RSA Animate - First as Tragedy, Then as Farce

And yes, but here we still are. It still moves...

No one here has the slightest intention of forgetting or ignoring how terrible the age of imperialism was to Africa, China, India, Persia, the Caribbean islands and the sugar and cotton plantations of North and South America. These things happened, and we must live now live in a world in which they did. However, it is doubtful that without the massive excesses of the European colonists, the attempts to create independent republics and free states would have ever been made. And in cases where the west never developed abroad, it was often local movements who seized state power and attempted to modernize their country, often with similarly ruthless disregard for the feudal classes and local people.

To say this does not demand a reconciliation with the past, or a chance to "forgive imperialism". It simply means that we recognize the world we live in, and make due of the tools we have to improve it. These now include growing access to power and communication technology, an awareness of our limited resources, massive improvements in agriculture, and the mass production of essential commodities.

In Marx's own writings on China and India, he describes the imperialists as the reluctant modernizers of these countries. While they wish to exploit them, they sow the seeds of their own obsolescence in the form of railroads, telegraph wires, and chain gangs, which organizes human beings into blocks of labor, and create the conditions in which they will recognize one another as reluctant equals and demand their freedom. To notice this is to notice the cunning of history.

A helpful alternative example that Zizek uses to describe what he's talking about here is his description of Microsoft and the large software companies. They may, like Bill Gates and Microsoft, have a great history of philanthropy and spurring development. The point however, is to notice that the way they achieve the power to accomplish these noble ends is by creating huge private monopolies and preventing competitors from making their philanthropy difficult.

This is the paradox of development. In order to create new development and a more egalitarian distribution of goods and services, the means of production must first be centralized into a smaller managing (or professional revolutionary) hand. You may notice, this is obviously a problem for Leninist revolutionaries as well as capitalist philanthropists.

So Zizek doesn't disapprove of charity. He just wants to radically question the notion of private property to illustrate the problems that are involved in it. An investigation of charity, if it is to be radical, should examine the ways in which it is implicated in the question of private property. And thinking is never a waste.

Has anyone read Zizek's book "Living in the End Times"? It is a weighty book, so I am glad that I was able to hear him speak about a single topic.
He seems to suggest that the solutions rests in the acknowledgement of the problem; admitting the problem changes the behaviors.
The NY Time recently feature a video about e-Waste, "The Sequel to 'The Story of Stuff' 2.0."
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com...
Currently electronic devices become outdated in about 18 month, forcing us the dispose of a product that is filled with highly toxic materials. "Extended Producer Responsibility", would require the producer to take it back, and make recycling the waste part of the product's true cost.
This is true of other problems as well. Daycare is seen as a solution to the needs for a two income family. Why? What other animal leaves its young in the care of a surrogate? Developmental, babies need the individual care of the mother or parent. Instead of focusing this fact, we shift the attention away from the infants needs to the need for more income, which is often little more than the cost of the daycare.
Understand the problem correctly and there is multiple solutions, not merely one. This is why I believe Zizek refrains from suggesting any, and instead focus on clarifying the issues.

Where can I buy this poster!?

This is like listening to a team of communists argue with a team of nurses. Those who seek solution in political action diagnose inequality and propose solutions void of humanity and timeliness for the sake of humanity. Meanwhile the nurses run around in a battlefield dressing station cooks trying to heal the wounded and work with what they have. Is anyone actually wrong? Is anyone actually right? Society has proven itself to be a self-organizing system in which both the communists and nurses play a part. As for me, I'll take my paycheck and have a sandwich.