Slavoj Zizek – A Revolution ne s’autorise que d’elle même

Today, the meaning of « liberalism » moves between two opposed poles: economic liberalism (free market individualism, opposition to strong state regulation, etc.) and political libertarian liberalism (accent on equality, social solidarity, permissiveness, etc.) – in the US, Republicans are more liberal in the first sense and Democrats in the second sense. The point is, of course, that, while one cannot decide through closer analysis which is the « true » liberalism, one also cannot resolve the deadlock by way of trying to propose a kind of « higher » dialectical synthesis, or by way of « avoiding the confusion » through on a clear distinction between the two senses of the term: the tension between the two meanings is inherent to the very content that « liberalism » endeavors to designate, it is constitutive of this notion, so this ambiguity, far from signaling the limitation of our knowledge, signals the innermost « truth » of the notion of liberalism.