What is 'Truth' for Marxists? - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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Then we have the escentric Zizek's emphasis on universal truth not in terms like Popper with a subjectless object but something intimately tied to the relations between subjects.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ot/zizek1.htm
The key question thus concerns the exact STATUS of this externality: is it simply the externality of an impartial “objective” scientist who, after studying history and establishing that, in the long run, the working class has a great future ahead, decides to join the winning side? So when Lenin says “The theory of Marx is all-powerful, because it is true,” everything depends on how we understand “truth” here: is it a neutral “objective knowledge,” or the truth of an engaged subject? Lenin’s wager — today, in our era of postmodern relativism, more actual than ever — is that universal truth and partisanship, the gesture of taking sides, are not only not mutually exclusive, but condition each other: in a concrete situation, its UNIVERSAL truth can only be articulated from a thoroughly PARTISAN position — truth is by definition one-sided. (This, of course, goes against the predominant doxa of compromise, of finding a middle path among the multitude of conflicting interests.) Why not, then, shamelessly and courageously ENDORSE the boring standard reproach according to which, Marxism is a “secularized religion,” with Lenin as the Messiah, etc.? Yes, assuming the proletarian standpoint IS EXACTLY like making a leap of faith and assuming a full subjective engagement for its Cause; yes, the “truth” of Marxism is perceptible only to those who accomplish this leap, NOT to any neutral observers. What the EXTERNALITY means here is that this truth is nonetheless UNIVERSAL, not just the “point-of-view” of a particular historical subject: “external” intellectuals are needed because the working class cannot immediately perceive ITS OWN PLACE within the social totality which enables it to accomplish its “mission” — this insight has to be mediated through an external element.

http://loydo38.blogspot.com/2011/05/christianitys-perversion-zizek-and.html
This, however, does not mean that the Real is self-evident, or that the symbolic carries or shows its meaning by itself. After describing two identical maps of a tribal village drawn by both some of the elites who live in the area more central to the temple and the less individuals who are pushed to the outskirts of town, Zizek points out that while the two maps may be identical, what those maps mean and symbolize can be very different. While one group may see an equally dispersed layout, the other may see an invisible, but present, line delineating the elites of the village from the rest. He writes,

"It is here that we can see in what precise sense the Real intervenes through anamorphosis. First we have the “actual,” “objective” arrangement of the houses, and then its two different symbolizations that both distort, in an anamorphic way, the actual arrangement. The “Real” here, however, is not the actual arrangement, but the traumatic core of the social antagonism that distorts the tribe members’ view of the actual antagonism.[7]"

He further adds that “the ‘truth’ is not the ‘real’ state of things, that is, the ‘direct’ view of the object without perspectival distortion, but the very Real of the antagonism that causes perspectival distortion. . . .” In other words, the truth of the Real is not a hard objective kernel that we attain by peeling away subjective perspective. Instead it is the truth of the reality of those perspectives. As with Wallace’s death, the truth is not the facts of his torture and death, but rather, the truth is the experience of his torture and death through the eyes of his disciples who have participated in his revolutionary battles with him. Zizek continues, “There is a truth; everything is not relative—but this truth is the truth of the perspectival distortion as such, not the truth distorted by the partial view from a one-sided perspective.”[8] Again, for Wallace’s disciples, there was one truth of his death—the truth of his revolutionary cause—not a series of truths, each gained from differing perspectives of his death. For the disciples, the one truth denied all others.
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