Slavoj Žižek on His Stubborn Attachment to Communism
Conversations with Tyler
Conversations with Tyler
4.8 • 2.6K Ratings
🗓️ 8 January 2020
⏱️ 87 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This bonus episode features audio from the Holberg Debate in Bergen, Norway between Tyler and Slavoj Žižek held on December 7, 2019. They discuss the reasons Slavoj (still) considers himself a Communist, why he calls The Handmaid's Tale "nostalgia for the present," what he likes about Greta Thunberg, what Marx got right about the commodification of beliefs, his concerns about ecology and surveillance in communist states like China today, the reasons academia should maintain its 'useless character,' his beginnings as a Heideggerian, why he is distrustful of liberal optimism, the "Fukuyama dilemma" we face, the importance of "empty manners," and more.
Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.
Recorded December 7th, 2019
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, |
| 0:08.3 | bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems. |
| 0:12.5 | Learn more at mercatis.org. |
| 0:15.2 | And for more conversations, including videos, transcripts, and upcoming dates, visit |
| 0:20.4 | ConversationsWithTyler.com. |
| 0:34.9 | Before you begin, let me express my admiration for him. |
| 0:39.0 | I'm a strange communist like Marx, who said that one can learn more from a conservative |
| 0:46.3 | like Balzac, then from all progressives about economy, I think that our only true partners, |
| 0:54.0 | the true leftists today, are modest, intelligent, honest, skeptics, conservatives. |
| 1:00.4 | This morning, he provided the best, I'm grateful for it, the best definition of myself. |
| 1:06.0 | He told me that he considers me a moderate conservative communist. |
| 1:11.2 | My gratitude to you. |
| 1:14.6 | I would like to pursue this theme. |
| 1:16.6 | Thank you for your remarks. |
| 1:18.5 | The assigned topic was why I am still a communist. |
| 1:21.6 | I think, in fact, what you argued was why I am no longer a communist, and you can be thought |
| 1:28.2 | of as favoring a kind of social democracy with more effort directed at climate change. |
| 1:33.6 | But before we get to psychoanalyzing you, let me start with a simple, factual question. |
| 1:38.8 | So you cite China as the biggest success story of communism. |
| 1:42.8 | It is so successful. |
| 1:43.8 | It has right now the per capita income pretty much exactly equal to Mexico, not so impressive. |
| 1:49.6 | If you look at capitalist Taiwan, it has the per capita income of France, single-payer, |
... |
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