The Importance of Totality in Capitalism

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I am not anti-capitalist in some abstract naive sense, but in the simple sense of what? For example, when you talk about today's global capitalism, don't talk only about countries which function more or less developed western countries. Mention also countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, which doesn't even function as a country. You have local warlords who have all exclusive contracts with big international, mostly mining companies. The metals used in all our computers and so on mostly come from Congo and so on. So the point is that this country which is a nightmare, it doesn't function as a state,. It has the record number of children, direct children, turned into killing machines,

Radical philosopher, polymath, film star, cult icon, and author of over 30 books, Slavoj Žižek is one of the most controversial and leading contemporary public intellectuals, simultaneously acclaimed as the ‘Elvis of cultural theory’ and denounced as ‘the most dangerous philosopher in the West’. In this special lecture for Intelligence Squared from July 2011, Žižek argues that global capitalism is fast approaching its terminal crisis and that our collective responses to economic Armageddon correspond to the five stages of grief – ideological denial, explosions of anger, attempts at bargaining, followed by depression and finally acceptance of change. Referencing everything from Kafka, the "Hollywood Marxism" of Avatar, the Arab Spring and WikiLeaks, he presents a roadmap for finding a way beyond the madness.

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