Comradely Greetings (4 page)

The popular vote on the issue had been proposed by trade unions opposed to the government's neoliberal economic policies, and their proposal had received enough signatures to make it obligatory. In the judgment of the Slovene Constitutional Court, however, such a referendum “would have caused unconstitutional consequences”—how? The Court conceded that a referendum was a constitutional right, but claimed that its execution in this case would endanger other constitutional values which, in a situation of deep economic crisis, should take priority—values such as the efficient functioning of the state apparatus, especially in creating the conditions for economic growth; or the realization of human rights, especially the rights to social security and to free economic activity … In short, in its assessment,
the Court simply accepted as undisputed fact the reasoning of the international financial authorities exerting pressure on Slovenia to pursue more austerity measures. A failure to obey the dictates of those authorities, or to meet their expectations, the Court argued, would lead to further political and economic crises and would thus be unconstitutional—in other words, since following those dictates is a condition for the maintenance of constitutional order, they take priority over the constitution (and
eo ipso
over state sovereignty).

Slovenia may be a small marginal country, but this decision of its Constitutional Court is symptomatic of a global tendency towards the limitation of democracy. The idea is that, in a complex economic situation such as we have today, the majority of people are not qualified to judge—they just want to keep their privileges intact, and are ignorant of the catastrophic consequences which would ensue if their demands were to be met. This line of argumentation is not new. In a TV interview a few years ago, Ralf Dahrendorf linked the growing distrust in democracy to the fact that, after every revolutionary change, the road to new prosperity will lead through a “valley of tears”: with the breakdown of socialism we cannot pass directly to the abundance of a market economy—the limited, but real, socialist welfare and security systems will first have to be dismantled, and these initial steps will inevitably be painful. For Dahrendorf, the key problem is that this passage through the “valley of tears” will invariably last longer than the average period between democratic elections, thereby creating an irresistible temptation to postpone the difficult changes for
short-term electoral gain. But if the majority are likely to resist the necessary restructuring, would the logical conclusion not then be that, for a decade or so, an enlightened elite should take power, even by non-democratic means, in order to enforce the necessary measures and thus lay the foundations for a truly stable democracy? When developing countries are “prematurely democratized,” the result is a populism which ends in economic catastrophe and political despotism—no wonder then that today's most economically successful Third World countries (Taiwan, South Korea, Chile) embraced full democracy only after a period of authoritarian rule. Does this line of thinking not also provide the best justification for the maintenance of an authoritarian regime in China?

What is new today is that, with the continuation of the crisis that began in 2008, this same distrust of democracy, once limited to Third World or post-Communist countries, is gaining ground in the developed Western countries themselves. What, a decade or two ago, was merely patronizing advice to others, now concerns ourselves, as Western Europe, in its passage from the post-war Welfare State to the new global economy, is required to undergo a painful restructuring leading to widespread insecurity.

But what if this distrust is justified? What if it is only the experts who can save us, whether with full or less than full democracy? The least one can say is that since 2008 the crisis has furnished us with more than adequate proof of how it is not the people but the experts themselves who, in the vast majority, have no idea what they are doing. In Western Europe, we are effectively witnessing the increasing inability
of the ruling elite to rule. Look at how they've dealt with the Greek crisis: putting pressure on Greece to repay its debts while at the same time ruining its economy through imposed austerity measures—thereby ensuring that the debts will never be repaid.

No wonder, then, that Pussy Riot makes us all uneasy—you know very well what you don't know, you don't pretend to have fast and easy answers, but what you are also telling us is that those in power don't know either. Your message is that, in Europe today, the blind are leading the blind. This is why it is so important that you persist. In the same way that, after witnessing Napoleon entering Jena, Hegel wrote that it was as if he had seen the World Spirit riding in on a horse, you, sitting there in prison, embody nothing less than the critical awareness of us all.

Comradely greetings,

Slavoj

Dear Slavoj,

One time, in the autumn of 2012, while I was sitting in pretrial detention with the other Pussy Riot activists, I came to your house for a visit. In a dream, of course.

I get what you're saying about horses and the World Spirit, about Chapman's “buffoonery and irreverence,” and more to the point about how and why all of these are so forcefully bound up with one another. Pussy Riot has wound up on the side of those who feel the call to critique, to creation and co-creation, to experimentation and the role of the unceasing provocateur. To put it in terms of the opposition
Nietzsche set up, we're the children of Dionysus, floating by in a barrel, accepting nobody's authority. We're on the side of those who don't offer final answers or transcendent truths. Our mission, rather, is the asking of questions.

There are architects of Apollonian equilibrium in this world, and there are (punk) singers of flux and transformation. One is not better than the other: “Mamy raznye nuzhny, mamy raznye vazhny.”
¹
Only our cooperation can ensure the continuity of Heraclitus' vision: “This world has always been and will always be a pulsing fire, flaring up accordingly, and dying down accordingly, with the cycling of the eternal world breath.”

We count ourselves among those rebels who court storms,
²
who hold that the only truth lies in perpetual seeking.

Nikolai Berdyaev wrote in
Self-Knowledge
: “Truth as an object which intrudes itself and wields authority over me—an object in the name of which it is demanded that I should renounce freedom—is a figment: truth is no extraneous thing; it is the way and the life. Truth is spiritual conquest; it is known in and through freedom.” “Christianity itself is to me the embodiment of the revolt against the world and its laws and fashions.” “From time to time a terrible thought
crossed my mind: what if obsequious orthodoxy is right and I am wrong? In that case I am lost. But I have always been quick to cast this thought from me.” All statements that might have come from Pussy Riot just as easily as from Russia's great political philosopher. In 1898, Berdyaev was arrested on charges of agitating for the Social Democrats, indicted for “designs on the overthrow of the government and the church,” and exiled from Kiev for three years to the Vologda Gubernia. When the World Spirit touches you, don't think you can walk away unscathed.

Intuition—and this is where your blind leading the blind comes in—is of stunning importance. The main thing is to realize that you yourself are as blind as can be. Once you get that, you can, for maybe the first time, doubt the natural place in the world to which your skin and your bones have rooted you, the inherited condition that constantly threatens to spill over into feelings of terror.

It's tempting to think that fundamentalism is the only terrifying aspect of our situation, but the problem is bigger than that; fundamentalists are the tip of the iceberg. There's a powerful antifascist dictum that “the fascists do the killing, the authorities the burying.” I remember something the curator Andrei Erofeev,
³
whom I know to be anything but
indifferent to antifascism, used to say while he was on trial at the instigation of the ultra-conservative People's Council, and facing considerable jail time, for his role in organizing the “Forbidden Art—2006” exhibition: “If the People's Council had acted without the sanction of state apparatuses, this trial wouldn't be happening. So the situation, fraught as it is with the crescendoing possibility of violence, is reproduced by those same ‘experts' who, from where they stand in the halls of power, are supposed to be able to make impartial decisions. ‘Only an expert can deal with the problem.' ”

That's something Laurie Anderson sings: “Only an expert can deal with the problem.” If only Laurie and I could've had the chance to take those experts down a peg! And solve our problems without them. Because expert status is no portal to the Kingdom of Absolute Truth.

Reasonable minds at last are seeing how truth can come from the mouths of innocents. It's not in vain that the Rus'
⁴
so esteems its holy fools, its mad ones. In the beating, political heart of civil Russia's capital city, at the site of Pussy Riot's January 2012 performance, at the base of Red Square, stands St. Basil's Cathedral, named after Russia's beloved Basil Fool for Christ.

Cultural competence and sensitivity to the Zeitgeist don't come with a college diploma or live in an administrator's
briefcase. You need to know which way to point the map. “Humor, buffoonery, and irreverence” might turn out to be modes of seeking truth. Truth is multifaceted, its seekers many and varied. “Different but equal,” as another good antifascist slogan had it.

I think Plato was pretty much wrong when he defined human beings as “featherless bipeds.” No, a person does a lot more doubting than a plucked cock does. And these are the people I love—the Dionysians, the unmediated ones, those drawn to what's different and new, seeking movement and inspiration over dogmas and immutable statutes. The innocents, in other words, the speakers of truth.

Two years for Pussy Riot—the price we owe fate for the gift of perfect pitch that enables us to sound out an A, even while our old traditions teach us to listen for G-flat.