On Christian Socialism — Beating the Perverted Right at their Own Game
“The left should embrace both pragmatism and utopianism…”
- NATHAN J. ROBINSON
Frederic Jameson used to say how it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism¹. If the apocalypse will come, we’ll communicate through body language, seduction will be set free and Eros will reign over the world. It’s like Baudrillard said: they told us that everything is production, but everything is seduction² and jokes for the most part.
In order for the left to succeed, we must re-invent Christianity. Perhaps we are at a crossroads in history right now not very different from the period preceding the inquisitions or the one preceding the end of slave economies. The far-right all over Europe is perverting Christianity, which is in its letter a religion of love and peace, and they’re turning it into a religion of war and hate. Towards the end of antiquity (slave economies), the Pharisees did the same (with Judaism), and so did the inquisitors towards the end of feudalism. Now we’re approaching the beginning of the end of capitalism (or “Techno-Feudalism”³, Cloud Capitalism⁴), in which the right yet again is perverting religion to spread hate and war. The left will go into the direction of Christian Socialism, and this is not only a prediction for what the left will do but also an ethical obligation to follow this path through history. Progressive Christianity looks paradoxical only right now, because progressives are secular and conservatives are religious. After the progressive movement will re-invent Christianity (if we will succeed in doing it), we will retroactively look back on this and reinterpret the entire past as leading up to that moment. This is my dialectical Hegelian-Marxian analysis.
In “The Sublime Object of Ideology”, Zizek mentions how you only die twice⁵, in relation to the film with a similar name. The big Other, the absolute, which we named God up to our times, dies twice. This shall be done not only at an individual level, but also at a collective level, since the individual and the collective are in a dialectical relationship. In other words, Christian Socialism will also be Christian Atheist Socialism. The only way to kill the far-right is to follow their religion to the letter up until its death, until its spirit (“object petit a”, for Lacan) is set free. This is a pragmatic utopianism, a return from Marx and back to Hegel, a moderately temperate radicalism.
Christianity and Atheism are irreconcilable only in this present moment in history. Christian Atheism is a paradox only because we live in the current historical conditions we live in. That’s why Christian Atheism is the progressive/revolutionary position here, not in spite of but precisely because it’s a paradox (a paradox right now). The paradox must be gradually accelerated. Here Zizek’s “moderately conservative communism” comes in: we need radical change (there is not much hope for parties that call themselves ‘centre-left’ or “social democratic” in Europe — they are the old status-quo). But that radical change must be implemented gradually, incrementally. I am not referring to Nick Land’s or D&G’s accelerationism here — we must gradually accelerate on all fronts: Christianity, Atheism, and the Left.
Every ideology has a gap inside it, a crack, a contradiction — that contradiction is the wound within ideology. You do not heal a wound by stabbing it again, you heal a wound by cleaning it. Christianity and Other religions must be purified of their extremist character.
Christian Atheism is the only real secular position today, and it’s secular only because the liberal-moderate establishment and the far-right are both religious (but only the latter is honestly religious). The far-right fundamentalists are religious in both the letter and in the spirit, and they are the most directly dangerous. (This can be especially seen in the gradual decay of modern Jungians like Jordan Peterson: in 2017, Peterson had faith but was not radical enough, while right now he radicalized himself and lost all faith in God by becoming a fanatic believer — in that respect, they are not much different from the Pharisees.) The liberal-left is religious in the spirit but not in the letter (as it can be seen in some variants of intersectional identity politics, who are very religious in the spirit but are not religious in the letter). Christian Atheism + socialism will be religious only in the letter, but not in the spirit. In this sense, we must push forward, such that the spirit of Christ will emerge through socialism, only to lead to its own inevitable self-destruction yet again (the second death of the big Other).
The reason why culture wars and identity politics are increasing in the US is likely to be related to the US being the imperial core of global capitalism. Whenever you are the imperial core, you are the hegemonic status-quo as well as that position of universality in the economic order. For example: democrats and republicans being almost identical on all the important issues like economics and foreign policy cannot but only give rise to contradictions in the ideological superstructure, out of a lack of ways to differentiate themselves. But to simply call out identity politics as a right-wing phenomenon, like Todd McGowan does, is not enough — we must go a bit further and call out the emergence of political identities. The political compass is the best example of this, as the line between personality and ideology is blurred more and more each day. The cultural logic of late-capitalism, a ‘postmodern’ era indeed, blurs the lines between identities. The reaction to this to this flexible identity is a rise in both identity politics and political identities. We talk about political ideologies as if ideology is a shopping cart and we must go ‘shopping’ for ideologies like they’re clothing. When ideology morphs into political identity, the entire world is in an identity crisis. This is the status-quo right now.
The joke about libertarian Stalinism echoes now — yes, all oppression hierarchies must be subverted, but the only way to subvert all oppression hierarchies is to know your place in the hierarchy. Peter Rollins emphasizes that Christianity is a religion that embraces the God that also does not know what the Big Other want, so to be a Christian is to embrace that lack and to continuously hystericize the believer through community. Right now we need community, as a concrete universal. This is the paradox of the new, liberal forms of intersectional feminism as well: its lack of dialectics turns all identities into a “Hobbsean war of identity groups”. The (in)famous ‘woke CIA ad’ exemplifies this perfectly: the moment where each individual is merely an intersection of various groups, all you are left with is the individual. That makes its character inherently abstract and universal, but not concrete. To have a universalist politics that is also concrete and materialist implies showing, among Other things, how the patriarchy also hurts men.
On that issue of universality, there’s some truth to Jungian psychoanalysis too. What Jung gets wrong is the dialectic itself. Jung, as well as Fichte, Buddhists and Taoists, are still stuck in the “thesis-antithesis-synthesis” game. But if we reach the synthesis, the apocalypse, there is nothing left, and no new ideas can emerge. Jungians are right only in the form of what they say but there is no content to their words, as synthesis and “enlightened centrism” can only lead to silence and tautology. Empty words with a lot of truth: that’s Carl Jung. Jungianism has a chance to be saved, as was tried by people like James Hillman⁶ (a true dialectician), once we realize the Lacanian teaching that truth has the structure of a lie.
That’s what Zizek gets wrong about perversion. Perversion is the way forward. Yes, perversion is the hidden unconscious character of every ideology. No, we must not completely abandon perversion. It is the right which is perverting Christianity right now. We can beat the right at their own game. Perversion must be fought against itself. We must be perverts on this issue such as to reclaim both Christianity and Atheism from all sides. What Zizek is doing right now is disavowing perversion itself. But disavowal is inherently dialectical (and thus compatible with Hegel and Marx) due to its contradictory nature. There is nothing inherently fetishistic about disavowal itself: disavowal means contradicting yourself. And as the far-right “goes crazy”, they are becoming psychotic from a psychoanalytic perspective (one shall not be confused by the least sublime hysteric of certain right-wingers, people like Matt Walsh, who can be seen in his movie “What is a woman?” — the right for the most part is still psychotic). And fortunately, psychotic obscurantism is still on the rise, but unfortunately, that is true. Yes, because of dialectics, intellectuals still lead the revolution today. Zizek remains right in his return to Hegel then: right now, we need to think. Only by thinking really hard, political seduction can flow, people’s minds can be changed, and the material relations of production will also change accordingly. In this world of social media there is nothing but seduction: in other words, ideology must be tickled to the death. To change minds and change reality at the same time, political ideology must be approached through indirect, subtle methods. The far-right is your crush, the liberal-left is her father: you must seduce all of them.
Deleuze and Guattari used to say how capitalism deterritorializes with one hand and reterritorializes with the other⁸. In the same sense, it’s perhaps implicit in the writings of people like Alenka Zupančič how capitalism desexualizes with one hand and resexualizes with the other⁷. That’s what Deleuze and Guattari do not get in Anti-Oedipus: if they truly wanted to be against the Oedipal father, they should have created an Oedipal triangle. The disjunctive-synthesis: a true disappointment, as Deleuze and Guattari were only two people (that is: Deleuze, Guattari, and the big Other).
The end of the world is approaching at faster speeds than the end of capital. Marx used to say how religion is the opium of the people. If religion is the opium of the people, fascism is heroin. Christian socialism remains, then, the way forward. America is the imperial core, so Jacques Derrida was more than right in his analysis of ‘the American attitude’: his response? “Voila”⁹. He still lives on in the spirit of the Other, but unfortunately, not all idiots can be saved. The masses are dumb¹⁰ and there’s too many of them. But George Carlin does not go far enough: if people are stupid as well as full of shit (obsessional), as well as ‘fucking nuts’ (psychotic), then they are implicitly schizophrenic. To unleash Eros in both politics and love, a soft, sarcastic bite is enough, not psychotics and Deleuzians chewing on flesh!
REFERENCES:
1: Frederic Jameson — Future City: https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii21/articles/fredric-jameson-future-city
2: Jean Baudrillard — Seduction
3: See: Yanis Varoufakis — “Techno-Feudalism: What Killed Capitalism”
4: Ștefan Lastrevio — „Cloud Capitalism, The Network Effect and The Anonymous Masters”: https://lastreviotheory.medium.com/cloud-capitalism-the-network-effect-and-the-anonymous-masters-839b24909829
5: Slavoj Zizek — The Sublime Object of Ideology, p. 145
6: See: James Hillman — „We’ve had a hundred years of psychotherpay, and we’re only getting worse”
7: See: Alenka Zupancic — „What IS sex?”
8: See: Deleuze and Guattari — „Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia”
9: Jacques Derrida on American Attitude: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2j578jTBCY
10: See: George Carlin — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKN1Q5SjbeI
