Karl Marx wrote the following description of the dialectic in his Afterward to the Second German Edition:

“In its mystified form, dialectic became the fashion in Germany, because it seemed to transfigure and to glorify the existing state of things. In its rational form it is a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors, because it includes in its comprehension and affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary.”

A harsh reply by an Oxford University lecturer to the works of Slavoj Zizek, especially about his writing with regard to the dialectic, deserves a serious reply. The article can be found at this link:

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/10/what-is-zizek-for

Thomas Moller-Nielsen, the writer, is confused about two points:

1. “As someone who’s always struggled with understanding just what, exactly, dialectical materialism consists in, I was curious to see to what extent Žižek was able to enlighten me.”

2. “This, however, still leaves several puzzles unsolved. Why, for instance, does Penguin—one of the most prestigious publishing houses in the world—continue to to publish Žižek books, and to market them as misleadingly as they do? And how is it that, for instance, Yanis Varoufakis—someone whom I generally admire—felt comfortable publicly describing Žižek’s last book, which consisted almost entirely of pervy nonsense, as “excellent.” How did this happen?

“The short answer is that I don’t know—in much the same way that I don’t know why other charlatans (including, incidentally, Žižek’s hero, Jacques Lacan) throughout history became famous, were offered exorbitant book contracts, and were treated with awe and reverence by students, academics, and members of the general public.”

These seemingly planned bouts of confusion create serious shortcomings for the arguments in the article. First, why look to Zizek for enlightenment on dialectical materialism, a.k.a. Marxism when he does not even belong to a Marxist group or a Marxist party.  Look for an explanation of Marxism or Dialectical Materialism in one of the works of the greatest Marxist writers, Marx himself, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky.  They have all written on the subject, and their works have been archived online at marxists.org for easy reference.

Zizek, once a member of the Stalinist Yugoslavian Communist Party, participated in the privatization of the workers’ common property and that of the deformed workers’ state as a member of the Liberal Democratic Party, a political agent of the EU in Southern Europe. This party controlled a majority of the Slovenian congress for most of the period from 1990 to 2004. Since then, it has been thoroughly discredited, with its share of the popular vote reaching as low as 1.5%. Do you expect to find enlightenment in such company?

Hegelianism represented the idealist reflection of the enlightenment of scientific discovery, artistic refinement, political progress, and daring philosophical thought. Yet Hegel stood on the side of the undemocratic German authorities, as Zizek does. This prevented Hegel from reaching the heights of enlightenment and rational thought. This acheivement required the scientific materialist, the proletarian class and its defenders, not hypocritical defenders of privilege. Zizek suffers in the same way as a defender of the Stalinist authorities and the oligarchy of the former Stalinist countries of Europe.

Secondly, the causes of popularity and commercial success of Zizek has to be found in his strengths, not in his weaknesses, as the writer tries to do:

“That is, I do not believe that Žižek is celebrated around the world in spite of the fact that he clearly possesses all of the negative qualities enumerated above. Rather, I suspect, he is celebrated in large part precisely because of them.”

This view encourages conspiracy theories, for one, and moreover blinds people to the argument that genuinely lends him his popularity. What does he say that virtually no one else in the mainstream media does? That he is, in his own words, a “qualified communist.” He uses the term “Stalinism”, generally associated with the Trotskyist movement. He, like First Lady Melania Trump, hails from Slovenia, one of the most equal countries in the world, according to the Gini Index.

Zizek may be popular for the same reason as Greta Thunberg, the environmentalist from the famously Social-democratic and relatively equal Sweden. The conspiracy theorist may say she succeeded not in spite of, but because of her “autism”, or her youth and femininity. That this Greta girl is what we must think of, when we think of an environmentalist. As Marxists, we must reject that political line. Thunberg’s distrustful and threatening posture towards the political elite accounts above all, for her popularity.

There is also the increased popularity of socialist ideas in general, expressed by the rise of Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, as well as the majority support for socialism over capitalism among U.S. millennials, the first generation in the U.S. to hold this opinion.

The reasons I have listed begin to explain Zizek’s popularity, but they do not explain why his positions have not hindered him through censorship and discrimination. This failure on the part of the mainstream media to censor him relates largely to his many apparent flaws, described in the article, which he bravely and brilliantly turns into assets to his fame.

More important, however, is his adherence to the consensus of silence with regard to the Trotskyist movement. Moller-Nielsen adheres to the same abhorrent principle of silence. His most noxious argument, however, he saves for the end.

“Progressivists… will likely be tempted by the false dilemma of: (i) trying to defend him in the name of “progressivism”—a doomed, and even dangerous enterprise; or, even worse, (ii) rejecting him and, as a result, rejecting their progressive politics or instincts.”

As a matter of fact, Moller-Nielsen has chosen the second of these choices, arguing explicitly that Zizek must be censored, not merely harrassed as he appears to be. Moller-Neilsen has criticized effectively the physical and intellectual reaction of Zizek to the torture of his soul, but he has not said the slightest thing in his defense. The perverseness of relations under capitalism has reached unprecedented proportions, which can be seen in the company its leaders keep, such as their most conspicuous of companions, Jeffrey Epstein. Zizek emerges contradictorily from this mileu as an important defender of Slovenian “liberal democracy”, its privatization of nationalized industries, as well as its “unification” with the EU.

Why has Moller-Nielsen argued so callously that “the world”, not just the Left or some specific group on the left, “doesn’t need to… and… cannot… afford.. to provide Slavoj Zizek with a platform from which he can… pontificate…?” The real reason lies in his cowardly and self-damaging argument “(i)” above. Defending him is “a doomed, and even dangerous enterprise.” The wisdom behind this argument seems rather shaky. To one who has not abandoned progressive politics, defending one’s right to pontificate should seem elementary. To argue that communist ideas are not necessary provides a further clue into the doom and danger that lies waiting for the mistaken intellectual who defends another. We must see in this argument the fear of, or sickness from, fascism leading to the abandonment of the basic instinct of self-preservation. Communism is not necessary and neither is our life and liberty!

Zizek’s successful resurrection of Hegel’s method, while clearly flawed as the original, has made him a hero to intellectuals and academics. His unconstrained forays into various subjects resemble the works of the original German philosopher. This method freed a generation of intellectuals, Marx and Engels among them, to speak freely and knowingly on many subjects without fear of the spies and censors of the German authorities. Marx and Engels predicted that the Slavic nations could never unite, and that they would be subsumed into a united Germany. Yugoslavia proved them wrong, but this Slavic philosopher from the former Yugoslavia, where Trotskyism has been historically suppressed by a Stalinist dictatorship, has proven that dialectical materialism or Marxism will never lose its international appeal.