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Authors: Slavoj Žižek
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ties are here thoroughly wrong: on the contrary, fidelity to premodern (“Asian”) values is paradoxically
the very feature that allows countries like Singapore or India to follow the path of capitalist dynamics even more radically than Western liberal countries
. Appeals to traditional values enable individuals to justify their ruthless engagement in market competition in ethical terms (“I am really doing it to help my parents, to earn enough money so that my children and cousins will be able to study …”). We can say something similar about today’s China: it is wrong to claim that China faces the choice of either becoming a truly capitalist country or of maintaining a Communist system which inevitably thwarts full capitalist development. This choice is a fake one: in today’s China, capitalist growth is exploding not in spite of Communist rule but because of it—far from being an obstacle to capitalist development, Communist rule guarantees the optimal conditions for an unbridled capitalism.
In short, global capitalism is a complex process which affects different countries in different ways, and what unites the protests in their multifariousness is that they are all reactions against different facets of capitalist globalization. The general tendency of contemporary capitalism is towardsfurther expansion of the reign of the market, combined with progressive enclosures of public space, sweeping cuts in public services, and a rising authoritarianism in the functioning of political power. It is in this context that the Greeks protest against the reign of international financial capital and their own corrupt and inefficient clientelist state increasingly unable to provide basic social services; that Turks protest against religious authoritarianism and the commercialization of public space; that Egyptians protested against a corrupt authoritarian regime supported by the Western powers; that Iranians protested against a corrupt and inefficient religious fundamentalist rule, etc. What unites these protests is that they all deal with a specific combination of (at least) two issues: a more or less radical economic one (from corruption and inefficiency to outright anti-capitalism) and a politico-ideological one (from demands for democracy to demands for overcoming the standard multiparty democracy). And does the same not hold for the Occupy Wall Street movement? Beneath the profusion of (often confused) statements, Occupy Wall Street incorporated two basic insights: 1) a discontent with capitalism
as a system
—the problem is the capitalist system as such, not any particular corruption; and 2) an awareness that the institutionalized form of multiparty democracy is incapable of holding back the excesses of capitalism, i.e., that democracy has to be reinvented.
There are, of course, many traps awaiting those engaged in these struggles. Let me take the case of Turkey. The motto that united those who protested in Taksim Square was “Dignity!”—a good but ambiguous slogan. The term is appropriate insofar as it makes it clear that protests arenot just about particular material demands, but about the protesters’ freedom and emancipation. In the case of the Taksim Square protests, the call for dignity not only referred to corruption but was also, and crucially, directed against the patronizing ideology of the Turkish prime minister. The direct target of the Gezi Park protests was neither neoliberal capitalism nor Islamism, but the personality of Erdoğan: the demand was for
him
to step down. Why? What made him so annoying as to become the target of both secular educated protesters as well as of anti-capitalist Muslim youth, the object of a hatred which fused them together? Here is how my friend Bülent Somay explains it:
Everybody wanted PM Erdoğan to resign. Because, many activists explained both during and after the Resistance, he was constantly meddling with their lifestyles, telling women to have at least three
the very feature that allows countries like Singapore or India to follow the path of capitalist dynamics even more radically than Western liberal countries
. Appeals to traditional values enable individuals to justify their ruthless engagement in market competition in ethical terms (“I am really doing it to help my parents, to earn enough money so that my children and cousins will be able to study …”). We can say something similar about today’s China: it is wrong to claim that China faces the choice of either becoming a truly capitalist country or of maintaining a Communist system which inevitably thwarts full capitalist development. This choice is a fake one: in today’s China, capitalist growth is exploding not in spite of Communist rule but because of it—far from being an obstacle to capitalist development, Communist rule guarantees the optimal conditions for an unbridled capitalism.
In short, global capitalism is a complex process which affects different countries in different ways, and what unites the protests in their multifariousness is that they are all reactions against different facets of capitalist globalization. The general tendency of contemporary capitalism is towardsfurther expansion of the reign of the market, combined with progressive enclosures of public space, sweeping cuts in public services, and a rising authoritarianism in the functioning of political power. It is in this context that the Greeks protest against the reign of international financial capital and their own corrupt and inefficient clientelist state increasingly unable to provide basic social services; that Turks protest against religious authoritarianism and the commercialization of public space; that Egyptians protested against a corrupt authoritarian regime supported by the Western powers; that Iranians protested against a corrupt and inefficient religious fundamentalist rule, etc. What unites these protests is that they all deal with a specific combination of (at least) two issues: a more or less radical economic one (from corruption and inefficiency to outright anti-capitalism) and a politico-ideological one (from demands for democracy to demands for overcoming the standard multiparty democracy). And does the same not hold for the Occupy Wall Street movement? Beneath the profusion of (often confused) statements, Occupy Wall Street incorporated two basic insights: 1) a discontent with capitalism
as a system
—the problem is the capitalist system as such, not any particular corruption; and 2) an awareness that the institutionalized form of multiparty democracy is incapable of holding back the excesses of capitalism, i.e., that democracy has to be reinvented.
There are, of course, many traps awaiting those engaged in these struggles. Let me take the case of Turkey. The motto that united those who protested in Taksim Square was “Dignity!”—a good but ambiguous slogan. The term is appropriate insofar as it makes it clear that protests arenot just about particular material demands, but about the protesters’ freedom and emancipation. In the case of the Taksim Square protests, the call for dignity not only referred to corruption but was also, and crucially, directed against the patronizing ideology of the Turkish prime minister. The direct target of the Gezi Park protests was neither neoliberal capitalism nor Islamism, but the personality of Erdoğan: the demand was for
him
to step down. Why? What made him so annoying as to become the target of both secular educated protesters as well as of anti-capitalist Muslim youth, the object of a hatred which fused them together? Here is how my friend Bülent Somay explains it:
Everybody wanted PM Erdoğan to resign. Because, many activists explained both during and after the Resistance, he was constantly meddling with their lifestyles, telling women to have at least three
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