gusta evocar el racismo, la ecología, los agravios a los obreros, etc., para anotar puntos sobre los conservadores sin poner en peligro el sistema. Recordemos cómo, en Seattle, el propio Bill Clinton se refirió diestramente a los manifestantes que estaban afuera, en las calles, recordándoles a los líderes reunidos dentro del palacio sitiado que ellos debían escuchar el mensaje de los manifestantes (el mensaje que, por supuesto, Clinton interpretó, fue privado de su aguijón subversivo atribuido a los extremistas peligrosos que introducen el caos y la violencia en la mayoría de los manifestantes pacíficos). Pasa lo mismo con los todos los Nuevos Movimientos Sociales, hasta con los Zapatistas en Chiapas: la política del sistema esta siempre lista para “escuchar sus demandas”, privándolas de su aguijón político apropiado. El sistema es por la definición ecuménico, abierto, tolerante, preparado para “escuchar” a todos – aun cuando uno insista en sus propias demandas, ellos la privan de su aguijón político universal por la misma forma de la negociación. La verdadera Tercera Vía que nosotros tenemos que buscar es esta tercera vía entre la política parlamentaria institucionalizada y los nuevos movimientos sociales.

Repetir a Lenin es así aceptar que “Lenín está muerto”- que su solución particular falló, incluso falló monstruosamente, pero que había una chispa utópica que merece ser salvada. Repetir a Lenin significa que uno tiene que distinguir entre lo que Lenin hizo efectivamente y el campo de posibilidades que él abrió, la tensión entre lo que Lenin hizo efectivamente y otra dimensión, lo que estaba “en Lenin más que en el propio Lenin”. Repetir a Lenin no es repetir lo que Lenin hizo sino lo que él no hizo, sus oportunidades erradas.

Referencias

-Hardt, Michael, y Antonio Negri. Empire. 2000. Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard University Press. (Hardt, Michael, y Antonio Negri. Imperio, Buenos Aires, 2002, ed. Paidós)

-Lenin, V.I. 1960-70. Collected Works. 45 vols. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House.

Título Original: Have Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri Rewritten the Communist Manifesto For the Twenty-First Century?

Extraído de: Rethinking Marxism, Volume 13, Number 3/4 2001

http://www.egs.edu/faculty/zizek/zizek-have-michael-hardt-antonio-negri-communist-manifesto.html

http://www.lacan.com/zizek-empire.htm

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