When Zizek and Peterson Argued About Marxism and Capitalism, Were They Debating the Same Concepts?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78BFFq_8XvM
It seems to me that the "Marxism" Peterson is thinking of is different from the "Marxism" that Zivek is thinking of. In fact, neither of their "Marxism" is all that similar to the original "Marxism" made by Marx.
At multiple times during their debate it seems like they're just talking past each other.
It seems to me that the "Marxism" Peterson is thinking of is different from the "Marxism" that Zivek is thinking of. In fact, neither of their "Marxism" is all that similar to the original "Marxism" made by Marx.
At multiple times during their debate it seems like they're just talking past each other.
Comments (83)
Not actually,
Even if it is difficult for a clinical psychologist to understand a philosopher (who knows that he would be on thin ice if he would start talking about clinical psychology and hence sticks to philosophy), the two make it through the discussion. To the outrage or disappointment of their supporters, they find a lot of common ground.
Hopefully they’ll continue to the ‘exchange’ and that this was more of an appetizer for future discourse. I’ve been tempted to read some of Zizek’s stuff as he’s certainly entertaining if nothing else.
Wasn’t at all surprised they mostly agreed, but was hoping they’d both have come to the event with better preparation ... maybe next time?
I’ve actually found Russell Brand’s recent dialogues much more engaging to listen to than this one. Maybe I’ve just heard from both Peterson and Zizek too much to be as fully engaged with their words as when I first come across them.
I’m still hoping to see Stephen Fry take either one of them on (so to speak) in some form of debate/discussion. It would be nice to see such public interest in more mainstream academia too. Sadly it seems most of these kind of events only gain momentum due to political agendas - like with the Atheist movement to affect US education by supporting/defending the teaching scientific knowledge.
Zizek: Well, my brand of Marxism is different from what you think it is. In fact when I think about Marxism I think about climate change and how Donald Trump sucks.
Peterson: Oh. I guess we don't disagree as much as I thought we did.
Zizek: Communist liberals in universities suck!
Peterson: Yes!
[A summary of their debate].
When the national government in the US can decide on something [rare I know], it has the mechanisms to force state governments to comply. In China, that's not the case. Instead, the local governments in China pretend to comply, and then through a combination of bribes and relationship building continues to do whatever it was that they were doing.
Russia has a similar problem.
Pretty much exactly as I thought then. Saves me watching it to find out.
:lol:
Maybe they’ll be more. The most eerie bit was when Peterson referred to the “violent overthrowing of the rich” which led some fanatics in the audience to cheer quite blood thirstily at the idea ... sad that there are people out there like that, but reassuring that everyone else in the audience likely stared at them with befuddled pity (maybe they were roused from such appalling behaviour to consider what it was they were actually cheering for?)
There were plenty of points where Zizek could really have hammered down on Peterson; just look at Zizek's bitch face when Peterson's floundering for examples of 'Post-Modern Neomarxists' or when Zizek corrects him on Foucault (Foucault wasn't a Marxist, he was a major critic of Marxism). But he didn't, why?
Zizek really wanted to exploit the cognitive dissonance of him agreeing with Peterson on most major points, when it's likely people (extreme fans) were expecting one to 'own' or 'destroy' the other.
In that interview with Russia Today, Zizek frames it like that too, apparently Zizek agreed to the debate but wanted to set the terms for it. The terms of the debate allowed lengthy exegesis before critique, so Zizek could present his idiosyncratic worldview criticising the same points Peterson would - simultaneously undermining Peterson's arguments (based on an inaccurate caricature) and appearing attractive to his viewer base.
I’m not so sure this wasn’t gone over? I believe the point was the focus on use of power, and viewing society as oppressed versus oppressor? That was where the relation to Marx was held - Foucault is a purposefully slippery customer though. I’m not a massive fan and given that he is most definitely a postmodernist and Peterson’s view - rightly or wrongly - was that postmodernism smuggled in Marxist ideas, it isn’t a massive stretch to associate Foucault with Marxism by association in that manner as well as via his mentors. Of course Foucault never liked any kind of label and quite openly stated opposition to some of Marx’s ideas regarding history - he nevertheless had some similarities to Marxist ideas in the use of power and the narrative of oppression in an historical sense (I’ve only read Madness and Civilization myself and this is apparent enough in that text; he may have switched positions later, and as I’ve heard he was prone to doing so quite often).
By all means educate me on his views. He is someone I am very willing to read more of - in fact I very nearly purchased The Archeology of Knowledge recently, but I’ve got quite a back-log at the moment.
Thanks
If you're willing to aggregate to 'analysis of power' = 'oppressed vs oppressor narratives' = 'Foucault' = 'Marxism' you may as well call Marxists left liberals.
Anyway, Foucault's methodology is very much non-Marxist, he traces cultural shifts using art works, tropes, systems of ideas - eventually subordinated to the master concept of 'discourse', and he looks at the interface between discourse and social life and social institutions a lot. There's no central emphasis on 'material conditions' or class antagonism as you would expect from a Marxist, even if you could broadly call what he writes as creating a historical critique of ideology in something similar to the Marxist sense of the term.
Even the sense of 'oppressor and oppressed' as an intentional, causal relationship between identity groups isn't really present, power relations in Foucault is far more diffuse and systemic, arising as mechanisms of relation between social institutions, people and discourse.
You can find some sympathy with Marxist critique, but it's largely historically limited.
I'm not a Foucault scholar though, I've read Madness and Civilisation recently and The Order of Things a long time ago, so take what I say with a pinch of salt.
I wasn’t saying this. I was stating what I recall Peterson saying about Foucault; as I said “rightly or wrongly” that appeared to be his claim.
The whole affair was rather flat and I can’t pretend I was listening all that intently. I’m much more interested in dead thinkers than living ones :)
Yeah, that's the equivocation Peterson uses all the time. Zizek 'agreed' with it in the debate, but it was pretty clear that Zizek thought the old framework of class was supplanted by the framework of the 'identity politics' bogeyman. So Peterson emphasised the equivocation as a criticism of Marxism, Zizek emphasised the equivocation as signalling the death of Marxism as a political project.
Who is a Marxist anymore?
I think that there are many intelligent leftists here, but nobody in the Forum comes close to the old-school Marxists that I grew up in my country. Nobody here talks the old lithurgy. The talk with no meaning that anybody that lived during the Soviet times or visited the Workers Paradise would instantly recognize. That lithurgy sounds so funny today.
I remember Bitter Crank saying that he was in the left circles when he was young and he's older than me, so he would remember. Of course the Euro-Marxists of that time were a different breed from American Marxists.
It's actually the analysis of power which Peterson has a problem with. All the stuff about "postmodern" is circling a certain move of social analysis, in which social relationships and expressions of power are understood.
Peterson, for lack of a better term, is a certain sort of traditionalist[/I], who understands the organisation of society based on a certain kind of our myth. In his view our society is organised by meaning of myths. It's not, as Foucault analyses, a set of material states organised through how people [i]exist and relate to each other.
For Peterson, it doesn't matter Foucault is aligned with some version of neo-liberalism and capitalism. The way Foucault analyses society is too scientific . Describing our society being organised in terms of how people exist and relate to each other tosses Peterson's precious myths. It means we understand the organisation of our society to be formed by our existence, by how we choose to treat people, rather than through a mythical tradition.
For the mythical identies of Peterson, his supporters and the closely aligned alt right, this is never acceptable because it topples the mythical tradition as the means by which social organisation occurs.
Diffuse is probably worse to Peterson. It means understanding a social relation though the specific and individual, rather than a lens of a singular tradition.
It's hard to cite the meaning of a myth as one's social origin, when you concive one's social situation as an individual event caused by a range of complex interactions with many other things and people.
This is literally the only part I watched.
"Who are these Marxists?! Name one!"
Peterson's ice cream in the desert look is priceless as his whole cultural Marxism schtick is exposed as the stinking pile of dog dirt it always was. Cue puzzled look at his laptop and tremulous attempts at saving face. Reminds me of when Sarah Palin was asked to name one newspaper she read.
Toasted. And moving on...
There ya go. All fixed now.
Quoting matt
Quoting Baden
Yet an important comment from Zizek was that "This isn't a competition". But of course the Tribalists don't care about that. Philosophy is about winning the argument!
Pffft. Don't take yourself so seriously. I saw a tiny segment as I pointed out above where Peterson got owned and then I made a joke. If Zizek has a tribe (is that the one where everyone has a perpetual cold?) I'm not in it. But he is smarter and more interesting than Peterson as many others are.
Yes, the whole debate was a long discovery of the fact that Perterson has just taken for granted the US right-wing meme term "neo-marxist" to refer to identity politics, but there are no actual examples of neo-marxists and Peterson suddenly realized that it's a problem for a critical thinker.
Zizek let it slide because Peterson was so impressed by basic Hegelian / Marxist analysis of our situation as well as Zizek's "seductive charisma, especially to a younger audience" that he wanted to found a "Zizekism" right then and there.
Perterson lost the debate of defending capitalism when he recognized that the destruction of the oceans was a problem: to paraphrase "There's been some good things too for the environment, like more trees in Europe -- ok, yes, there's a total catastrophe in the oceans -- but good things have happened too". Zizek did come back to this point a few times, but there was never any answer, just a long ramblings about personal responsibility to get eventually to the basic point of "take the plank out of your own eye before trying to take the sliver out of the eye of your brothers" but in a new hip psychobabble version. Discussing the oceans would have been the "Marxist v Capitalism" point of contention, and choosing to avoid that issue and instead praise Zizek was why there was no debate.
In short, just two Marxists agreeing that the commodification of everything is a major problem.
Scenarios in the debate, or that he elaborates in other places? In either case, what's utter rubbish about them?
I don't. Sorry if I look like that.
Quoting Baden
OK, I watched the whole thing and thus I hope I'm not coming off being too concerned of this, but...
There is the issue that Peterson was indeed flabbergasted: because Zizek didn't defend Marxism and didn't try to refute Jordan's arguments. So umm... :chin: And where I personally agree totally with Zizek is his view that the whole idea of Cultural Marxists being the culprit is nonsense. Hopefully Jordan got it, because I've had a problem with that view for a long time.
The simple fact is that the Ivy League Academia isn't lost in PC culture and safe spaces and all the humbug because of postmodernists and/or Cultural Marxists, it's lost there because of feckless administrators that in their 'White Guilt' hypocrisy and their urge please the students (thanks to the competition between universities) have given a small vocal minority, that likely don't actually represent the majority, too much room to play their own 60's fantasy of making similar advances as the civil rights movement did before them. Yeah, MILK THE GUILT!
And same goes to the so politically correct Canadian lawmakers: oh, they are so well hearing the minorities. Yet that doesn't make them marxists, but anyway.
(And of course Slavoj doesn't like the victimhood culture etc. either, but who's looking for agreements between the two.)
I’m hoping you used italics to suggest what Foucault did wasn’t scientific - because what he produced was historical opinionated prose. To call it scientific is a serious stretch!
When China switched from Marxism to Capitalism, that's when China's economic boom began. If China still believed in Marxism, their economy would be like Russia's.
Look, I came from China. Marxism is shi-.
Don't be a simpleton (like Peterson) and think that Marxism and the actual Real-World implementation of Marxism are equivalent issues. This isn't about the practical and historical implementation of an ideology! :angry:
Besides, to the Western intellectuals You (the Chinese) looked all so cute with your caps with the Red Star and green overalls waving the Little Red Book of Mao. And then you rode bicycles. Oh, how people just loved it here in the West that you rode bicycles! The streets of China were so different without the cars, which was so nice, so good. Everybody understood, that as there were so many Chinese, You simply could not have cars as we had, that would be an utter disaster. The Chinese simply couldn't have a similar materialist consumption-economy as we enjoyed, which was inherently bad. You were far better than that! You were Communists, or more specifically Maoists. It worked in your society. Hence the view among of the leftist intellectuals was that You were living sensibly and we, in the decadent capitalist West, should feel bad about our lifestyle.
??????????????
I mean it entirely earnestly. (and it is a contrast, hence the emphasis, to Peterson's approach of suggesting our social organisation is given by a tradition myth).
Foucault's method of takes observation of our society seriously. Instead of approaching our social relationships in terms of whether they follow a myth or tradition, he looks at how we are states of the world who have produced a particular social organisation through our actions and social expectations.
The move is analogous to when we shift from insisting the causality of the world is given in myth, to act of observing and describing what the world is doing. Foucault does it with our social organisation in relation to our culture and structures of power.
To add to ssu's comment, Hitler was voted for in a democracy, so were many other dictators (as well as many a coup that simply overthrew the democracy), yet few here would even attempt to argue that: Hitler was bad, Hitler came to power in a democracy, therefore democracy bad. If you step back for a moment, the reason that this argument form is used with respect to Marxism or socialism or communism, is that nearly 2 centuries of propaganda backs up what reduces to simply repeating that propaganda. So it's understandable that people who repeat it think of themselves as doing good, but is it critical thinking?
If someone was arguing for democracy against opponents here, it would go without saying that they'd be able to accept democracy does indeed allow tyrants to get voted in but that it is not necessarily a fatal flaw to the philosophy of democracy itself (they would then argue why not); and it would go without saying that they'd be able to argue their view that the Nazi's were democracy gone wrong (and perhaps due to a poorly designed democratic system) and that is a risk but not definitive conclusive evidence that democracy is bad.
Indeed, if we were arguing in Marx's time, a proponent of democracy would need to contend with the criticism that one major democratic experiment led straight to Nepolean and the subsequent wars that killed millions of people, and the other major democratic experiment was clearly just colonial elites not wanting to give up their slaves. Point being, at one point, whether the point referenced or then before, it was not clear that real democracies in practice didn't simply descend to a worse despotism (aristocrats argued this for literally thousands of years; and they worked pretty hard to make sure there wasn't any prosperous democracies around for most of that time).
Now, this doesn't establish things either way; perhaps democracy does lead invariably to despotism; perhaps Marxism in all it's forms does lead invariably to despotism. The point of a philosophy debate forum is to debate it, support one's arguments or then criticize another's arguments, then contending with rebuttals, subtleties and reformulations.
For instance, some Marxists view democracy as essential to Marxism, and therefore the despotism of the Soviet Union or Communist China (both emerging long after Marx is dead) is incompatible with what Marx believed and wrote. The main supporting evidence of this is Marx's view of the Commune of Paris.
His work is generally opinion and speculation. It is good speculation in places, but to call it “scientific” is to not understand science.
You’d have to provide some pretty convincing evidence to back up that claim!
All I’m saying is you shouldn’t ignore the critique simply because you hated his failed solution. I’m saying no more than that.
Did you read the rest of my comment?
Yeah, I think you have it.
Zizek is rightly uncomfortable with those who treat event as a championship bout.
Be that as it may, if we want to debate this, are you saying Hitler did not rise through a democratic process?
Ok, then yes, we disagree on this point.
Though I don't view Hitler being elected as a point against democracy, it's simply the case that he used the political process to form a government and institute a dictatorship; there was no coup (if you see a third option between the two, please explain it).
From Wikipedia:
The Reichstag Fire Decree was also constitutional, and as Wikipedia notes "the Nazis used the provisions of the Reichstag Fire Decree to arrest all 81 Communist deputies (in spite of their virulent campaign against the party, the Nazis had allowed the KPD to contest the election[167]) and prevent several Social Democrats from attending [the vote on the enabling act]".
Do you dispute Wikipedia's description? How is the de facto dictatorship not compatible with the democratic process the Germans had? How was it a coup? or then some third option that is neither legal nor a coup? (i.e. how do you argue against the legality of each step towards the Nazi's seizing power without saying "a poorly designed democratic system"). The Nazi's didn't have a majority, but it's a parliamentary system, Hitler got the other parties to vote for his Enabling act, and he used a completely constitutionally valid Decree to round up the communists. Sure, the fire wasn't lit by the communists, but that I would include in the "risks of democracy": that bad faith actors can use subterfuge for propaganda purposes; the Germans still voted enough Nazi's into power as well as other parties largely sympathetic to the Nazi's; i.e. the argument "it's only democracy if no one plays any tricks", I do not think is valid.
From wiki too:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933
Stopping people from voting by threat/violence, or by already having removed their citizen rights, is not exactly what democracy is about.
Granted, his initial rise - although manipulative and violent - as in line with basic democratic principles. So, you have a point there. His actual appointment as leader was not democratic according to the above though.
The threat/violence and repression of the communists were done under constitutional powers granted by the Reichstag Fire Decree. It's debatable how many MPs voted for the Enabling Act simply because they "felt threatened", and again the electorate could have voted for representatives that would stand against the Nazi's regardless of threats (the communists were a minority and their repression was legal under the Fire Decree, people could have voted for more of them and/or more anti-Nazi social democrats; but they didn't and anti-Nazi's were in the minority).
There is nothing that says violent and manipulative people can't participate in democracy. It is you that is close but not cigar: you are including in your definition of democracy the assumption that it must be constituted by people who value the democratic process, peaceful deliberation and no dirty tricks. You are confusing democratic values with the democratic process itself.
Someone defending the philosophy of democracy must contend with the fact that the democratic process can be used by someone who values dictatorship to seize power through completely legal steps. Hitler is an example of this in practice.
The other parties could have opposed him, but didn't. It's a weak quibble to say they "felt threatened", the MP's that voted for the enabling act weren't forced at gun point to vote one way in a farce of democracy; there was debate, there was a deal cut with the leader of the other major party; there were nevertheless people who voted against it. The ambiance may have been "threatening" but any MP who felt strongly anti-Nazi certainly would have voted against despite the atmosphere; the fact is the majority were not strongly anti-Nazi and largely sympathetic to Nazism (hence why the leader of the other major party accepted a deal; support in exchange for a a position in the de facto dictatorship). If the repression of the communists was an unconstitutional outrage, the other parties could have opposed the repression and the Fire Decree (but they didn't because they didn't like the communists either).
Historians don't talk about the "Hitler coup" nor the "19 something revolution where Hitler overturned the government with a group of guerrilla fighters descending from the mountains".
Hitler was the government! And he exploited weaknesses in the design of German democracy to create a pathway to a legal dictatorship.
Now historians also agree that a majority of Germans were not in favour of Nazism, a lot thought he was a joke and wouldn't win a significant amount of seats and didn't bother to vote. But the point of this part of the discussion is not that Hitler's rise was unconstitutional or that Germany didn't have a democratic process, but to point out Hitler didn't truly "represent" the German people (in a meta-democracy way, just as we can say today Trump doesn't "represent" Americans, due to losing the popular vote, in the same meta-democracy way), as well as to provide a general lesson on the dangers of not-voting and the danger of parliamentary first-past-the-post systems and constitutional emergency powers.
If you review your argument carefully it reduces to Hitler having an unfair advantage in passing the Enabling Act, due to a prior accumulation of power under the entirely constitutional Fire Decree (granted by Hindenburg, who was president and had that emergency decree power in a democratic system; he could have decreed otherwise). In other words, your argument is that the democracy was badly designed, not that Hitler seized power in an undemocratic way.
Hitler did not stage a coup nor overthrow the government with a revolutionary force, he played the democracy game (as anyone can do in a democracy, regardless if they value democracy or not), and he accumulated enough support and power to be able to legally exclude his fiercest opponents and then used that position to solidify totalitarian power, again legally.
To be a proponent of democracy is to accept such people can participate in public life and form parties and run for office and be in government; but to have faith that good democratic design and enough people really valuing democracy itself can prevent such people rising to form a legal dictatorships, as well as update and adapt the system when needed.
However, there's no mechanism in democratic theory to guarantee legal dictatorship can't happen; it's a risk and a criticism of democracy that a proponent of democracy must deal with.
I concede the to the bulk of your argument though given that if they hadn’t been threatened and blocked from voting then they the Nazi Party’s rise to power would’ve only been, at best, delayed rather than halted.
I’m well aware that people can democratically vote for a dictatorship - I believe something along those lines happened fairly recently in Turkey.
Just goes to show how far removed ideological analysis is from active popular political discourse.
The subject matter vs Peterson's background made this an ill-fated exchange to begin with. He's no economist and no political scientist; Zizek had the home-field advantage, which meant everything.
Me, Myself, and Ivy
The Preppy Progressives transfer their deserved but denied guilt over being nothing without Daddy's Money to those whose opportunities are stolen through that heiristocratic appropriation. With the delusion that they are Born to Rule, they seek distortions of history in order to force Whites to feel guilty. They hate their fathers while continuing to still believe what their fathers told them, before adolescent rebellion on everything else, about their inherited superiority.
Have you read Marx outside of the Manifesto (assuming you've read that)?
My problem isn't just with Marx. If you really want to get into it, I don't like Plato. His philosophy is crap.
I.e. Even 2-year-old children understand the concepts of fairness and ownership.
I.e. Marx is shi-. ALL of his basic axioms behind his arguments are wrong.
Marxists talk a lot about factories, but they seem to have very little knowledge of how factories (or supply chains) work in the first place. Like, for all of your knowledge of Marxism, how often have you actually visited the factories that make stuff?
As I said: I would listen to you if you can provide a good summary.
Also: I'm not the one making big broad generalizations about the philosophy of factories and manufacturing, so the onus is on the "Marxists."
2. Factories have changed a lot since the 1860s.
Marxism has nothing on that. It's a 19th century philosophy designed for a 19th century world. But it's the 21st century now, baby!
I'm not going to tell you how computers are made (although I think I know more about than you do).
I was just telling you that private property isnt about owning your pants. I'm not a Marxist. I think Marx had an apocalyptic outlook. Communists did anyway.
Getting really angry about stuff like this really isn't productive. Just sit back in your easy chair and get all philosophical. :)
Dont you have a gym membership for that?
Walking is good. Especially by a river or lake.
Amazon is outdated. JD and BABA is the future.
What Humanity Needs Is an Ambidextrous Guillotine
Their is no Left Wing. After the French Revolution, the hereditary plutocracy divided into two ideologies on how to perpetuate Birth-Class Supremacy. One, the Reactionaries, decided that the best way was totalitarianism, to humiliate the working classes into absolute hopelessness and fatalistic subservience. The other division decided that democracy would inevitably supersede them unless they infiltrated democratic movements, single-mindedly pushed their way into leadership of them, and deceptively established the same Born to Rule totalitarianism. The desperate and power-hungry Marxists took advantage of the delusion that they were the most dedicated because they had the most to lose by rejecting Reactionism.
Possibly this was intentional. In broadcasted debates like this, the debaters often aren't concerned with engaging in a productive discussion with each other. Instead they try to convince the viewer of their viewpoints.
Now that the Generation Z has reached the campus and makes it's own sillyness apparent, I always emphasize not to judge a whole generation by it's loudest actors. Yes, stereotypes do tell something true, but shouldn't be generalized. What also ought to be noted that the 'Preppy Progressive' tend to be in the top universities, which have a history of 'being woke'. And why wouldn't they feel so important, when they made the cut to an Ivy League University.
My reality check comes from my job where I meet young conscripts: the millennials and the gen Z. As I've talked about this among my peers and the now retired baby boomers, it's obvious that these serious minded guys and gals of younger generations are just OK. You just have to explain things to them and raise your voice only when they otherwise cannot hear you. Old school military antics will get them confused, the society has changed. Some argue that they are actually far better than the Gen X and baby boomers, who, especially the baby boomers, used a lot of alcohol and didn't take their conscription and military service so seriously.