[spectre] Zizek, The Two Totalitarianisms

[Aliette Guibert]

    Very interesting philosophical point of views ; BUT I cannot enter an
interactive discussion or in French, And I wonder if my bad English did not
contain elements making nonsense for English speakers... So I choose a
following explanation of my own part to dismiss the misunderstandings to
other thoughts.

First : my intervention was not against that one of Zizek but revives
with regard to the fact of his part that there would be good dictatorships
and
bad dictatorships. For my point of view they are all awfull. And for another
hand as feminist I prefer quote the emotionnal international first one
imagined and implemented by Flora Tristan:))

=============================================


    Totalitarianisms and dictatorships always beginning by the
'organization' -of the intransitive information even resulting from the
militant base, of the intransitive decision and of the intransitive
communication, but possibly multidirectionally (the same of the pyramidal
organizations as event of the organizations in networks -which can regards
the empire or the dictiatorship even their process it is not the same- from
the moment they are the object of a rationalist and/or bureaucratic
management)-.

Obviously the totalitarianisms which threaten us todays have no appearence
of the modern dictatorships which were able to involve both Hitler or
Mussolini or Stalin even with large-scale peculiarities -collective property
for example- (they were emergent structures in full access of the productive
modernity of people either acted by the political economy or the criticism
of the political economy dispositives -'The new man, said Mussolini reunited
by the Futurists; and Speer wrote in his book "In the heart of the Reich
3rd", written in prison, how he would thought as a laboratory of the future
to occidental society of the freedom back-regarding the march of the urban
and social economy they had experimented to the war: equipments, management
of the territory and the services- and a lot of years after, we can say
"yes" and until the return of moral version of any philosophical concept in
the name of criticism in Kraus'works, conveniently exploited in repressive
politics thanks to the educative reductionnism, and actually signed till in
France by a part of ATTAC with Bouveresse).

And for the radical leftist part let us not speak about consequences of the
Chinese cultural revolution, because after the 100 flowers it was not so
famous either - to avoid speaking about China today and about big market in
which it is engaged giving her excellent international opening-. Then,
remember of Pol Pot and so on til today... But see for another part the
western and continental totalitarianisms growing up.


    But let us speak of largest Europe, of its past from which its
predictable
future takes sense, just at the moment of this special constitution -but it
is not all, my question is not of Nations; my question is of freedom, of
diverse, of difference, of life regarding any local and different traditions
in balance weaved by unpredictable cyclical situations, as it is about
microsavings or about the justice, in front of the only bureaucratic global
application instead of the daily pragmatical experience of the people to
resolve the disappearance of their former liberties by relative
differences... If you think that the right of the people to dispose of
themselves linked to the former nations have disappear: which new
dispositive of self determination do you see borning in the new situation ?
Please could you tell me of that precisely ?

" From authority to institution: Public duration. Myriam Revault d’Allones:
" The current, growing decay of authority seems to be a defining feature of
our modern era. And yet, probing deeper into the changing notion of
authority that comes along with effective liberty and equality, it appears
that our relationship to time, rather than power, is the key to
understanding the changes in and fresh potential of the way we relate to
authority." "
http://www.esprit.presse.fr/archive/abstract.cfm?id_numero=192&id_sommaire=5990

Saddened not to quote "Multitudes" for once, which does not hold the
monopoly of the critical thought in France even with the most good
redactors - fortunately otherwise we would return to the unique left thought
but coming from a new alternative dominion-...

On this following point of view  of totalitarism from Arendt, we have a
chance with this philosoher named Myriam Revault d'Allones in France, whose
father and a part of his family died in Auschwitz, a woman we have to thank
of the first work till the early seventies to reopen Arendt specially on
the radical evil question and its pragmatical consequences in the
materialist projects to societies. More she has written a political trilogy
in a phenomenologic point of view of the occidental decay of politics under
the observation of it since the 60s in France; (she is both materialist
herself in a remarkable phenomenologist thought of the diverse theorical
environments, more a specialist of Spinoza:
http://www.cerphi.net/bbs/alpha/rev.htm
http://www.cerphi.net/bbs/chronol/bbs1991.htm )
... Personally I credit her analyses and her hypotheses without
correspondence of my own life with her works; and moreover she is not an
activist, thus she is not prescriptive; on the other hand she is active in
the institution and the public domain; as woman making be afraid for the
theoretical power of the men in the university departments, she suffered a
lot institutionally by it. Is it the reason for which her works are so
little translated to the Foreigner? At last it could be really interesting
to gether works in anglophone version.
http://www.theatre-contemporain.net/spectacles/skinner/presentationus.htm


    I guess of my own observation : the dictatorship of the proletariat
imagined
by Marx applied by Lenin's executive included possible the
succession -advent- of Stalin. A dictatorship is a dictatorship both in
matter of object and of dominants. It doesn't much matter which social
class, which caste, which clan dominates the others. It is always the
structure of a straight dominion of the men by other men, in an arrangement
of the control depriving liberties to think and to express or act otherway
than what it is prescribed by the dictatorship. And this, whatever it would
be in the name of the good (exactly said Baudrillard any weeks ago in
Liberation : today the excessive evil could be the excessive good itself -at
the top of the directorial societies). It is always a unique aim towards the
unique project radically spent an crossed by acts : what is exactly
monstrous in the dictatorship it is the rationalism which does not integrate
the principle of uncertainty, nor of concept of otherness. This costs for
the society and costs for the environment. Even if active of the technical
progress in modernity. It is necessary to see how the Gulag begins with a
critical religious community front of the tsars, then gives place to a
social utopia of the redemption of the man by the teamwork for the progress
of the people.

The dictatorship of the proletariat it was the legitimate dominion of a
former exploited class suddendly reached the power, to guard it and
transform the world in a social progress without opponents, but this was not
exactly the project imagined by Marx. Why did Marx could imagine such a
thing could be possible before the peoples could reach their united
autonomy? Because of the horrifying repression of the Commune of Paris he
had united after March 18th in
which in London he was informed by his French family among
whom his son-in-law ( Lafarge )... The
dictatorship of the proletariat realized by Lenin, it was to prevent the
return of Versaillais on the scale of White Russia. It was a hard
administration in wartime, an administrative weapon to centralize the war
effort of the exploited class at the power while its enemies (of
class) were still fighting.

The largest question begins on the longer time
It would not have of to last, is not it? only Here we are, there were only
the enemies of class to be resolved, but also the enemies of the party: all
those who were not in the party line of Lenin. And among those the
anarchists who had allowed to make a success of the movement of the soviets
to get the power by the people: on the watchword " all the power in the
soviets ".

The question is not of the circonstancial dictatorship of the proletariat
but of the durable model of the dictatorship of the proletariat justified by
the installation of the power as model of durable government: as a model of
communist State.  The State in this conception not being nationalist but
making only a single concept with the dictatorship. A vision of
internationalist dictatorship which was exactly the model realized by
Stalin.

Marx in his part of pragmatical strategist with Engels is not innocent in
matter of the long term of the dictatorship of the proletariat to realize
the revolutionary communist model, by transforming quite the structure
including of the thought inherited from the traditions. What consisted the
project of realization of the communist utopia including at the price of a
violence against the man - including against the revolutionary man who would
not be conform with the prescriptive dictat of the united party and united
vision - radical, intolerant of the utopia for the well to the people even
decided by the representative hierarchy of the party as anything the people
could not inform by themselves to them.

Here enter the question of the avant-gardes exactly inside of the question
of dictatorship decided by the hierarchy as the good to the people: the same
way you could understand how the futurists or modern artists as Libera the
great architect could unit to Mussolini. Emperor is not dictator.

Does it come from a depressive vision of the people as evil ? Not
necessarly. But certainly knowing of the lost culture by the revolutionary
process anything sounds of men who could return to barbarian actions. But at
last there were not the men returning by their own to barbarian process, but
the bureaucracy itself as barbarian - the barbarian agent it is the
structure, it is the machine and specially in modernity as that one of the
technical universe of the production. Totalitarianism is not autoritarism
and so on... they need a mechanical bureaucracy to begin in inflexible
monstrousness. That is why we need the ethic human right of insubordination
in front of the slander, as the social one front of the law of the chief and
the same as the bureaucrat one front of the official bureaucracy.

Local example in the past History: Jean Moulin charged by the General de
Gaulle in London to unify the resistance with the communists in France
during the last war in Europe, he was a French high-ranking servant who was
rebellious to his official government - the government of Vichy; General de
Gaulle himself was a rebellious to the official army -and he was not alone
fortunatly. Current example of a global plague caused in the Soviet Union:
what would it have been able to arrive of better at Tchernobyl before the
final disaster otherwise the responsible insubordination of some civil
servant, worker or leader, entering transitive communication (to/or medias)
at the time of the first prédictibles signs? Actual: what would have been
able to arrive of less to the countries of Asia of the South struck by the
gigantic tsunami if at the time of the earthquake the American observer
could communicate with all his neighbours without waiting for the
centralized decision of the Pentagon by the time of the Patriot Act?
Totalitarianism of the well for our own security presents the same as terror
of the evil depriving us of the individual saving right to the saving
community.

This predictable right is still necessary (will be necessary for ever) but
the opening European active rights inherited from the European pact of 1955,
not inspired by the 1792 ones but inspired by Eleonor Roosevelt resolution
to the united nations, does not foresee the tolerance of this civil duty
(something as a paradisiac vision believing in the universal democracy stays
in the resolution by Eleanor Roosevelt).

Exactly the same distorsion of the technical vision of the administration
under Hitler. The only difference is the marxist leninist utopia for all: no
race, no class. As Hitler society was for germanic people only and the same
or slaves of
others (or to get them disappeared). But the otherness is missing in the
both
ideologies. We cannot tame the otherness: we can only tolerate its alive
existence or probability in a predictable universe. Thus from a structure of
defensive situation to the structure of a State aiming at its survival, we
see exactly the definition of the dominant dictator by surviving, not in
emperor, such as defined in " Masses and power ". But the empires also can
become totalitarian according to their environment and the way of imposing
upon it. And now it is not the symbolistic question of the power, it is the
power to appropriate the ressources which will give the power to decide in
matter of survival humanity : who, where, and when - they will decide.

Marx had envisaged a theoretical answer visionary in the long term of the
end of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the decay of the State, it is
an argument which the Trotskyists still used in 1968: the decay of the
State. And he(it) took place well in Soviet Union, at the end of the
Perestroika, But we saw the result: far from the ideal maturity of the
communist society finally realized, the distraught people face the mafias in
a destroyed ecology, whereas the alternative utopia of the liberalism comes
true without obstacle in a generalized way, through the world globalization
of the supranational organizations and the local reforms required resolutely
by the richest countries to the poorest. For the other hand, the destroyed
model of the human rights inheritated from the Lights to the Industrial
history in Europe linked to theformer history of the Nations, leave
radically its place to the extensive model of the 'justifiable dominion of
the democracy inheritated of the high culture of the performance which
America represents as power and competence - capable of winning by fighting
both with force and with the most advanced technical ressources -successfull
to managed the dominion of its own native people in the past history- : that
is exactly the sense of the skulls and bones of Yale holding Geronimo's
skull - calling this skull as Geronimo's...(Re-read Sontag on the torture of
others). More as model of dominion edificated by the liberal dollar approved
by God.

Who could not have noticed today that the utopias come true in their
opposite that the people are good or bad? Including the liberal utopia. But
the worst, which could today, in front of the scale of the problem staying
not studied and connected to the past history of Europe: the opportunities
and the political alliances after the world war, then the cold war, or the
baillon of the peoples occupied by the USSR did not allow to show the
scene(stage) for this catharsis. Then we sink in morality where indeed
still, aach hangs on old palanquins, except the Nazis: everything is good -
or it was an error of history -never of the system...!

Fortunatly lost Nations you could say ? Fortunatly Migrant for the best of
the future to the best representative citizen, you could wish ? BUT please :
in which world and who able to do it?

Too many ghosts of not understood past times is filling the commun European
house: it is not enough to lock doors as the young sacrified heroes buried
the thermo-reactors of Tchernobyl under tons of concrete. It is absolutely
necessary to discuss about it, to understand, to analyze, to educate, to
prevent : where, why, how: totalitarianisms? We have to understand what is
threatened us today.

At last: I hate the swastika; I like the sickle and the hammer: but the
results are not convenient for me. As for flags I very gladly let you think
of what you think of it, I am not contradictory to you.

But for all that, I did not capitulate on my desire of freedom.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Soenke Zehle" <soenke.zehle at web.de>
To: <spectre at mikrolisten.de>
Sent: Tuesday, March 15, 2005 11:52 AM
Subject: Re: [spectre] Zizek, The Two Totalitarianisms


> >No totalitarianism is reduced to its iconography.
>
> D'accord, but I liked Zizek's piece b/c it does diagnose shifts in the
> public philosophies of history, and theories of totalitarianism have
> seen quite a revival in Germany, for example (not that there is only one
> strand, there's also - in part triggered by various anniversaries that
> remind Germany of its shortlived-yet-violent colonial experiments - a
> growing singularity-vs-continuity debate etc. etc. [1].
>
> I also wonder whether this is one of the blind spots of the post-Arendt
> craze based on her reintroduction of the figure of the migrant as point
> of departure for the elaboration of a new post-sovereign idiom of the
> political; I have seen very few people who write in this context also
> comment on her totalitarianism-theoretical approaches, usually it's the
> short section on the end of the nation-state and the end of the rights
> of man alone that is used, and I wonder whether this post-sovereignty
> trend is an inadvertent contributor to this revival, which I do find
> troubling,
>
> Soenke
>
> [1] Kundrus, Birthe. “Grenzen der Gleichsetzung: Kolonialverbrechen und
> Vernichtungspolitik.” iz3w 275 (März 2004). 30-33.
> <http://www.iz3w.org/iz3w/index.html>
>
>
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