الرأسمالية والرغبة : التكلفة النفسية للأسواق الحرّة

by Todd McGowan, تود ماكغوان, خالد حافظي (Translator)

هل يمكننا تحليل الرأسمالية نفسياً؟ ربما لو طرح هذا السؤال على فرويد في حد ذاته لعبّر عن شكوكه في إيجاد إجابة عنه؛ لأنّه تساءل في خاتمة كتابه؛ الذي عنونه الحضارة وسخطها، عمّا إذا كان بإمكان المرء إجراء تحليل نفسي للمجتمع بأسره، وخلص إلى أنه لا يستطيع القيام بذلك. والمشكلة، حسب رأيه، ليست معضلة عملية؛ لكن على الرغم من أنّه لا يمكن للمرء أن يعرض مجتمعاً بأكمله، أو نظاما اقتصاديًا بأسره، لسلسلة من جلسات التحليل النفسي، فإنّ كلّ نظام اجتماعي وكلّ نظام اقتصادي يعبّر عن نفسه من خلال المفاصل التي تخون أصداءه النفسية.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Psychology, Economics, Psychoanalysis, Politics, Theory

452 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2023

About the author

Todd McGowan is Associate Professor of Film at the University of Vermont, US. He is the author of The Fictional Christopher Nolan (2012), Out of Time: Desire in Atemporal Cinema (2011), The Impossible David Lynch (2007), The Real Gaze: Film Theory After Lacan (2007), and other books.

Reviews

[Phillip · Rating 5 out of 5]

McGowan makes an interesting argument here, namely that capitalism is actually a deeply satisfying political economic system because it shields us from the truth of our desire, which is that we derive enjoyment not from the satisfaction of our desires but from the failure of our satisfaction. This sounds counter-intuitive, but it is grounded in psychoanalytic principles. Namely, the principle that the subject's desire is always the desire for the lost object, which can never be attained within the symbolic order (hence its status as LOST object). Instead, the subject substitutes the objet petit a (or objet a) for the lost object, and pursues the objet petit a as if it would heal the subject's castration or self-division. So far, this is Lacanian psychoanalysis 101.

McGowan's big insight is that this notion fundamentally underpins capitalism, not simply in the basic sense that we pursue commodities to try and replace the object petit a (though that is an important component of capitalism's psychic investment), but more importantly in the sense that capitalism provides a mythos that shields us from the traumatic reality that we are invested in the failure to achieve satisfaction. According to this book, capitalism utilizes both the death drive--the impulse to put off the possibility of the true satisfaction of our desires in order to remain desiring subjects--and the objet petit a to locate capitalist subjects within a cycle of promised but always deferred future satisfaction. The teleological logic of capitalism is, here, the promise that in the future desire will be satisfied: desire for abundance, desire for love, desire for the sublime, even, ironically, desire for the revolution which will bring an end to capitalism. This is one of the ironies McGowan draws our attention to: that when communists, socialists, anarchists, etc. adopt the teleological promise of a better future (always in practice deferred/deferrable) in exchange for sacrifice in the present, they in fact adopt a capitalist teleology rooted in the structure of the promise.

[Blaze-Pascal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fitting (Dis)satisfaction into Political Action: McGowan’s (2016) Capitalism and Desire

Can we psychoanalyze capitalism? According to McGowan, we must. McGowan’s psychoanalytic theory is derived from the most famous psychoanalyst and enfant terrible of France, Jacques Lacan. Lacan once brazenly remarked to a group of student protestors: “You want a new master; you shall have one”. By this statement Lacan was suggesting that any form of political revolt which has an ideological agenda solicits a demand for the true Master of the subject’s desire. Capitalism and Desire (2016) expands the essence of Lacan’s remark in a metacritique of both liberal and other forms of emancipatory theory underestimating the alluring quality of the commodity. McGowan might be described as saying: “You want a new master, you already have one, the market”.
Todd McGowan’s Capitalism and Desire presents the case that “capitalism has the effect of sustaining subjects in a constant state of desire. As subjects of capitalism, we are constantly on the edge of having our desire realized, but never reach the point of realization”. Like the banal sled in Orson Welles’s (1941) Citizen Kane, the commodity is just a place holder, buried beneath mounds of other accumulated commodities. As subjects of capitalism, we all have similar sleds buried beneath our junk. We should be aware of the dissatisfaction spectators experience at the conclusion of the film at the realization of the sled’s banality. The commodity will never fulfill our lack. However, as neurotic subjects, according to McGowan we cling to our (dis)satisfaction and labor for the fantasy promises that the commodity will offer a way to escape this lack. It’s not the attainment of the sled itself that is satisfying, that’s why it’s buried beneath junk, but the kernel within it, the elusive objet a, the fantasy sustaining it.
McGowan claims that the “essence of capitalism is accumulation” (39). Marx was the first to address accumulation and how it creates inequities based on the injustice of the theft of surplus value. Capitalism and Desire is not about the horrors of capitalism, rather, the psychic reasons we accumulate. McGowan states that this is the point where psychoanalysis can intervene in capitalism. By emphasizing that the enjoyment of our alienation is linked to commodity fetishism, McGowan knots together psychoanalytic theory into the capitalist critique, suggesting that any future political action must emphasize the commodity’s (dis)satisfaction.
Challenging Marx’s stance on Hegel, in some ways the “rational is real” for McGowan, and this explains why capitalism feels ‘natural’. Capitalism surely isn’t cultural, as the adaptability of it to every culture shows it is blind to culture. Nor is it natural, capitalism is a human phenomenon: no other animal engages in capitalism. The structure of the subject’s desire precedes capitalism which is why it feels ‘natural’. Even though the psychic vulnerabilities to capitalism precede the development of it into its form, McGowan claims that the enjoyment of capitalism results from the subject’s alienation to nature through language, therefore the “real is rational”.
McGowan’s psychoanalytic-historic lens suggests that capitalism doesn’t create the problem but plays into the psychic vulnerabilities of the human subject as a speaking-being of lack and enhances the problem. The important insight that McGowan draws from Lacanian psychoanalysis is the structural aspects of language and human subjectivity: “the unconscious is structured like a language”. That’s not to say that Lacanian subject is just language, rather one could say that it is a structuralist of the real because it is connected to our lack. The barrier in the world of signification creates a lack at the heart of the desiring subject. Even though language is our best tool we use to understand the world, it is limited in its capacity to accurately encapsulate reality through the signifier.

The relationship between capitalism and language is hidden. Appearances are deceiving as capitalism distorts reality through the signifier, as it is a result of a divided world by the difference between signifier and signified. Capitalism isn’t just ideology, but plays into the real, symbolic, and imaginary. Capitalism is real as it manipulates this relationship between the subject and its own satisfaction by allowing subjects to avoid the trauma of their self-destructive satisfaction and immerse themselves in the promise of the future. The genius of capitalism, its ideology, lies in how it convinces the subject that it can find satisfying objects, even though it is a necessary loss that remains unconsciously misrecognized: Kane’s sled.
The psychic vulnerability to the signifier explains a lot of the phenomena with regards to the development of capitalist ideology and its staying power to incorporate desire and enjoyment. For example, McGowan claims that privatization of the public world, is so prevalent because it protects subjects from “confronting the traumatic core of their mode of obtaining satisfaction, capitalism allows us to believe that we obtain satisfaction from what we accumulate rather than our unending pursuit of failure”. With personal satisfaction through accumulation, the public space disappears. Is the psychoanalytic couch one of the only public spaces left?
McGowan also reflects on the role of sacrifice in capitalism. He states that “instead of flying a plane into a building, all one needs to do to experience the most violent sacrifice is to buy a new iPhone” (162). The jarring statement recalls the sacrifices as responses to capitalism, both the terrorist sacrifice of the World Trade Center attacks and the terror on the body of the cobalt miner in the Congo laboring for the elements of your iPhone, are ways the subjects have come to sacrifice themselves in capitalism. Sacrifice is everywhere in capitalism; capitalism thrives on destruction; however, McGowan suggests that sacrifice is linked to the foundational lack. Without sacrifice, there could be no enjoyment. Different cultures found different ways to deal with this foundational loss: sacrifice, ritual, potlatch, all states have resorted to terrorism, war. This could be described as a death drive.
Who is the Other we thus are sacrificing ourselves for? Psychoanalysis has an answer, Lacan once said, “desire is the desire of the Other’s desire”. Loss and sacrifice are fundamental to the subject’s experience, and the subject who fails to grasp the necessity of loss is lured by the mystery of the desire of the symbolic Other. If sacrifice holds a religious quality, then the new God, we sacrifice ourselves for in capitalism is the market, it is the Other, the invisible hand. However, freedom in capitalism is utterly false. What Freud contributed to the understanding of Adam Smith’s invisible hand, was that the believer in the invisible hand could be described as a neurotic. The notion of freedom couldn’t exist without the rise secular realm, it requires a negation of God but leaving him as a determining absence. It makes a visible hand invisible. What comes to replace God for the neurotic subject who believes they are free is an invisible big Other. It tells them what to desire and how.
In subsequent chapters, weaving theory with film and television references, McGowan lays out a Lacanian thread of other ways we follow the big Other as the market to avoid the traumatic encounter with the public, through our desire of infinite accumulation, where we’ve become means and not ends in ourselves, our intimate relations have become commodified, we’ve exchanged love for romance, and the system depends that we cling to the idea of scarcity rather than recognize abundance. McGowan ends the book reflecting on the market’s “fetishistic sublime” which echoes his friend Slavoj Žižek’s (1989) seminal The Sublime Object of Ideology. This insight into the psychic lives of subjects means that the struggle cannot be solely based on the enjoyment of the surplus value because capitalism, in contradiction to the repressive hypothesis, demands that subjects ‘Enjoy!’ offering them their desire idealized in the commodity. By offering them the sublime, it leads to the abject, through the death drive.

This portends to the question of political action. How does psychoanalysis offer us a new pathway in the struggle for freedom from/in capitalism? Psychoanalysis requires we become responsible to become free, by becoming responsible for our unconscious. For example, it can offer the basic insight that the end of an international labour movement makes any action today seeking only ideological ends as the symptom of disavowal (I know very well, however…) of historical reality, which is also symptomatic of capitalism itself. Any future action that takes psychoanalytic insight seriously would need to incorporate the death drive in the commodity’s sublimity: the way the subject invests in their own (dis)satisfaction. That’s not to suggest that there is no room for labor movements, however the lack of the psychoanalytic insights into the death drive of commodity fetishism in other forms of emancipatory politics either informed by injustice (Marx) or the repressive hypotheses (Marcuse, Reich, and oddly enough Foucault), could be a cause for capitalism to continue to operate despite them.
The whole truth is that “the real is rational and the rational is real”. The only way to resist the sublime commodity, is embrace the contradiction and to go through the sublime. McGowan states that, “if one invests oneself in the promise of the future, through this gesture one accepts the basic rules of the capitalist game”. Other forms of political action fail, because when you make promises for a future sublime enjoyment (such as Marx’s future enjoyment of surplus value), you are competing with the sublime commodity which already promises a future enjoyment which is much more psychically appealing and accessible. According to McGowan, it is this very promise of the future that needs to be abandoned as it is the capitalist fantasy. Whether this demand takes the form of Marxism (the demand for the enjoyment of the surplus) or repression (the demand for libidinal jouissance), they are foundationally hysterical, and are demands of the Other to be the true Master of their desire. You already have a master, the market as the invisible hand of God, and the commodity as the sublime object.

The subject’s satisfaction is how it desires, not what it obtains.

In a preface of Das Kapital Marx declared “there is no royal road to science”. This is true for psychoanalysis as well, if there is a pathway it offers, it is not an easy one, as it thus promises dissatisfaction. The struggle against capitalism needs to take place around the accumulation of capital which happens in the present, and this requires changing the subject’s relationship to desire. Any psychoanalytic “cure” needs to incorporate the subject’s relationship to its lost object. That means that any pathway to political action requires that we recognize that the sublimity of the object is both the challenge and the opportunity. McGowan claims: “If we recognized that we obtained satisfaction from the failure to obtain the perfect commodity rather than from a wholly successful purchase, we would be freed from the psychic appeal of capitalism”. What does it mean then to enjoy one’s failure to obtain the real sublime object? McGowan suggests for a deeper analysis we return to Marx and read Das Kapital volume 2.


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Review 2023

The psychoanalytic critique of capitalism is around accumulation. Why do we accumulate commodities? It's because the act of accumulation plays into the subject's lack, we don't actually consume commodities to satisfy ourselves, rather we cling to our dissatisfaction for a future enjoyment the commodity promises us. We labor, and work, and enjoy, we enjoy what we think the Other wants. Give up exchange value and embrace use value. Become means not ends. Love.

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Review 2022

I started this book several months ago, 7 months?? And I read about 60% of it and then put it down, and went back and learned more about Lacan, Hegel and Marx. I don't know if that was necessary, but I think this is an ESSENTIAL book for learning how to traverse the fantasy that capitalism offers its subjects, learning to enjoy rather than accumulate as McGowan states. So many juicy juicy insights all throughout the book, and I find myself wanting to continue reading Marx Volume 2, and also revisit the Sublime Object of Ideology. Also, having recently watched Bergman's "Scenes from a Marriage" I was very delighted when I read his chapter on love and all the quilting I was doing with regards to it.... I'm also wondering whether or not in the 2001 Space Odyssey, the monolith is not the sublime object?? Maybe... need to write more, and read more. McGowan, you rock.

[Ben Albertyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The excessive packaging of the commodity has an ontological necessity. As we search for a knife to cut through the annoying packaging, we ask ourselves in the midst of cursing the producer why we must always navigate this excess. We never take this question seriously, but we should. The excessive packaging provides the form that invigorates the commodity with the sublimity that renders it desirable. As we cut through the packaging, we perform an act akin to that of the mystical saint’s moment of communion with God, but we do so without the trauma of the mystical rupture. The commodity embodies the promise of an ultimate satisfaction or enjoyment that would transport the consumer beyond the secular world, a promise that no commodity will ever fulfill.”

[عبدالرحمن عقاب · Rating 3 out of 5]

كتابٌ في البحث عن الأصول النفسية التي تفسر جاذبية "الرأسمالية" وسرّ بقائها مع ثبوت فشلها على المستوى النفسي.
يمضي الكتاب في فصوله في تتبّع أوجه التناقض ما بين ما تدّعيه الرأسمالية من الحرية والعلمانية والندرة والغايات و...غير ذلك، وما هي عليه حالتها من الخضوع والتألّه وخشية الوفرة.
ويجمع بين ذلك كله خيط ناظم من اعتماد الرأسمالية على "الوعد" الدائم والمستمر، وكون هذا الوعد مستمر يعني أنه وعد بالسراب، كلما وصله المرء لم يجده شيئاً! وتراءى له آخر في الأفق، فواصل السير ...وهكذا!
الكتاب مزعج في أسلوب كتابته، يسهب ويُطنب ويكرّر. وكأني به مثال صادق لأسلوب المحلل النفسي، فكرته محدّدة وقصيرة، لكنه يملأ بتحليله الصفحات الطوال.

[Hani Abu-Khalil · Rating 4 out of 5]

A critique of capitalism that targets the mechanisms behind the capitalist system and essays to explain why capitalism is such a successful system. According to McGowan, capitalism mirrors the dark drives and instincts of human nature and buys into our self-destructive tendencies (the death drive known from psychoanalysis).
The concept of infinitude is a central part of this critique, as capitalism has built in it an external infinity that is unsustainable and only goes that far. We can only harvest the planet as much as it allows and the very ingrained underlying idea of infinite growth and profit is simply unrealistic.
Another central notion is that of the object of desire, a concrete object - or rather, an array of objects - that we strive to obtain with one hand, while the other hand tries to obstruct our success, explained duly with reference to aforementioned death drive. We want all sorts of things - a better job, a bigger car, the new iPhone, a raise - but the capitalist system, and our own psychological constitution, is bound to not let us have the satisfaction of obtaining these objects - and herein lies the actual satisfaction, according to McGowan. We get a perverse satisfaction out of our own failures, a satisfaction that is just as integral as the satisfaction of having our immediate needs and wants met.
Our longing for certain objects are determined by the so-called Other, our surrounding society and our conceptions and assumptions of what society would most like to see us as being/possessing. A lot of industries help sustain these constant changes in what the Other wants from us and there will always be new ways/objects that help us closer to the goal of meeting the Other's expectations. The ad industry, for one.
This strive also flows over in our love life, where many of us have begun to seek a partner in the same way that we work towards our next object of desire. We have checklists and clear conceptions of what we want and go out looking for love on the online dating market, objectifying, commodifying the people we ought instead establish a mutually acknowledging and subjective relationship with - at least in order to love with all the ugly drawbacks and defects that it holds. Capitalism has thus rendered us unable to settle for anything than the mythical - but also nonexistent - perfect object, also in the realm of love.
Lastly, capitalism diminishes and devalues the means to the end, if not making the means become ends. This way, there are no means for their own sake but only means for the sake of the final goal - which does not exist. The eternal strive towards a goal that always moves and is never reached, thereby becomes a premise of a system that never ceases and sees the value of the existing world but only sees value in "the new".
If we, as McGowan says, "recognize capitalism's dependence on the means and insist on the means for its own sake, we undermine the logic that sustains capitalist production" and then we can rid ourselves of it, looking for another alternative (one that isn't the communism og the 20th century).

A very informative book that builds on top of social constructivism and pays homage to Lacan, Freud, and Marx, but also Milton, Hayek, and Smith. Complex, compelling, and perhaps faulty, but at least it provides a somewhat new perspective on the toils of capitalism on the human psyche.

[Colin Cox · Rating 5 out of 5]

Early in Capitalism and Desire, Todd McGowan suggests, "Capitalism has the effect of sustaining subjects in a constant state of desire...capitalist subjects experience satisfaction itself as dissatisfying, which enables them to simultaneously enjoy themselves and believe wholeheartedly that a more complete satisfaction exists just around the corner, embodied in the newest commodity" (11). Several important words and phrases in this passage reveal how McGowan thinks about the commodity and how the commodity within capitalism nurtures, as contradictory as it sounds, satisfaction and, more significantly, dissatisfaction. A word like "constant " suggests the potential impossibility of a world or state of being beyond the frustrating tension between satisfaction and dissatisfaction as expressed in the commodity form. To be clear, and McGowan emphasizes this point throughout Capitalism and Desire, it is foolish to imagine some utopia, Marxist or otherwise, beyond frustration and disappointment. Psychoanalysis argues we are creatures seeking dissatisfaction. Potentially, this is why so many people, in turn, dismiss or marginalize psychoanalysis. The question psychoanalysis demands subjects ask is this: how can and should we orient ourselves to dissatisfaction? Can subjects enjoy dissatisfaction better?

The source of McGowan's answer exists in how we relate to the commodity itself and the commodity form more broadly. From the passage I quote in the previous paragraph: "capitalist subjects experience satisfaction itself as dissatisfying, which enables them to enjoy themselves simultaneously and believe wholeheartedly that a more complete satisfaction exists just around the corner, embodied in the newest commodity" (11). This phrase "around the corner" is so critical. McGowan indicates that capitalism operates by deferring, ad infinitum, the promise of wholeness each commodity within capitalism must promise. That is to say, as capitalist consumers, we must imagine that each new commodity houses something in itself more than itself. This process is the essence of commodity fetishism, but this process is also the essence of capitalism's simultaneous satisfaction and dissatisfaction. McGowan contends that something radical would happen if we stopped imagining that the next commodity, or any commodity for that matter, possessed such power. He writes, "If we recognized that we obtained satisfaction from the failure to obtain the perfect commodity rather than from a wholly successful purchase, we would be free from the psychic appeal of capitalism" (14). And as McGowan contends, psychoanalysis has a part to play in liberating subjects from this psychic quagmire: "All that psychoanalysis can do--the extent of its intervention--is to assist the patient in recognizing its mode of repeating and the satisfaction that this repetition provides" (17).

Therefore, repetition, and understanding repetition's appeal, is McGowan's primary preoccupation in Capitalism and Desire. Capitalism offer subjects something akin to "bad repetition." That is to say, when capitalism has us, we place an outsized and destructive emphasis on the promise of the commodity. But this promise is a false promise for two key reasons: one, it obscures dissatisfaction's appeal while, two, suggesting that a single commodity (the one any subject finds themselves preoccupied with at any particular moment) will inaugurate an end to dissatisfaction. Instead, McGowan suggests we shift our understanding regarding dissatisfaction. He writes, "We invest ourselves psychically (and financially) in new commodities with the hope that they will provide the satisfaction that the previous commodity failed to provide, but no commodity can embody the lost object. Every object of desire and every commodity will fail. Capitalism thrives on this failure, and we can never escape its perpetual crises without recognizing this link. Only the turn from the logic of accumulation to the logic of satisfaction--with an acceptance of the lost status of the object--can move us beyond the crisis of capitalism" (242). McGowan's reference to "the lost object" or "objet petit a" is a crucial psychoanalytic concept. The lost object is the personification of lack within the symbolic order. Slavoj Žižek, for instance, has described the lost object as "a hole at the center of the symbolic order." While this object feels real, we must remember the lost object, objet petit a, or the object cause desire (whatever we want to call it), does not exist. This object is simply the manifestation of the lack of subjectivity.

Therefore, instead of seeking something beyond or something transcendent, we should turn our attention to the here and now. McGowan writes, "it is through the banality of the everyday, not in the promised satisfaction of the future, that one discovers the sublime" (243). Said differently, "the satisfaction of loss is our driving motive," not the promise of something beyond loss (244). Capitalism works by entrenching subjects in this bad infinite; this promise of something (i.e., the perfect commodity) beyond dissatisfaction. Furthermore, I argue we see this dynamic at play in the work of two famous musicians who both rose to varying degrees of popularity in the 1980s: Bruce Springsteen and Belinda Carlisle.

McGowan has spoken about Carlisle before. Her song "Heaven is a Place on Earth" symbolizes the radical potentiality of imagining the transcendent embedded within the banal. In the song, Carlisle says, "Heaven is a place on Earth / They say in Heaven, love comes first / We'll make Heaven a place on Earth / Ooh, Heaven is a place on Earth." Carlisle rejects the conventional notion that heaven is some transcendent place beyond the triviality of daily human existence. For Carlisle, heaven is here, not out there.

By contrast, Bruce Springsteen, a musician I have nothing but unwavering affection toward, is the perfect capitalist. In so many of his songs, he encourages his listeners to reject the banality and triviality of the here and now. For Springsteen, the promise of the beyond is too enticing. For example, consider "Born to Run." Near the end of the song, arguably one of the most popular songs of the 20th century, Springsteen says, "Oh, someday girl, I don't know when / We're gonna get to that place / Where we really want to go, and we'll walk in the sun / But till then, tramps like us/ Baby, we were born to run." Contrasting Springsteen with Carlslie may help to explain why Springsteen is one of the most successful musicians ever while Carlsie, while successful, never experienced a Sprinsteenian-level of success; Carlslie's promise is a distinctly anti-capitalist promise. By contrast, Springsteen gives us precisely what capitalism gives us: the promise of a transcendent beyond, but as Springsteen suggests in "Born to Run," moving beyond is far from what the subject wants. This is why "Born to Run" ends with dissatisfaction ("Oh, someday girl, I don't know when") cloaked by a false promise of satisfaction ("We're gonna get to that place / Where we really want to go").

[Yosra Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a difficult read. It requires quite the concentration. However, it was worth the time and effort. The books gives a thorough, well analysed and assessed theory to the psyche behind why capitalism is difficult to break from. The author's analysis of different topics and their relation to capitalism (Sacrifce, love, desire, sublimity, satistaction) contributed effectively to the overall goal of the book which is as far as my opinion is to put forward the reasons why capitalism sustains its strength and even sometimes thrives and nourish on the "supposedly" fights against capitalism.
Most interesting for me was his analysis of different literature (from movies, ads and novels) and their contribution to capitalism (for or against capitalism). While in the beginning it might seem that the book will approach only from the psychoanalytic side, it soon moves to include deeply enough philosophical theories and schools which contributes to the analysis even further. The book while not "condensed" managed to succeed in putting its theory in clear plain points and providing a very solid story in a relatively small book which adds to the value of the book. In the end this book addition is providing an insight (a story, a theory) to look into capitalism in relation to psycoanalys that one can consider in daily life and assessments of ones actions in the world of capitalism. Where to agree/disagree with the theory and the goal of the book (or even parts), would in my opinion require sometime after finishing the book to both swallow the ideas/challenges laid throughout the chapters and also to put them into thought within the daily life and see how they fit/do not fit.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this with a book club and it's the second book of Todd's that I've read. I do recommend that before you read this book to know a bit about psychoanalytic theory by Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. The people who struggled the most with the book either didn't know enough about psychoanalysis, or completely disagreed with psychoanalysis all together. A little knowledge of philosophy (such at Kant's notion of sublime referenced in Chapter 10) is helpful as well.

All that to say, I did enjoy the book and it made me think about capitalism from a very different perspective: what is the free market doing to our unconscious drives and how we feel satisfaction. This is not an economics book, nor one that stays on the psychological surface. In a sense, McGowan notes the genius of capitalism and how it works psychically on us, and why all the past critiques (including Marx) don't hold up. By noting how well capitalism works, McGowan begins to search out some of its holes within the system and within us. Overall, it contained some very interesting theories that I will keep in my mind as I search out the next commodity to purchase.

[Juhana Karlsson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not an expert on psychoanalysis and/or critique of capitalism, but partly because of that I can gladly give this book five stars as my mind was blown so many times that I lost count.

The main topic (and the book covers much more than that) is seemingly simple, but it's implications are enormous: capitalism keeps people unconsciously satisfied via constant disappointment, as the subject's satisfaction will always depend on the absence of the object it enjoys. The trauma of loss and the satisfaction hidden therein is obfuscated by the act of accumulation and constant striving for a "better future", which keeps capitalism going.

This was one of the best and most thought-provoking books I've read in a while, highly recommended if you're at all interested in these topics.

[Svetislav Momcilovic · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. In contrast to many critics of capitalism, this book has a clear structure. Plainly defined the never satisfying desires that run modern capitalist societies - the endless accumulation and desires for perfect commodities that lose their value as soon as you have them. We spend our lives in a continuous and pointless run. I definitely want to hear more from Todd McGowan.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

What people have is desires, and that is sinful. On the other hand, McGowan has needs, and Society at large has an obligation to pay for his needs, and limit the sinful desire.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't say I agree with McGowan on a few key points but there is a lot to contend with here and it is a great introduction to several ideas and arguments.

[Teoman TURKOGLU · Rating 4 out of 5]

What Is the Psychic Cost of Capitalism? is a powerful work that approaches capitalism not merely as an economic system, but as a regime that reshapes the inner world of the subject. The book explains contemporary experiences of burnout, guilt, inadequacy, and meaninglessness by showing how market logic has gradually embedded itself in our minds.

One of the book’s strongest contributions is its convincing analysis of how, in modern capitalism, the subject is no longer primarily coerced from the outside but has instead become a being who voluntarily exploits itself, moving beyond the classical notion of “exploitation.” The psychological damage caused by performance pressure, the ideology of success, and the rhetoric of “everything is in your hands” is examined with clear psychoanalytic sensitivity.

However, I find the book’s critique of Marx to be open to debate. The claim that Marx addressed capitalism solely within an economic framework and neglected its psychological dimension remains unconvincing, especially when one considers the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and the concept of alienation. Although Marx does not explicitly use the concept of “the psyche,” he offers a profound analysis of humanity’s ontological rupture and the commodification of life energy. In this respect, the book sometimes risks reading Marx too narrowly, as a purely economic thinker.

Nevertheless, if the work is read not as a rejection of Marx but as an attempt to extend and reinterpret his thought within the context of today’s performance-driven capitalism, it becomes highly productive. Its synthesis of psychoanalysis, sociology, and contemporary critiques of capitalism is intellectually stimulating and thought-provoking.

In short, this is a book that takes the question “Why are we so exhausted?” seriously. It unsettles the reader—and precisely for that reason, it is valuable. While its engagement with Marx is open to debate, it remains an important stop for anyone seeking to understand the psychological cost of capitalism.

[John Lassiegne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pairs well with Mark Fisher’s ‘Capitalist Realism’ + ‘Post-Capitalist Desire’

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good and interesting read - not wildly new information, but a really revelatory re-framing around Freudian death drive/sublimation/consumption that was amazing to me. The author made a few weird comments that ignored the context of capitalism and was confusing/didnt really add to the overall argument, but overall super worthwhile read

[AFP · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5

[Eric Dand · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some fine psychoanalysis, but some rather poor Marxism.

The biggest problem with this book is that its author has a very loose, faulty definition of "capitalism," which he seems to define broadly as all of the ills of modern society, or reductively as whatever one does not like about the modern condition. It's a frustratingly poor definition, one that feels a bit sensational and hyperbolic. Very little of what McGowan refers to as "capitalism" fits a proper definition of the term.

In the book's initial chapters, McGowan's definition of capitalism is "the accumulation of goods" (note "goods," not "capital") and he confines himself to discussion of how the modern condition is characterized by alienation from nature, and the pursuit of "the perfect good" which will relieve this alienation and finally provide satisfaction. This is some familiar Freudian psychoanalysis, but it confuses capitalism for what I would call "consumerism."

I hoped this might just be a prelude; that later McGowan might expand to discuss capital itself, the accumulation thereof, and how capital begets more capital, etc., in a more traditional definition of the term. Yet, thirty pages later, McGowan is still focussed on "goods" and an individual's quest for goods (not money or power, but "things"). He even has a sub-heading entitled "The Allure of Buying a Bunch of Things," which, again, is some fine psychoanalysis, but isn't nearly as anti-capitalist as it purports to be.

The next few chapters deal with "privacy," "the gaze," and "sacrifice," none of which are particularly related to capitalism at all, though they're rich topics for psychoanalysis.

By the middle chapters, McGowan still talks of "goods" rather than "capital," but his rhetoric has shifted to mostly refer to "capitalist modernity," rather than simply "capitalism," which is a more correct term for the social ills he describes in the book. This is a more honest framing, and one by which I can find more to like about the book.

When it comes to forming a coherent capitalist critique, the author is at his strongest when he quotes directly from Marxists (best of all, Marx himself) or capitalist economists like Keynes, Hayek, and Mises. Then, he is forced to at least partly adhere to a familiar definition of capitalism. Even in these moments, though, the author is rarely discussing capitalism itself, and is usually invoking these thinkers only while detoured into a sidebar that is only distantly related to the main topic, and so in this way avoids needing to reconcile his loose definition of "capitalism" with that of other thinkers.

Perhaps this is all due to the fact that this is a psychoanalytic text first, and political or economic theory second. To his credit, McGowan states clearly in the preface that to apply psychoanalysis to a society rather than an individual is a misapplication of psychoanalysis. To his discredit, McGowan never seems to quite do this, either: he limits himself to discussion of the individual experience of capitalist society. This may be by the limitation of his chosen (psychoanalytic) frame, but I feel that it's also by the lack of a consistent or clear definition of "capitalism" itself.

There is ample room to examine capital through a psychoanalytic lens: how the capitalist always seeks to grow his enterprise, to accumulate more capital, and to then deploy that capital in pursuit of yet more capital. But McGowan frustratingly never visits this most traditional, orthodox definition of his favourite word, seeming to lack a fundamental understanding of what is or is not actually "capitalism" vs. simply our modern condition (which is shaped by capitalism, yes, but not capitalism itself).

A frustrating work from a Marxist perspective, but not devoid of merit from a Freudian perspective, this book has some interesting insight into the modern condition. Just don't expect it to actually be about capitalism per se.

[Amar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Todd is a good expositor of Lacan. He is arguably one of the best. But his criticisms of other theorists are some of the most questionable that you can come across. When he criticizes Marx, he uses odd humanist interpretations of him. To demonstrate how odd his criticisms of other theorists are, let us look at his critique of Bataille:

"The problem with Bataille, however, is that his theory of sacrifice is grounded in an ontology of excess energy. We enjoy sacrifice because we are burdened with too much energy: there is enjoyment in the diminution of this burden. But Bataille never explains how this excess arises and how we obtain it."

In what world does Bataille not explain how this excess arises? The whole point of the first volume of The Accursed Share is him explaining how the excess arises. Now, I guess if you don't study Bataille much then I could see how you are not sure how he arrives at how we obtain this excess. However, if he did a bit more digging, he would very quickly find that there are a couple ways you can assume as to how humans obtain this excess energy:

The first way you can assume we obtain this energy is that "energy is… first solar… then biological… then human (as it is spent in our monuments, artifacts, and social rituals)" (Stoekl 2007). It begins by flowing from the sun, through photosynthesis allowing for plant growth, then through the plants’ consumption enters a cycle which possibly ends up human.

The second way you can assume is through a transcendental ontology. For one has to — to the point of imperative — remember that "the sun is the truth of the universe, which is essentially immanence, i.e., flows of all that is. In the context of his solar cosmology, those flows are of solar energy; we are nothing but effects of the immanent solar flow" (Jack 2021). Here is where one tends to misrecognize itself as a self: a discontinuous being, separate from the cosmic flow of becoming, sovereign beings independent of the solar/universal immanence. This misrecognition is what constitutes our being as transcendent. This transcendence of which is as real as the solar flow of being, in and through its differentiation.

The other fault of this book is its repetitiveness. Not only is it repetitive within the domain of the book itself, but also nearly everything said here has already been iterated in his book Enjoying What We Don't Have.

[Raoul G · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh my God! That was one hell of a book. It also was one of the most difficult books I ever read. But, believe me, it definitely is rewarding.

What Todd McGowan set out to accomplish with this book is nothing less than to uncover the hidden driving motive of capitalism. He does this by analyzing many different aspects of capitalism from a psychoanalytical perspective, drawing heavily from Freud and Lacan. There are also many philosophical discussions which of course include Marx, but also thinkers like Hegel, Kant, Adorno and Arendt, just to name a few. Furthermore he engages with a variety of proponents of capitalism from Adam Smith to Milton Friedman, and uncovers weak points in their theories in a quite convincing manner.

For McGowan the key for understanding capitalism can be found in the second volume of Marx's Capital:
“For capitalism is already essentially abolished once we assume that it is enjoyment that is the driving motive and not enrichment itself.”
Now, the thing is that Marx does not really unpack this idea in a systematic manner. This is the task that McGowan seeks to fulfill with this book. The tool needed to unpack this idea is psychoanalysis:
"The resilience of capitalism as an economic or social form derives from its relationship to the psyche and to how subjects relate to their own satisfaction. This is why psychoanalysis is requisite for making sense of capitalism’s appeal."
McGowan goes into depth explaining concepts like desire, (dis-)satisfaction, (un-)consciousness, the lost object, the Other, fantasy, the gaze and others from a freudian/lacanian perspective and shows what role they play in capitalism.

"Capitalism has the effect of sustaining subjects in a constant state of desire. As subjects of capitalism, we are constantly on the edge of having our desire realized, but never reach the point of realization. This has the effect of producing a satisfaction that we don’t recognize as such. That is, capitalist subjects experience satisfaction itself as dissatisfying, which enables them to simultaneously enjoy themselves and believe wholeheartedly that a more complete satisfaction exists just around the corner, embodied in the newest commodity. [...] To take solace in the promise of tomorrow is to accept the sense of dissatisfaction that capitalism sells more vehemently than it sells any commodity. As long as one remains invested in the promise as such, one has already succumbed to the fundamental logic of capitalism."

Other than the first chapters which are concerned with these and other psychological aspects, some of my favorite chapters were the one in which he talks about the role sacrifice plays for obtaining satisfaction and how this manifests in capitalism, the chapter about God and how God is replaced by "the invisible hand" in capitalism, and the chapter about love. In the following, one small excerpt from each of those chapters:

"Sacrifice appears in the workers’ sacrifice of their time for the production of the commodity, which profits the capitalist in the stead of the workers. It also appears in the act of consumption, where consumers sacrifice their wealth for commodities that they don’t need. Sacrifice manifests itself in a hidden form in the production and consumption of the commodity. Rather than overcoming sacrifice, capitalism secularizes it. This is the essence of capitalism’s relation to sacrifice. [...] If anyone can obtain a product without sacrifice, it has no value for the subject... In fact, we cannot enjoy without some sacrifice—either of ourselves or of others—because sacrifice is the source of all value. We value objects through the loss that they embody. The psychic or financial cost of an object is inextricable from the worth that we assign to it."

"Freedom implies the absence of any substantial Other, the lack of guarantees to guide the subject’s choices. The free subject exists alone with its decisions, and whatever morality it adopts stems from it alone, not from God or from any authorized figure. [...] The market replaces God insofar as it tells us what we should desire. But it is an improved version of God because it permits us to retain the idea of ourselves as free beings. Whereas Christian theologians must constantly wrestle with the problem of human freedom in the face of an omnipotent God, the apologist for capitalism never confronts a similar problem because the free market incessantly assures us, even with its moniker, of our freedom. That is, the capitalist Other, unlike God, doesn’t force us to question how we could reconcile freedom and the Other’s omnipotence, and yet the market relieves us from our freedom much more effectively than God. God leaves room for doubt, whereas the market rarely does."

"Capitalist society’s packaging of love as romance aims at eliminating the disruptiveness of love while sustaining its passion. This is an impossible task, and the love of the capitalist subject is always a diminished love insofar as it’s safer. Romance under capitalism is a form of investment, and even a risky investment, as romance sometimes is, remains within the calculus of risk and loss. Love transcends any calculus and forces the subject to abandon its identity entirely, not simply stake its reputation or its fortune... The risk that occurs in love stems from the status the lover grants to the beloved. The beloved ceases to be just another object that the lover desires and takes the place of social authority itself. When I love the other, I want to count for this other more than any recognition that might come from society at large. I want to matter more than everyone else put together. For the lover, the other must value her or him not just above all else, but she or he must replace all else as the basis for the calculation of value. To put it in the terms of psychoanalysis, love demands that the little other take over the function of the big Other."

Sometimes the book gets a bit too technical (at least for me) but even when this is the case, these difficult passages are usually not too long and there are also many examples, like interesting interpretations of movies (this shows McGowan's proficiency in the domain of film theory), which make for an overall very enjoyable read.

The most important thing this book offers is a lens through which we can look at our lives and the world we are living in. It offers a way to understand and interpret much of what is going on around us and some of what is going on inside us. I have found this lens invaluable. At this point I have to issue a warning: After reading this book you might not be able to consume the way you did before and you might not be able to desire in the way you did before. And if that happens, believe me, it will be a good thing.

[Salvador Ramírez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Todd McGowan articula una crítica al capitalismo desde el psicoanálisis lacaniano, una crítica alternativa a la basada en las injusticias o en la represión que genera el capitalismo. En este libro es explica cómo el capitalismo genera satisfacción y esto explica el porqué continúa funcionando, a pesar de los amplios efectos negativos conocidos como la enorme explotación laboral y la desigualdad económica. El libro no trata de crear un catálogo de horrores conocidos del capitalismo, sino de explicar toda la satisfacción que crea el capitalismo. Su exposición argumentativa lo hace a través de diez capítulos en donde trata diferentes facetas de cómo el capitalismo nos envuelve como sujetos.

El planteamiento central que guiará toda la discusión lo expone en el primer capítulo: el capitalismo aprovecha el deseo del sujeto, para crear una satisfacción, la cual al mismo tiempo la oculta para mantener el deseo activo a través de las mercancías. Esto es, el capitalismo crea la fantasía de que al obtener una mercancía se está obteniendo un objeto que satisface nuestros deseos, que nos permite gozar. No obstante, al obtener la mercancía siempre se genera una insatisfacción (desilusión), pues el objeto del deseo nunca corresponde ni podrá corresponder con la mercancía. Razón por la cual, la respuesta del sujeto es adquiere otra mercancía o acumularlas, en busca de la mercancía que por fin permita satisfacer el deseo. Sin embargo, es en esta falla de obtener el objeto deseado donde se encuentra la satisfacción, es decir, en la repetición de la falla es lo que nos satisface, no el objeto que se obtiene. De esta manera el sujeto se "engancha" en el mecanismo del capitalismo, que permite tanto la reproducción del mismo, como genera satisfacción al sujeto - aunque no lo sepa.

En el segundo capítulo, habla sobre cómo el capitalismo nos protege del público (a su favor). El espacio público facilita la creación del sujeto y de su deseo al permitirle encontrar a otros y sus deseos. Sin embargo, con la privatización del espacio público (y la hipervigilancia del espacio público que resta) se empuja a las personas a espacios privados para resguardarlos del otro. Esto crea la idea de que tenemos agencia como sujetos contra el Gran Otro al retirarnos a lo privado e impulsa el consumo privado en la búsqueda de la satisfacción, pero la satisfacción solo se genera en lo social.

En el tercer capítulo del libro trata sobre la mirada, un concepto lacaniano usado ampliamente en la crítica cinematográfica. Señala que el espacio no es neutral, sino que está construido por el capital y distorsionado por el deseo. Creemos que existe un gran otro que garantiza la coherencia. Se crea la idea de que hay un gran otro capitalista y al hacer las cosas como las hacemos es tratar de que el gran otro nos reconozca. La mirada dentro del capitalismo es darse cuenta de la distorsión del espacio por el capital y esta surge en los periodos de crisis económica. Momento en que permite cobrar conciencia de lo no-natural del capitalismo y de sus relaciones de producción. Estos momentos de crisis no necesariamente son revolucionarios, pues pueden generar fenómenos que busquen la coherencia del sistema, eliminar las distorsiones, como es el fascismo.

El cuarto capítulo del libro trata sobre el sacrificio, una práctica que parecería desterrada de la modernidad. Sin embargo, el capitalismo en lugar de eliminarlo, lo vuelve cotidiano. El sacrificio cambia de algo religioso a ser algo normalizado. Los trabajadores sacrifican su tiempo por la idea de obtener un salario que les permita alcanzar la felicidad. Es evidente que no hay dinero en el mundo que permita comprar el tiempo y el trabajador lo sacrifica tiempo por dinero. Del mismo modo, el capitalismo permite evitar recordar los horrores detrás de las mercancías y los sacrificios que implican, como el trabajo infantil en la minería, para continuar disfrutando.

El quinto capítulo del libro trata sobre cómo el mercado reemplaza a Dios y da una falsa idea de libertad. Esto significa que ya no existe un mundo en el que la libertad esté limitada por la religión, sin embargo, la única libertad que queda es la dictada por las reglas del mercado. Esto obliga al sujeto a tomar muchas decisiones (en términos económicos) y evita confrontar nuestros deseos con los de otros. Así, el mercado se plantea como el Gran Otro que garantiza el orden: la mano invisible que crea el equilibrio. No obstante, en realidad no lo hace, limita elecciones y el sujeto se pregunta continuamente qué debe hacer (lo cual deriva en neurosis del sujeto). De esta manera, el mercado reemplaza a Dios al decirnos qué desear.

En el sexto capitulo habla sobre la idea del infinito y la mala infinitud (hegeliana). Señala que el capitalismo crea la fantasía del crecimiento infinito, de la acumulación sin fin. Idea que físicamente es imposible, pero que el sujeto sigue de forma continua. McGowan propone que el orden igualitario implica el reconocimiento de la necesidad de límites, no sólo como una frontera al crecimiento y que simultáneamente constituya el crecimiento como una posibilidad, es decir, que adopte el obstáculo como su misma condición de o posible.

En el séptimo capítulo menciona que el capitalismo se enfoca en el fin, no en los medios. Esto es, busca la productividad como un fin, y deja de lado el medio para alcanzarla que está constituido por el sacrificio, el trauma. En otras palabras, sólo se visibiliza el fin de la mercancía que es la ganancia, siendo que lo que gozamos son los medios, sus fallos.

En el capítulo ocho, habla que el capitalismo utiliza la idea del amor, pero en realidad explota el romance, que se utiliza para evitar el amor y su trauma. El romance trabaja bajo la fantasía de la mercancía satisfactoria perfecta, es, la idea del “alma gemela”. Esto tomando en cuenta que recurre a la idea del amor de Badiou como evento. El ejemplo de ello son las apps de citas, en donde se busca amor bajo la lógica de las mercancías, y es así como aparece en el sistema capitalista.
En el capítulo noveno, elabora el argumento de como la escasez generada por el capitalismo hace que el otro sea una amenaza a mi satisfacción y así produce envidia. La escasez genera una conexión negativa con el otro a través de un objeto en común. Una falta que hace centrar el deseo en lo que otros parece que tienen. Asimismo, el capitalismo genera una fantasía de en el futuro existirá abundancia mientras éste genera escasez, ocultando la fuente de la satisfacción. Si existiera abundancia no sería posible sostener la ilusión de la satisfacción mediante la mercancía, aunque la falta del sujeto continuaría.

En el décimo capitulo, señala que el capitalismo también sostiene lo sublime mediante la mercancía. Para el productor, la mercancía crea valor de la nada y el consumidor crea trascendencia con su compra. La publicidad de las mercancías por ejemplo invoca lo sublime y promesas para el consumidor. Como serían los autos nuevos envueltos de una serie de promesas, pero al comprarlos se devalúan inmediatamente.

El capitalismo también crea un tipo de orientalización, de exotismo, para generar deseo (por ejemplo las imágenes de El Japón). Del mismo modo, señala que los fundamentalistas son un producto de la modernidad. Ellos buscan lo sublime y no lo encuentran en la mercancía que es una fala promesa, por lo que recurren a otro acto para alcanzarla.

McGowan plantea en la sección de conclusiones que poder superar el capitalismo es necesario darnos cuenta de los mecanismos psíquicos que nos mantienen ligados al mismo, pues la revolución es insuficiente sin romper estos mecanismos. Señala que "Sólo el giro de la lógica de acumulación a una de satisfacción-con la aceptación del objeto perdido- puede movernos más allá de la crisis del capitalismo" (p. 242). Concluyendo que "Hasta que aceptemos que la satisfacción de la pérdida es nuestro motivo que nos conduce, nos mantendremos rehenes de la economía del enriquecimiento" (p. 244).

Si bien este libro esta lleno de ejemplos que refieren más a los países occidentales, y lecturas superficiales de la teoría marxista, no por ello su argumento central deja de sostenerse y se debe de reconocer sus aportaciones filosofía, crítica de la ideología y teoría crítica.


Para una reseña larga y explicación más concisa, recomiendo leer la reseña de Michael Down https://thedangerousmaybe.medium.com/...

Y para una reseña corta, de corte académico, Anthony Ballas https://www.c-scp.org/2019/10/10/todd...

[Sam Stephens · Rating 4 out of 5]

If capitalism reduces humanity to mere survival and a constant state of exploitation, why does it continue? This line of inquiry forces McGowan to contend that critiques of capitalism that begin with injustice and repression fall short. Instead, we must begin with the psychic staying power of capitalism for human subjectivity. The power of capitalism lies in the blending of the object of desire (satisfaction through accumulation) with the lost object (peace through recognizing satisfaction in what does not exist). Thus capitalism offers the lost object through a bate and switch with the object of desire via the commodity form. It’s psychic staying power comes through its promise of future oriented success. The satisfaction capitalism gives to capitalist subjects is the promise of the future which holds happiness and satisfaction in the next commodity—the next iPhone, job, car, vacation, lifestyle, etc. It is in this fundamental structure of capitalism that our revolutionary criticism needs to be directed. Thus, when we recognize a) that satisfaction is accompanied by our failure to achieve the lost object through relentless accumulation, and b) that our real motive is satisfaction rather than enrichment, capitalism is well on the way to being abolished.

[Trevor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not going to be able to cover half of the ideas in this book – and that means you are probably going to have to track this one down yourself, I’m afraid. I’ve been fascinated by the whole idea of desire for quite some time. The problem with desire is that as soon as you have achieved your desire, you have lost your desire. It is a deeply strange thing, that is lost as soon as it is achieved. This book argues that this strange nature of desire is one of the key driving forces of capitalism and helps to explain why thwarted desire is the thing that makes capitalism so appealing. This contradiction, and seeming paradox, is why we need a psychoanalytic understanding of capitalism to understand the hold it has upon us. In that, a lot of this book is focused upon this seemingly contradictory longing that capitalism creates in us. That is, this book supplements Marx with Freud to explain why the self-defeating nature of capitalism for the true flourishing of our natures holds such an appeal to us.

The longing for the object of desire is pure desire. The obtaining of the object of desire kills the desire and therefore actually obtaining what we think we desire is to be avoided almost at all costs. And so, we self-sabotage so that we can go on longing for what we can never have. Of course, this longing never recognises that it is the thwarted longing itself that we ultimately want – we believe that if only we can have what we desire we will be complete. And so we spend our time trying to find ways in which we can achieve our desire, to possess it. It is like that saying that people are in love with the idea of being in love, rather than actually in love with someone else. Capitalism, particularly late stage capitalism, is about consumption (a word that is related to fire, in the sense that what is consumed, like obtaining the desired object itself, ceases to be) and so the act of consummation is a destructive act reducing to ashes what we thought we wanted most. As such, we are all King Midas – we desire gold, but turning everything to gold kills everything we otherwise ought to have loved.

This death wish is central to the desire capitalism breeds in us. And yet, we remain convinced that we are one more purchase away from being complete. The problem is that what we desire is too often defined less by ourselves and more by what we think others would be impressed with us possessing. We want the latest gadget, less for the functionality of the gadget itself, but also for what we think others will believe this says about us. He makes an interesting point about the nature of desire and sacrifice – that all objects of value are only valuable in the sense that they embody sacrifice. This is both in the sense of the sacrifice we have to make in choosing this object over all others that we could otherwise possess if we had not chosen it – something that only then goes on to heighten our desire for the purchase not made and to regret the one chosen – but also that the objects we desire embody the sacrifices of others. He says that this is a fundamental feature of capitalism – that capitalism always involves sacrifice, of the child slaves who dig the rare earth metals that power our iPhones, the workers who must sign contracts that they will not attempt suicide while working in the factories that put our iPhones together, the rivers and environments reduced to wastelands by our factories and mines. Sacrifice is fundamental to desire, and loss is a consequence of desire that is always thwarted.

You would think that we would learn that this is a fool’s game and find ways to break the cycle – but the whole machinery of capitalism is desired for us to never make this connection. And so this is the revolutionary act we need to make – to recognise that whatever it is to be fully human is not to be found in the desires capitalism places before us. That finding ways to transcend these desires – these beliefs that we can be completed by the commodities on offer to us – is the path towards becoming true individuals defined by choices that make us whole, rather than choices that leave us perpetually longing for what we can never have. This is the difference between love and desire. A kind of acceptance.

At one point in this, and I’ve been thinking I’ve never really been loved in this way other than by my own children, we know we are in love when we can see the faults of our lover and love them all the more for those faults. This is not something we are able to do with an object of desire. The faults of an object of desire are the reasons we reject that object and begin desiring something else. The latest model or the chocolate cake we should have ordered instead of the cheesecake. If love creates scars in us, it also teaches us to love those scars. If our lover has scars, we love them as much for those scars as we do for their perfections. For in the end, perhaps all we have left is our scars.

Finding ways to move beyond the false promise of desire towards the acceptance of love is perhaps the only way out of the hold capitalism has upon us. The sacrifices capitalism imposes have strong psychological holds upon ourselves, but the sacrifices are too much – they are killing the planet in capitalism’s death wish. Capitalism is premised on infinite accumulation and that is an impossibility. The alternative is a kind of gratitude, an acceptance of enough. I’ve no idea if such a psychological shift is even possible – not only for one person, but what is necessary is that it be achieved for everyone. That said, playing a game where we already know that desire will always be thwarted is hardly one that makes sense either. The shift from desire to love is not inevitable or easy – but it is one that seems worth attempting.

[Indiana Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have so many post it flags between the pages of this book...McGowan is so remarkably succinct in examining this tricky subject. How to lucidly explain what the capitalist system does the subjects psyche? And what does the psyche do for capitalism?

This is such an enlightening book, it revealed so much about human nature and subjectivity

[Maxwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is the most i have ever fucked up a book with my pen. loved it. anyway, on the 96th page, 2nd paragraph, 4th sentence, 2nd word i think you meant 'difference'. now if you wanted to contact me to for the pod in return for this editing favour, my number is

[elle · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5
A bit tautological so I feel like it could’ve been a bit shorter, but overall the idea that capitalism persists because we’re psychically invested in it since it mimics the how we process desire (and vice versa), taking notes from psychoanalysis. Our desire, in the framework of capitalism, is mediated through a cyclical system of loss. The mistake of exchanging the lost object (i.e. the almost imaginary, sublimated commodity that promises satisfy all our desires, always the next purchase away) with the object of desire (i.e. the object-commodity that we CAN acquire, which never provides real or lasting satisfaction) fuels to this almost mechanized rhythm. In other words, the act of desiring for something or someone is itself the satisfying part, the fulfilling part, and the erotic part. This is the act of “loss”. Waiting for a package to arrive feels so good. But the satisfaction we feel upon the actual arrival of the order never really is proportionate to the amount of desire we had for the object while waiting for it or adding it to our cart online. And so we start the cycle anew, invested in the promise of tomorrow, and of the imagined near-future. This promise rationalizes accumulation, manufactured or false scarcity, commodity fetishism, and capitalist realism (or, the illusion that capitalism is inherent in human nature and the natural order of the world— therefore a neutral force yet incomprehensibly requiring violent policing and surveillance to uphold). Buying into the promise of tomorrow is buying into the promise of capitalism, that is, there will always be a tomorrow where all your accumulation will have paid off. I’m not sure I agree per se because the promise of tomorrow can be revolutionary and necessary to keep working, but it’s given me something to think about. Interesting tangents to make with this with spontaneity vs. organization in a lot of New Left thinking (Graeber, Fisher, etc.)

Overall great. It put into words an everyday feeling that we’re all mostly familiar with. I think it was a bit reductive and one dimensional at points, when explaining away the rationale behind suicide bombing or terrorism for example, ignoring the words Imperialism and Neo-colonialism and its other cousins. The ideas fall a bit short in those aspects, but it made me work to understand, which I always appreciate.

We are never satisfied, because capitalism is good at making our dissatisfaction feel so fucking good. This is a psychic investment that we must uncover, break, and use as the impetus for political action.

Magdalene J. Taylor for an article on Dirt Mag re: the question Is it better to desire, or be desired?:
“it feels better to be desired but spiritually the reward for suffering through desiring is greater”

[Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

For me, i dont know if there could be a more compelling theory of the great modern problem than this. The pure simplicity of it is arresting: what sustains the current social order is a nigh on universal belief that it is possible for one to obtain an object that satisfies one’s desire. The trouble is, this belief simultaneously defies what psychoanalysis reveals as our essentially lacking nature, as subjects whose desire is caused by an original lost symbolic object and not satisfiable by any actual object to which we transfer it, yet also allows for an economic system based on endless accumulation that actually does satisfy us in its constant cycle of disappointment and subsequent (false) promise of future fulfillment, because we are unconsciously (and thus authentically) satisfied by the un-having that permits us to desire.

I feel this is apparent at an almost intuitive level - barring any psychoanalytical jargon, theres an endless supply of common insights that gain new light when they are unified by the notion that obtainment precludes satisfaction: we are happiest when we are in the process of doing, and usually only realize it upon retrospection; the wealthy are all miserable despite having every material desire satisfied; we are most enamoured with the things we want before we buy them; we dont realize how important certain loved ones are to us until we are separated from them.

Whats even more valuable here too is the illumination of a path forward amidst the blind alleys of past revolutionary projects, which partake of the same ideology of potential future satisfaction that turns the capitalist wheel despite their profound material critiques of it; real radicality comes in confronting the traumas of freedom from authority (no big Other, no subject-supposed-to-know, no authorization beyond self-authorization), of loss in the midst of abundance, of self-abandonment in authentic love, it comes in the words of the big man Marx himself whom McGowan quotes in a poignant keystone to bring it all home: “For capitalism is already essentially abolished once we assume that it is enjoyment that is the driving motive and not enrichment itself.” Workers of the world, seize the means of enjoyment!

Of course we must fight for the improvement of material conditions for all such that baseline needs are met - but as any good leftist asks themselves incessantly, while we are well within our means to do so, why havent we yet? The answer: because a lasting revolution will necessarily be a psychic one, a shifting of the collective mindset from one of accumulation or nostalgia to an understanding of true enjoyment, where we locate our satisfaction in neither the future nor the past but in the right here, right now.

[Noah Coates · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not my style. I find it relies too heavily on some mythical lost object constituted by language. That we constantly desire this phantom object and essentially subjectivity boils down to a wallowing hole/lack of self-destruction and misery. The death drive becomes a moral concept - as that unsociable, uncodable desire, which seeks pure repetition, and thus it becomes in this work the object of critique essentially. Problem is, the death drive is not a subjects tendency towards destruction, but a subjects tendency towards an impersonal and non-codable form of energy. It is an excitation that demands expenditure, not a mythical lack the subject tends towards, because of its own contradictory and hopeless nature. The idea of consumption practices depending on lack in an idea worth entertaining however - that subjects are produced as lacking; repressed desires are channeled back into consumptive practices which give libidinal energy a moral outlet via the capture of capitalist commodification. The problem here becomes, not, in the impossibility of ever desiring, of achieving a whole object - and thus the problem of capitalism being a "cruel desire" which posits an impossible fantasy, but that capital consistently redirects libidinal energy from uncodable expenditure into a domesticated consumer subject. When a woman buys a purse, she is reinvesting a misplaced desire - investing her lack produced by capitalism into capitalism. A sort of devilish and evil investment. The problem being, is that the investment in the purse, is always haunted by the misplaced desire. The man she likes but won't approach her, or the boyfriend who won't show her enough love? The purse provides a means of satisfaction and form of escape, yet it is always short-lived, since latent in the new investment, is the implicit diversion, and thus, a ressentiment, and necessitated detachment.

[Valentín Serrano García · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb! McGowan doesn't waste your time and goes to the point: which are the psychic grounds of capitalism? Why does it survives to every revolutionary attemp or economic collapse? What can we do to undermine it's logic (which is ours, too)?

McGowan, sustaining his discourse on profound philosophical and clinical insights (Kant, Marx, Hegel, Freud, Bataille, Lacan, Derrida or Althusser, amongst others) and highlighting his master on psychoanalitic theory, reflects about the following topics: sublimity and commodities, infinite production, jouissance and consumism, radicality of love against romance, mankind unsatisfied condition, sacrifice within production, the invisible hand and many others. What is overwhelming, indeed, is the fact that McGowan has synthetized all in less than 300 pages!

Once read, it is understandable that Zizek himself has considered this essay a classic.
However, just one advice: this is not a divulgative book. It demands previous acquaintance with, at least, lacanian theory (theory grounded on clinical practice). If not, you could feel lost sometimes.

[Nic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Other reviewers do a much better job at encapsulating the strengths of this work and its enduring value. I’ll only make a few points based on my initial understanding of the arguments of this work, which I won’t develop here but will just mention. To McGowan, the fundamental task in our struggle against capitalism is a change in our relation psychic relation to it. What’s missing for me here is collective action and struggle. I think there’s a problem of claiming that capitalism and communism are structurally equivalent (in light of their conceptions of enjoyment). I don’t think we have to cede an investment in utopianism and futurity as repeating the logics of capitalist desire. And I’m not sure that every loss is necessarily traumatic.

[Nick121235 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Possibly the most important book on capitalism written in the 21st century. Todd McGowan extrapolates from the work of Slavoj Žižek and makes his work digestible for those of us who aren't deeply mired in Hegelian metaphysics. This work is key to understanding the way that desire is really what drives capitalism and our participation in it, and may be the fourth most important critique of capitalism ever written, after Marx's Capital, Ẓ̌iẓ̌ek's Sublime Object of Ideology, and Deleuze & Guattari’s Capitalism and Schizophrenia.