Inb4 fifty iterations of “Zizek.”
Gabriel Rockhill: Capitalism’s Court Jester: Slavoj Žižek
This neoliberal prankster is thus the epitome of a radical recuperator. He cultivates and markets the appearance of radicality in order to recuperate potentially radical elements in society, particularly young people and students, within the pro-imperialist anti-communist fold. This is precisely why he is the most famous ‘Marxist’ in the capitalist world, festooned by the likes of a journal linked to the engine of U.S. imperialism. His mantra is nothing but an opportunistic perversion of the closing lines of The Communist Manifesto: “Cultural consumers of the pro-Western world unite—and buy my next book, or movie, or crossover product, or whatever, and so on, and so on!”
A position further solidified by how often he plagiarizes himself. Literally if you’ve read one Zizek book, you’ve read parts of others already.
It’s the same jokes 400 times for sure. And the ideas are also rarely different. To be fair to him though, he admits as much openly saying “ive written the same book 30 times to get my point across” or something similar
Carlos Martinez wrote a book about the collapse of the USSR called The End of the Beginning which honestly should be required reading for any socialist
I looked into this book and he seems to stress “peaceful coexistence with the capitalist world.” What exactly would that entail? I feel like it kind of goes back on class war and seems to assume that even if the socialist projects did seek peaceful coexistence, that the capitalist world would actually participate peacefully. I think it sort of ignores the context of class war that would result in the birth of these new socialist experiments in the first place.
Am I making sense? I think this might be a bit rambly since I’m a bit sleep-deprived but I hope you get what I’m saying and can lend some context.
People have already covered the major authors so I’m going to give a shout out to Torkil Lauesen.
He had a good interview on RevLeft Radio and an okay one on The Deprogram if you want to get a feel for what he’s like.
Vijay Prashad, Losurdo (recently passed away RIP), Zak Cope, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Parenti, John Smith, Roland Boer, Galeano, Paul Cockshott (on certain things), Jin Huiming, Assata shakur, Federici (weirdly not a marxist but does marxist analysis in all her works).
Vijay Prashad and Michaek Parenti for non fiction, and Kim Stanley Robinson for fiction
Kim Stanley Robinson is an ML? After reading Ministry for the Future I assumed he was a socdem. I did not like that book. It’s been a while since I read it, and from what I remember, it omitted a useful economic analysis and liberation struggle from confronting climate crisis which seemed totally idealistic to me.
I recall reading that he considered himself a Marxist, and he does appear to support revolutionary approach to social change in his books. While Ministry for the Future isn’t perfect, it did some economic analysis showing that capitalism is fundamentally at odds with having a livable future. The whole thesis of the book is that capitalism needs to be abolished, and the book also doesn’t shy away from saying that violence will be necessary to do so. It also talks positively about USSR saying that it had the right idea all along.
He’s a socialist, but not a Marxist-Leninist. Not instinctively hating the USSR is good, but it doesn’t make you an ML. 😛
What book do you recommend by Parenti for a noob?
Thank you for the suggestions! 🙏
Blackshirts and the Reds (obvi), To Kill A Nation (recent history of the destruction of Yugoslavia, a lot of parallels to Ukraine), Inventing Realities (I’ve heard it’s like Manufacturing Consent, but better), and Against Empire. There are probably other good ones that I don’t know much about. I wasn’t much interested by The Assassination of Julius Ceasar, but if you’re into Roman history it’s probably good.
Inventing realities felt to me like 2 books in 1, with a very simple but well developed analysis of propaganda as part 1 and the last chapter with part 2 being the 200 pages of just gut wrenching examples of propaganda to support found between. I thought beforehand that it’d feel like there were many theses being developed, but it just hits hard then piles on support. Not a bad thing, but I found it interestingly written
(Not the original reply but) Depends on the interest, but I started with Blackshirts and the Reds (deconstructing the red fascist myths and northwestern lies about the Soviet Union) and it was an amazing read. They’re usually really short and straightforward to read, so any of them will do as the first one.
Love Blackshirts & Reds for more recent history, but also would like to throw in The Assassination of Julius Caesar if you are interested in the politics of Rome at all. It’s way more similar to Amerikan “democracy” than one might believe (not just “descended from”).
There were multiple almost-uprisings that were quashed by the ruling class, and this work goes into grueling detail regarding them. I do not view Rome the same as I did prior to reading it, or Amerika for that matter.
