The Left and the Stalinist State

In this article in Dissent (sorry, you'll need to subscribe to read the whole thing) Alan Johnson takes supposed Leftist darling Slavov Zizek to task for Stalinist theorizing. What is wrong with people on the Left that Stalin/Mao can still have any appeal? Millions dead? Any revolution that needs to kill millions in order to sustain itself is, by definition, a failure. Revolutions purport to replace an old regime with a new, better one. But if the new, better one is unsustainable, how exactly is it better?

Johnson's got some great lines - for example:

"[French Maoist philosopher, and major influence on Zizek] Badiou's totalitarian political category/fantasy of "The People" has nothing to do with actual people. They can be ignored, even abused, in the name of "truth." One imposes the truth against the people in the name of "The People.""

But, he also makes a case for social democracy (Dissent is essentially a social-democratic rag) that leaves me feeling rather empty. In essence, the way Johnson puts it, it seems that social democrats want to extend the benefits of capitalistic democracy (bourgeois-life) to the working/lower classes. But as a friend of mine says, somebody has to make my fries. Within the context of the state, there will always be oppressed (and therefore, oppressors). One is either a beneficiary or a subject (and sometimes, both at once), but we can't all be beneficiaries - states exist to get somebody else to do the dirty work so we can spend our time writing/reading blog posts.

I suspect that Zizek's arguments are rooted in a "smash the state" mentality - Mao had a point when he said that a revolution is not a dinner-party. You can't make a really big omelet without breaking a whole lotta eggs. But, then, you can't bitch about the state and want to replace it with a state that is even more oppressive. Perhaps Zizek's frustrations with social democracy (I'm assuming this is true based on my experience as a/with Maoist(s) in a previous life) lie not so much in the bourgeois life, but rather in the state that creates that life (but one ought to prefer the bourgeois life than the life without living that was under Stalin's state). But if your argument is with the state, then one shouldn't follow Mao or Stalin - one must turn to anarchism.

Running away to start an anarchist collective and drop out of the state makes more and more theoretical sense. On the other hand, it also seems rather selfish - if the Left is supposed to be about caring for our fellow men/women, then shouldn't we be doing something more than just dropping out? But, then, maybe people that buy into what the state offers don't want/need the kind of help we (I) can offer.