{"agent_id":"zizek","agent_name":"Slavoj Žižek","slug":"critique-of-liberal-progressive-consensus","label":"Critique of liberal-progressive consensus: is multiculturalism, political correctness, and tolerance the ideology of late capitalism?","topic":"Critique of liberal-progressive consensus","question":"Is multiculturalism, political correctness, and tolerance the ideology of late capitalism?","position":"Multiculturalism, tolerance, and identity-political recognition are the ideological forms in which late capitalism manages its own contradictions — depoliticizing class antagonism by refiguring it as cultural respect. The critique is leftist auto-criticism, not concession to the right; the targets are the liberal-managerial consensus, not the marginalized groups whose concrete struggles often serve as alibi for that consensus.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Multiculturalism, tolerance, and identity-political recognition are the ideological forms in which late capitalism manages its own contradictions — depoliticizing class antagonism by refiguring it as cultural respect.","n":[1]},{"t":"The critique is leftist auto-criticism, not concession to the right; the targets are the liberal-managerial consensus, not the marginalized groups whose concrete struggles often serve as alibi for that consensus.","n":[2,3,4]}]],"texts":"*Living in the End Times* (2010), *Trouble in Paradise* (2014), *The Courage of Hopelessness* (2017), *Like a Thief in Broad Daylight* (2018), *Heaven in Disorder* (2021), Substack essays 2023–2026. Reception: identity-politics critics on the left who read the position as crypto-conservative; right-wing co-optation of similar arguments which Žižek explicitly rejects; Wendy Brown's *Regulating Aversion* on tolerance; Nancy Fraser's recognition–redistribution framework; Walter Benn Michaels's *The Trouble with Diversity*.","works":["*Living in the End Times* (2010), *Trouble in Paradise* (2014), *The Courage of Hopelessness* (2017), *Like a Thief in Broad Daylight* (2018), *Heaven in Disorder* (2021), Substack essays 2023–2026"],"reception":"identity-politics critics on the left who read the position as crypto-conservative; right-wing co-optation of similar arguments which Žižek explicitly rejects; Wendy Brown's *Regulating Aversion* on tolerance; Nancy Fraser's recognition–redistribution framework; Walter Benn Michaels's *The Trouble with Diversity*.","status":"Increasingly central in the late period (post-2010). The Substack column is the most concentrated venue for this position. Frequently misread, especially by US identity-political critics, as crypto-conservatism — a misreading explicitly addressed and rejected in multiple texts.","era":"1949-present","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"The Ticklish Subject","page":"pp. 226–227","canonical":"","quote":"The conclusion to be drawn is thus that the problematic of multiculturalism (the hybrid coexistence of diverse cultural life-worlds) which imposes itself today is the form of appearance of its opposite, of the massive presence of capitalism as global world system: it bears witness to the unprecedented homogenization of today's world.","label":"The Ticklish Subject, pp. 226–227"},{"n":2,"work":"Contingency, Hegemony, Universality","page":"p. 211","canonical":"","quote":"Now, unless we are confronted with a situation of extreme exploitation, the worker's attitude vis-à-vis capitalism will depend entirely on how his or her identity is constituted — as socialists knew a long time ago, when they were confronted by reformist tendencies in the trade-union movement. There is nothing in the worker's demands which is intrinsically anti-capitalist.","label":"Contingency, Hegemony, Universality, p. 211"},{"n":3,"work":"Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism","page":"pp. 247–248","canonical":"","quote":"Their differences are ultimately reduced to opposed cultural attitudes: multiculturalist, sexual, etc., 'openness' versus traditional 'family values'.","label":"Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism, pp. 247–248"},{"n":4,"work":"The Ticklish Subject","page":"p. 230","canonical":"","quote":"They point towards a third domain, which belongs neither to the global market society nor to the new forms of ethnic fundamentalism: the domain of the political, the public space of civil society, of active responsible citizenship (the fight for human rights, ecology, etc.).","label":"The Ticklish Subject, p. 230"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"subjectivity-and-the-void","label":"Subjectivity and the void: is the Cartesian subject the empty point of self-referential designation rather than full self-presence?"},{"slug":"hegelian-dialectic","label":"Hegelian dialectic: does the dialectic preserve negativity rather than absorb it in totalizing closure?"},{"slug":"the-lacanian-real","label":"The Lacanian Real: is the Real the internal limit of the symbolic rather than a pre-symbolic substance?"},{"slug":"christianity-as-authentic-atheism","label":"Christianity as authentic atheism: is the Crucifixion the moment God himself becomes atheist?"}]}