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Member Since: 2/2006Last Seen: 11/22/2009

Zizek: 20 Years of Collapse - "If capitalism is really so much better than Socialism, why are our lives still miserable?"

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TODAY is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. During this time of reflection, it is common to emphasize the miraculous nature of the events that began that day: a dream seemed to come true, the Communist regimes collapsed like a house of cards, and the world suddenly changed in ways that had been inconceivable only a few months earlier. Who in Poland could ever have imagined free elections with Lech Walesa as president?

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{"commentId":10591811,"authorDomain":"dsnook2003"}

But... But... Obama's a dirtystkinIslamonazified SocialistCommuMarxistMaoisistic White hate!!!!

And if THAT doesn't work... Whoa... is that Britney Spears, sans panties?

{"commentId":10591811,"threadId":"720818","contentId":"3484803","authorDomain":"dsnook2003"}
    Reply#1 - Tue Nov 10, 2009 9:31 AM EST
    {"commentId":10594557,"authorDomain":"TheObserver1"}

    Hey, if you don't love it, leave it.

    You couldn't do that before.

    {"commentId":10594557,"threadId":"720818","contentId":"3484803","authorDomain":"TheObserver1"}
      #1.1 - Tue Nov 10, 2009 11:34 AM EST
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      {"commentId":10591853,"authorDomain":"killfile"}

      I'm not going to pretend to completely "get" Zizek but it strikes me that he's essentially arguing here that our linkage of communism/socialism as an economic system to the authoritarian and Stalinist governments of Eastern Europe and the subsequent binary opposition we set up between Capitalism and Communism more or less let tyranny off the hook while attacking the economic system in question.

      And what if we got the wrong villain? What if it wasn't socialism that was to blame for the hell that was the Soviet Union; what if it was totalitarianism. What then do we make of modern totalitarian capitalist states? What would a liberal socialist nation look like?

      {"commentId":10591853,"threadId":"720818","contentId":"3484803","authorDomain":"killfile"}
        Reply#2 - Tue Nov 10, 2009 9:34 AM EST
        {"commentId":10593573,"authorDomain":"courts"}

        What would a liberal socialist nation look like?

        Most of the states in Western Europe?

        {"commentId":10593573,"threadId":"720818","contentId":"3484803","authorDomain":"courts"}
        • 3 votes
        #2.1 - Tue Nov 10, 2009 10:53 AM EST
        {"commentId":10595111,"authorDomain":"rainbowwarrior"}

        I'd say Costa Rica comes closet to a modern liberal socialist nation, they have no need of a military for starts!

        {"commentId":10595111,"threadId":"720818","contentId":"3484803","authorDomain":"rainbowwarrior"}
          #2.2 - Tue Nov 10, 2009 11:58 AM EST
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