I was at Occupy Wall Street last Sunday, listening to Slavoj Žižek talk about the end of the world. Or the end of the world as we know, at least, the end of capitalism, which he beautifully described as “waking up from the dream that is becoming a nightmare.” Another thing he said: “we feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom.” It’s the deadly thing about capitalism: in the midst of robbing you of your values and the poor of their life, it also takes your words, your ability to even think of a world without profit, without the ravages of greed and competition and crashes. It makes itself omnipresent, immovable, inevitable.
Žižek wanted to make his youthful audience believe: “They will tell you that you are dreaming, but the true dreamers are those who think that things can go on indefinitely they way they are, just with some cosmetic changes.” And: “Isn’t something wrong in the world if you are promised to be immortal, but we cannot spend a little more on health care?”
I like to think of myself as more willing to believe than most. The most surprising thing about studying capitalism is how precarious and uninevitable it is; it has invented the story of its own predestined march to global triumph, its own scientific irrefutability, its own watertight logic. The fact that most of us in the developed world, myself absolutely included, cannot imagine a world without it, is a testament to the effectiveness of its story-telling. Even as we watch it live out the story it has told us, and begin to see the world-killing consequences of the performance, we still believe this cataclysmic irrationality is the only choice.
The point is, most of the time I don’t believe. Even though I think I am able to see our system for what it is, and even to imagine a world after it, I am still afraid to let go. It’s easy to call oneself a radical and difficult to be one; at Occupy Wall Street, I realize my cowardice and inability to be one. I see mostly the flaws, the weaknesses, the overwhelming size and weight of the opposition—there’s that capitalist mind game again!—and the youth and idealism of the protesters. To believe is to give up one’s respectability in the old order, to admit that there is nothing here for us, that we’ve more chance of finding life in the next world than in this one. And most of us do have something to lose—at least we think so, unable as we are to realize it will be taken from us anyway.
If that sounds like something you’ve heard before in a wildly different context, that’s because it is. This is the part where Eagleton would point out that Marxism and Christianity both represent a kind of insane, deluded hope. A hope that something possible but very implausible is real, because the reality of it not being real is too terrible to contemplate. It is possible, though very unlikely, that the people of the United States might be their own master; it is possible, though very unlikely, that there is a God who will save us at the end. And I guess the crushing part isn’t as much the great likelihood that the unseen object of our hope is a fantasy as much as the fact that we don’t know whether or not it’s a fantasy. We can believe or not believe, but we cannot know.
Am I believer or unbeliever? Most of the time, I think those are different names for the same thing. The unbeliever strengthens the believer by pointing out all the ways that have been tried and do not work; the believer helps us all by continuing in her conviction that there is yet a way that hasn’t been tried. I’m as bad a radical as I am a believer; I can’t be convinced, but I hope I can participate in the project of believing.
David Sessions
David Sessions is the founding editor of Patrol. He covers religion for Newsweek and The Daily Beast, and is a graduate student in the Draper Program for Humanities and Social Thought at New York University. He can be reached at hdavidsessions at gmail dot com.
3 Responses to Radical Hope
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I readily identify with the difficulty of real radicalization.. and of feeling like it somehow delegitimizes your faith and commitment to progress. The narrative of the capitalist political economy is truly difficult to escape as the language is very much a part of our lifeworld. As a Social Democrat I find the difficulty of reconciling the priority of liberty and majoritarian institutions with my significantly Marxist view of political economy to be incredibly acute, as most Social Democrats do. I agree that the hope really is in creating a space to have a frank discussion about the world we want to set up after capitalism. In this respect I’ve found a lot of hope in the discourse of post-structuralism i.e the politics of friendship, insofar as we should be looking to transcend worn out arguments of big/small government, capitalism vs communism etc.. I’m not sure the Zizeks and Badious of the world would agree entirely with that statement. But, the key as you pointed out really is keeping the faith and always trying to move the conversation forward. I’m reminded of a quote from Keynes: “Once we allow ourselves to be disobedient to the test of an accountant’s profit, we have begun to change our civilization.”
Hello David,
I was browsing at TDB in order to reread George Packer’s superlative analysis of the breakdown of the social contract in American institutions because 1978 was such a pivotal year for me as well as the year that Packer singled out as the beginning of the decline in social responsibility. In the process of utilizing that link I noticed the link to Patrol. I was already impressed with your journalistic integrity from Best Reads and I applaud your endeavor here at Patrol. 1978 was also the year that I started reading Nietzsche at the tender age of 21 and I see you have cited Professor Kaufmann’s translation of The Birth of Tragedy on your current reading list. I have spared no trouble to read, reread and understand Nietzsche over the ensuing years and I am quite delighted to see him on your reading list.
The Birth of Tragedy is a logical place to begin reading Nietzsche because it is his first book, but it is also my least favorite for several reasons. Nietzsche was an exceptionally young professor at the University of Basel when he wrote it and he was under pressure to prove his scholarly merit. Nietzsche was also paying homage to the great German composer Richard Wagner and the book is tedious in some places as a result. Still, it flashes the brilliance that characterizes most of Nietzsche’s later work and is worthy of consideration. Professor Kaufmann juxtaposed The Case of Wagner in the publication to demonstrate how Nietzsche had later broken with Wagner because of Wagner’s virulent anti-Semitism and shameless pandering to German nationalism and religiosity.
The Portable Nietzsche, also translated by Professor Kaufmann, is an excellent overview of Nietzsche’s philosophy. It contains excerpts from most of Nietzsche’s 17 books as well as complete versions of Zarathustra and Twilight of the Idols. Another valuable source is Professor Kaufmann’s first book about Nietzsche that was published in 1950 and entitled Nietzsche- Philosopher, Psychologist, AntiChrist. Professor Kaufmann details the profound influence of Socrates on Nietzsche’s philosophy and it is impossible to fully understand Nietzsche without a thorough reading of Symposium and The Apology at the very least among the Platonic dialogues. Professor Kaufmann also notes Nietzsche’s distinction between Christ, Christianity and Christendom. In spite of his ruthless criticism of Christianity, largely based on the supposition that Christianity was a misunderstanding from the beginning, or the Crucifixion, Nietzsche observed that it has always been possible to be a Christian. Many interpreters have claimed that one must have been a Christian, or at least sympathetic to Christianity, to understand Nietzsche.
Finally, I would be negligent not to mention Ecce Homo as one of the great works in world literature and one of my favorite books. I have read it more times than I can count and never have I felt so strongly the presence of genius in the written word. Nietzsche wrote it in three weeks in the fall of 1888, shortly before his collapse into insanity. He seemed to possess an uncanny prescience about his impending breakdown and the brutal distortion of his philosophy in the 20th century. Nietzsche even remarked in a letter to one of his favorite pen pals that his books would not be taken seriously until the 21st century.
So here we are in the 21st century, David, witnesses to a radical transformation in the world economy and world culture, courtesy of a digital revolution. Your dedication to the new journalism deserves commendation. Keep the faith.
Best Regards,
Ron Bruno
ronbru@live.com
In the end the crowds will be gone, and capitalism will be there.