Slavoj Žižek: Coronavirus, Black Lives Matter, and revolution | Big Think Edge

Welcome to Big Think Live. I'm Peter Hopkins, president and co-founder of Big Think. Today's topic is "Pandemic Protests Panic," and we have the honor of hosting Slavoj Žižek. Slavoj is one of the most prolific and well-known philosophers and cultural theorists in the world. He has been called the "elder of cultural theory" and "the most dangerous thinker in the West." His inventive and provocative body of work mixes Hegelian metaphysics, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and Marxist dialectic in order to challenge conventional wisdom and accepted verities on both the left and the right. His kaleidoscopic vision has now turned to the emerging new normal in his latest book, "Pandemic: COVID-19 Shapes the World." But last, but not least, he is also one of Big Think's top ten most popular experts ever.

In addition, we are also fortunate enough to have the ideal guest moderator for today's talk, Namo Berga. Namo is the founder of Bismark Analysis, a consulting firm that investigates the institutional landscape of society, mostly in political matters. He is also a research fellow at the Long Now Foundation, where he studies institutions that can endure for centuries and millennia. His research civilization centers around the question of why there has got to be an enduring, eternal society.

Let me extend a warm welcome to Pablo and Efimeral. Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you.

We just have a couple of housekeeping notes before I turn it over to Sam. If you have questions for Slavoj, please ask them in the comment section of whatever platform you are watching on, whether it's YouTube or Big Think Edge. We will be turning on audience questions about 15 to 20 minutes into the discussion. If any questions arise right away, we will get to them in the Q&A.

So, without further ado, we'll hand the reins over to the panel to moderate the discussion from Namo.

Okay, thank you, Peter. Slavoj, in your latest book, "Pandemic," you note that the pandemic has required extraordinary measures to stabilize the economy, and you described these measures as rooted in ideology rather than necessity. Do you think these pandemic measures will change the fundamental nature of capitalism or will we actually return to the new state of normal after the crisis?

What you said about Sam—I think this is what in TV quiz shows they call the million-dollar question. You know, all misunderstandings already stem from the way I describe this. Communism is war. Communism is clear; I don't have in mind what Marx thought about communism as a society of freedom and affluence and so on. I refer here to one of Marx's definitions of communism, which incidentally is almost literally taken from a passage from, I think, the Gospel: "From each according to his needs, to each according to his abilities."

Now, this doesn't mean I want a Lamborghini car. I get it and so on. Everybody agrees with that. That's why tramps and tracks tens of millions, especially in such an emergency state. The priority is not profit, market mechanisms, and so on. At least for some time, the priority is to control the health situation and to guarantee that people don't starve and so on—a minimum of existence. This thing should simply be absolutely prioritized.

I also make it clear that this is not just about sitting at home and getting what I need. I think maybe if the second wave will be even worse, I'm not afraid to say that these people will proclaim a totalitarian... or whatever, what many people have to be temporarily—not in a Stalinist way—mobilized.

For example, I recently read about the troubles in agriculture harvesting now in Tennessee; they tested that one problem with 200 workers, all of them were positive. Similar situations occur in French mines, and so the very mode of production actually has to change—like the factory farms and so on. Perhaps they just are not viable...

But at the same time, I got my lesson. I was nonetheless kind of a dissident in the last decades of the ex-Yugoslavia. I was jobless for five years, unemployed, and so on. So, I am well aware that it's simply the state—centralized and, you know, it's not—yes, we are different, not…