The real ideological dream is this idea
of capitalism without its destructive effect
As an European I am categorically
against that because here, in Europe,
we know very well, in the 20th century a big
alternate project of modernity called fascism.
This is it precisely the idea, to get modernity without
paying the price of class struggle and so and so….
This is why, although Chavez links to Marxism
and anti-capitalism, I think he dreams
of an alternative modernity.
Now lets pass to the second theme
“communism without history”
here I want to do a paradoxal thing,
I want to defend the two positions which
have been severely criticized here today.
First of all: “the eternal idea of communism».
Well I support this idea in its entire platonic connotation.
It’s not even an idea, it’s a real fact, a
fact of practical reason as Kant would have said.
Look at history, first revolt of slaves in the oriental
empire, millenary’s revolt of farmers, Haiti, Jacobin…
why am I pro-Jacobin ?
Well you can say what you want against
Robespierre but the Jacobin revolutionary
France was the first state to totally recognize
the Haiti revolution. As you know, after,
with Napoleon, it changes completely.
Napoleon was so scared about the danger of
this revolt of slaves, that for him, it
was not enough to re-colonize them.
Rather he wanted to kill them all
and import new slaves.
So there is nothing naïve here: from time
to time we get this explosion of the eternal idea of communism.
There is a trans-historical constancy not far from
the Freudian concept of compulsive repetition.
The crucial problem is: is it enough?
Is the final horizon of our fight this
idea of communism in the way of Becket.
I refer to his nice sentence where he claims:
“you must act, do the gesture, fail, and act
again in a way that next time you will fail better”
No! Here I am optimist inside my pessimism,
keeping close and orthodox to Marx, I
believe our time is very peculiar today,
Why? its capitalism itself who movilizes actualizes
this destructive dialectic, as a executor of the communist will.
We have here a real alternative.
Shall we follow the path of Negri and Deleuze,
something we could call “accelarationism”
as if,( as Rancière noted), the post-modern
development was objectively communist, and
instead of fighting, it we should lead it
to his  extreme. Is it this or what?
I do not have a great answer,
but I believe ,to say it in religious terms,
that we approaching an apocalyptic period.
Don’t think I fancy stupidities like the movie “2012”,
well not 2012, but 2020 or 2030… [laughs]
Lets speak about ecology…
It's incredible what happens here
Oh! This is just a technical error [laughter]
Seriously, look how fast money have been found
to stop the financial crisis, in comparison to the ecological crisis.
?
it is clear that capitalism cant
solve the ecological problem.
biogenetics, and all the new perspective coming,
intellectual property ,new walls, homo saccer and so on…
in front of all these we must occupy
what Marx called, the proletarian position.
The proletarian position, to say it in Hegelian
terms, is for me subjectivity deprived of its substance.
the substance is all we have been speaking
of today: the commons being more and more private.
Nature and our biogenetic heritage, privatized
our intellectual work, privatized, etc, etc
I appreciate very much the book of Catherine
Malabou “les nouveaux blesses” (the new injured)
She describes what she calls a post traumatic
subject alike a “psychic proletarian”
a subject in which the symbolic
substance is destroyed.
In such situation we need theory, this is crucial because some
problems become visible only through theory.
The second point: I agree with what has been
said here about the “Shared capacity”.
but still I believe we can't escape
a form of hierarchy.
Terry Eagleton told me this formidable anecdote
about Eric Hobsbawm, the great historian:
30 years ago he visited a factory, and
to look cool, he said to the workers:
“I don’t know more than you do, I am here
to share with you, I want to learn from you”.
then a ordinary worker interrupted him
and said: "This is false! Are you kidding us?
you are paid to know more
than us and to tell us what to do”
When a scientific says to you “we are all equal” this
is the most refined form of absolute arrogance. [Applause]
The universalisation of cientific
discourse today is a paradoxical thing
In the old times the people owned
the public opinion
Now the cientifics hold the opinion
I completely agree with Rancière here:
you can refer to a neutral theory
