{"id":4433,"date":"2009-11-02T11:54:05","date_gmt":"2009-11-02T15:54:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=4433"},"modified":"2012-02-21T00:06:50","modified_gmt":"2012-02-21T05:06:50","slug":"savingliberalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2009\/11\/02\/savingliberalism\/","title":{"rendered":"saving liberalism from itself"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u017di\u017eek, Slavoj. First as Tragedy Then as Farce<\/em>. New York: Verso, 2009.\u00a0 Print.<\/p>\n

A true Left takes a crisis seriously, without illusions, but as something inevitable, as a chance to be fully exploited. The basic insight of the radical Left is that although crises are painful and dangerous they are ineluctable, and that they are the terrain on which battles have to be waged and won. The difference between liberalism and the radical Left is that, although they refer to the same three elements (liberal center, populist Right, radical Left), they locate them in a radically different topology: for the liberal center, the radical Left and the Right are two forms of the same “totalitarian” excess; while for the Left, the only true alternative is the one between itself and the liberal mainstream, the populist “radical” Right being nothing but the symptom of liberalism’s inability to deal with the Leftist threat (75).<\/p>\n

Where then do the core values of liberalism-freedom, equality, etc.-stand? The paradox is that liberalism itself is not strong enough to save its own core values from the fundamentalist onslaught. Its problem is that it cannot stand on its own: there is something missing in the liberal edifice. Liberalism is, in its very notion, “parasitic:’ relying as it does on a presupposed network of communal values that it undermines in the course of its own development. Fundamentalism is a reaction \u2014a false, mystificatory reaction of course\u2014 against a real flaw inherent within liberalism, and this is why fundamentalism is, over and again, generated by liberalism.<\/strong> Left to itself, liberalism will slowly undermine itself \u2014the only thing that can save its core is a renewed Left. Or, to put it in the well-known terms of 1968, in order for its key legacy to survive, liberalism wil need the brotherly help of the radical Left (77).<\/p>\n

Utopias of alternative worlds have been exorcized by the utopia in power, masking itself as pragmatic realism. It is not only the conservative dream of regaining some idealized Past before the Fal, or the image of a bright future as the present universality minus its constitutive obstacle, that is utopian; no less utopian is the liberal-pragmatic idea that one can solve problems gradually, one by one (“people are dying right now in Rwanda, so let’s forget about antiimperialist struggle, let us just prevent the slaughter”; or ”one has to fight poverty and racism here and now, not wait for the collapse of the global capitalist order” ). John Caputo recently wrote:<\/p>\n

I would be perfectly happy if the far left politicians in the United States were able to reform the system by providing universal health care, effectively redistributing wealth more equitably with a revised IRS code, effectively restricting campaign financing, enfranchising all voters, treating migrant workers humanely, and effecting a multilateral foreign policy that would integrate American power within the international community, etc., i.e., intervene upon capitalism by means of serious (78) and far-reaching reforms . . . . If after doing all that Badiou and\u00a0\u017di\u017eek complained that some Monster called Capital still stalks us, I would be inclined to greet that Monster with a yawn.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The problem here is not Caputo’s conclusion that if one can achieve all that within capitalism, why not remain within the system? The problem lies with the “utopian” premise that it is possible to achieve all that within the coordinates of global capitalism<\/strong>. What if the particular malfunctionings of capitalism enumerated by Caputo are not merely accidental disturbances but are rather structurally necessary?<\/strong> What if Caputo’s dream is a dream of universality (of the universal capitalist order) without its symptoms, <\/strong>without any critical points in which its “repressed truth” articulates itself? (78)<\/p>\n

The ongoing financial meltdown demonstrates how difficult it is to disturb the thick undergrowth of utopian premises which determine
\nour acts. As Alain Badiou succinctly put it:<\/p>\n

The ordinary citizen must “understand” that it is impossible to make up the shortfall in social security, but that it is imperative to stuff untold billions into the banks’ financial hole? We must somberly accept that no one imagines any longer that it’s possible to nationalize a factory hounded by competition, a factory employing thousands of workers, but that it is obvious to do so for a bank made penniless by speculation ?<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u017di\u017eek, Slavoj. First as Tragedy Then as Farce. New York: Verso, 2009.\u00a0 Print. A true Left takes a crisis seriously, without illusions, but as something inevitable, as a chance to be fully exploited. The basic insight of the radical Left is that although crises are painful and dangerous they are ineluctable, and that they are … Continue reading “saving liberalism from itself”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[140],"class_list":["post-4433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-zizek","tag-tragedyfarce"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4433"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8793,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4433\/revisions\/8793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}