That one should not simply accept the task of collaborating with politicians and administrators to relieve contemporary discontents and sufferings, but, rather, ask how such subjective discontents are generated by the very social order whose smooth functioning they disturb: how a subjective discontent in civilization is a discontent that is cosubstantial with civilization itself? There is a cruel
\nirony in the fact that Lacanian orientation lost its sociopolitical critical edge at the very moment when its representatives decided to intervene in public political debates \u2014 how much more subversive was Lacan\u2019s old arrogant \u201celitism\u201d! There are situations in
\nwhich the duty of the analysts is not to participate in debates, insofar as such participation, even if it pretends to be critical, means that one accepts the basic coordinates of the way the ruling ideology formulates the problem.<\/p>\n
However, precisely as Marxists, in keeping with our fidelity to Marx\u2019s work,we should point out Marx\u2019s mistake: he perceived how capitalism unleashed the breathtaking dynamic of self-enhancing productivity \u2014 see his fascinated descriptions of how, in capitalism, \u201ceverything solid melts into air,\u201d of how capitalism is the greatest revolutionizer in the entire history of humanity; on the other hand, he also clearly perceived how this capitalist dynamic is propelled by its own inner obstacle or antagonism\u2014the ultimate limit of capitalism (of capitalist self-propelling productivity) is Capital itself, that is to say, the incessant capitalist development and revolutionizing of its own material conditions, the mad dance of its unconditional spiral of productivity, is ultimately nothing but a desperate flight forward to escape its own debilitating inherent contradiction. … Marx\u2019s fundamental mistake<\/span> was to conclude, from these insights, that a new, higher social order (Communism) is possible, an order that would not only maintain but even raise to a higher level, and effectively fully release the potential of, the self-increasing spiral of productivity which, in capitalism, on account of its inherent obstacle (\u201ccontradiction\u201d), is again and again thwarted by socially destructive economic crises. In short, what Marx overlooked is that\u2014to put it in classic Derridean terms\u2014this inherent obstacle\/antagonism, as the \u201ccondition of impossibility\u201d of the full deployment of the productive forces, is simultaneously its \u201ccondition of possibility\u201d: if we abolish the obstacle, the inherent contradiction of capitalism, we do not get the fully unleashed drive to productivity finally delivered of its impediment, we lose precisely this productivity that seemed to be generated and simultaneously thwarted by capitalism\u2014if we take away the obstacle, the very potential thwarted by this obstacle dissipates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" That one should not simply accept the task of collaborating with politicians and administrators to relieve contemporary discontents and sufferings, but, rather, ask how such subjective discontents are generated by the very social order whose smooth functioning they disturb: how a subjective discontent in civilization is a discontent that is cosubstantial with civilization itself? There … Continue reading “parallax marx’s mistake”<\/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":[],"class_list":["post-8857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-zizek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8857","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=8857"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8859,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8857\/revisions\/8859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}