Philosophy Weekend: Slavoj Zizek and the Dream of Yugoslavia

Big Thinking Biography Classics Eastern European Economics Existential Film History Language Politics Postmodernism Psychology Religion Transgressive



Zizek is a philosopher who doesn't mind giving himself labels; he is a Lacanian, and he is a Marxist. By calling himself a Marxist, Zizek damns himself to many readers. I would guess that nine out of ten of my own friends and acquaintances would react with anger and disbelief to the idea that any serious modern political philosopher could advocate Marxism after the fall of the Soviet Union. Zizek surely loses a lot of readers by adopting this label so boldly (undoubtedly, he gains a few too).

This boldness is itself an expression of his philosophical mission. He is arguing that Marxism remains possible in the 21st Century, and by holding up the Marxist "flag" and marching proudly forward, he is encouraging other political philosophers who might also nurture hopeful thoughts about Marxism to stop cowering in fear. After reading many of his writings about Marxism, I'm not at all sure that Slavoj Zizek actually desires a Marxist world, but I am sure that he thinks Marxist ideology deserves a better place at the table than it currently holds.

He's right about this, because Marxism has been a gigantic presence in recent world history, and yet the Marxist legacy is currently denigrated into simplistic cliche. The cliche goes something like this:

Communism was a failure. Capitalism is the opposite of Communism. Therefore, Capitalism is a success.

I've heard variations of this equation many times. It's a sloppy formulation, though unfortunately many people take it extremely seriously.

It's not very perceptive to say that Communism was a failure in the 20th century. Every major government in the world -- communist governments, fascist governments, monarchist governments, democratic governments -- took part in the twin orgies of murder and genocide known as World War One and World War Two. This suggests that every political system in the 20th Century was a failure. These wars, and the atmosphere of poisonous political paranoia that they generated, also dominated the political discourse of the 20th Century so completely that no other ideology had any chance to take root and grow. The only political ideology that was tested in the 20th Century was the ideology of militarized nationalism. That ideology, not Marxism, is the ideology that failed.

Josef Stalin's Soviet Union was a terrible representative for Marxism for several decades of the 20th Century, and Slavoj Zizek is harshly critical of Stalin, and of the psychological cycles of enduring violence that enable tyrannical Communists like Stalin and Mao Zedong. Zizek has a right to stand for Marxism without standing for Stalinism or Maoism, and he proudly does so. When Zizek writes about Marxism, he tends to adopt a humorous tone that is grimly wistful -- a literary tone reminiscent of Nikolai Gogol and Fyodor Dostoevsky. He does not appear to claim to know how a Marxist government could possibly function in the real world, and as a Freudian/Lacanian psychologist he is forced to demonstrate often that he knows the odds are tough.

But an ethical philosopher doesn't need to know how to translate a philosophy into practice in order to stand up for that philosophy. Perhaps one thing that drives Zizek's manic intensity as a writer is that the complex legacy of Karl Marx is so often dragged through the mud. Much of Zizek's writing is about standing up for a downtrodden idea. This brings us to the second point I made about Zizek last week, that his work can best be understood in the context of his national history, because the country Zizek was born in is also, today, nothing but a downtrodden idea.

If you want to appreciate Zizek's often enigmatic essays, you must read the fascinating, terrible, beautiful, violent history of the Balkan lands -- Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia -- that once united to form the nation of Yugoslavia. This ancient territory has gone by many names -- to the Romans, it encompassed Dalmatia and Illyria -- and in the religious wars of the past millennium these lands were often caught in the grind between three warring giants: Austria-Hungary, Russia and Ottoman Turkey. The three giants meddled in or invaded the Balkan territories constantly, often ostensibly on behalf of their respectively Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim religious missions, but also to spread their imperial reach and wealth.

After the fall of Napoleonic Europe in the early 19th Century, the diverse Balkan lands continued to attract foreign invasion, and a series of regional proxy wars led towards increasing Austro-Hungarian influence. But the incipient nationalism of the various South Slavic peoples within the Austro-Hungarian empire led to bitter, ruinous conflicts, culminating in the assassination that led to the beginning of World War One -- the act of a small band of Serbian nationalists in Sarajevo.

After Austria-Hungary collapsed at the end of this four-year war, the Balkan nations united for the first time ever as Yugoslavia -- the land of the South Slavs. But Yugoslavia now became the target of the rising Italian dictator Benito Mussolini's imperial attentions, and remained war-torn even during the "peaceful" years between World War One and World War Two, during which it was invaded and brutally dominated by Hitler's Germany.

At the end of World War Two, Yugoslavia emerged as a Communist nation with a powerful and independent leader, Josip Tito, who refused to follow the global leadership of Josef Stalin.

Born in 1949, roughly four years after the rebirth of Yugoslavia amidst the European wreckage of World War Two, young Slavoj Zizek found a way to become an outspoken intellectual in a communist country. It has become a commonplace "fact" that communist nations suppressed their freethinkers, but Zizek managed to pursue a brazen academic path and protest openly against the leadership of his Yugoslav homeland without going to jail or having his legs broken or seeing his family killed. This helps to explain why, unlike many of my fellow Americans who invariably imagine the distant legacy of communism to amount to nothing but totalitarian oppression, Zizek is able to represent the possibility of a communist government that did not destroy its brazen intellectuals, and sometimes even nurtured them.

Yugoslavia's communist government collapsed in the late 1980s, ahead of the vanguard of Soviet Union satellites that also fell. But the post-Yugoslavian nations of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia did not fare well. There can be little doubt that most post-Soviet Eastern European nations like Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary are better off outside the Iron Curtain, but Yugoslavia had never really been inside the Iron Curtain, and the decade following the fall of European communism was a horrific disaster for the Balkan lands. The post-Yugoslavian nations, freed of communism, now fell into "ethnic cleansing" -- a new word for the old idea of genocide -- during the long and painful Bosnian wars.

Zizek's beloved city of Ljubjlana, Slovenia was spared the massacre, but one can only imagine how the dream of united Yugoslavia -- a once-optimistic multi-ethnic nation, now disappeared forever -- echoed in Zizek's head as he watched the horrors of the post-Marxist wars destroy innocent lives and families in lands that had until recently been his own national home.

In the introduction to his recent book Living in the End Times Zizek complains that he is always credited with self-contradictory positions:

... for being a covert Slovene nationalist *and* an unpatriotic traitor to my nation, for being a crypto-Stalinist defending terror *and* for spreading bourgeois lies about Communism ... So maybe, just maybe, I am on the right path, the path of fidelity of freedom.

A look at Zizek's history helps to illuminate these contradictions, as the contradictions are Zizek's primary cultural legacy. He comes from a different land. It's overly reductive to describe Slavoj Zizek as a Yugo-nostalgist -- however, the contradictions that electrify Zizek's philosophical essays are the contradictions that are inherent in the history of Yugoslavia, a country that has now disappeared into the misty memories of time.

Today Zizek is perhaps the most famous political philosopher in the world who was born in a powerful country that no longer exists. Talk about an existential crisis ...

This article is part of the series Philosophy Weekend. The next post in the series is Philosophy Weekend: Chomsky the Hopeless Anarcho-Syndicalist. The previous post in the series is Philosophy Weekend: Slavoj Zizek, Marxism's Lovable Lawyer.
10 Responses to "Philosophy Weekend: Slavoj Zizek and the Dream of Yugoslavia"

At inception I can understand Marxism being a fickle philosophy but in application it's nothing less than pure evil in pure contravention of the human spirit. Just as you stated, the experiment failed horribly leaving only misery in its wake.

by Levi Asher on

But, Howard, as I mention above, the experiment was never conducted. You can validly state that the philosophy of Marxism contravenes the human spirit -- I think this is probably true. But you can't really back up the assertion that the experiment failed, because the experiment was never begun. The only experiment we conducted in the 20th Century on planet Earth was an experiment in rampant militarism followed by total war. That experiment dominated every government's policy, and left a lot of misery in its wake.

by mtmynd1 on

When Howard Sherman wrote: "At inception I can understand Marxism being a fickle philosophy but in application it's nothing less than pure evil in pure contravention of the human spirit," I found myself cringing from the lack of knowledge that Marx spoke with in describing the evolution of economy, from Capitalism to Socialism and finally attaining Communism. How many people worldwide actually know of this? Apparently far too few as the two scare words governments enjoy using are 'socialism' and especially 'communism.'

To that I say, since there has never been pure socialism and not even a valid hint of communism realized in the world, I would agree with Levi that both of these theories were quickly extinguished by militarism, even though they were simply theories, plain and simple.

Militarism has been used against peoples throughout our hu'man history. It has only become more massive and dangerous during the 20th Century we've just come out of. Whether or not militarism will continue its dominance on the world scene could, arguably, be weakening. The people seem to be sick and tired of constant war and battles that ultimately deal with money on one level or another. Money. The root of all evil? One could concur there is a great deal of truth in that saying given the history wars and the outgrowth, militarism.

It wasn't socialism or even communism that began the wars of the 20th Century but rather the flow of money and the game of monopoly that initiated the wars and determined who won them. The most financially powerful government has the largest vested interest in defending their power (read: treasury) and has at its disposal the ability to "out shoot" their opponents by any means possible, as it has always been in our violent history.

The problem I see we have as a race of people is eliminating greed from our lives. Is not greed the poison that incites mankind into wars for more and more and more? Like a narcotic, the money drug becomes more and more of a need that never ceases until death. Once bitten by that insidious opiate, we seem to become ever hooked and make our lives revolve around it without any regard or remorse for the well-being of others beyond our very noses. Only a junkie behaves in such a manner... and we are not much better for that addiction.

by Levi Asher on

Thanks for this, mtmynd.

Important point, though: while mtmynd and I seem to both see this the same way, I don't want Howard Sherman or anyone else who has a different opinion to feel shouted down, or to think their opinions have no place on this site. The truth is, more people I know would agree with Howard's comment about Marxism than with mtmynd's or mine. I would only like to ask Howard and others to please take a moment to realize that statements like "Marxism is pure evil" or "communism failed and has left nothing but misery in its wake" have now been repeated so often and so constantly that we are in danger of forgetting that these are gross simplifications, reducing decades of complex history to mindless cliche. A gross simplification should not be mistaken for a significant truth -- not about something as important as economic or political philosophy.

Anyway, most importantly: everybody's opinions are welcome here, even when they completely disagree with my own.

by A.I. Ely on

Great article, but, please, be aware (and, since I am sure you are, indicate) that "Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia" were not the only Yugoslav states, and are not the only post-Yugoslavian nations. There is Macedonia, too, that was an equal member of SFRJ, and became independent almost at the same time as the other former republics. I do not see a reason why it should be constantly excluded from (your) enumerations.

by Levi Asher on

Thanks for pointing that out, A.I. It was an unintentional oversight, and I will be more careful next time.

by Carlo on

Firstly, levi, your article is full of wrong and pre-constructed concepts, and apologetic dribble about capitalism. You are subjective and one-sided. You have never lived in Yugoslavia, so you are not competent to speak about it, or any other socialist country of the time. Your pre-ccoked statements and quotes, glorifying as I mentioned above, capitalism simply because socialism was "defeated" by it prevents you to look at the recent past analytically and ask a simple question - why was capitalism so hell-bent o destroying socialism in the first place?

Let us leave for a second the fact that only Yugoslavia was a truly socialist country - free people, free economy, free thinking of individuals. Capitalist "democracies" had to destroyed socialism because - contrary to capitalist brainwashing mantras, they could not stand to have some competition. And in Yugoslavia they had a very successful and competent socialist opponent. Yugoslav President J. B. Tito was the father of the non-Alligned movement which had more countries as members than the UN. Yugoslavia was growing economically faster than most of the "western capitalist democracies". Yugoslavia was educating thousands of foreign students at its modern universities. Yugoslav architecture was developing its own, often quite futuristic style, Yugoslav culture was flowing freely around the world, and was inviting foreigners to Yugoslavia. Yugoslav tourism was a serious competitor to the "big three", the Greece, the Italy and the Spain. Yugoslav food industry, mostly organic while the rest of the world was already poisoned with the artificial food, was at the top of the Euroepan, and by extension of world, export list. Yugoslav industrial design was up to date with the rest of the developed world as was electronic industry, especially in micro-components. And I could go on for days like this. For example, free medical, free education to doctorate, free homes for workers (yeah, beat that "free democratic capitalism"), living standard that was way beyond the living standard in the uk at the time, and a few other "developed capitalist economies" of Europe.

None of that was made known to people in "western democratic capitalist" countries. The picture of Yugoslavia was a reflection of capitalist fear and horror before the fact that a small, once backward agricultural country, was able to explode intellectually to the levels unseen in the "developed and free democratic west".

And all that was achieved without the 220 billions the Germany owed to Yugoslavia in the name of the war reparations. See J. B. Tito and W. Brandt (German Chancellor) agreement for details.

So, your article is but a heap of horse manure garble for those of us who have been in Yugoslavia before the "free democratic capitalism" brought it to its horrible and bloody end. And for what?

For everything that you now freely - for who is going to contest your outright delusional idiocies right? - throw at the "socialism". After all, as you so arrogantly and pompously claim now "the experiment was never conducted... because the experiment was never begun."

Well, you are wrong for there are plenty of us who remember visiting Yugoslavia as tourists, expecting to see gulag-like rundown hell on earth and instead arriving at a beautiful and clean modern country with happy people, who worked 38 hours per week and had more than we in the "western freedom". And it was such a little paradise that many foreigners stayed there and never came back to their cold, grey and miserable "democratic capitalism". In their thousands. I could tell you about whole town in Bosnia composed of Italians for example, or Germans living throughout Serbia, Slovenia and Croatia.

But, I am sure you would find a way to twist the past, as you have above, in the article, and make some "intelligent" comments about the things you have never seen or experienced because you think you are some smart and learned person, although from your uninformed and ideologically fueled rant in the article we can all see you are anything but even remotely smart or educated.

Arrogant ignorant, that you most certainly are. Just remember that the truth is unstoppable. No amount of bull and plain garble like this article above, cannot stop the truth.

by Marc Eliot Stein on

Carlo, I don't think you read my article at all. What are you talking about? I am certainly not an apologist for capitalism. Capitalism as it has been practiced has been a disaster for the world, and as I sit here in 2018 my country is suffering under the illegitimate and racist leadership of a capitalist crook named Donald Trump, supported by immoral capitalist donors who steal from the working people. What are you referring to when you call me an apologist for capitalism?

You are correct that I know very little about Yugoslavia, or about the Balkans. I don't pretend in this article to know more than I know, though. I would be very interested in hearing about and publishing your perspective, since you do clearly know a lot about this region - I just wish you didn't have to couch your perspective in nasty insults that don't make sense. I can tell you're mad about what some people think of Yugoslavia - but I don't know why you're mad at my article.

Finally, my own basic point here is that while many Americans and Westerners think of Yugoslavia as part of the legacy of Soviet Communism, it was no such thing. Slavoj Zizek's writings can be better understood in this context. That's the whole point I'm trying to make here. And I'd love to learn more.

- Marc Eliot Stein aka Levi Asher

by Mbq on

Hi, firstly it shames me to see Carlo's comment as it is quite rude. Unfortunately, that tone of discussion is way too common in the ex Yugoslavia. People get much too worked up, as if their blood boils up and the steam messes up the rational thinking.

That's one of the characteristics of Balkan nationalism. We allow ourselves to talk dirt about state, people, system etc but if a foreigner agrees - one is instantly offended.

On the other hand, I'd like to point some facts regarding your article. First is orthodox Christianity and the Russia. Orthodox Christianity did not come to Balkan from Russia. Instead, it came to Russia from the Balkans. As you surely know, it was Byzantine empire that was spreading it among the slavic peoples on the Balkans well before 10th century or such. For the Catholic Christianity it was Frankish empire instead. Russia was never physically present in the Balkans.

Second, of the former Yugoslav republics, Slovenia is the only one that fares better and it is ahead of the other republics by a long shot. Slovenia and Croatia were ahead of others even while in the federation, but while Slovenia went ahead, Croatia is chasing its own tail.

As a last thought, Yugoslavia had many progressive and positive elements in it's core but unfortunately we mustn't forget that it also had many problems that were swept under the carpet. Catastrophic economic situation of the late 80s, huge and slow administration, lack of transparency and what in my opinion is the worst - and that stayed alive although changing colours from red to blue or orange or red again - political elites who's only ideology is their own position and wealth.

by Marc Eliot Stein on

Thanks a lot for this feedback, Mbq. Very helpful. And you are certainly right that I mistakenly implied that Orthodox Christianity came to Balkans from Russia when obviously it came from the Byzantines. I'm glad you pointed that out. I may modify that sentence in the original article to correct this. Thanks for your other informative feedback as well.

-- Marc aka Levi

Add new comment