from Slavoj Zizek’s
On Belief (2001)
The Leninist Freedom
How, then, do things stand with freedom? Here is how Lenin stated his
position in a polemic against the Menshevik and
Socialist-Revolutionaries’ critique of Bolshevik power in 1922:
Indeed, the sermons which ... the Mensheviks and
Socialist-Revolutionaries preach express their true nature: “The
revolution has gone too far What you are saying now we have been saying
at[ the time, permit us to say it again.” But we say in reply: “Permit
us to put you before a firing squad for saying that. Either you refrain
from expressing your views, or, if you insist on expressing your
political views publicly in the present circumstances, when our position
is far more difficult than it was when the white guards were directly
attacking us, then you will have only yourselves to blame if we treat
you as the worst and most pernicious white guard elements."”
This Leninist freedom of choice — not “Life or money!” but “Life or
critique!” — combined with Lenin’s dismissive attitude towards the
“liberal” notion of freedom, accounts for his bad reputation among
liberals. Their case largely rests upon their rejection of the standard
Marxist-Leninist opposition of “formal” and “actual” freedom: as even
Leftist liberals like Claude Lefort emphasize again and again, freedom
is in its very notion “formal,” so that “actual freedom” equals the lack
of freedom.” That is to say, with regard to freedom, Lenin is best
remembered for his famous retort “Freedom yes, but for WHOM? To do
WHAT?” — for him, in the case of the Mensheviks quoted above, their
“freedom” to criticize the Bolshevik government effectively amounted to
“freedom” to undermine the workers’ and peasants’ government on behalf
of the counter-revolution ... Today, is it not obvious after the
terrifying experience of Really Existing Socialism, where the fault of
this reasoning resides? First, it reduces a historical constellation to a
closed, fully contextualized, situation in which the “objective”
consequences of one’s acts are fully determined (“independently of your
intentions, what you are doing now objectively serves . . . “); second,
the position of enunciation of such statements usurps the right to
decide what your acts “objectively mean,” so that their apparent 11
objectivism” (the focus on “objective meaning”) is the form of
appearance of its opposite, the thorough subjectivism: I decide what
your acts objectively mean, since I define the context of a situation
(say, if I conceive of my power as the immediate equivalent/expression
of the power of the working class, then everyone who opposes me is
“objectively” an enemy of the working class).
Against this full
contextualization, one should emphasize that freedom is “actual”
precisely and only as the capacity to “transcend” the coordinates of a
given situation, to “posit the presuppositions” of one’s activity (as
Hegel would have put it), i.e. to redefine the very situation within
which one is active. Furthermore, as many a critic pointed out, the very
term “Really Existing Socialism,” although it was coined in order to
assert Socialism’s success, is in itself a proof of Socialism’s utter
failure, i.e. of the failure of the attempt to legitimize Socialist
regimes — the term “Really Existing Socialism” popped up at the
historical moment when the only legitimizing reason for Socialism was a
mere fact that it exists . . . “
Is this, however, the whole story? How does freedom effectively
function in liberal democracies themselves? Although Clinton’s
presidency epitomizes the Third Way of today’s (ex-)Left succumbing to
the Rightist ideological blackmail, his health-care reform program would
nonetheless amount to a kind of act, at least in today’s conditions,
since it would have been based on the rejection of the hegemonic notions
of the need to curtail Big State expenditure and administration — in a
way, it would “do the impossible.” No wonder, then, that it failed: its
failure — perhaps the only significant, although negative, event of
Clinton’s presidency bears witness to the material force of the
ideological notion of “free choice.” That is to say, although the large
majority of the so-called “ordinary people” were not properly acquainted
with the reform program, the medical lobby (twice as strong as the
infamous defense lobby!) succeeded in imposing on the public the
fundamental idea that, with universal health-care free choice (in
matters concerning medicine) will be somehow threatened — against this
purely fictional reference to “free choice”, all enumeration of “hard
facts” (in Canada, health-care is less expensive and more effective,
with no less free choice, etc.) proved ineffective.
Here we are at the very nerve center of the liberal ideology: freedom
of choice, grounded in the notion of the “psychological” subject
endowed with propensities he or she strives to realize. This especially
holds today, in the era of what sociologists like Ulrich Beck call “risk
society,” when the ruling ideology endeavors to sell us the insecurity
caused by the dismantling of the Welfare State as the opportunity for
new freedoms: you have to change jobs every year, relying on short-term
contracts instead of a long-term stable appointment. Why not see it as
the liberation from the constraints of a fixed job, as the chance to
reinvent yourself again and again, to become aware of and realize hidden
potentials of your personality? You can no longer rely on the standard
health insurance and retirement plan, so that you have to opt for
additional coverage for which you have to pay. Why not perceive it as an
additional opportunity to choose: either better life now or long-term
security? And if this predicament causes you anxiety, the postmodern or
“second modernity” ideologist will immediately accuse you of being
unable to assume full freedom, of the “escape from freedom,” of the
immature sticking to old stable forms ... Even better, when this is
inscribed into the ideology of the subject as the psychological
individual pregnant with natural abilities and tendencies, then 1 as it
were automatically interpret all these changes as the results of my
personality, not as the result of me being thrown around by market
forces.
Phenomena like these make it all the more necessary today to REASSERT
the opposition of “formal” and “actual” freedom in a new, more precise,
sense. What we need today, in the era of liberal hegemony, is a
“Leninist”
traité de la servitude libérale, a new version of la Boétie’s
Traiti de la servitude volontaire
that would fully justify the apparent oxymoron “liberal
totalitarianism.” In experimental psychology, Jean-Léon Beauvois took
the first step in this direction with his precise exploration of the
paradoxes of conferring on the subject the freedom to choose. Repeated
experiments established the following paradox: if, AFTER getting from
two groups of volunteers the agreement to participate in an experiment,
one informs them that the experiment will involve something unpleasant,
against their ethics even, and if, at this point, one reminds the first
group that they have the free choice to say no, and says nothing to the
other group, in BOTH groups, the SAME (very high) percentage will agree
to continue their participation in the experiment.
What this means is that conferring the formal
freedom of choice
does not make any difference: those given the freedom will do the same
thing as those (implicitly) denied it. This, however, does not mean that
the reminder/bestowal of the freedom of choice does not make any
difference: those given the freedom to choose will not only tend to
choose the same as those denied it; they will tend to “rationalize”
their “free” decision to continue to participate in the experiment —
unable to endure the so-called cognitive dissonance (their awareness
that they FREELY acted against their interests, propensities, tastes or
norms), they will tend to change their opinion about the act they were
asked to accomplish.
Let us say that an individual is first asked to participate in an
experiment that concerns changing eating habits in order to fight
against famine; then, after agreeing to do it, at the first encounter in
the laboratory, he will be asked to swallow a living worm, with the
explicit reminder that, if he finds this act repulsive, he can, of
course, say no, since he has the complete freedom to choose. In most
cases, he will do it, and then rationalize it by way of saying to
himself something like: “What I am asked to do IS disgusting, but I am
not a coward, 1 should display some courage and self-control, otherwise
scientists will perceive me as a weak person who pulls out at the first
minor obstacle! Furthermore, a worm does have a lot of proteins and it
could effectively be used to feed the poor who am 1 to hinder such an
important experiment because of my petty sensitivity? And, finally,
maybe my disgust of worms is just a prejudice, maybe a worm is not so
bad — and would tasting it not be a new and daring experience? What if
it will enable me to discover an unexpected, slightly perverse,
dimension of myself that 1 was hitherto unaware of?”
Beauvois enumerates three modes of what brings people to accomplish
such an act which runs against their perceived propensities and/or
interests: authoritarian (the pure command “You should do it because I
say so, without questioning it!”, sustained by the reward if the subject
does it and the punishment if he does not do it), totalitarian (the
reference to some higher Cause or common Good which is larger than the
subject’s perceived interest: “You should do it because, even if it is
unpleasant, it serves our Nation, Party, Humanity!”), and liberal (the
reference to the subject’s inner nature itself. “What is asked of you
may appear repulsive, but look deep into yourself and you will discover
that it’s in your true nature to do it, you will find it attractive, you
will become aware of new, unexpected, dimensions of your
personality!”).
At this point, Beauvois should be corrected: a direct
authoritarianism is practically nonexistent — even the most oppressive
regime publicly legitimizes its reign with the reference to some Higher
Good, and the fact that, ultimately, “you have to obey because I say so”
reverberates only as its obscene supplement discernible between the
lines. It is rather the specificity of the standard authoritarianism to
refer to some higher Good (“whatever your inclinations are, you have to
follow my order for the sake of the higher Good!”), while
totalitarianism, like liberalism, interpellates the subject on behalf of
HIS OWN good (“what may appear to you as an external pressure, is
really the expression of your objective interests, of what you REALLY
WANT without being aware of it! “). The difference between the two
resides elsewhere: totalitarianism” imposes on the subject his or her
own good, even if it is against his or her will — recall King Charles’
(in)famous statement: “If any shall be so foolishly unnatural s to
oppose their king, their country and their own good, we will make them
happy, by God’s blessing — even against their wills. “ (Charles I to the
Earl of Essex, 6 August 1 644. ) Here we encounter the later Jacobin
theme of happiness as a political factor, as well as the Saint-Justian
idea of forcing people to be happy ... Liberalism tries to avoid (or,
rather, cover up) this paradox by way of clinging to the end to the
fiction of the subject’s immediate free self-perception (“I don’t claim
to know better than you what you want — just look deep into yourself and
decide freely what you want!”).
The reason for this fault in Beauvois’s line of argumentation is that
he fails to recognize how the abyssal tautological authority (“It is so
because 1 say so!” of the Master) does not work only because of the
sanctions (punishment/reward) it implicitly or explicitly evokes. That
is to say, what, effectively, makes a subject freely choose what is
imposed on him against his interests and/or propensities? Here, the
empirical inquiry into “pathological” (in the Kantian sense of the term)
motivations is not sufficient: the enunciation of an injunction that
imposes on its addressee a symbolic engagement/ commitment evinces an
inherent force of its own, so that what seduces us into obeying it is
the very feature that may appear to be an obstacle — the absence of a
“why.” Here, Lacan can be of some help: the Lacanian “Master-Signifier”
designates precisely this hypnotic force of the symbolic injunction
which relies only on its own act of enunciation — it is here that we
encounter “symbolic efficiency” at its purest. The three ways of
legitimizing the exercise of authority (“authoritarian,” “totalitarian,”
“liberal”) are nothing but three ways of covering up, of blinding us to
the seductive power of the abyss of this empty call. In a way,
liberalism is here even the worst of the three, since it NATURALIZES the
reasons for obedience into the subject’s internal psychological
structure. So the paradox is that “liberal” subjects are in a way those
least free: they change the very opinion/perception of themselves,
accepting what was IMPOSED on them as originating in their “nature” —
they are even no longer AWARE of their subordination.
Let us take the situation in the Eastern European countries around
1990, when Really Existing Socialism was falling apart: all of a sudden,
people were thrown into a situation of the “freedom of political
choice” — however, were they REALLY at any point asked the fundamental
question of what kind of new order they actually wanted? Is it not that
they found themselves in the exact situation of the subject-victim of a
Beauvois experiment? They were first told that they were entering the
promised land of political freedom; then, soon afterwards, they were
informed that this freedom involved wild privatization, the dismantling
of the system of social security, etc. etc. — they still have the
freedom to choose, so if they want, they can step out; but, no, our
heroic Eastern Europeans didn’t want to disappoint their Western
mentors, they stoically persisted in the choice they never made,
convincing themselves that they should behave as mature subjects who are
aware that freedom has its price ... This is why the notion of the
psychological subject endowed with natural propensities, who has to
realize its true Self and its potentials, and who is, consequently,
ultimately responsible for his failure or success, is the key ingredient
of liberal freedom. And here one should risk reintroducing the Leninist
opposition of “formal” and “actual” freedom: in an act of actual
freedom, one dares precisely to BREAK the seductive power of symbolic
efficiency. Therein resides the moment of truth of Lenin’s acerbic
retort to his Menshevik critics: the truly free choice is a choice in
which I do not merely choose between two or more options WITHIN a
pre-given set of coordinates, but I choose to change this set of
coordinates itself The catch of the “transition” from Really Existing
Socialism to capitalism was that people never had the chance to choose
the
ad quem of this transition — all of a sudden, they were
(almost literally) “thrown” into a new situation in which they were
presented with a new set of given choices (pure liberalism, nationalist
conservatism ... ). What this means is that the “actual freedom” as the
act of consciously changing this set occurs only when, in the situation
of a forced choice, one ACTS AS IF THE CHOICE IS NOT FORCED and “chooses
the impossible.”
This is what Lenin’s obsessive tirades against “formal” freedom are
about, therein resides their “rational kernel” which is worth saving
today: when he emphasizes that there is no “pure” democracy, that we
should always ask who does a freedom under consideration serve, which is
its role in the class struggle, his point is precisely to maintain the
possibility of the TRUE radical choice.
This is what the distinction
between “formal” and “actual” freedom ultimately amounts to: “formal”
freedom is the freedom of choice WITHIN the coordinates of the existing
power relations, while “actual” freedom designates the site of an
intervention which undermines these very coordinates. In short, Lenin’s
point is not to limit freedom of choice, but to maintain the fundamental
Choice — when Lenin asks about the role of a freedom within the class
struggle, what he is asking is precisely: “Does this freedom contribute
to or constrain the fundamental revolutionary Choice?”
The most popular TV show of the fall of 2000 in France, with the
viewer rating two times higher than that of the notorious “Big Brother”
reality soaps, was “
C'est mon choix” (“It is my choice”) on
France 3, the talk show whose guest is an ordinary (or, exceptionally, a
well-known) person who made a peculiar choice which determined his or
her entire life-style: one of them decided never to wear underwear,
another tries to find a more appropriate sexual partner for his father
and mother — extravagance is allowed, solicited even, but with the
explicit exclusion of the choices which may disturb the public (for
example, a person whose choice is to be and act as a racist, is a priori
excluded). Can one imagine a better predicament of what the “freedom of
choice” effectively amounts to in our liberal societies? We can go on
making our small choices, “reinvesting ourselves” thoroughly, on
condition that these choices do not seriously disturb the social and
ideological balance. For “
C'est mon choix,” the truly radical
thing would have been to focus precisely on the “disturbing” choices: to
invite as guests people like dedicated racists, i.e. people whose
choice (whose difference) DOES make a difference. This, also, is the
reason why, today, “democracy” is more and more a false issue, a notion
so discredited by its predominant use that, perhaps, one should take the
risk of abandoning it to the enemy. Where, how, by whom are the key
decisions concerning global social issues made? Are they made in the
public space, through the engaged participation of the majority? If the
answer is yes, it is of secondary importance if the state has a
one-party system, etc. If the answer is no, it is of secondary
importance if we have parliamentary democracy and freedom of individual
choice.
Did something homologous to the invention of the liberal
psychological individual not take place in the Soviet Union in the late
1920s and early 1930s? The Russian avant-garde art of the early 1920s
(futurism, constructivism) not only zealously endorsed
industrialization, it even endeavored to reinvent a new industrial man —
no longer the old man of sentimental passions and roots in traditions,
but the new man who gladly accepts his role as a bolt or screw in the
gigantic coordinated industrial Machine. As such, it was subversive in
its very “ultra-orthodoxy,” i.e. in its over-identification with the
core of the official ideology: the image of man that we get in
Eisenstein, Meyerhold, constructivist paintings, etc., emphasizes the
beauty of his/her mechanical movements, his/her thorough
depsychologization. What was perceived in the West as the ultimate
nightmare of liberal individualism, as the ideological counterpoint to
“Taylorization,” to Fordist ribbon-work, was in Russia hailed as the
utopian prospect of liberation: recall how Meyerhold violently asserted
the “behaviorist” approach to acting — no longer emphatic
familiarization with the person the actor is playing, but ruthless
bodily training aimed at cold bodily discipline, at the ability of the
actor to perform a series of mechanized movements . . .” THIS is what
was unbearable to AND IN the official Stalinist ideology, so that the
Stalinist “socialist realism” effectively WAS an attempt to reassert a
“Socialism with a human face,” i.e. to reinscribe the process of
industrialization within the constraints of the traditional
psychological individual: in the Socialist Realist texts, paintings and
films, individuals are no longer rendered as parts of the global
Machine, but as warm, passionate persons.
The obvious reproach that imposes itself here is, of course: is the
basic characteristic of today’s “postmodern” subject not the exact
opposite of the free subject who experienced himself as ultimately
responsible for his fate, namely the subject who grounds the authority
of his speech on his status of a victim of circumstances beyond his
control? Every contact with another human being is experienced as a
potential threat — if the other smokes, if he casts a covetous glance at
me, he already hurts me; this logic of victimization is today
universalized, reaching well beyond the standard cases of sexual or
racist harassment — recall the growing financial industry of paying
damage claims, from the tobacco industry deal in the USA and the
financial claims of the Holocaust victims and forced laborers in Nazi
Germany, and the idea that the USA should pay the African-Americans
hundreds of billions of dollars for all they were deprived of due to
their past slavery ... This notion of the subject as an irresponsible
victim involves the extreme Narcissistic perspective from which every
encounter with the Other appears as a potential threat to the subject’s
precarious imaginary balance; as such, it is not the opposite, but,
rather, the inherent supplement of the liberal free subject: in today’s
predominant form of individuality, the self-centered assertion of the
psychological subject paradoxically overlaps with the perception of
oneself as a victim of circumstances.
pp 113 to 124 reproduced from
On Belief.
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