Žižek tells us that he appreciates capitalism, as even
Marx and Stalin did, as ‘the most productive, welfare producing, dynamic force
in human history’. However, as Marx did in his way, and many others do now, Žižek
sees a looming crisis of capitalism.
Some people see light at the end of the tunnel, in
some correction on capitalism, but Žižek joked that this light may be an
oncoming train.
Multinational corporations pressure governments to provide
tax breaks, allow for deteriorating conditions of labour, and give subsidies
for settling in a country and for cheap energy. This is yielding a ‘race to the
bottom’, with governments competing among each other to attract or keep
multinationals.
Banks were bailed out after incurring excessive risks,
hiving the losses off onto the public, leading to the 2008 crisis. Measures
were taken to re-regulate banking to prevent such crises from occurring again,
but in the US those are being abolished again by president Trump, and the next
crisis is brewing.
These developments have been accompanied by the
emergence of what is called a ‘precariat’ (a contraction of ‘precarious’ and
‘proletariat’). There, workers have no lasting jobs, hop from one project or
temporary employment to another, often with bad labour conditions, poor
perspectives for housing, proper health care and pension. This is not only
undermining their economic position, but is eating away their self-respect and
hope.
Extremes occur, for example, in mines in Congo,
factories in Bangladesh, services in India, and building projects in Arab gulf
states, just to name a few. In China, many millions have been uprooted from
their rural communities, to migrate to factories in the large cities, dumped in
poor and filthy housing, meeting discrimination from the settled middle class that
enjoys rising prosperity and cultural facilities.
In Western countries conditions are less dire, but
serious enough to breed discontent and resentment, yielding political upheaval in
populist movements in the US and Europe.
Žižek said, in one of those one-liners he throws out,
that he supported Trump. When challenged on this, he said that what he ‘really
meant’ was that Trump helps to carry the system to a crisis, unearthing the
ugly truths of neoconservatism.
What will the precariat do when they find out that the populists also have no adequate answer, giving promises they cannot keep?
Marx predicted that the proletariat would form a class
and would grab political power in a revolutionary overthrow, which they did.
What will the present precariat do? An obstacle here is that the workers
compete with each other in getting work, and do not have a shared workplace as
a platform for banding together. Or will the new media offer the means to do
so?
In one of his lectures, Žižek recalled how communism
and Nazism also had guilty dreams of the submission of labour to higher
purposes. In late capitalism that higher purpose lies in the supremacy of
markets. An end of human submission in labour may lie in the emergence of
androids, robots, who will not clamour for food, freedom or happiness.
Karl Polanyi, in his Great transformation (1944) proposed
that unchecked markets lead to fascism. That happened in the rise of Hitler and
is happening now.
A case in point is Chili, which under Pinochet was the pioneer of extreme neoliberalism. It wins in both the best and the worst. After some years it had the highest rate of investment, economic growth and per capita income in Latin America, and the lowest murder rate. The inequality of capital ownership is among the highest in the world: the top 1% owns 1/3. Among the rest of the population 3/4 has debts, one third of which is behind in payment. The depression rate is the highest in the world, suicide rates are among the highest in the world, and next to North Korea it is the only country with rising suicide among minors. Only the rich can afford good health care and education.[i]
Then, for another dimension, Žižek also notes, like
many others, that the emerging ‘platforms’ such as those of Google, Facebook,
Amazon and Uber, with their use of algorithms that employ ‘big data’ on choices
of consumers and voters are now getting to know them ‘better than they know
themselves’, manipulate their subconscious choices and thereby dehumanize them.
As Žižek says, this is privatization and
monopolization of intellectual capital, yielding rent, not profit as a margin
on costs, but as unrelated to costs, thus going against the main argument of
market efficiency and liberty that capitalism proclaims.
This is one of the cases of ideology that Žižek loves
to expose, where dark reality is hidden behind the shining official lore.
Capitalism still legitimizes itself as being based on
liberal democracy, but it is presently in important ways becoming similar to
the authoritarianism that it condemns. How different will authoritarian
capitalism of present China, Russia, Malaysia, etc. be from the new-capitalist
monopolies and manipulations of economic, social, intellectual and symbolic
capital?
Žižek claims that, even more deeply dark, capitalist
competition is not only joy in winning but also, but hidden, joy at others
losing, which is now increasingly becoming manifest in indifference to the
increasing exclusion of the losers from employment. I am not yet sure what to
think of this.
This is one of the cases Žižek exposes of excess
enjoyment, or ‘jouissance’, in transgression of morals. Also, feelings of guilt
about consumerism, global injustice and ruin of nature, are assuaged, paid off,
by firms (Žižek gives Starbucks as an example) that include in the high price
of a product percentages they transfer for protection of the destitute, the
suppressed, and nature. One can also think of airlines giving the opportunity
to plant trees to fight pollution. Commodification of conscience.
[i] Source: Volkskrant, 16-17 december
2017.
No comments:
Post a Comment