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Slavoj Zizek is a contemporary Marxist philosopher, best known for making pervy jokes, have weird mannerisms, and talking about Kung Fu Panda on YouTube. One of the main things that he drives at is that we need to critique our "ideology". He thinks that the capitalist ideology is so permeated in some parts of the world (such as the USA) that an alternative has become inconceivable for most people. Zizek is using the term "ideology" in a fairly specialized sense in the tradition of Marx, you can read more on what he means in the linked IEP articled.

While he has said that he is sympathetic in some ways to people like Obama and Bernie Sanders, who seek to make minor incremental changes to make capitalism more bearable (he calls it "capitalism with a human face"), he does claim that people on the left need to remain sharply critical of them (when he says "people on the left", he means actual socialists, i.e. people who wish to abolish capitalism, not the American left). So, while Zizek doesn't believe we should oppose raising the minimum wage, etc, it certainly wouldn't be a "socialist utopia" that he would hope the distant future would have attained.

Oh, and if you are a Bernie Sanders fan or something like that, please don't email me with Oxford dictionary definitions of "socialism". I couldn't possible care. I'm explaining Zizek's ideas, and raising the minimum wage or whatever isn't really Zizek's idea of socialism (which is the normal definition - workers owning the means of production), so...email him.

Slavoj Zizek is a contemporary Marxist philosopher, best known for making pervy jokes, have weird mannerisms, and talking about Kung Fu Panda on YouTube. One of the main things that he drives at is that we need to critique our "ideology". He thinks that the capitalist ideology is so permeated in some parts of the world (such as the USA) that an alternative has become inconceivable for most people. Zizek is using the term "ideology" in a fairly specialized sense in the tradition of Marx, you can read more on what he means in the linked IEP articled.

While he has said that he is sympathetic in some ways to people like Obama and Bernie Sanders, who seek to make minor incremental changes to make capitalism more bearable (he calls it "capitalism with a human face"), he does claim that people on the left need to remain sharply critical of them (when he says "people on the left", he means actual socialists, i.e. people who wish to abolish capitalism, not the American left). So, while Zizek doesn't believe we should oppose raising the minimum wage, etc, it certainly wouldn't be a "socialist utopia" that he would hope the distant future would have attained.

Oh, and if you are a Bernie Sanders fan or something like that, please don't email me with Oxford dictionary definitions of "socialism". I couldn't possible care. I'm explaining Zizek's ideas, and raising the minimum wage or whatever isn't really Zizek's idea of socialism (which is the normal definition - workers owning the means of production), so...email him.