The link to the whole article is at the end of the quote...
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AA wrote:
From a New York Times op-ed piece by the ubiquitous Slavoj Zizek:
One can also argue that, when the Communist regimes collapsed, the
disillusioned former Communists were effectively better suited to run
the new capitalist economy than the populist dissidents. While the
heroes of the anti-Communist protests continued to dwell in their
dreams of a new society of justice, honesty and solidarity, the former
Communists were able to ruthlessly accommodate themselves to the new
capitalist rules and the new cruel world of market efficiency,
inclusive of all the new and old dirty tricks and corruption.
A further twist is added by those countries in which Communists
allowed the explosion of capitalism, while retaining political power:
they seem to be more capitalist than the Western liberal capitalists
themselves. In a crazy double reversal, capitalism won over Communism,
but the price paid for this victory is that Communists are now beating
capitalism in its own terrain.
This is why today's China is so unsettling: capitalism has always
seemed inextricably linked to democracy, and faced with the explosion
of capitalism in the People's Republic, many analysts still assume
that political democracy will inevitably assert itself.
But what if this strain of authoritarian capitalism proves itself to
be more efficient, more profitable, than our liberal capitalism? What
if democracy is no longer the necessary and natural accompaniment of
economic development, but its impediment?
If this is the case, then perhaps the disappointment at capitalism in
the post-Communist countries should not be dismissed as a simple sign
of the "immature" expectations of the people who didn't possess a
realistic image of capitalism.
When people protested Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, the large
majority of them did not ask for capitalism. They wanted the freedom
to live their lives outside state control, to come together and talk
as they pleased; they wanted a life of simplicity and sincerity,
liberated from the primitive ideological indoctrination and the
prevailing cynical hypocrisy.
More here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/opinion/09zizek.html
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Zizek is a poseur farouche. Scaring the knickers off the philistines with his pseudo-Marxist aura.
He knows nothing about historical forces and nothing about economic forces. But he can suck up the popular gabble of the salons like a sponge and squirt it back out again like a true charlady. Or better, he can gobble up the gabble, half-digest it, and shit it out again with his own special texture and odour added.
He's all diction and no dick, so to say. A tame castrato in the bourgeois/academic press. He makes even Tariq Ali look good ;-)
What does "ubiquitous" mean, AA? Slimy? Slithery? Is it the same as "iniquitous"? Or "you-be-quiet-ous"?
As for the big question: "Can authoritarian capitalism work better than free-market capitalism?", of course it can't. Too many distortions of healthy processes - or what pass for healthy processes under capitalism. Nazism was authoritarian capitalism. Capitalism without the "free and equal" exchange of capital (in this case, money) for labour power becomes slavery in a more concrete sense than "wage-slavery", and slave labour is notoriously unproductive and unmanageable, even when it's got more slave-drivers whipping it than you can shake a scourge at. Imperialist capitalism is like a wobbling jelly of congealed blood. And if we don't lance it soon it'll burst all over us. The blood is infected...
Cheers
Chops
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