Sir George Clausen, Study of a group of field workers, ca. 1901
On the subject of my post Psoy Korolenko – Ekh Lyuli Lyuli. OK, I am done speaking about Slavoj Zizek without actually reading his work. Today’s article in the NYT is a good start – 20 Years of Collapse. I find his views refreshing, nothing to disagree about. In fact the views of democracy, as a self-fulfilling utopia, ring true to me:
“Where does this resurrection of anti-Communism draw its strength from? Why were the old ghosts resuscitated in nations where many young people don’t even remember the Communist times? The new anti-Communism provides a simple answer to the question: “If capitalism is really so much better than Socialism, why are our lives still miserable?”
It is because, many believe, we are not really in capitalism: we do not yet have true democracy but only its deceiving mask, the same dark forces still pull the threads of power, a narrow sect of former Communists disguised as new owners and managers — nothing’s really changed, so we need another purge, the revolution has to be repeated …
What these belated anti-Communists fail to realize is that the image they provide of their society comes uncannily close to the most abused traditional leftist image of capitalism: a society in which formal democracy merely conceals the reign of a wealthy minority. In other words, the newly born anti-Communists don’t get that what they are denouncing as perverted pseudo-capitalism simply is capitalism.”
A monumental shift occurred in America over the past decades. The appeal of the American model was not because you could become rich here, people instinctively understand that’s a lottery. The American appeal was because a mechanic in Detroit can live a comfortable life where his hard work is rewarded. This all changed. The rich got themselves the access to the global workforce and the middle class got pretty much demolished. There are structural changes in this country and not a single person knows how it will all play out.
At the same time America went to war(s) to impose its way of life on the savage world. The ideological underpinning and motivations came courtesy of Natan Sharansky and the Jewish neocons. It was the messianic vision – the flame of democracy engulfing the world (iz iskry vozgoritse plamya). The vision of the messianic peace and prosperity. But the realities of Iraq and Afghanistan put an end to the rhetoric and as always in history the messianic good intentions inevitably lead to bloodshed and massive death. Appropriately a post religious Russian Jew Natan Sharansky found new metaphors to articulate the central reckless messianic ethos of our Russian Jewish heritage. So we now have two pillars of the democratic utopia collapsing in front of our very eyes. America is no longer the model with its ruinous middle class and the repelled and defeated democratic jihad in the Middle East.
The so-called Chinese and Russian democracies are monarchical lordships, with no middle class to begin with. It took decades for America to destroy its middle class and Russia and China pretty mush had a clean slate. And this is the reason for the perceived and actual economic efficiencies in Russia and especially in China. No middle class to get in a way, just super rich apparatchiks and people who are accustomed to punishing work and orders. No such luck in America, weighted down by the obsolete middle class. The whiny and spoiled populace with unmet expectations. In this context Slavoj Zizek’s is honest and timely:
“How did we come to this? Deceived by 20th-century Communism and disillusioned with 21st-century capitalism, we can only hope for new Kravchenkos — and that they come to happier ends. On the search for justice, they will have to start from scratch. They will have to invent their own ideologies. They will be denounced as dangerous utopians, but they alone will have awakened from the utopian dream that holds the rest of us under its sway.”
P.S. Performance of US stock market recently decoupled from the economic reality. The rate of the dollar is more important for a global corporation than the unemployed one-third of the American workforce. As long as the global markets are intact to manufacture and sell, who cares about the American middle class.
Image licensed courtesy of Picture Library of the Royal Academy of Arts
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