Slavoj Žižek: Allegation in favor of a bureaucratic socialism
(Youtube Live stream scheduled for 28 Jun 2017)
The day after winning the referendum against EU pressure and saying no to austerity policies, the Syriza government completely collapsed under pressure from the EU; This investment represents the definitive "infinite judgment" (the coincidence of opposites) of left-wing politics in power: there is no gradual mediation between the two extremes, no smooth slippage into any agreement, but a direct and brutal inversion. We must accept this paradox in its highest purity, without lowering it by reference to particular circumstances (the loss of contact with grassroots social movements). It is too easy to reproduce the old opposition between presence and representation, between grassroots social movements and their representation / alienation in party mechanisms and state apparatuses, with the consequent mantra that the left in power should keep alive its roots at all costs Popular. This conceals the real problem: how to transform the mechanisms of the State, how to make them work in another way, instead of being satisfied with supplementing them with popular pressure from outside.
When one hears the idea of local communities working in a transparent way, without "alienated" mechanisms of representation, with all their members actively involved in the organization of their lives, we should remember that their survival depends on a dense web of institutional mechanisms " Alienated ": where do water and electricity come from? Who guarantees law enforcement? Who do we turn to for health care? And so on. The more self-regulated the community, the more fluent and invisible the network has to function. The struggles for emancipation may have to shift from aim to goal of overcoming alienation to focus on reinforcing the right form of alienation: how to achieve a fluid functioning of 'alienated' (invisible) social mechanisms that allow the emergence of ' Non-alienated '.
We have an old name for these alienated mechanisms: bureaucracy, that is why the left today needs to reinvent bureaucratic socialism. The typical characterization of Stalinist regimes as "bureaucratic socialism" is completely confused and (self) mystifying: it is the way in which the Stalinist regime itself perceives its problem, the cause of its failures and its difficulties; The simplest thing is to impute to the bureaucracy an indifferent and petty attitude. "Bureaucratism" was only an effect of the functioning of Stalinist regimes, and the paradox is that it is the inadequate name par excellence: what Stalinist regimes would have really lacked would have been an efficient "bureaucracy" (an administrative apparatus Alienated, depoliticized and competent).
Slavoj Žižek responds to a joint invitation from the Círculo de Bellas Artes and the Reina Sofía Museum, where he will give another conference whose theme will be contemporary fascism. The intervention of Žižek in the CBA will serve as a framework to present one of the great projects for the coming season: a reflection from multiple approaches on the revolution, the resistance, the rebellion and the conflict. To interrelate revolutions throughout the history, to look for the motivations that end in forms of resistance and its consequences and to unravel past and present rebelliousness are some of its objectives.
The core of this proposal will be an audiovisual project that aims to encourage critical reflection on the mechanisms and structures involved in the different forms of rebellion, resistance and revolution.