You have said that the greatest sin of the left in history has been the desire to lose. Can this desire explain the lack of alternatives that we currently live with?

This is what I said above all about the current Western academic left. I think they secretly enjoy their comfortable academic life at the universities. And although they talk about the need for change, they really don’t want it: they like the revolution but if it happens very far, in Nicaragua or now in Venezuela, where it doesn’t really change their lives. I think this started with the Frankfurt School; the academic left was very critical of its society, but it was an abstract cultural critique that had no real engagement. It is a very proud position, and I say to that, following Hegel, the Beautiful Soul: you have a comfortable position, very critical, but you are still fully integrated into that society. And in general, I think this is true in the case of this “cultural studies left”.

Even in our case, right?

Yeah, but we shouldn't blame ourselves too much. The problem is more radical. For example: We have the financial crisis in Greece, and some around me are satisfied, “look, public disorder, the revolution is starting”... No! In what way? What do the protesters want in Greece? Not to lose old privileges. And here one must be more benevolent: it is not that great capital wants to dismantle the welfare state; this is happening, but not because evil people want it; this is the trend of today’s capital with globalization. But for me it is very sad that everything that the pragmatic left can offer is linked to the old welfare state. The Left, in this sense, is the conservative force of today. And the Greek is so sad... Okay, some communists are calling for a revolution, but it doesn’t mean anything. All they want is to keep the old privileges. Isn't it sad that we don't have a real alternative program? Not even those who are critical of capitalism on a global level. Remember the movement in Seattle and Porto Alegre about five to ten years ago? Of course, it was nice, they were all there together, it was a protest movement. But except for a few general phrases against imperialism, or for ecology... they didn’t have an alternative program. It's a serious problem. I don’t think we can define what we want [the last three words have been accompanied by a small bump on the table]; it’s basically a negative position. I think we live in a strange time. Antonio Gramsci explained it with some beautiful lines: in times when the old is dying and the new is not born, it is possible to explain things in the form of monsters.

What are monsters?

It seems to me that phenomena such as fundamentalism also belong to this species. The old is dying, the new is not born yet. So I think we are living in potentially very dangerous times. Something is happening in Europe that everyone should be concerned about: until now, in an ordinary country, there was a political tension between the moderate left and the moderate right. There used to be two big parties and apart from them there were other margins: some small fascist parties, some environmentalists... But now a different scene is emerging: we are seeing a big technocratic central party, liberal, popular... call it what you want; and then a conservative, nationalist, anti-immigrant party. They are getting stronger and stronger: look at the latest votes in Holland, Belgium, Eastern Europe is a catastrophe... So the only option is a kind of technocratic neutral capitalism or a proto-fascist far right. And I think that’s the price we’re paying for the decline of the left. Do you know what Walter Benjamin said? Every fascism is representative of a failed revolution. And this is literally true in the Arab countries. Why do we have Islamic fundamentalism now? Because the secular Arab left disappeared. So, as ugly as it is, this fundamentalism is also, to a certain extent, a good sign: it means that there is potential for change, but we have not used it and are paying the price for it.

And how do you take that potential and turn it into a far-left movement?

[Laughs] I'm both optimistic and pessimistic about it. Optimistic, because it is clear that in view of all this current crisis phenomenon, many problems—not only of the financial world, but also of the ecological world, or of the intellectual property...—cannot be solved from within capitalism. Crises arise again and again. Now we’ve seen it in the U.S.: people tell me “you’re crazy, how do you say communism is necessary today?” and I tell them, “look at the oil spill around Louisiana.” Obama has been very weak on this issue. It’s become a legal problem, it’s starting to say that British Petroleum has to pay... It’s ridiculous! It's having a global catastrophe, you can't play those legal games, start looking for who's to blame. And you can’t play by saying “we’re dealing with private companies.” There had to be a general mobilization. Do we realize the challenge we face? If the spill continues, the whole habitat will change in the area, people will have to change places of residence... Or, even bigger challenges: I have read that due to global warming in northern Russia, in Siberia, the whole climate is changing. The permafrost is softening. This is good for the agriculture there, but of course, in other parts of the world the desert is expanding; and in the future we will have to organize large population movements, millions will have to move from here to there... Who will organize this? You can't leave it to the market. Ecology obliges us to new, radical, citizen and mass actions, which we cannot leave in the hands of the market or the state. All this creates a need, precisely the need for something that I still call communism.

But at the same time, I don't think we're ready for action yet. And I'm pessimistic about that. Many of my friends are catastrophic. They think we need a couple more ecological catastrophes, or public disorder. I say yes, but catastrophes and crises are always ambiguous phenomena. They can expand the space for change, but also, when there is a crisis, people’s reaction is to become even more conservative.

The Shock Doctrine.

That's what it is. It is clear, for example, that the financial crisis has shown that free-market liberalism is a myth. Everyone knows now that nation states are getting stronger and stronger—and in this I don’t agree with my friend Toni Negri, who believes that nation states are disappearing.

But you yourself have said that globalisation is bad for states like Germany.

I believe that the real victims of globalisation are the secondary powers, the great nations of Europe, for that matter. Spain, Germany, England... Globalization means that Scotland wants independence or at least greater autonomy; you, the Basques, too... This is actually a good phenomenon. These new entities that want to divide do not only want to achieve the old nation-state, but a new autonomous entity with much more free space, even in culture. This is a very interesting phenomenon. Globalisation does not mean that we will all be eating burgers, it means that it is easier for you, for example, to express your international identity. That’s the good thing about globalization. So we should use that option [he taps the table with the pointer]. We don’t have to be conservative or be afraid of that.

In Slovenia, you do not want to return to a state similar to Yugoslavia.

Do you know what the tragedy was there? The majority of Slovenians did not want complete independence. They wanted a kind of confederation, but do you know who pushed us to complete independence?

Assisted by Milosevic.

Molosevic, that's it. When we discuss colloquially whether we should make a monument to the hero of independent Slovenia, to whom we should make it, we conclude that we should make it to Milosevic [laughs]. When we saw this logic of populist violence, we knew that war would come. And the idea was: “Let’s go outside before it all blows up.” In that the West was very naive, they didn't see you coming.

Not even the people on the left. Tariq Ali and...

The ones on the left were the worst. I have an eternal conflict with Tariq Ali: I don’t know, if I use as an argument the stupidity or idleness of the Pakistanis... for God’s sake! The basic rule of anti-racism is not to use racist clichés as political motives, as they used the selfishness of the Slovenians. It was a way to survive. We saw that war was coming, it was clear to everyone, except for the stupid Western observers, that it would be war. It was not the Slovenes or the Croats who sank Yugoslavia, it was Milosevic. At the time of his inauguration, Tito’s Yugoslavia died and we had only one choice: perhaps to build a new Yugoslavia, democratic, with greater autonomy, confederate... or Milosevic wins and becomes, as we ironically said, Serboslavia. The most important years were the first of Milosevic from 1986 to 1989. Those who opposed Milosevic tried desperately to negotiate an alternative version; and the catastrophe was that the army and the central power supported Milosevic. It was clear to everyone that it was all over. The tragedy was like that of the Greeks: we could see it coming and nothing could be done.

Jürgen Habermas said that only the Serbs could build a true democratic country... Here they say the same about the Spaniards.

I’m not surprised that Aznar said publicly that they should name Habermas as the official Spanish philosopher for the idea of constitutional patriotism... This is the clearest limitation of Habermas: he has this utterly false fear that giving more space to small nations will lead to a certain proto-fascism, a danger to democracy, etc. And so he admitted the greatest sickness of Serbian nationalism—and it is shocking that many of the supposed Democrats who opposed Milosevic made the same mistake: to think that the Serbs were the only nation in Yugoslavia with the ability to build a state; that the rest of the nations were not capable of that.

Basques, how can we articulate our particular struggle with the universal struggle of communism? Is it a blind alley to combine the two?

Oh, no! No, no! Not at all! In fact, I believe that within the European Union itself, the stronger Europe is, the greater your area of autonomy will be. To the extent that Europe is more united, it will be more a regional Europe and not so much a Europe of national states. It's a very nice paradox: As long as you want total autonomy from the Spanish state, your support is the supreme universal space. You should not be afraid of Europe. Beware of these false leftists who are followers of Habermas: they say that the European Union is an instrument of the International Monetary Fund, of international capital, and therefore the task of the left is to return to the strong nation-states; they believe that only the strong nation-state can save what can be saved from the welfare state today. First of all: if you follow this line, you will find yourself together with the radical European right, which is in favour of stronger nation-states, always warning of the danger of immigrants,
etc. I am Hegelian: I am for universality. But universality does not undermine your uniqueness; it is not a matter of renouncing your uniqueness; on the contrary, you must see your uniqueness as a means of participating in the universal. The false idea of the universalist left is that we must forget about our identity, because no one lives in an abstract space. The dialectic here is very clear: With a hierarchical space like the universal Europe, and under it the nation states, the allies of universality are those who undermine the full sovereignty of the nation states from within. Just as you oppose the Spanish nation-state, you are more universal. That must be your argument. The force of universality is you, not the Spanish state. And I believe that this is vital for a united Europe. And I still have hope in Europe because in the rest there are two models: liberal Anglo-Saxon and authoritarian capitalism in China, Japan, etc. I don’t want to live in a world where those are the only options [laughs]. But only Europe will unite, if it becomes a regional Europe, it will not work as long as the basic unit is the national state.

Your native language is Slovenian, but we’re doing this interview in English, so are your books published... How are you doing?

It’s the same: many of my friends thought that English was the organ of imperialism, they were against English. Well, I'm not. Precisely in a situation like yours, where there is Spanish and your language, it is good to have a third language, English legally; it is partly a space of universality, because if we move with English, Spanish becomes another of all the other languages, at the same level as yours. English allows you to talk to other parts of Europe without Spanish mediation. We should be very pragmatic about this. It is typical in France, for example, how the French nationalists are against the English. For what reason? Because they want a great French state.
I have no problem with English because today it is becoming something like the Latin of yesteryear: They speak in Singapore, in China, in India... it is no longer an instrument of the people of England, it is becoming universal, which means that you are much freer in the field of English, where you are equal to others. I repeat, I avoid this error, which is to say, “let us return to the full sovereignty of the nation-states.” Do you know when I will start to believe in Europe? When you, as Basques, are able to connect with other regions of Europe, not through the Spanish state, but directly. This will be the true European universality in practice.

You gave us a headline with that phrase...

You can manipulate it the way you want... I believe in manipulation, everything is accepted in politics [laughs].

To change the subject: last year in London you held the congress On the idea of communism...

...cutting forgiveness: a friend made a good characterization of this congress. He told me that it was like Woodstock: old stars went to play their old songs [laughing]. Unfortunately, it was true!

You spoke at that congress about the treatment that a communist society should give to artists, exemplifying the narrative of Franz Kafka’s singer Josefin. But would you accept the same treatment for philosophers?

Yeah, no problem. I don’t want any privilege, I’m very humble in that sense... Where is the problem?

In the treatment that you receive from this conference [Architecture more for less]. Aren't you afraid of becoming a philosopher's fetish? People admire you and...

But they also admire the singer Josefin. The problem begins when he wants real privileges, money, etc. At that point, people say no. However, some of my leftist friends tell me that when I participate in conferences like this, I’m selling myself to the establishment. But I always remember that phrase of Lenin: the capitalist will sell you, even the rope to hang him. That means, “Take it!” I earn money here, which allows me to travel around, make free speeches, etc. I'm not a fetishist with money; grab all the options, take the money. What matters is what you do next.

Thesis, antithesis, synthesis... These are not Hegel’s words. You are writing a book about him.

It is a beautiful paradox: Hegel never used those words. With the book I will try to completely rehabilitate Hegel, and I will say that paradoxically I think Marx was more idealistic than Hegel; that Hegel was more open to contingency. Hegel strictly forbids something that Marx did: Marx believed much more in the reason of history. He thought you could have a historical subject, the working class, who knows the logic of history, who knows the role that plays in it, and who is able to act accordingly. So you can act as an agent of historical reason. Hegel bans this completely, he is much more open: he makes it clear that we can only reason about history in retrospect. I think Hegel was a very radical thinker of the contingency. It wasn’t that “everything is predetermined by reason”; for Hegel, if you read it really well, the need is also always set in retrospect in a contingent way. Something happens in a contingent way, and once it happens, it becomes necessary. There is a very refined dialectic within Hegel.

And another thing: Hegel's idea of reconciliation. It is not, as has been read many times, this idea of radical subjectivism, in which the subject totalizes all reality. The opposite is: What Hegel defines as “versöhnung”, which is reconciliation, the surrender of your particular identity, as well as the acceptance of the irrationality of the world. It's very modest in that sense. And I will try to show empirically that Hegel is not a rationalist who deals with the end of history. For example, it is interesting to read his philosophy of history. In the introduction, and this is not naive if we take into account that he wrote about 1810, when he talks about the United States and Russia, he says that we cannot develop the logic of these two countries; that the next century will be theirs. He knows that some theories can't be developed yet, so he's very open about it.

We have the phenomenology of the mind...

...my Lacanian team also translated it into Slovenian! Now we're translating Logic, because, I still think that's Hegel's masterpiece. He saved Marx and Lenin: If you see Marx, after the failed revolution of 1848, he went into crisis. What did he do? He began to read Hegel’s Logic and then returned to write Critique of Political Economy, etc. Lenin did the same: In 1914, a complete despair, and Hegel began to read. I mean, the good leftists know that the only solution at the moment of defeat is to read Hegel [laughs].

Is philosophy something that happened between Kant and Hegel?

That's something I say to provoke friends, but I like the idea...

Later misunderstanding, before some confused intuitions...

The basic idea is this: something so traumatic and powerful happened with Hegel that we haven’t come back yet. Hegel is not our past, but our future. The usual notions we have about him... I think the criticisms made by Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer and even Marx fail. Before Hegel we have the traditional metaphysics, then we have the positivist thought of the 19th century, but among them, in Hegel’s bosom, something unique happens: neither metaphysics nor post-metaphysics, and we are not yet ready to face completely what happened at the time. Hegel was between the two worlds, and I think these are the most productive positions. Do you know why? When people ask me why we developed such a relatively good theory in Slovenia, I reply that we were lucky; we were not clearer, but the former Yugoslavia, and Slovenia in particular, was in the ideal position: we were in a socialist country, but at the same time it was very open, we had a relationship with the West. We had no illusions about socialism, we did not believe that Yugoslav socialism was better than the others, but we had no hope for the West either. We were involved, and we were able to see what was wrong in every world. Alain Badiou, in a brochure now republished, On a Dark Disaster, describes our situation after 1990 with the following words: “Evil dancing on the ruins of evil.” It is very clear in this, it has no nostalgia for the old socialism. He knows that the communist regimes were evil, a historical mistake, but he says that what followed was not what people expected.

Maoist is Badiou...

Yeah and no. I mean, he knows that the Maoist era is over, but he still has some absolute nostalgic connection. With mockery I wrote somewhere that for him it is Maoism, which for Heidegger was Nazism: the last great political engagement. If you read the French edition of the book I made with Mao’s texts, he criticized me in the introduction and it was on fire... For a week he did not want to talk to me [laughing]. He was particularly angry with me when I made the diagnosis, saying that the cultural revolution was something like Naomi Klein’s shock therapy to prepare the Deng Xiaopingi framework for market capitalism. I didn't want to hear that!

You have said that Christianity achieves universality after St. Paul betrayed the mentality of Jesus, just as Lenin achieved universality by betraying Marx. Explain this idea?

I'm completely atheist, let's be clear. The logical thing that interests me is this: God is dead, to say in Lacanian terms there is no Other Superior, and all that remains is the holy spirit, which for me is an emancipatory collective. This is the Christianity that I like; and I always make the priests nervous when I argue with them. I ask them: “All right, if you are Christians, tell me how you read some of Christ’s phrases: ‘If you do not hate your father and mother you are not my follower’ or ‘I bring the sword, not peace’”... That is universality, universality in struggle and not what I call “Unesco universality”: “We all have our cultures.” Universality for me is not the rediscovery of our cultures; it is the other way around: “You have your fight here and I have mine, let’s see if we can fight the same.” The only universality is that of struggle.

We've read somewhere that you're Nietzschean.

Where did I say that?

At a conference, because of one of your friends...

...oh, no, I know what you're talking about. A friend of my team from Slovenia, Alenka Zupancic wrote a book, The Shortest Shadow on Nietzsche, that almost convinced me, but I still have problems. I'm much closer to Kierkegaard, etc. One of the reasons is that Nietzche hated Richard Wagner. You know when Nietzsche went crazy with Wagner?

After listening to Parsifal, right?

Well, Nietzsche was completely wrong in his criticism of Parsifal. Parsifal is a completely pagan work; Wagner did something very ugly in this opera: he reinterpreted Christianity as a pagan myth. The country is sick, the king is sick and needs to be strengthened... That's a pagan topic. The real Christian Wagner, I'm trying to prove, is from the opera Götterdämmerung... Wagner is complicated and Nietzsche failed. By the way, this is how Alain Badiou and I became friends: we realized that we were Wagnerian fans and now we are making a short book together; in France two short books will come out separately and in England both together in two or three months.

In The sublime object of the ideology you said that the traditional critique of ideology is no longer valid because of the cynicism of society. How can criticism of ideology, for example in the press, be effective?

A
friend of mine recently had lunch with Noam Chomsky, to whom Chomsky is said to have said, “Who needs the theory today? You just have to tell people the truth.” No, I don't agree. For example, in Israel, a revisionist historian has shown how Israel burned some Arab villages during the war of 1948-1949 and committed other atrocities. But the effect of this was not “oh mother, now we know the truth!” No, I don't. The historian said it was done correctly. To put it another way: in this cynical functioning of ideology, you can tell all the material truth. It's not enough. What does this mean, that the critique of ideology does not work? No, I don't. I tried to answer that question in another of my books, I think it was On beliefen. The idea that I basically developed was that, taking the hamster as an example, trying to explain the fetish function of ideology; no cynic is absolutely cynical; cynicism is an impossible position, because even people who want to be cynical have what I call hamster. Something to say, “This is real.” And you should attack that point. When someone tells you “I’m totally cynical, I don’t have values” ask him where he has the hamster. It can be a nation, Buddhism... For many great Western entrepreneurs, the hamster is what I ironically call Western Buddhism: it is strange how many Buddhists there are in private life, they say that if you meditate you are a better person in business as well... But I repeat, the problem with cynicism is that it is an imposing position. If pure cynicism were possible, then yes, I agree, we would have a problem, because the criticism of ideology would not work anymore. Whatever you say, the absolute cynic would answer: “I agree with you! From the stern! I accept it and I will continue!”

We have already mentioned that book you are preparing about Hegel, but you will also have another project in your hands, right?

What I'm trying to do seriously now, but I don't have time, is this: Rewrite the antique. I'd like to do it like Brecht, take the same story but in different terms. First there is the Antigone that we know, that of Sophocles. In the second part Antigona wins the debate and Kreont says “ok, let’s accept the burial in Polineikes”. What happens next is exactly what Kreont feared: how the city has just emerged from the civil war, this burial provokes a new wave of violence and in the end the city of Thebes is completely destroyed. Then Antigona appears in the ruins of the city crying, saying “I was created for love not for war...” etc.

What is the problem with love?

Love is okay when it comes to the love of Jesus Christ, when it means “I come with the sword.” But it happens in my version of the Antigone, when the Creon and the Antigone are debating, that the crown, that group of fools who usually say pelloqueries, intervenes and establishes itself as a Jacobin committee of the public security. The Crown arrests the Creon and the Antigon, tells them that “with these feudal struggles you are bringing the nation to ruin”; and establishes a citizen dictatorship, kills the Creon and the Antigon and establishes popular democracy [laughs]. And you know what? Some Greek friends told me that the story is more ambiguous than it even seems in Sophocles: Sophocles is not alone in supporting Antigone. Kreont, in some passages, almost quotes Pericles. So Kreonte is not a pure totalitarian idiot, he has a powerful way of arguing. And I, from a very young age, have always been more on Kreonte's side. It’s my old trend: my dream, and I don’t have the money to make it, is to rewrite Star Wars, turning the emperor and Darth Vader into heroes. The Jedi are little feudal lords and the Empire is a progressive dictatorship.