Last night, Jordan Peterson and Slavoj Žižek debated each other at the Sony Centre in Toronto. The title of the debate was “Happiness: Capitalism v. Marxism.” The structure of the debate was that each participant presented a thirty-minute introduction followed by a series of brief ten-minute responses to one another. The conversation ended with a few general questions from the audience.

The event was sold out and lasted three hours. What was anticipated to be a heated “debate of the century” turned out to be a rather friendly and amiable exchange. Throughout the evening, both speakers stated on multiple occasions how much they agreed with and admired one another. Peterson was particularly taken by Žižek’s charismatic performance and “complex arguments,” while Žižek stressed how much he agreed with Peterson’s critique of political correctness and his aggressive style of argumentation.

Žižek surely isn’t as odious as Peterson. But the debate revealed just how far the leftist intellectual has fallen, and why we need a real Marxist politics to argue forthrightly for freedom and justice.