This video comes from one of the most watched intellectual debates of recent years: Jordan Peterson’s 2019 encounter in Toronto with Slavoj Zizek, the Slovenian Marxist philosopher. The stated topic was happiness, Marxism versus capitalism, and Peterson opened with a critique of the Communist Manifesto, the short revolutionary text by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels that has inspired movements around the world since 1848. Rather than treating the Manifesto as a historical curiosity, Peterson reads it as a living document whose ideas still shape how people think about class, power, and justice.
What makes Peterson’s approach different is his focus on psychology and human nature. As a clinical psychologist, he argues that the Manifesto’s picture of history as a struggle between oppressors and oppressed is too simple, and that it encourages resentment instead of personal responsibility. In his view, a society built on that outlook will not produce happiness, but division and coercion. This account offers a clear window into that famous debate and into Peterson’s wider argument about why the promises of the Manifesto should be read with care.
On February, April 19, 2019, I debated Marxist philosopher Slavoj Zizek in Toronto, April 19 at the Sony Centre. I started with a critique of The Communist Manifesto, which is the central revolutionary document of the Marxist movement. Dr. Zizek is a Slovenian philosopher and professor at the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana, whose works on cultural studies, psychoanalysis, and, above all, for the purposes of our debate, Marxism, are world-renowned. The topic? Happiness: Marxism vs Capitalism.