[rad-green] Big Capital will use every tool at its disposal to crush socialists like Corbyn -- Slavoj Zizek

*https://www.rt.com/op-ed/476079-corbyn-socialists-labour-capital-zizek/
<https://www.rt.com/op-ed/476079-corbyn-socialists-labour-capital-zizek/>RT
         17 Dec 2019 *

Big Capital will use every tool at its disposal to crush socialists like
CorbynSlavoj Zizek*is a cultural philosopher. He’s a senior researcher at
the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana
and Global Distinguished Professor of German at New York University.*


[image: Slavoj Zizek: Big Capital will use every tool at its disposal to
crush socialists like Corbyn]
*© REUTERS/Hannah McKay*
The Labour Party’s election failure in the UK proves that, for the
progressive left to succeed, it will have to become considerably more
revolutionary. The ‘softly, softly’ approach isn’t working.

Since, in some sense, the election was about Brexit, the first thing that
strikes the eye is the asymmetry in the position of the two big parties.
The Tories constantly repeated their mantra of “*Get Brexit done!*”, while
Labour’s stance was the worst possible.

Knowing well their supporters were almost symmetrically split between
‘Remainers’ and ‘Leavers,’ the party leadership was afraid to choose one
side and thus lose voters opposed to it – but, as the saying goes, if you
try to sit on two stools simultaneously you may well fall into the gap that
separates them. What made things worse was how the true stance of Corbyn
was more or less known: he wanted a Brexit, just a different one.

The now-outgoing party leader wanted the UK to get rid of EU financial, and
other, regulations in order to pursue more radical Leftist policies.
Whatever we think of this choice – there are good reasons for and against
Brexit – the Labour party avoided an open debate about it and masked its
indecision with a catastrophic formula: “*We’ll let the people decide!*”

Why was it catastrophic? Simply because people don’t want politicians to
impose hard decisions on them. Instead, they demand political leaders show
them a clear path, to tell them what choice to make. The Tories made their
stance clear.
Playing with fire

The second reason for Labour’s failure was the well-orchestrated campaign
of character assassination against Corbyn, who was even rated
<https://www.jewishpress.com/news/jewish-news/antisemitism-news/jeremy-corbyn-rated-top-anti-semite-of-2019-by-simon-wiesenthal-center/2019/12/08/>
the
Top Anti-Semite of 2019 by the Simon Wiesenthal Center (ahead of actual
terrorists!). This was a case of foreign meddling into elections at least
as strong as the alleged Russian meddling into the last US elections.

Gideon Levy correctly predicts that the precipitous conflation of critique
of Israeli politics with anti-Semitism will give rise to a new wave of
anti-Semitism, and one can clearly see where this path will eventually end.
As Marxism taught us, anti-Semitism is a displaced anti-capitalism: it
projects the cause of social antagonisms engendered by capitalism onto an
external intruder (the ‘Jews’).

The temptation here is to make a fateful step further and to denounce any
radical anti-capitalism as a form of anti-Semitism – signs of this are
already multiplying all around the world. Can one imagine a more dangerous
way of inciting hatred?

I find it especially worrying when this strong pro-capitalist stance is
combined with the newly-discovered love among US Christian conservatives
for Israel: how can the US Christian fundamentalists, who are by nature
anti-Semitic, now passionately support the policy of the State of Israel?

There is only one solution to this enigma: it is not that the US
fundamentalists changed, it is that Zionism itself, in its hatred of Jews
who do not fully identify with the politics of the State of Israel,
paradoxically became anti-Semitic. In other words, it constructed the
figure of the Jew who doubts the Zionist project along anti-Semitic lines.

Trump did exactly the same when he used
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/12/09/trump-israeli-american-council-anti-semitic-claims/>
anti-Semitic
stereotypes to characterize Jews as driven by money and insufficiently
loyal to Israel. Israel is playing a dangerous game here: some time ago,
Fox News, the main US voice of the radical Right and a staunch supporter of
Israeli expansionism, had to demote Glen Beck, its most popular host, whose
comments were becoming openly anti-Semitic.
False allies

When, at this year’s Hanukkah party, Trump signed his controversial
executive order on anti-Semitism, John Hagee was there, the founder and
chairman of the Christians United for Israel. On top of the standard
Christian-conservative agenda (Hagee sees the Kyoto Protocol as a
conspiracy aimed at manipulating the US economy; in his bestselling novel
‘Jerusalem Countdown,’ the antichrist is the head of the European Union),
Hagee has made statements that definitely sound anti-Semitic.

He has blamed the Holocaust on Jews themselves; he has stated that Hitler’s
persecution was a “*divine plan*” to lead Jews to form the modern state of
Israel; he calls liberal Jews “*poisoned*” and “*spiritually blind*”; he
admits that the preemptive nuclear attack on Iran that he favors will lead
to the deaths of most Jews in Israel. (As a curiosity, he claims in
‘Jerusalem Countdown’ that Hitler was born from a lineage of “*accursed,
genocidally murderous half-breed Jews.*”) With friends like these, Israel
really doesn’t need enemies.
Money talks

Last but not least, the third reason is what I call the Piketty trap. In
his Capital and Ideology, Thomas Piketty proposes to radicalize the welfare
state – not to nationalize all wealth like in Soviet-style Communism but to
maintain capitalism and redistribute assets by giving every adult a lump
sum at the age of 25. The progressive income taxes he proposes would allow
governments to give everyone a basic income equivalent to 60% of the
average wage in wealthy nations and cover the costs of decarbonizing the
economy.

Furthermore, employees should have 50% of the seats on company boards; the
voting power of even the largest shareholders should be capped at 10%, with
an individualized carbon tax calculated by a personalized card that would
track each person’s contribution to climate change.

Piketty is thus fully aware that the model he proposes would only work if
enforced globally, beyond the confines of nation-states; such a global
measure presupposes an already existing global power with the strength and
authority to enforce it. However, such a global power is unimaginable
within the confines of today’s global capitalism and the political
mechanisms it implies – in short, if such a power were to exist, the basic
problem would already have been resolved. Piketty’s proposal is utopian,
although he presents it as pragmatic, looking for a solution within the
frame of capitalism and democratic procedures.
Safe game?

Imagine that Corbyn had won (or, for that matter, Bernie Sanders becomes US
president) – and just try to fathom the shattering counter-attack of Big
Capital with all its dirty tricks. Maybe the voters were aware of these
potential dangers inherent in a Labour victory and preferred the safe
game.

The challenges that we face, from global warming to refugees, from digital
control to biogenetic manipulations, require nothing less than a global
reorganization of our societies. Whichever way this will happen, two things
are sure: it will not be enacted by some new version of a Leninist
Communist party, but it will also not happen as part of our parliamentary
democracy. It will not be just a political party winning more votes and
enacting Social Democratic measures.

This brings us to the fatal limitation of Democratic Socialists. Back in
1985, Felix Guattari and Toni Negri published a short book in French ‘Les
nouveaux espaces de liberté’ whose title was changed for the English
translation into ‘Communists Like Us’ – the implicit message of this change
was the same as that of Democratic Socialists: “*Don’t be afraid, we are
ordinary guys like you, we don’t pose any threat, life will just go on when
we will win..*.” This, unfortunately, is not the option. Radical changes
are needed for our survival, and life will NOT go on, as usual; we will
have to change even in our innermost feelings and stances.

So we should of course fully support Labour in the UK, Democratic
Socialists in the US, and their peers in other states. But if we just wait
for the right moment to enact radical change, this moment will never
arrive. So, we have to begin with where we are. But we should do this
without illusions, fully aware that our future will demand much more than
electoral games and Social Democratic measures. We are at the beginning of
a dangerous voyage on which our survival depends.

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