The Communist hypothesis and comedic democracy
The communist idea does not come from an idealic outside position, untouched by the vampirish claws of capital. Rather it comes as a response to the immanent contradictions of capitalism, particularly the capitalist instantion of the impossible class relationship. As such, the communist hypothesis arrives without determinate content. Its articulation is independent of previous articulations in the name of communism. What is to be done is yet to be articulated, but does not have to come from outside of ourselves. The answer lies within the contradictions of capitalism. It is not located with a specific agent or missing ideological narrative but comes rather through our own implication – as practioners rather than believers – in the contradictions of capitalism.
For Zizek, this revolutionary potential comes from our universal implication in the contradictions of capitalism. Revolution comes not from a specific subject such as the proletariat, but because in capitalism we are all proletarians. Nonetheless, despite hinting at the shape the communist hypothesis might take, Zizek limits his analysis to the end of capitalism. Within this analysis, however, lie the seeds of a fundamentally different form of political economy. This form is based upon a comedic articulation of the communist hypothesis in what can be deemed communist democracy.
The Communist Hypothesis
The communist hypothesis is neither an ideal, a semblance or presence to come in a deconstructive sense, nor has it any necessary relation to previous communist instantiations which focused on either property or the state. Rather it is the task of dedicated anti-capitalists and the focus of this thesis to consider the manner in which it must be articulated in today’s conditions.
Thus the communist hypothesis cannot be a transcendental idea. Rather it arises as the only radical response to the contradictions of global capital. Western Marxism, beginning with the Frankfurt school has become increasingly critical towards the Hegelian-Marxist notion of determinate negation, by which any new form of society emerges from the contradictions immanent to the current order. Instead, Marxism and other forms of Radical Leftism have adopted a utopia longing for an order which is wholly Other; an order which develops from an unmediated outside.
Zizek’s notion of the communist hypothesis is strictly opposed to any notion of an outside to capitalism. Rather Zizek rehabilitates the Hegelian determinate negation in his theory of universality. Under this theory the concrete universal – that which is excluded from the ‘private’ order, yet exceeds its boundaries and remains immanent to the totality – stands directly for universality through determinate negation. Thus the communist hypothesis comes as a response to the immanent contradictions of capitalism, not from a mythically unspoiled outside.
Zizek argues that these contradictions are embodied in four antagonisms which threaten capitalism; the possibility of ecological collapse, the contradictions between immaterial labour, intellectual property and private property, the development of new scientific technologies which are changing the nature of life in its barest form and the new forms of exclusion, which Zizek labels new forms of apartheid. This exclusion is most notable in the rapidly expanding slums of the third world, but increasingly an underclass is developing within the western world itself. This group acts as reserve or surplus labour, the existance of which maintains the status of labour as a commodity and the capitalistic class relations. The radical potential of this group is not their poverty as such – horrific as it is – but rather the walls and divisions used to exclude them from the rest of society.
Communism, in the face of these antagonisms, operates as the only alternative in response to the apparent subsumption of the symptoms of capital in the context of Francis Fukuyama’s ‘End of History’ thesis. This thesis has becomes so maligned it is passé to do so, yet it continues to dominate socio-political performance. The domination is such that in response to the contradictions of capitalism, only two possibilities emerge.
The first approach, broadly conceived as conservative or neo-liberal, depending upon location, is the more pragmatic. Under neo-liberal ideology, the capitalist system is considered far from perfect, yet is regarded as not only historically the most effective system, but also the most beneficial system possible. In its most strongly ideological narrative, this approach contends that capitalism is simply a reflection of human nature and no more perfectible. Capitalism will operate in sporadic cycles and will be unjust to some degree. This may seem complacently benign when it comes to the fluctuating price of cheese, but becomes more brutal in regards to naked ambition for limited global resources. It is one thing to justify inflation, quite another to consider the prospect of an outright Oil war between the
The other, more liberal, option can be deemed ‘eco-capitalism’. This approach, characterized by the work of Jeffery Sachs and the official benevolence of the United Nations, argues that the productivity of capitalism can be utilized for the good of humanity, whether it is dealing with the ecological crisis, ending poverty or becoming more tolerant towards the Other. In particular the language of its politico-ideological supplement, liberal democracy is used to pacify the brutality of capitalism.
The eco-capitalist narrative acknowledges the symptoms of capitalism yet maintains that they can be resolved within the limits of capitalism. In this sense, eco-capitalism is similar to Marx’s conception of the transition from capitalism to communism. Marx believed that the communist economy would be able to capture the productivity evident in capitalism, without its symptoms. Unfortunately, Marx was unable to understand that this productivity was unique to capitalism itself, and without the torque provided by profit, capitalist productivity would not occur within capitalism. By contrast, the eco-capitalists still maintain their belief in profit, what they misunderstand is that it is profit itself which is causing the problems against which they rally.
The communist hypothesis does not emerge from outside of this history, but rather upon the basis of the exclusion around which capital is founded. Under Zizek’s construction of the four dominant symptoms of capitalism, there is one symptom that defines the group; poverty, or rather the exclusion of those in poverty. The other three contradictions have been able to be included within the limits of capitalism. Environmentalism, despite the apparent radical possibility of a chaotic breech of nature, has become sustainable development. The contradictions of private property have become a legal challenge and bio-genetics has developed into an ethical, or even scientific, struggle. For Zizek these three elements are part of the battle for the commons.
Here Zizek follows Hardt and Negri in suggesting that the commons – particularly in the postmodern articulation of the commons in immaterial labour and knowledge – are increasingly being enclosed and privatised. In relation to these specific antagonisms, environmentalism equates to the commons of external nature, intellectual property to the commons of culture and bio-technology to the commons of internal nature. Whilst this enclosure and exploitation of what is common to all evokes the necessary use of communism, it is only the fourth symptom, that of exclusion, which adds the dimension of universality and the consequent possibility of communist ‘democracy’.
For Zizek, universality and democracy are intimately intertwined, abet with a characteristic twist. The excluded stand for universality preciously because they are excluded; they are the part with no part, the element whose exclusion constitutes the order. That is, the capitalist empire – both as an ideological system and symbolic/Real logic – must produce an exclusion in order to constitute itself as a set. That exclusion, of the unruly masses with no official place in the private capitalist order, is what makes the totality of Empire universal. The universal is not the failed attempt of any given set to constitute itself, but rather the set and its failure constitute the domain of universality.
Zizek links this form of universality to democracy in the Greek sense to signify the intrusion of the excluded into the socio-political space. Here Greek democracy contrasts strongly with Western-style liberal democracy. Liberal democracy seeks to include, but only that which is already symbolised within the current order. That is, liberal democracy is already formed on the basis of the exclusion of class struggle, the main instantiation of which is the masses of urban slums that act as the reserve army of labour for capitalism. By contrast, the Grecian form of democracy is based upon the inclusion of this group – the part with no part in the established order – into the demos. Such a move cannot be established by the demos themselves but rather must come from the internal destabilisation of the order. Thus democracy is universal in the sense that it includes that which is outside of itself, yet necessary for its own constitution.
Thus what is vital for both universality and democracy is not exclusion per se, but rather the interaction or gap between the excluded and the established order. The universal may be embodied by the excluded, but universality occurs through the inclusion of the excluded element. Zizek labels this approach a parallax view, where two incommensurable positions are held together. Thus, in Zizek’s communist democracy there is no specific revolutionary agent. Rather the revolutionary potential occurs in the short circuit between the order and its exclusion. The figure of the excluded confronts us – in its universal status – with the truth of its own position. Such a parallax juxtaposition –whereby both (incommensurable) sides are held together in the same frame – makes communist democracy a comedic system in more than just an ironic sense, following Zupancic’s logic of comedy/love, to which I shall soon turn my attention.
