According to Slavoj Zizek, the guy with the Stalin poster on his wall, Obama is like Lenin:
I am a Leninist. Lenin wasn’t afraid to dirty his hands. If you can get power, grab it. Do whatever is possible. This is why I support Obama. I think the battle he is fighting now over healthcare is extremely important, because it concerns the very core of the ruling ideology. The core of the campaign against Obama is freedom of choice. And the lesson, if he wins, is that freedom of choice is certainly something beautiful, but that it only works against a background of regulations, ethical presuppositions, economic conditions and so on. My position isn’t that we should sit down and wait for some big revolution to come. We have to engage wherever we can. If Obama wins his battle over healthcare, if some kind of blow can be struck against the ideology of freedom of choice, it will have been a victory worth fighting for.
Not great for Obama’s public relations.
He impugns capitalism for its envy problem. But in Zizek’s world he’d be a prominent public philosopher, and that makes me positively green (on the outside…) with envy.
October 30, 2009 at 1:17 pm
Zizek is fast replacing Baudrillard as my favorite Euro-commedian.
His book on the Iraq war is actually quite good.
October 30, 2009 at 3:42 pm
I thought Baudrillard was taken more seriously.
Zizek has written some weighty tomes on some hardcore continental philosophy, but yea he seems to intentionally go for a comical impression nonetheless.
In the article Zizek states that Rawls was wrong about the difference principle because he didn’t take into account envy. I believe that was the point made in G.A. Cohen’s final book. John Nye gives reasons to think that nothing can overcome the problem of envy here:
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/10/16/john-v-c-nye/why-things-will-feel-worse-as-they-get-better-the-downside-of-growing-consumption-equality/
October 31, 2009 at 10:04 am
Just replying to your comment on my post; no need to publish this(though of course feel free):
I like your point that California and Texas may be too large even for the Articles, though looking at the EU, France and Germany are commensurate territorially (roughly) with our large states. Considering the consolidation here, I think an argument can be made that Texas and Cali should be independent…though I don’t see this happening, at least any time soon (though the USSR fell apart faster than any of us thought possible or likely).
Thanks for your comment. It helps me to think of the problem from a slightly different angle. Sadly, I think we are not likely to prevail against the consolidationists.