I work at a call center, and the company just recently raised their rates on millions of customers. There has been plenty of backlash and anger, and the call center has been a bit of a personal hell for me. But generally, people respectfully voice their frustration or anger about the price increase, and go off and vote with their dollar.
One man, in particular, did not. Here is our conversation:
Me: "Thank you for calling ...., how can I help you?"
Him: "I've been a long time customer of yours and I've never done this before. I'm calling about the price increase. Fuck you."
...And he hangs up.
Now, I completely understand why someone would be furious about the price change. It amounts to about $6, and while for some people that would not be a big deal, for others who are struggling to get by, that could be the difference between having the service and not (and the service is involved in entertainment, which means it's the difference between the realities of life and all that entails, and the realities of the fantasy life-worlds we engage in when we watch a movie or listen to a record).
The question I'm really interested in is, why did he say "I've never done this before"? It wouldn't matter at all to me whether he's made a call like that before. I am on the other end of it, passive in the sense of being restrained by corporate regulations to a) respond with any kind of authenticity (maybe telling him, "no, fuck you dude") or b) make any changes to the pricing or to his plan that would really please him. Further, since he gave me no ability to respond by immediately hanging up, I was made that much more insignificant to the overall purpose of the call. So, it seems to me he said it for himself, and I can't help but wonder why.
My first theory is that, by saying it, he was trying to justify himself ethically. He was distinguishing his character (the real 'him') from the man on the phone. He might have felt ethically wrong about the call, so he needed to alleviate his guilt by making sure that the person he would tell off would know that this was not really him. He was, in a way, telling me that I shouldn't hold it against him because he is not in control of this call.
My second theory is that by saying it, he was trying to emphasize the effect the price change has had on him. That is, the price change is so significant to his ability to enjoy the service that it has forced an otherwise peaceful man to pick up the phone and do something he really doesn't want to do. Again, this is not the real 'him' calling. This would put an almost poetic emphasis on his role as a victim: his 'revolution' or 'protest' has been forced out of him by a wicked nemesis named corporate greed. Again, in this scenario he is innocent, and his attack is not brought about by his own free will, but rather as the result historical circumstances.
These are all the theories I have, all of which assume his will to remain innocent of the crime, but what do you think?
Also, here's a link to my song regarding the proverbial angry customer, in case you haven't seen it:
The Angry Caller
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Book Review: Slavoj Zizek - Living in the End Times, Bargaining (Part V)
This is part II, (following Part I), which addresses Bargaining.
So, we ended saying that "'class struggle' paradoxically precedes classes as determinate social groups: that is, that every class position and determination is already an effect of the 'class struggle'" and "one should always bear in mind that, for a true Marxist, 'classes' are not categories of positive social reality, parts of the social body, but categories of the real of a political struggle which cuts across the entire social body, preventing its 'totalization'" (198). As such, the way things have turned out in the global capitalistic world, with its growing discrepancy between the rich and poor, with third world countries bearing the weight of greedy monopolistic corporate greed, and with a political establishment in the US that anchors itself to corporate payrolls, we can rest assured this "is not an eternal fate, a universal ontological condition of man, but is a state that can be radically changed such that it will no longer be reducible to the interplay of private interests" (200). It's political, and politics can change. Doing so will not be the result of this individual's fight versus this individual, but will be the result of an embedded antagonism, or struggle, in Capitalism itself, which will constitute the revolutionary individual. So, as this happens, and it's publicized by the establishment as a purely objective social fact, understand that the struggle was built into the system itself. It will involve subjective engagement, but the subjective engagement was constituted by a corrupt interplay of private interests. As major world economies come closer to bankruptcy and foreclosure, it will be interesting to see what kinds of revolutionary actions unearth and what new forms of political economy unearth.
In the second half of this chapter, Zizek revisits Marx's "Labor Theory of Value." Zizek points out that in all other economic systems, there is a need for explicit social domination to keep things running smoothly, but not in Capitalism. In Capitalism, citizens enjoy personal freedom and equality. The reason is, in Capitalism, exploitation is "naturalized" - that is, it's "inscribed into the functioning of the economy" and "domination is already implicit in the structure of the production process" (207). How is this? With Marx, we must understand that in Capitalism, our labor-power always produces more value than it is itself worth. This extra-value is what we would call profit - the price for nothing. Think about the immense profits reported by oil companies. Profit does not refer at all to the labor of extracting the oil from the ground, the market value of oil, or the cost paid to lawyers and accountants and business executives, or the cost of cleaning up (or not cleaning up) devastated regions. Profit refers to the price of nothing, although it was made possible by the real labor of particular people. That is, the people in the oil industry produce more value than their labor itself is worth. And how does this make domination implicit into the structure of the production process? The Capitalists, those few who control the means of production, make their living on this profit, effectively hiring their workers from within a "big structural disadvantage." First, workers will more likely get a job if they're willing to work for less: "the lowest price will get universalized." If, out of twenty workers, one is willing to work for less, they will all have to match his wage if they have any hope of getting hired. And Zizek continues, "Therein resides the role of the reserve army of the unemployed: just a tiny percentage of unemployed can lower wages considerably, because their readiness to work for lower wages presents a threat to all those with jobs" (209). We can see, then, that exploitation and domination are not given explicitly, but are built into the system in a more subversive way. There's no need to threaten punishment: we all fight for lower and lower wages while the Capitalist aims to make more and more profit after all the costs are taken into account. Consider outsourcing - we have an army of unemployed, an army of workers willing to work for less, and they set the price of labor, a price we're currently unable to match. Consider automation: machines will always replace workers so long as their cost balances out to less per hour than the worker.
The 'nothing' that we pay for is the brand name. When we buy Coke over an anonymous cola drink, we are providing Coke with profit in exchange for their name. Zizek writes, "We can thus say that, when we pay more for a commodity due to its brand name, we are paying the extra price for Nothing, for the mere signifier, not for the positive qualities of the product. It is in the interest of the capitalist to maximize the part of the price of a product which covers the brand name, since this part is pure profit, payment for nothing; the ideal would be to sell a mere brand name and thus get money for nothing" (211). Of course, nobody would simply buy a name, so the marketing campaigns of companies do their best to give the consumer the appearance that buying a product with their specific brand name will give them a unique and incredible experience - like Nike shoes will make you jump higher, a fiction I believed when I was a kid desiring Air Jordans! In the end, corporations survive based on the price they're able to extract from the consumer for the nothing they are able to acquire after the workers have been paid.
Zizek considers some interesting radical economic theories which aim to solve this embedded exploitation. One that I found interesting was that of Philippe Van Parijs' "'Third Way' beyond capitalism and socialism" (235). His idea is that the basic principles of capitalism can be combined with John Rawls's notion of a just society. Here is a very simplified version of Rawls's thought experiment and its bearing on a theory of justice:
So, we ended saying that "'class struggle' paradoxically precedes classes as determinate social groups: that is, that every class position and determination is already an effect of the 'class struggle'" and "one should always bear in mind that, for a true Marxist, 'classes' are not categories of positive social reality, parts of the social body, but categories of the real of a political struggle which cuts across the entire social body, preventing its 'totalization'" (198). As such, the way things have turned out in the global capitalistic world, with its growing discrepancy between the rich and poor, with third world countries bearing the weight of greedy monopolistic corporate greed, and with a political establishment in the US that anchors itself to corporate payrolls, we can rest assured this "is not an eternal fate, a universal ontological condition of man, but is a state that can be radically changed such that it will no longer be reducible to the interplay of private interests" (200). It's political, and politics can change. Doing so will not be the result of this individual's fight versus this individual, but will be the result of an embedded antagonism, or struggle, in Capitalism itself, which will constitute the revolutionary individual. So, as this happens, and it's publicized by the establishment as a purely objective social fact, understand that the struggle was built into the system itself. It will involve subjective engagement, but the subjective engagement was constituted by a corrupt interplay of private interests. As major world economies come closer to bankruptcy and foreclosure, it will be interesting to see what kinds of revolutionary actions unearth and what new forms of political economy unearth.
In the second half of this chapter, Zizek revisits Marx's "Labor Theory of Value." Zizek points out that in all other economic systems, there is a need for explicit social domination to keep things running smoothly, but not in Capitalism. In Capitalism, citizens enjoy personal freedom and equality. The reason is, in Capitalism, exploitation is "naturalized" - that is, it's "inscribed into the functioning of the economy" and "domination is already implicit in the structure of the production process" (207). How is this? With Marx, we must understand that in Capitalism, our labor-power always produces more value than it is itself worth. This extra-value is what we would call profit - the price for nothing. Think about the immense profits reported by oil companies. Profit does not refer at all to the labor of extracting the oil from the ground, the market value of oil, or the cost paid to lawyers and accountants and business executives, or the cost of cleaning up (or not cleaning up) devastated regions. Profit refers to the price of nothing, although it was made possible by the real labor of particular people. That is, the people in the oil industry produce more value than their labor itself is worth. And how does this make domination implicit into the structure of the production process? The Capitalists, those few who control the means of production, make their living on this profit, effectively hiring their workers from within a "big structural disadvantage." First, workers will more likely get a job if they're willing to work for less: "the lowest price will get universalized." If, out of twenty workers, one is willing to work for less, they will all have to match his wage if they have any hope of getting hired. And Zizek continues, "Therein resides the role of the reserve army of the unemployed: just a tiny percentage of unemployed can lower wages considerably, because their readiness to work for lower wages presents a threat to all those with jobs" (209). We can see, then, that exploitation and domination are not given explicitly, but are built into the system in a more subversive way. There's no need to threaten punishment: we all fight for lower and lower wages while the Capitalist aims to make more and more profit after all the costs are taken into account. Consider outsourcing - we have an army of unemployed, an army of workers willing to work for less, and they set the price of labor, a price we're currently unable to match. Consider automation: machines will always replace workers so long as their cost balances out to less per hour than the worker.
The 'nothing' that we pay for is the brand name. When we buy Coke over an anonymous cola drink, we are providing Coke with profit in exchange for their name. Zizek writes, "We can thus say that, when we pay more for a commodity due to its brand name, we are paying the extra price for Nothing, for the mere signifier, not for the positive qualities of the product. It is in the interest of the capitalist to maximize the part of the price of a product which covers the brand name, since this part is pure profit, payment for nothing; the ideal would be to sell a mere brand name and thus get money for nothing" (211). Of course, nobody would simply buy a name, so the marketing campaigns of companies do their best to give the consumer the appearance that buying a product with their specific brand name will give them a unique and incredible experience - like Nike shoes will make you jump higher, a fiction I believed when I was a kid desiring Air Jordans! In the end, corporations survive based on the price they're able to extract from the consumer for the nothing they are able to acquire after the workers have been paid.
Zizek considers some interesting radical economic theories which aim to solve this embedded exploitation. One that I found interesting was that of Philippe Van Parijs' "'Third Way' beyond capitalism and socialism" (235). His idea is that the basic principles of capitalism can be combined with John Rawls's notion of a just society. Here is a very simplified version of Rawls's thought experiment and its bearing on a theory of justice:
Imagine that there is a room full of people of differing ages, races, income brackets, ideologies, etc. and you put them in a "state of ignorance". While maintaining their variety of differences, they can no longer remember anything about themselves. They understand what race/age/gender/income/etc. means, but they don't know which categories they fall under. In this state of ignorance, they must collectively decide what kind of society they want to form. Rawls's notion is that people will look after their own private interests, and so, in this state of ignorance, they will collectively create laws that will ensure that all have equal access to the most important resources such as good schools, libraries, some kind of basic healthcare, housing, etc. They do this because they don't know if they'll wake up the poorest person in the country. They will also ensure that equal opportunities will be shared by all, so of course laws would protect them from racial or gender discrimination. And they will also create a society where there is inequality, because if they were to wake up hard-working and strongly motivated, they would want the opportunity to get paid more for their efforts. So, Rawls essentially comes up with two guiding principles for the just society:
- Rights of Basic Liberty: “each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others."
- Social and Economic Rights: “social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) reasonably expected to be to everyone’s advantage, and (b) attached to positions and offices open to all.”
Parijs aims to combine Rawls's notion of the just society with Capitalism and so his "Third Way" is this: to tax the profit-seeking process which sustains capitalist productivity. This striving towards payment for nothing is to be taxed to provide freedom from exploitation for workers.
So, the idea is this: if workers are truly free, as a Capitalist system says they are, the freedom not to work should be included among their genuine life options. Right now most people cannot really choose to stay home and raise children or direct their effort toward starting a business because most everyone exists in a pool of workers all striving toward the "'scarce' commodity of well-paid jobs" (235). We either take a job that just gets us by, or we endure all the hardships of being jobless and impoverished. This is the case of most of the working class. Parijs argues that, put in a state of ignorance, we would want to ensure that we had the choice to do otherwise. We would count the choice to not work and still earn a subsistence level of income as a 'real freedom'. To ensure that we do have this freedom, and to provide protection from the embedded exploitative nature of Capitalism, we should tax the scarce commodity of well-paid jobs. We would thus, as I already noted, tax the profit-seeking process embedded within Capitalism. All citizens would enjoy a minimum income, and this income would would help increase a worker's negotiating power because they would be able to reject any job that offered a wage that, in contrast, just wasn't worth it. Parijs also argues that this minimum income would support consumption which would help the economy thrive. The people not working, living in the bottom income bracket of society, would not be considered as parasites, but rather just the bottom of the income bracket. They provide a stabilizing and empowering platform by which those choosing to work can rely on when vying for respect and a decent wage from potential employers. This would, of course, cut deep into the profits of corporations as they would need to substantially increase workers' wages. Zizek writes, "In short, the only possible moral justification for capitalism would lie in its productivity being harnessed to provide the highest sustainable basic income" (235). Capitalism would no longer be justified in self-referential terms: for its efficiency in increasing profits and productivity year after year.
Zizek ends his chapter on Bargaining asking us to re-envision Marx and his labor theory of value. A radical theory such as Van Parijs', with its practical conclusion of a basic sustainable income for all citizens, justifies capitalism by making it serve the social-democratic Welfare State. It's one of many efforts which indicate an end to the classic capitalism Marx was criticizing where the worker is indispensable to the production process, in favor of an era where the capitalist worker (the proletariat) can now be replaced by machines or through outsourcing. For Marx, the labor theory of value marked the internal paradox by which the worker would one day rise up and exert a physical struggle against and eventually over their local Master. This was the communist revolution. In these days, as labor strikes are no longer motivated by efforts to get better wages or working conditions, as these demands themselves would be easily solved through outsourcing, workers strike in an effort to "raise consciousness" (your typical strike today occurs after the plant is shut down as a bad publicity stunt to hurt outsourcing companies). The revolution of the worker will not be to "become a collective master over nature," (as in, control collectively the means of production), but rather to identify the ideological notions that hold us down, and to thereby "recognize the imposture in the very notion of the Master" (243). Our struggle today is not as local and physical as it was in Marx's time, and it can therefore be much more elusive. Our struggle today is still about social domination, but much more cerebral. It's an ideological struggle.
Work Cited:
Zizek, Slavoj. Living in the End Times. New York: Verso, 2010.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Book Review: Slavoj Zizek - Living in the End Times, Bargaining (Part IV)
Here are links to:
Introduction (An Introduction to Slavoj Zizek)
Part I (The Introduction to Living in the End Times
Part II (Chapter 1)
Part III (Chapter 2)
And here is Part IV: Bargaining!
Bargaining, the third stage of grief as late capitalism confronts the ecological crisis, the consequences of the biogenetic revolution, growing imbalances within the system itself, and exploding social divisions, is in focus here, and it brings us right into a critique of capitalist economics. Zizek is deeply inspired by Karl Marx, and it comes out in a tour de force here. Zizek is most interested in debunking the myth that Capitalism is an ahistorical, asocial form. Because of the nature of Capitalism, and its emphasis on human individuality and freedom, it's hard to avoid this myth. It's easy to see money as a natural phenomenon which has served as a tool by which people can freely express themselves and enjoy self-determination, not a product of human psychology and ideology. Theories such as Heidegger's categories of a general 'will-to-power' or a 'will-to-technological-domination' have been utilized to provide a natural explanation of the "inherent structure of capitalist reproduction which can survive only through its incessant expansion and for which this ever-expanding reproduction, not some final state, is itself the only true goal of the entire movement"(188). But this is not so, according to Zizek. Capitalist production does not come naturally to people, but is rather the effect of a political and class struggle that is built into the social body itself. And the social body anchors itself to an ingrained ideology.
The ideology of free-market capital can be unearthed when considering the "inner logic of the three functions of money." Here Zizek takes a close reading of Marx and combines it with a Lacanian analysis. First we have Marx's 'ideal money', which requires no physical material - "it is enough to imagine a certain sum of money which expresses the value of the commodity in question." So, let's imagine gold, and let's put a number beside it, and let's imagine that that number has a relation to, say wheat, and so on. This exercise would be tied in with Lacan's Imaginary. It's at the Imaginary that the ego is conceived and born. It's where ideas are born, which then have a powerful effect on one's understanding of the world and one's place in it. Here the concept of money is born. Next, we pass to symbolic money. This is where cash comes in. The Lacanian category of the Symbolic refers to "the impersonal framework of society, the arena in which we take our place as part of a community of fellow human beings"(Tony Myers, 22). Cash becomes that physical object with the symbolic efficacy to make real interpersonal transactions. We can acquire stuff with paper. And finally, we have the Real: that which cannot be known, that which cannot be brought under a category, the world prior to language and symbolic representations. This would describe the reality of our bank vaults, the physical material resting in them. This is the treasure as it sits in the vaults prior to social valuation.
When we consider that the US debt could be wiped out in an instance if we just printed enough dollar bills, we confront the ideology of money. How much of this is just in our heads? Of course, doing so from within the ideological framework of global capitalism, we would crash the world economy. Most likely, wars would ensue. But we could clear our debt, and the 'reality' of our bank vaults would be known for what it truly is: a myth we believed in, which governed the political landscape and had real effects in people's lives. The US debt is a myth, as is the Greek debt. This is not to make light of it. The Lacanian triad ultimately makes up what we would call Reality. The triad governs our sense of morality, social responsibility, our engagement in philosophy, politics, literature, science, religion, and any other field that can be thought of. It's not so simple as erasing all debt, as that debt has come to dictate relations between people and states and nations. In Greece, real violence has erupted as a result of austerity measures and a European Union bailout. As mentioned, a clearing of the US debt through printing money would likely result in devastating wars and mass unemployment and hardship. If no money was printed, but the US merely defaulted on its loan, there would be mass unemployment, retirements ruined, and sick people would go untreated. In laying out the Lacanian analysis of money, I do not mean to simplify it. Zizek's point here is to critique the idea that labor in a capitalistic system is naturalized in a way it's never been before: it is now post-ideological. He criticizes the idea that, whereas previously imagined social structures which involved castes, estates, and traditional hierarchical links grounded themselves in ideology, Capitalist social classes have not. That labor has now become a natural phenomenon: with individual freedom to, regardless of your previous circumstances, study what you love, choose your career, and effectively determine what kind of lifestyle you will lead, your labor has become ahistorical. Zizek responds: "The abstraction of labor into an asocial form is ideological in the strict sense: it misrecognizes its own socio-historical conditions" (191).
What this means, following Marx, is that social groups don't determine a class struggle, but rather that the class struggle "precedes classes as determinate social groups" (198). In Capitalism, as with other economic models, class struggle is built into the framework of society. The ahistorical formulation of economy would argue the opposite: it would forget political economy in favor of a simple positive ordering of differing income brackets. In contrast, the formulation recognizing social-historical conditions would see 'class struggle' as preceding any ordering, and 'classes', as such, would no longer be part of a social 'reality', but rather an effect of the immanent antagonisms of capitalism. Zizek writes, "(O)ne should always bear in mind that, for a true Marxist, 'classes' are not categories of positive social reality, parts of the social body, but categories of the real of a political struggle which cuts across the entire social body, preventing its 'totalization.' True, there is no outside to capitalism today, but this should not be used to hide the fact that capitalism itself is 'antagonistic,' relying on contradictory measures to remain viable - and these immanent antagonisms open up the space for radical action" (198). What he means when he says there is no "outside to capitalism" is that capitalism is by and large the "determining factor" in the world economy. Stalin's Communism relied on a drive-to-expand, more and more productivity, and a need to increase the scope and quality of its production (188). So does China's Socialist experiment, Chavez's Bolivarian Revolution, and all of Europe's democratic quasi-socialist experiments. Why? Because their success relies on competing in a capitalist world-economy. So, radical action today does indeed exist within Global Capitalism, but Zizek's point is that such radical action, as carried out by the exploited and antagonized, should not be seen, as they commonly are, as triumphs of creative entrepreneurship. They should be seen as political events. Zizek notes, "If, say, a co-operative movement of poor farmers in a Third World country succeeds in establishing a thriving alternative network, this should be celebrated as a genuine political event" (199). In other words, it should not be understood in terms of Capitalism's success, but rather in terms of a class struggle for autonomy and self-determination within the antagonistic structure of Capitalism itself.
Zizek emphasizes that the 'class struggle' is not one between agents, but rather that which constitutes agents. If it were the former, Capitalism would be thought in its ahistorical, post-ideological sense, which is a fiction. The struggle of the Third World co-operative movement of poor farmers would be seen outside the context of exploitation: a system designed to pay them a subsistence-level income in exchange for their servitude to the institutions that determine prices and value, demand exportation, and provide the framework by which middle-men corporations and their investors can profit. As the latter, class belonging is no longer understood in terms of an objective social fact, but as the result of a historical process and the antagonisms built into the system that keep it afloat. The exploitation is seen for what it is: an antagonism (struggle) preceding the Third-world co-operative's engagement in the world. A political struggle constituting their social engagement. Class belonging is then understood as "the result of struggle and subjective engagement" (202).
I plan to actually follow up this blog with another one because "Bargaining" it's a long chapter with a lot of profound insights. This will due for now, I suppose.
Myers, Tony. Slavoj Zizek. New York: Routledge, 2003.
Zizek, Slavoj. Living in the End Times. Brooklyn, New York: Verso, 2010.
Introduction (An Introduction to Slavoj Zizek)
Part I (The Introduction to Living in the End Times
Part II (Chapter 1)
Part III (Chapter 2)
And here is Part IV: Bargaining!
Bargaining, the third stage of grief as late capitalism confronts the ecological crisis, the consequences of the biogenetic revolution, growing imbalances within the system itself, and exploding social divisions, is in focus here, and it brings us right into a critique of capitalist economics. Zizek is deeply inspired by Karl Marx, and it comes out in a tour de force here. Zizek is most interested in debunking the myth that Capitalism is an ahistorical, asocial form. Because of the nature of Capitalism, and its emphasis on human individuality and freedom, it's hard to avoid this myth. It's easy to see money as a natural phenomenon which has served as a tool by which people can freely express themselves and enjoy self-determination, not a product of human psychology and ideology. Theories such as Heidegger's categories of a general 'will-to-power' or a 'will-to-technological-domination' have been utilized to provide a natural explanation of the "inherent structure of capitalist reproduction which can survive only through its incessant expansion and for which this ever-expanding reproduction, not some final state, is itself the only true goal of the entire movement"(188). But this is not so, according to Zizek. Capitalist production does not come naturally to people, but is rather the effect of a political and class struggle that is built into the social body itself. And the social body anchors itself to an ingrained ideology.
The ideology of free-market capital can be unearthed when considering the "inner logic of the three functions of money." Here Zizek takes a close reading of Marx and combines it with a Lacanian analysis. First we have Marx's 'ideal money', which requires no physical material - "it is enough to imagine a certain sum of money which expresses the value of the commodity in question." So, let's imagine gold, and let's put a number beside it, and let's imagine that that number has a relation to, say wheat, and so on. This exercise would be tied in with Lacan's Imaginary. It's at the Imaginary that the ego is conceived and born. It's where ideas are born, which then have a powerful effect on one's understanding of the world and one's place in it. Here the concept of money is born. Next, we pass to symbolic money. This is where cash comes in. The Lacanian category of the Symbolic refers to "the impersonal framework of society, the arena in which we take our place as part of a community of fellow human beings"(Tony Myers, 22). Cash becomes that physical object with the symbolic efficacy to make real interpersonal transactions. We can acquire stuff with paper. And finally, we have the Real: that which cannot be known, that which cannot be brought under a category, the world prior to language and symbolic representations. This would describe the reality of our bank vaults, the physical material resting in them. This is the treasure as it sits in the vaults prior to social valuation.
When we consider that the US debt could be wiped out in an instance if we just printed enough dollar bills, we confront the ideology of money. How much of this is just in our heads? Of course, doing so from within the ideological framework of global capitalism, we would crash the world economy. Most likely, wars would ensue. But we could clear our debt, and the 'reality' of our bank vaults would be known for what it truly is: a myth we believed in, which governed the political landscape and had real effects in people's lives. The US debt is a myth, as is the Greek debt. This is not to make light of it. The Lacanian triad ultimately makes up what we would call Reality. The triad governs our sense of morality, social responsibility, our engagement in philosophy, politics, literature, science, religion, and any other field that can be thought of. It's not so simple as erasing all debt, as that debt has come to dictate relations between people and states and nations. In Greece, real violence has erupted as a result of austerity measures and a European Union bailout. As mentioned, a clearing of the US debt through printing money would likely result in devastating wars and mass unemployment and hardship. If no money was printed, but the US merely defaulted on its loan, there would be mass unemployment, retirements ruined, and sick people would go untreated. In laying out the Lacanian analysis of money, I do not mean to simplify it. Zizek's point here is to critique the idea that labor in a capitalistic system is naturalized in a way it's never been before: it is now post-ideological. He criticizes the idea that, whereas previously imagined social structures which involved castes, estates, and traditional hierarchical links grounded themselves in ideology, Capitalist social classes have not. That labor has now become a natural phenomenon: with individual freedom to, regardless of your previous circumstances, study what you love, choose your career, and effectively determine what kind of lifestyle you will lead, your labor has become ahistorical. Zizek responds: "The abstraction of labor into an asocial form is ideological in the strict sense: it misrecognizes its own socio-historical conditions" (191).
What this means, following Marx, is that social groups don't determine a class struggle, but rather that the class struggle "precedes classes as determinate social groups" (198). In Capitalism, as with other economic models, class struggle is built into the framework of society. The ahistorical formulation of economy would argue the opposite: it would forget political economy in favor of a simple positive ordering of differing income brackets. In contrast, the formulation recognizing social-historical conditions would see 'class struggle' as preceding any ordering, and 'classes', as such, would no longer be part of a social 'reality', but rather an effect of the immanent antagonisms of capitalism. Zizek writes, "(O)ne should always bear in mind that, for a true Marxist, 'classes' are not categories of positive social reality, parts of the social body, but categories of the real of a political struggle which cuts across the entire social body, preventing its 'totalization.' True, there is no outside to capitalism today, but this should not be used to hide the fact that capitalism itself is 'antagonistic,' relying on contradictory measures to remain viable - and these immanent antagonisms open up the space for radical action" (198). What he means when he says there is no "outside to capitalism" is that capitalism is by and large the "determining factor" in the world economy. Stalin's Communism relied on a drive-to-expand, more and more productivity, and a need to increase the scope and quality of its production (188). So does China's Socialist experiment, Chavez's Bolivarian Revolution, and all of Europe's democratic quasi-socialist experiments. Why? Because their success relies on competing in a capitalist world-economy. So, radical action today does indeed exist within Global Capitalism, but Zizek's point is that such radical action, as carried out by the exploited and antagonized, should not be seen, as they commonly are, as triumphs of creative entrepreneurship. They should be seen as political events. Zizek notes, "If, say, a co-operative movement of poor farmers in a Third World country succeeds in establishing a thriving alternative network, this should be celebrated as a genuine political event" (199). In other words, it should not be understood in terms of Capitalism's success, but rather in terms of a class struggle for autonomy and self-determination within the antagonistic structure of Capitalism itself.
Zizek emphasizes that the 'class struggle' is not one between agents, but rather that which constitutes agents. If it were the former, Capitalism would be thought in its ahistorical, post-ideological sense, which is a fiction. The struggle of the Third World co-operative movement of poor farmers would be seen outside the context of exploitation: a system designed to pay them a subsistence-level income in exchange for their servitude to the institutions that determine prices and value, demand exportation, and provide the framework by which middle-men corporations and their investors can profit. As the latter, class belonging is no longer understood in terms of an objective social fact, but as the result of a historical process and the antagonisms built into the system that keep it afloat. The exploitation is seen for what it is: an antagonism (struggle) preceding the Third-world co-operative's engagement in the world. A political struggle constituting their social engagement. Class belonging is then understood as "the result of struggle and subjective engagement" (202).
I plan to actually follow up this blog with another one because "Bargaining" it's a long chapter with a lot of profound insights. This will due for now, I suppose.
Myers, Tony. Slavoj Zizek. New York: Routledge, 2003.
Zizek, Slavoj. Living in the End Times. Brooklyn, New York: Verso, 2010.
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