Slavoj Zizek on Occupy: Some questions

[Questionable]

I recently purchased a book entitled "The Year of Dreaming Dangerously" by Slavoj Zizek, where he sets out to examine the widespread civil unrest of 2011 from a Marxist perspective (Or something close to a Marxist perspective, he seems to reject the theory of productive forces at the beginning of the book?).

Early in the book he talks about the Occupy Wall Street movement in the US, and claims that the movement was primarily a new class of "salaried bourgeois" who weren't interested in any radical change but were merely trying to protect their own privileged position in capitalism. He also dismisses students involved in the movement as up-and-coming salaried bourgeois who were afraid of there not being a position available in the class when they graduated out of college.

I was wondering what people's thoughts were on this perspective? I've heard it said before, and I previously agreed with it, but now I'm not so sure.

My problem with the analysis is that it comes across as a way to turn failures of the radical left into successes. When we fail to mobilize during periods of political unrest like Occupy, we need not blame ourselves, because those movements were actually bourgeois all along! It's not our faults that communism didn't catch it, it was because the people involved were actually spoiled bourgeoisified workers the whole time, and we need not worry ourselves with them. The claim that college students were also just trying to defend their privileged futures seems to be a left-wing version of the conservative cry that Occupy Wall Street was a bunch of liberal college kids who were too lazy to work for a future and instead wanted to steal our money with socializms.

But perhaps I'm totally wrong and Zizek is right, in which case I have no choice but to accept the truth. However at first glance it seems like a lame way to explain why radical leftism hasn't had mainstream success, because the people protesting were actually dirty labor aristocrats all along. But what do others think?

[Lord Hargreaves]

Does Zizek back up his argument with much evidence? Does he prove with facts and figures that Occupy activists were all budding middle class professionals, or is this just anecdotal on his part?

It seems his is a pretty ungenerous assessment of one of the most significant left wing movements in the last decade, doesn't it? These types of actions will always be heavily populated by students, that is inevitable.

And since higher education has expanded rapidly over the past few years, it seems unreasonable to argue that all students will necessarily be middle class. They aspire to be middle class and to have steady salaried work, sure, but so what? When these students realise that these things they aspire to are not available to them post-2008, and perhaps they never were, won't they start to become conscious of their working class roots and be radicalised? Why is Zizek so cynical?

[TheOneWhoKnocks]

The movement was far too varied and broad to try to analyze it as a monolithic thing. There certainly were bourgeois participants who had little interest in revolutionary change, but there were many working and middle class people there genuinely desiring an alternative (even if they hadn't necessarily been won to anti-capitalism). What does he expect one of the first militant and independent movements in over a decade to look like?

Also, as a university student who is very concerned about economic prospects after graduation, I view Zizek's dismissal of my fellow students' concerns as considerably elitist.

[Ocean Seal]

What is a salaried bourgeois? A CEO? Also where is he coming from with these assumptions? Does he actually back them up with some data? I've been to my #Occupy and I don't think that's what the bourgeoisie look like.

[Questionable]

What is a salaried bourgeois? A CEO? Also where is he coming from with these assumptions? Does he actually back them up with some data? I've been to my #Occupy and I don't think that's what the bourgeoisie look like.

I don't have the book with my right now but yes I believe when saying "salaried bourgeois" he referred to to the highest stratum of workers who don't produce surplus-value but are still paid wages to do tasks for the bourgeoisie, such as managing workers or keeping track of accounts, government employees, etc.

[PC LOAD LETTER]

I don't have the book with my right now but yes I believe when saying "salaried bourgeois" he referred to to the highest stratum of workers who don't produce surplus-value but are still paid wages to do tasks for the bourgeoisie, such as managing workers or keeping track of accounts, government employees, etc.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but is Zizek here inventing new words for things that already exist in Marxist discourse, like, you know, petty bourgeoisie?

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but is Zizek here inventing new words for things that already exist in Marxist discourse, like, you know, petty bourgeoisie?

Gotta keep it hip

https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRvq6MnZUVG_PYahXnY-gWFaKy1SbPHfbLn47t5oiVzCUBjMOGy

[L.A.P.]

What is a salaried bourgeois? A CEO? Also where is he coming from with these assumptions? Does he actually back them up with some data? I've been to my #Occupy and I don't think that's what the bourgeoisie look like.

he definitely is referring specifically to Occupy Wall Street

[Vanguard1917]

Didn't Zizek speak at an Occupy demonstration and tell his audience that they were giving us the 'language to articulate our non-freedom'?* Isn't he contradicting himself with this book?

*"So what are we doing here? Let me tell you a wonderful, old joke from Communist times. A guy was sent from East Germany to work in Siberia. He knew his mail would be read by censors, so he told his friends: “Let’s establish a code. If a letter you get from me is written in blue ink, it is true what I say. If it is written in red ink, it is false.” After a month, his friends get the first letter. Everything is in blue. It says, this letter: “Everything is wonderful here. Stores are full of good food. Movie theatres show good films from the west. Apartments (http://www.imposemagazine.com/bytes/slavoj-zizek-at-occupy-wall-street-transcript#) are large and luxurious. The only thing you cannot buy is red ink.” This is how we live. We have all the freedoms we want. But what we are missing is red ink: the language to articulate our non-freedom. The way we are taught to speak about freedom— war on terror and so on—falsifies freedom. And this is what you are doing here. You are giving all of us red ink."

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Also: Zizek "critiques" Marx that advance in the productive forces in the hands of the class enemy inevitably means social revolution. He writes in the book that:



Zizek, The Year of Dreaming Dangerously:
"In order to move beyond this frame [Marxism, Marx, theories of social revolution, the productive forces, production and incidentally the falling Rate of Profit], we should focus on the three features that characterize contemporary capitalism: the long term trend of shifting from profit to rent (based on "private" common knowledge and rent based on natural resources); the much stronger structural role of unemployment (the opportunity to be "exploited" in a long time job is experienced as a privilege); and finally the rise of what Jean-Claude Milner calls "the salaried bourgeoisie"

Zizek is an idiot. He is entertaining though. But, "salaried bourgeois"? LOL. Production is everything. Without Monopoly Capital investing into companies which hire Miners to produce coal, there is no more electricity; without electricity, no more internet or "'private' common knowledge", i.e. no more capitalist "rent" (property ownership over patents becomes useless if no demand for the commodity), no more "salaried Bourgeoisie"; I.Fucking.E. No more Capitalists, no more working and living Proletarians, i.e. no civilized society = social revolution.

[TheOneWhoKnocks]

There most certainly exists a class of salaried bourgeois. As Marx explains in vol. 1 of Capital and Michael Heinrich and Chris Harman elaborate further, a person is a capitalist insofar as they personify capital accumulation, whether or not they actually own capital. As firms have grown in size, it's become more common for owners of productive capital to hire high-paid managers to run production and facilitate accumulation. Those managers are part of the bourgeoisie even though they make a salary.

His point about rent is dumb though. Rent only absorbs a portion of the surplus value created through the process of production.. to say that profit can be created through rent is basically to take the neoclassical line that capital and land both produce value on their own.