Zizek begins hisbook with a warning: Any reader who would not even consider this notion isadvised not to continue reading. The title of the book is a reworking of aHegel quote by Marx, “that all great events and characters of world historyoccur, so to speak, twice. [Hegel] forgot to add: the first time as tragedy,the second time as farce.” Zizek gives this quote context for his book with theexplanation that the “utopia of the 1990s had to die twice, since the collapseof the liberal-democratic political utopia on 9/11 did not affect the economicutopia of global market capitalism.”
His comments on themethods used to mend the situation are insightful. Zizek notes that thewarnings of World Trade Organization (WTO) protesters should have been heeded.He writes of how the bankruptcy of GM would benefit its CEOs but would “breakthe backbone of one of the last strong unions in the United States, leaving thousandswith lower wages and thousands of others with lower retirement incomes…allow[ing] the free market to operate with brutal force… This is how theimpossible becomes possible: what was hitherto considered unthinkable withinthe horizon of the established standards of decent working conditions nowbecomes acceptable.”
Zizek makes much ofthe current class situation, which he groups into three categories:intellectual laborers, the old manual working class, and the outcasts. He useshis favorite mode of argument, dialectics, by routinely showing events to betheir oppositeas in the instance where he mentions that “the contemporaryradical-populist Right strangely reminds us of the old radical-populist Left”and actually works against its own interest when throwing “tea parties,” sincemany of those attending would benefit from higher taxes for the wealthy andlower taxes for the working class. At the same time, he critiques the choicesof liberals when they fashionably support mega-corporations like Starbucks andWhole Foods that do not allow unionizing.
While I do notforesee Zizek taking up the revolution himself, I believe he practices what hepreaches. In other words, “the revolution of everyday life.”
Of course, he isn'tabove taking a job from Abercrombie & Fitch, but maybe he perceives it ashis exploitation of them. He ends the book with the claim that old leftists whowere anti-communist for most of their lives wish to return to the fold, comparingthem to those who wish to convert to Christianity on their deathbeds. It is afitting analogy, since both Christianity and communism might work if they werepracticed as intended. He writes, “We have spent our lives rebelling vainlyagainst what, deep within us, we knew all the time to be the truth.” Unlikemost of us, Zizek has directly experienced communism, so perhaps we mightlisten.
