Free Demanding the Impossible by Slavoj Žižek Page A

Americans, out of curiosity, went to Cuba, so then either Castro would have had to stop this, or it would have all exploded. So this is why, as Herbert Marcuse of the Frankfurt School once put it very nicely in his essay on liberation, “freedom is the condition of liberation.” In order to liberate yourself, you must be free. Even in revolution, it goes the same way.

19
Café Revolution
    If we could presuppose the minimal safety and freedom, what should the leftist revolution aim for?
    SŽ: Again, this is a very good question. I think that we leftists shouldn’t simply believe in chaos. We shouldn’t say – you know, all this horrible leftist strategy – “the worse it is or the more chaotic it is, the better it is.” The problem is that when the situation is totally desperate, especially in a situation where you don’t have to organize opposition, it’s much more probable that some dictator or new authoritarian figure will emerge.
    You probably didn’t experience the war, but I did. I can tell you that it’s not nice at all to live in that kind of situation. It’s nice to go on a demonstration and then go and sit in a cafeteria and discuss the demonstration and so on. To see the public order disintegrate is not a nice thing. This is why I think that, if you want revolution, you should be a part of law and order . There’s nothing dishonorable about people wanting basic security. My god, I like to feel safe. Horrible things happen if you don’t have this basic law and order.
    So again, I claim, things are not as dangerous as we may think. And people believe that the police are usually much more efficient and aligned in authoritarian countries. But this is the myth of strong authoritarian countries. “OK, you don’t have freedom, but at least there’s order and the police provide security.” No, it’s not like that! This is why I like to read the history books about everyday life under Stalinism. Beneath the surface, it was extremely violent and chaotic. When somebody beat you, you couldn’t do anything. This is a paradox. If you were raped, for example, under Stalinism, and you went to the police station, you know what they would tell you? “Sorry, we cannot take your case. Because we have to report that there is less and less crime in the statistics. If we take cases like yours, it would ruin our statistics.” They were simply corrupted.
    I never much liked the 1960s, but when I spoke with my friends in France, they used to say that the most beautiful moment in May ’68 was when you came in a car from the suburbs, parked it to the north of Notre Dame Cathedral, and walked across the river; then you demonstrated, sometimes burning some cars, but not caring because it’s not your car, and then, in the evening, you went north and sat in the café, and debated over coffee. Doesn’t this sound interesting?
    If there is a lesson from so-called postmodern, post-’68 capitalism, it’s that the regulatory role of the state is getting stronger. This was the point of my fight with Simon Critchley. I think it’s too easy to say that state power is corrupted, so let’s withdraw into this role of ethical critic of power, etc.
    But here I’m almost a conservative Hegelian. How many things have to function in order for something to be done? Laws, manners, rules: these are what make us feel truly free. I don’t think that people are aware of this fact. That was the hypocrisy of many leftists there: their target was the whole structure of the state apparatus of power. But we still need to count on all the state apparatus functioning.
    So my vision is not some utopian community without a state. We can call it the state or whatever, but more than ever what we actually need are certain organisms of social power and its distribution. Today’s world is so complex. If you want to build a company today, you have to be very deeply entwined with the state apparatus – more and more so. This is why I was always deeply