Slavoj Žižek on His Stubborn Attachment to Communism

8 Jan 2020 · 87 min
Conversations with Tyler

8 Jan 2020 · 87 min

0:00

In this episode of Conversations with Tyler, host Tyler Cowen engages Slavoj Žižek in a sprawling, multilingual dialogue about his complex relationship to communism, its historical failures, and its possible future relevance. Žižek reflects on Lenin’s pragmatic, voluntarist spirit and the idea of resetting politics to a ‘zero level’, arguing that Lenin’s openness to improvisation offers a lesson for today’s crises. He critiques 20th‑century communism, especially the Yugoslav experience, describing it as a flawed but uniquely democratic form that avoided the worst excesses of Soviet rule. Žižek laments the erosion of academic autonomy under market pressures, noting how universities are being co‑opted by private funding and political agendas. Drawing on Hegel, he adopts a pessimistic stance toward grand revolutionary projects, suggesting that history repeats its failures and that only modest, incremental reforms are realistic. He proposes incorporating elements of chance—lottery—into democratic processes to curb expert domination, citing historical examples from ancient Greece to Venetian doges. Žižek also critiques contemporary identity politics and political correctness, arguing they often mask class bias. The conversation expands to a broader critique of liberal democratic capitalism, which he deems ill‑equipped to handle global challenges such as migration, digital domination, and ecological catastrophe. He links the rise of nationalism in post‑communist societies to the collapse of the communist nomenklatura and the search for legitimacy. Throughout, Žižek interweaves personal anecdotes about his intellectual formation—from early fascination with Heidegger to his engagement with Marxist and post‑structuralist thought—illustrating how his own journey informs his current philosophical outlook.

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