[Marxism] New Yorker profiles Naomi Klein

[Mehmet Cagatay]

There is central contradiction in Klein's theory that weakens its radicalism. Obviously just as every right-minded citizen, she detests ideological illusions, nothing interesting here. In her book, she zealously criticizes and ridicules a particular ideology and its consequences in reality, the free market ideology of Milton Friedman. This was really interesting at least for me since I have a profound disgust for his free-market ethics. But the whole critical radical literature misses the most crucial point. As Zizek pointed out in his recent interview (here: http://multimedia.boston.com/pub/m/20995978/slavoj_zizek_what_is_the_question.htm?pageid=26112 ), the true battlefield is the ideological one, the struggle for enforcing the predominant interpretation. Or, if I understand acceptably, it is the struggle to provide the prevailing form for any forthcoming interpretation. But what M. Klein achieves in her book is a sort of cognitive-behavioral therapy:
 She introduces to the reader the catastrophic costs of a particular ideological illusion and then she except from us to replace our obvious illusions with the proper perception of reality. I too detest ideological illusions. I sometimes even dislike the Marxist narrative. But how am I supposed to get rid of ideological illusions? By identification with the only ideology that aspires after a post-ideological world, i.e. communism. Unfortunately, this ideology is Marxism. At this point, I think this logic is also related with the ongoing Obama debate here. It is occasionally pointed out how Obama and the discontent among American people overlaps in the American reality but in the absence of an ideological rupture, the difference between Obama and Bush is only in context in a pre-given form and I'm suspicious whether it is sufficient or not.                  

Mehmet Çagatay
http://weblogmca.blogspot.com/