7/23

This month Slavoj wrote an article in response to the recent protests/riots in France this summer after another police murder incident. He goes "The Left Must Learn to Accept Law and Order". The argument that he develops for this position consists first in highlighting a couple of details from the riots that indicate that they may be doing more harm for working class communities than good. He goes onto expand on this point, framing it as a worldwide phenomenon, even going so far as to frame direct action as the domain of rightists. Notably in the article he goes so far as to argue that the most leftists have ever needed/are justified in using is the threat of violence (not the actual violence itself), citing the MLK peaceful protest activity with the threat of the black panthers/Malcom X/Nation of Islam, and the ANC in south Africa.
The first point is a clever reformulation of the quintessential neolib centrist argument "Its not the best system but its the best one we've got"(TINA). For Slavoj is intelligent enough to recognize that in the current political paradigm in rich western countries, real systemic change is completely impossible through the political means that the populations subject to said paradigm have access to. The most that voting and low-level political action can accomplish is marginally improving the quality of life for certain populations temporarily. Obviously. And if Slavoj is in fact correct in asserting that sparks of violent direct action such as these do more harm to the working class than the history and future of capital completely desubjectifying/dehumanizing(not to be a humanist or imply that there are certain essential characteristics which make a human or anything but yea you could say this)/exploiting/etc them, then the only politically sound course of action is to sit with our cocks in our hands.
To frame violence as purely a rightest tendency is blatantly false. While it is true that violence is the operating principle of rightists, top to bottom, from the level of the individual rightists who subtly affirm violent structures, to the small political organizations that intimidate, street fight, or perhaps lynch and burn, to the level of the fascist state which relies on distributed violent consciousness as well as police/military apparatus for material control. However even disregarding the fact that this alone does not put some sort of metaphysical stain on the concept itself, morally precluding leftists from employing it, leftist causes have relied on violence in the past and will continue to. The necessity of violence in struggles for independence from colonial power (ex the FLN which I mentioned above) is only the most obvious counter argument. And the irony of Slavoj invoking the Black Panthers as only a threat to give weight to MLKs argument: The Black Panthers were straight up killing cops left and right. Direct action at its finest. There has been no revolution without violence. And there can never be any fundamental change to a western liberal democracy using the immediately available political means. Not to mention how individual acts of violence/rebellion remain one of very few sites of spontaneity and creativity in societies were every movement is referenced, mediated by ideological nets.
Maybe this is his first step in a descent into reaction in his dotage. Or maybe that step was already taken when he was transphobic.