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Crisis & Critique Democracy and Revolution Volume I C R I S I S & C R CRISISI & T I Q U E # CRISIS & CRITIQUE1 CRITIQUE CRISIS & CRITIQUE DEMOCRACY AND REVOLUTION VOLUME I / ISSUE I, 2014 Dialectical Materialism Collective 1 The Impasses of Today’s Radical Politics C R I S I S & C R CRISISI & T I Q U E # CRISIS & CRITIQUE1 CRITIQUECRISIS & CRITIQUE Editorial Board: DEMOCRACY AND REVOLUTION Henrik Jøker Bjerre VOLUME I / ISSUE I, 2014 Aaron Schuster Adrian Johnston Joan Copjec Editor-in-Chief Robert Pfaller Agon Hamza Frank Ruda Gabriel Tupinambá Sead Zimeri Fabio Vighi 2 Slavoj Žižek Benjamin Noys Roland Boer Editorial note, 238 C H.J.Bjerre & A.Hamza Communism is Wrong, R by Jana Tsoneva I 8 S The Impasses of Today’s Radical 264 I Politics, by Slavoj Žižek The Jews and the Zionists; The Story ofS a Reversal, by Sina Badiei 46 & Socialist Democracy with Chinese 280 Characteristics, by Roland Boer Review articles: C R CRISIS &66 H.J.Bjerre: Prolegomena to Any FutureI The Indignant of the Earth, Materialism, by Adrian Johnston T by Frank Ruda I C.Crockett: From Myth to Symptom: theQ 90 case of Kosovo, by S. Žižek & A.HamzaU Democracy and revolution on the Inter- E net, by Katarina Peović Vuković D.Tutt: Enjoying What We Don’t Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis,# 116 by Todd McGowan 1 Alain Badiou and the aporia of democracy within generic communism, A.Ryder: Badiou and the Philosophers, by Panagiotis Sotiris ed.T.Tho & G.Bianco CRITIQUE136 308 Climate Crisis, Ideology, and Collective Notes on Contributers Action, by Ted Stolze 154 Lacan and Rational Choice, by Yuan Yao 166 Redemptive Revolutions: The Political Hermeneutics of Walter Benjamin, by Nicolai Krejberg Knudsen 194 The Necessity of Philosophy, by Srdjan Cvjetičanin 218 What is a Party a part of?, by Gabriel Tupinambá 3 The Impasses of Today’s Radical Politics C R I Editorial S I S Note & C R I T I Q U E Henrik # Jøker Bjerre & 1 Agon Hamza 4 Slavoj Žižek Why Crisis and Critique? C The publication of the first issue of Crisis and Critique R undoubtedly imposes the question on us: ‘why yet another journal I in philosophy?’ Furthermore, why a Marxist journal of philosophy? S I This question is in itself complicated, given the ‘crisis of Marxism’ S – not only a crisis which has lost reference to Marx, but one that is inscribed in Marxism itself. & The Left today, in all its orientations and traditions, is caught into a theoretical and political cul de sac: apart from the repetition C of old formulas and citations of various authors, as well as in the R (re)invention and elevation of trivial figures into the guiding names I T of our struggle, the Left cannot provide a new vision for humanity. I The Left is disoriented, the burden of the failure of the Communist Q experiments of the previous century and its (mostly) catastrophic U outcomes weigh too heavily on our shoulders. In addition, the E rise of right-wing forces and religious ‘fundamentalism’ is equally worrisome. The right wing or populist political parties, across # Europe and elsewhere, are ruthlessly appropriating the discourse 1 which traditionally belongs to the left and distorting it according to their own political agenda. The working class is, in this distorted perspective, divided into working people of particular countries, always potentially threatened by immigrants, low wages in neighbouring countries, global market competition, etc., instead of being a united class of people exploited by global capital, i.e. holding the “proletarian position”. The same goes for the religious ‘fundamentalists’ with their insistence on theocracy, who propose a return to the invented tradition, or even worse: the theological- religious struggle, instead of accentuating the emancipatory potential of religions, is becoming a struggle for dress and dietary codes. Against this, we should recall Mao Zedongs dictum: “Marxism comprises many principles, but in the final analysis they can all be brought back to a single sentence: it is right to rebel against the reactionaries.” So, why ‘Crisis and Critique’, a name which is taken up from the projected journal of Bertolt Brecht and Walter Benjamin that never came into existence? In very different times and ideological- political conjunctures, but yet in a similar spirit, this journal, published by the Dialectical Materialism Collective, seeks to establish a philosophical platform for interaction, debate and exchange between different orientations of critical Marxist scholars. 5 The Impasses of Today’s Radical Politics Back in his time, Marx called for ‘a ruthless criticism of C everything existing’ and our task is to turn our critical powers R towards the existing Marxism itself. The task of a Marxist I philosopher or theoretician is to critically re-think the hitherto S I existing Marxist theoretical traditions, as well as the practices of S the politics of emancipation. Therefore, we will not prioritise or espouse any particular tradition or orientation within Marxism. In & this sense, Dialectical Materialism is a Marxist Forum. We live in the time of crisis, even a double crisis: a crisis of the C Left or Marxism, and a crisis of the capitalist mode of production R itself. That is to say, on top of our list of current uncertainties - I T ideological, political and economic, we should add ‘theoretical’. I We do not have a theory of the present. In this regard, the aim of Q this journal is to critically examine and comprehend not only the U existing conjunctures, but also the possibilities of reinventing the E idea of radical emancipation, under the name of Communism. # 1 6 Slavoj Žižek C R I S I S & C R I T I Q U E # 1 7 The Impasses of Today’s Radical Politics C R I The Impasses S I S of Today’s & C R I T Radical Politics I Q U E # Slavoj Žižek 1 8 Slavoj Žižek The wound of Eurocentrism C With regard to global capitalism which, although it originated in Europe, R is today a global phenomenon where Europe is more and more losing its I leading role, one should be especially careful with non-reflected anti- S I Eurocentrism which can sometimes serve as the ideological cover for S the rejection of what is worth fighting for in the European legacy. An exemplary case of succumbing to this danger is Walter D Mignolo’s recent & critique of my defense of Leftist Eurocentrism: C R As a non-European thinker, my senses reacted to the first I sentence of Zizek’s article: When one says Eurocentrism, every self- T respecting postmodern leftist intellectual has as violent a reaction I as Joseph Goebbels had to culture - to reach for a gun, hurling Q U accusations of proto-fascist Eurocentrist cultural imperialism. E However, is it possible to imagine a leftist appropriation of the European political legacy? /…/ My response to that paragraph, # published in a couple of places, is the following: When one says 1 Eurocentrism, every self-respecting decolonial intellectual has not as violent a reaction as Joseph Goebbels had to culture - to reach for a gun, hurling accusations of proto-fascist Eurocentrist cultural imperialism. A self-respecting decolonial intellectual will reach instead to Frantz Fanon: ’Now, comrades, now is the time to decide to change sides. We must shake off the great mantle of night, which has enveloped us, and reach for the light. The new day, which is dawning, must find us determined, enlightened and resolute. So, my brothers, how could we fail to understand that we have better things to do than follow that Europe’s footstep.’ /…/ we, decolonial intellectuals, if not philosophers, ‘have better things to do’ as Fanon would say, than being engaged with issues debated by European philosophers.1 What Mignolo proposes is thus a version of Baudrillard’s battle cry “Forget Foucault!”: forget Europe, we have better things to do than deal with European philosophy, even better things than endlessly deconstructing it. The irony here is that this battle cry obviously did not hold for Fanon himself, who dealt extensively and intensively with 1 Quoted from http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/02/20132672747320891.html. 9 The Impasses of Today’s Radical Politics Hegel, psychoanalysis, Sartre, and even Lacan. So, when I read lines like C Mignolo’s, I also reach for Fanon – this Fanon: R I S I am a man, and what I have to recapture is the whole past of I the world. I am not responsible solely for the slave revolt in Santo S Domingo. Every time a man has contributed to the victory of the & dignity of the spirit, every time a man has said no to an attempt to subjugate his fellows, I have felt solidarity with his act. In no C way does my basic vocation have to be drawn from the past of R peoples of color. In no way do I have to dedicate myself to reviving I a black civilization unjustly ignored. I will not make myself the T man of any past. /…/ My black skin is not a repository for specific I values. /…/ Haven’t I got better things to do on this earth than Q U avenge the Blacks of the seventeenth century? /…/ I as a man of E color do not have the right to hope that in the white man there will be a crystallization of guilt toward the past of my race. I as a man # of color do not have the right to seek ways of stamping down the 1 pride of my former master. I have neither the right nor the duty to demand reparations for my subjugated ancestors.
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