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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   18314 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 31, 2025

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"They think they know how to solve all our problems." -> I respond with "no they don't".

And I argued the opposite (rather than changing the criteria). Then, you decided to claim that I changed the criteria and pick at details.

That he has replaced "revolution" with "???" in his master social plan to solve all our problems is more like retreating from the outlying harassment defense posts to the main wall than even retreating all the way to the motte.

Zizek doesn’t believe that he “knows how to solve all our problems”.

As a follower of Lacanian psychoanalysis, he believes that the fundamental nature of subjectivity will always lead to both social conflict and internal self-conflict regardless of how we arrange social relations.

His own idiosyncratic interpretation of Hegel’s “end of history” is that “the end of history is just realizing that there is no end of history; there is no final resolution of all contradiction”. Arguable whether Hegel actually meant that or not, but that’s what Zizek believes at any rate.

He has spoken at length about how Stalin’s mistake was thinking that he could transform himself into an impersonal agent of history and rationality; there is no ahistorical viewpoint from which you can judge yourself and your own actions, the outcome of your actions is never guaranteed, they can only be judged retroactively after they have unfolded in history.

Why, given these facts about his work and thought, do you persist in saying that “he thinks he knows how to solve all our problems”?

In addition to another excellent comment from @FCfromSSC, I just spent entirely too long probing AI and the sources it cited concerning Zizek, specifically. I have to admit that I still find him to be too obscurant about many things, very given to vagueness and distraction rather than forthcoming about his plans and expectations. That said, at this point, I'm moderately confident that your characterization of his position is kind of weak. As far as I could drill down to it, he has some deep psychoanalysis position that the mere existence of language is 'violence' and the source of impossible-to-solve '(self-)contradiction' with reality. To that extent, perhaps he does, indeed, think that this is one "problem" that cannot be solved with his plans for social engineering. But, frankly, that's a pretty small fig leaf. Were I to take any other of the Enlightenment-themed philosophies for socially engineering mankind and simply graft onto it, "...sure, sure, after we've already solved all of our (real) problems, we'll still have 'violence' that is, like, inherent in language or something," I don't think we've done anything meaningfully different to it. Nor do I think his incredibly weedsy position on retroactive necessity of historical outcomes is particularly germane. That we are neither pre-ordained to eliminate mankind in a nuclear holocaust nor to adopt his emancipatory communism (thus solving pretty much all our problems except the apparent violence of language) (...nor any other particular result) does not seem to be entirely relevant to the question at hand.

Why, given these facts about his work and thought, do you persist in saying that “he thinks he knows how to solve all our problems”?

I persist in suspecting that he thinks he knows how to solve all our problems for the following reasons:

  • Because he appears to still be claiming allegiance to an ideology whose central feature is one of the best-possible examples of "we know how to solve all our problems".

  • Because your own description of him makes it pretty clear that he is not speaking plainly about his model ("Intentionally left vague" above), and "I'm totally a communist, just not the bad kind of communist, I definitely wouldn't do the bad things, I would instead mumble mumble and that's why communism will work this time" is not terribly persuasive.

  • Because he appears to intellectually associate with people who much-less-ambiguously employ "we know how to solve all our problems (as you say, "The sorts of ultra-left economic policies that you’ve heard of before", plus the Academy generally)."

  • Because I do not think he would agree with, much less ever say anything like the following:

Prior to the conversation with Hlynka, I was thinking in terms of plans and payout matrices, looking for a solution to the problem. Hlynka reminded me that there is no solution, that there is no plan, that we are not in control of the world; all we control is ourselves; we make our choices and live with the consequences.

My understanding is that he is still entirely committed to "plans and payout matrices, looking for a solution to the problem". He thinks there is a plan, that there is a solution, and I do not find his efforts to distinguish himself from his ideology's failure modes persuasive. You argue that his idea that the end-state is not static is a significant difference, but I am not confident this is true due to the aforementioned intentional vagueness and cultivated ideological associations.

From our brief discussion of Marcuse:

FCfromSSC: Because he doesn't seem to see that statement as an obstacle to attempting solutions to all our problems. He says institutions can never resolve all the conflicts, that Socialism does not and cannot liberate Eros from Thanatos. And then he concludes that the Revolution should proceed anyway, endlessly, and that this is a good thing. Doesn't he?

"Limits" stop things. This "limit" stops nothing, instead it "drives the revolution beyond any accomplished stage of freedom", and he seems to consider this a feature, not a bug: "it is the struggle for the impossible, against the unconquerable whose domain can perhaps nevertheless be reduced". "Revolution" is commonly understood to mean the seizure and exercise of power. He claims that "revolution" will never end, and that this will plausibly deliver benefits indefinitely.

I do not see how this statement cashes out in a practical limit to socialist ambition. To the extent that it proposes a limit, the limit is entirely theoretical, and it appears to explicitly claim that such a theoretical limit will and should be ignored.

Primaprimaprima: He's saying that socialism can't create a perfect utopia, but it can make things better. This is a pretty common attitude across multiple ideologies. A standard American capitalist liberal might not think that we can create a utopia, but he does advocate for making things better through legal reform, scientific advancements, etc.

But my whole question is, "are these people capable of recognizing situations in which they can't make things better?" Are they capable of lifting their foot off the gas pedal? I suspect they are not, for a number of what seem to me to be entirely valid reasons, starting with their willing adherence to an ideology that has repeatedly proved itself incapable or doing so. And sure, this is a common problem across multiple ideologies, because the Enlightenment won three hundred years ago and most currently-popular ideologies are its direct descendents. My whole point is that vast swathes of ideologies suffer from this core problem, because they inherit it from the Enlightenment! I think most "standard capitalists" are in fact capable of recognizing that they don't actually have solutions to some problems, so it's not worth trying to fix them, but to the extent that some specific capitalist isn't so capable, my critique applies to them as well.

But the thing that really confuses me is that I've actually gone out of my way to describe in detail that I'm not actually certain about any of this, and recognize that I could be wrong about the disposition of specific theorists!

I am not familiar with either Zizek or McGowen, but the description you provide explains why they don't buy into Marxian Utopianism, not why they aren't adhering to "We know how to solve all our problems." Advocating for "Permanent Revolution" certainly doesn't sound incompatible with the core axiom described above. Do they believe that our present society could be vastly improved through a proper re-ordering of society? Do they believe that poverty, mental illness, crime and so on are essentially ills that our society has chosen to inflict on the less fortunate? Do they believe we might choose otherwise?

But if they have in fact abandoned the core axiom, if in fact they don't believe in Progress toward a Brighter Future, then I'd say they've left the Enlightenment and are doing their own thing. I would also argue that they're no longer a central example of a Marxist, whatever they choose to call themselves. For a similar example, consider Scientology: to me, the most salient feature of Scientology is its hierarchical nature, designed explicitly to crush and control individual members. Scientology splinter groups that have broken from that hierarchy but continue to believe the lore and perform the basic rituals together still call themselves Scientologists, but I can continue to object to "Scientology" as a group while considering them irrelevant to the discussion. In the same way, I don't actually care if someone wants to call themselves a "Marxist"; it's a perennially-fashionable label, as appalling as that is. What I care about is whether they believe, as Marx and all the central examples of Marxists very evidently did, that "we know how to solve all our problems."

I think I am offering reasonable analysis hedged with appropriate uncertainty. I'm not actually clear on why you disagree.

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