Thesis update

Background

My project seeks to develop a new understanding of political economy and capitalism via a fusion of Marxist political economy and Lacanian psychoanalysis. Globally, the combination of Marxism and psychoanalysis is a project with a relatively long history. Leftist theorists have attempted this project in the belief that such a fusion would retain the emancipatory potential of Marxism whilst providing a more satisfactory explanatory framework for the operation of the psyche. The latest and most popular instantiation of this tradition is Slavoj Zizek.

Zizek and Marx

Zizek’s work is firmly embedded in Lacanian theory, but as his theory has become progressively political and increasingly anti-capitalist, Zizek has turned to Marxism. Marx had always been an influence in Zizek’s work, but had played a secondary role in comparison to Lacan and Hegel, whom Zizek utilised to organise his central emphasis on ideology and enjoyment/jouissance.

Even though Zizek has become increasingly influenced by Marxist, Zizek has not taken on Marx’s work as a totality, although he takes on the tradition of the Marxist totality. Zizek’s investment into Marxist categories is mixed. He claims a fundamental homology between Lacan and Marx in some areas, such as the symptom and the link between surplus-value and surplus-enjoyment. Other concepts, like ideology, commodity fetishism and class are retained as important elements of the Marxist edifice, but are given a radical Lacanian twist. Finally, the positivising aspects of Marxist theory, such as species-being and false consciousness, are discarded.

Critiques of Zizek

Through his interpretation of the Marxist tradition, Zizek attempts to provide a new critique of capitalism and a renewed global anti-capitalist political project. This move has been the source of both academic and political controversy. Some theorists contend that Zizek’s fusion of Lacan and Marx is illegitimate because of Zizek’s continued adherence to Lacan. Others argue that the incommensurability between Lacan and Marx has led to Zizek not providing a systematic account of capitalism, a failure which produces several symptomatic hesitations in his account of capitalism.

Many theorists suggest that Zizek’s work is good theory, but not good politics. Conversely, many of these critics accept the fundamental premises of Zizek’s work, that is, his commitment to a negative ontological position, yet they dismiss the political consequences of this commitment without suggesting alternatives that adhere to a negative ontology. Instead, they produce what one might describe as ideal politics and poor theory.

Moving forward

Instead, I believe that Zizek’s theoretical positioning provides an excellent, if esoteric account of capitalism, but one that is not operationalised to its full potential because of a lack of applied analysis. Additionally, however, Zizek’s work has been unable to move past analysis and critique, a point which he fully acknowledges.

My thesis seeks to address this issue by starting from and advancing Zizek’s problematic (how to act radically against capitalism without the positivising aspects of Marxism) by extending Zizek’s existing understanding of capitalism and attempting to go beyond this critique by advancing Zizek’s own theoretical categories, such as the concrete universal. Additionally I seek to reconsider the notion of universality within political economy, particularly in regards to surplus-value and its relationship with surplus-enjoyment, a relationship which is always based on an exclusion (the concrete universal/class).

Zizek and Marxism; Class

Thesis position summary; class

Žižek’s combination of Lacan and Hegel provides a particularly productive approach for understanding social life. Žižek’s work operates via an understanding of ideology, universality and the necessary exclusion caused by the effect of the Real. Increasingly, Žižek has sought to extend his work to a critique of capitalism. In doing so he has begun to work in the Marxist ‘tradition’, integrating several key concepts, must notably class. Conversely, Žižek’s core theoretical insights remain Lacanian, which is problematic for his usage of Marxism. If there is no class relationship, that is, if the positively existing elements of Marx’s work, most notably the revolutionary subject and communism, are no longer viable, what action can be taken against capitalism in the name of Marxism?

Paper summary

As Žižek’s work has become more explicitly political, and in particular anti-capitalist, the concept of class has come to the forefront of his conceptual oeuvre. Žižek’s use of class has signalled an increasing move into the Marxist tradition. His utilisation of class, however, differs from the classical Marxist definition, having taken a Lacanian twist. Žižek resists any positivisation of class, instead considering it to be a modality of the Lacanian Real, that is, a hitch that all symbolisations struggle to integrate. This hitch is then excluded from the discursive horizon, thus becoming a positive factor for other discourses.

However, Žižek’s use of class has been controversial. The field is split between three positions; those who believe that Žižek does not adequately define his concept of class, those who contend that Žižek’s Lacanian version of class is incommensurable with the Marxist tradition from which it stems and critics who argue that Žižek’s conception of class renders it a politically redundant concept. In response, I seek to intervene in this gap – whilst acknowledging the relative salience of the critical positions - by suggesting that class operates in four intertwined iterations. The first is the failure of class relation; class as a modality of the Real. The second is the repression of the necessary exclusion which occurs in actually existing class relationships. This repression is class as the concrete universal. Because there is no possible translation between the concrete universal and the associated abstract universal imaginary (the signifiers and images which cohere our common constructions of shared social life) the affect of the concrete universal is also the Real (in terms of the parallax gap within the universal totality). Finally we have class as it appears within the abstract universal. In this sense the meaning of ‘class’ is determined by a hegemonic battle. Consequently, part of the difficulty of utilising class is the discursive positions into which it fits. Conversely, identifying the most salient of these positions is a vital task for any instantiation of Marxism which hopes to make a radical intervention in the capitalist system.

Genealogy of class within Žižek’s work

The importance of class has developed slowly within Žižek’s work, yet his use of the concept has stayed remarkably consistent. Žižek’s initial English language publication, The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989), focused mainly on the fusion of Hegel and Lacan into a theory of ideology. It is notable, however, that class is introduced in this text, and in a very similar manner to that which will follow in later works. Žižek stated;

‘class struggle is not the last signifier giving meaning to all signification…. but – quite on the contrary – a certain limit, a pure negativity, a traumatic limit which prevents the final totalisation of the social-ideological field. The ‘class struggle’ is present only in its effects, in the fact that every attempt to totalise the social field, to assign to social phenomena a definite place in the social structure, is doomed to fail’ (Zizek, 1989:164).

Although this definition previews the usage of class in later works, it is only introduced as a minor concept, a momentary point amongst a discussion of the structurating effects of the Real. In his next major text, For They Know Not What They Do (1991), Žižek advances his conception of class, although within the same parameters, by explicitly labelling it as a modality of the Real. Class is a modality of the Real because it operates as a hitch in the social-ideological field which all symbolisations attempt to suture; there is no answer to class struggle, in the same manner in which for Lacanian there is no sexual relationship.

Žižek considers class to be of the same category. Class does not exist as a positive object. As Žižek says of Marx’s work on class ‘class struggle functions in a strict sense as the ‘object’ of Capital, that which cannot become the ‘positive object of research’(2006: 82, emphasis in original). As with all modalities of the Real, class exists as both a hitch and an excess. Class is not only the failure of each symbolisation but this failure gives rise to ever more attempts to ‘conceal and patch up the rift of class struggle’ (Zizek, 1991: 100).

Thus the failure of the class relationship produces ongoing attempts to suture this wound in the symbolic fabric. The main effect is to exclude the notion of class from capitalist society, an exclusion which forms the capitalist universal imaginary. Žižek argues that it is this exclusion of class which constitutes the global capitalist horizon. In relation to the battle for universality and hegemony in global capitalism via the exclusion of class, Žižek contends;

‘This contamination of the universal by the particular is ‘stronger’ then the struggle for hegemony ( i.e. for which particular content will hegemonise the universality I question): it structures in advance the very terrain on which the multitude of particular contents fight for hegemony… the question is, also and above all, which secret privileging and inclusions/exclusions had to occur for this empty place as such to emerge in the first place’ (Zizek, 2000d: 320, emphasis in original).

Thus, the fundamental Žižekian point in regard to class is that it is not a positively existing entity. Rather class exists as a modality of the Real. Just as there is no sexual relationship, there is also no class relationship (Zizek, 2006: 82). However, what Žižek fails to do is specify a minimum (formal) definition of class. Even if class is cited as a force of negativity, an exclusion from the dominant order, the concept, in order to be able to identified as having this effect must have an existence in itself. At no point does Žižek specify what class is, beyond its effects. Thus the task for readers of Žižek who wish to take the class seriously to deconstruct Žižek’s work. This deconstruction aims to reveal the reasoning behind Žižek’s instantiation of class. Specifically we must consider why class (according to Žižek) has its stated effect as an exclusion from the capitalist order which constitutes that order. Such an examination requires an investigation into Žižek use of Lacanian theory, as well as the Marxist tradition from which class originates.

Relevant critiques of Žižek’s use of class

Žižek’s inability to properly define the place of class has led to confusion amongst followers and critics alike. The following are some of the most prominent critiques of Žižek usage of class;

Andrew Robinson and Simon Tormey, suggest that while Žižek attempts to revive class struggle, he does so in accordance with a Lacanian-Hegelian agenda which bares little relation to either a traditional, or an ‘empirical’ conception of class (Robinson & Tormey, 2005: 95). For Robinson and Tormey, Žižek substitution of traditional Marxist class struggle for the Lacanian Real is theoretically regressive, bound to remain within an atmosphere of antagonism and violence without progressive political hope (ibid: 96).

Mark Devenney (2007:54) is extremely critical of Žižek’s conception of class. Suggesting that Žižek’s argument is ‘extraordinary’, Devenney contends that Žižek makes three key propositions in regards to class, for which he provides no evidence;

1. Positive elements such as race obscure class antagonism;
2. Class is a purely formal gap proved by it’s lack of formal expression;
3. Class over determines and structures the whole field in advance.

Devenney contends that the true role of class in Žižek’s work is that it ‘allows Žižek to wear Marxist labels’.

In reply, Žižek is equally critical of Devenney, in particular his ‘faked ignorance’ at the possible structuring role of an element which is symbolically absent (Zizek, 2007: 212). For Žižek and other writers of a Lacanian orientation, the effect of symbolic absence (in the form of the Real) does not equate to an absence of symbolic effect. Indeed, one should emphasise that the notion of societal impossibility is always double; not only is it impossible for society to reach a level of fullness, but the ontologically necessary barrier preventing society from reaching fullness is also impossible to symbolise (Zizek, 2000a: 100). This double impossibility produces the relationship between the symptom – which reveals the effects of impossibility – and ideology, which attempts to suture and displace the effects of the symptom.

Conversely, Devenney’s point has some relevance. If Žižek is suggesting that class over-determines the symbolic in its absence, what evidence does he provide for this assertion? This is a point to which we shall return, although it is worth noting here that the structuring role of class should not be taken as an a priori, rather it is a political exclusion, one which can be discovered only via concerted and applied political analysis, through a Lacanian lens and Žižek’s own notion of short-circuit analysis.

Sean Homer (2001: 7) argues that Žižek’s ‘thoroughgoing Lacanism appears to rule out the possibility of any orthodox ‘understanding’ of Marxism, or, indeed, the formulation of a clearly identifiable political project’. Although Homer suggests that Žižek’s rehabilitation of class is ‘to be welcomed’ (p.14), Žižek’s lack of positive definition of class has meant that the successful integration of class struggle into his project has been prevented by his adherence to Lacanian psychoanalysis.

Likewise, Ernesto Laclau states that Žižek’s political work suffers from ‘combined and uneven development’;

‘While his Lacanian tools, together with his insight, have allowed him to make considerable advances in his understanding of ideological processes in contemporary societies, his strictly political thought has not advanced at the same pace and remains fixed in very traditional categories’ (Laclau, 2000b:206).

Matthew Sharpe claims that Žižek fails to properly define class and in doing so utilises various definitions. He states that Žižek utilises two separate positions on class; class as ‘empirically locatable phenomena’ and ‘class struggle as a priori’ (Sharpe, 2004: 203-204). Although Sharpe’s work insightfully reveals hesitations in Žižek’s work around capitalism[i] (ibid: 196-198), in relation to class struggle, Sharpe produces something of a misreading of Žižek’s work.

Sharpe claims that Žižek’s notion of class and is split between an empirical concept and theoretical proposition. Sharpe argues that Žižek uses class both in terms of ‘empirically located phenomena’ and as an ‘a priori’’ concept. As well as arguing that class is the one element amongst many in terms of global struggle, Žižek makes numerous references to actually existing sites of class struggle. Sharpe suggests that this usage of class opens up Žižek for critique, particularly in light of the post-Marxism emphasis on discursive contingency, which has ‘robbed’ the working class of its privileged ontological status.

Sharpe contrasts Žižek’s efforts to provide examples of actually existing class struggle with his conception of class struggle as an a priori concept. Here Žižek is using class struggle as the Real, a traumatic hitch that cannot be symbolised, yet constitutes the horizon of understanding (ibid: 205). Just as, according to Laclau and Mouffe, ‘Society doesn’t exist’ (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985), neither do class relationships. There is some validity in this critique; Žižek does discuss class in both objective and formal terms, the designation of class struggle as the central antagonism of our times being the work of ‘concrete social analysis’ (Zizek, 1994: 25).

Conversely, Sharpe’s reading of these positions as an inconsistency in Žižek’s work is incorrect. Rather, both these positions stem from class as the Real. For Žižek, class is first and foremost an a priori concept[ii]. However, although class as the Real reveals that class relationships do not exist, the failure of class does not prevent the continued production of surplus-value. The necessary effect of economic reproduction based on surplus is class struggle[iii].

As such, there are several modalities of class antagonism within Žižek’s work. This does not change the fact that these operations come in response to class as a fundamental hitch in the process of economic reproduction. Nonetheless, Žižek’s refusal to define class beyond its structuring effects does pose a problem for his theory of capitalism.

My response to the problems inherent in Žižek’s usage of class

In response to this gap, I propose that class can be operationised in a manner which remains within the Marxist tradition, whilst retaining commensurability with Lacanian psychoanalysis. This operationisation relies on the usage of Žižek’s concept of concrete universality in order to refuse the deadlock of avoiding a direct positivising definition, yet requiring a minimal conception in order to work with the concept. This reflects the difficulty in positivising elements of the Real. Conversely, as Žižek (Zizek, 2000b: 214-215) himself states, when the Real is conceived as an internal - as opposed to external - limit to symbolisation, the failure of symbolisation can be represented through it’s effects. In turn, symbolisation can occur around these effects; hence the symbolic concept of the Real.

In order to work within this deadlock, the definition of class requires multiple classifications through several iterations before coming to rest with the concrete universal. The first step is to identify the very status of class which would allow for the lack of a class relationship. This step is the most difficult as it relies on a degree of positivisation which is largely disavowed in Žižek’s work.

The status of class relates to the fundamental economic issue of production and distribution of surplus-value. All modern (class) societies produce an economic surplus in order to reproduce themselves. Surplus-value is at the core of any economic system and is especially salient within capitalism in the form of profit. Profit and its oppositional determinate, class, are the fundamental base structure of capitalism. Even if one considers that capitalism itself is ‘non-all’, a contingent entity which is always in flux, revolutionising its own conditions (Zizek, 2006: 82), at the same time capitalism is always something, that something being surplus-value[iv] (Miklitsch, 1998: 497)

Class defines one’s position relative to surplus. This is not to suggest that class is a fixed concept, following, as an example, the Marxist class groups of Bourgeois and Proletariat. Rather I am suggesting that the concept of class, as a minimal definition, relates to the (economic) production of surplus-value that is necessary for reproducing modern society. The core question of class is, who is it that owns the means of production for surplus? Who is able to appropriate this surplus? (Glynos, 2001:80).

Thus, class is not purely a capitalist concept; it pertains to all surplus producing societies. A society in which no surplus is produced would not be a class society. This is not to suggest that such a society would be without hierarchy. This hierarchy, however, would be of a different nature from class societies.

In class societies in which surplus is required from societal reproduction, there exists no fair and guaranteed manner of distributing this surplus; any attempt at constructing a perfect class relationship will always fail. It was this symptom that Marxism and its various instantiations in communism and socialism, sought to remove. Removing class struggle is an ontological impossibility. Rather, economic systems have to establish themselves in relation to class as a form of the Real.

Žižek makes this point in The Sublime Object of Ideology (Zizek, 1989: 3). Lacanian ethics is not about removing the gap between the Real and symbolic, rather it is about establishing one’s relationship with that gap, integrating it into symbolisation. To integrate class into society is to acknowledge it as a fundamental hitch which cannot be removed. Vitally, however, acknowledging the Real should not result in a pragmatic resignation which confines politics to the already existing (Devenney, 2007: 46).[v]

Importantly, Žižek distinguishes between Lacanian and Marxist ethics. Marxist thought assumed the existence of a fundamental antagonism (class) which mediated all other antagonisms. Historical developmental would bring about the end of this antagonism, and thus all other antagonism. For example, communism would finish class struggle and thus all patriarchy.

Whilst Žižek, through the initial work of Ernesto Laclau, rejected the logic of the one mediating antagonism, his Lacanian theory has allowed his thought to go past that of post-Marxism. Conversely, as we shall see, this movement brings Žižek, through his notion of the concrete universal, back to the original Marxist position. This position, however, has been subject to the dialectical process; a classic example of Lacanian-Hegelian determinate reflection where the initial obstacle becomes the very positive condition of the discourse.

Here Žižek states he wants to go beyond Laclau and post-Marxism, characterised by Laclau’s discourse theory, in stating that the plurality of discourses – post-modern particularism – is a response to some fundamental real exclusion. For Žižek this exclusion is the Real. As I will expand on later, class is the Real, both in the sense that there is no class relationship and as the gap opened up for the instantiation of class as the concrete universal. It is to class as the concrete universal to which we now turn.

The core concept of Žižek’s notion of class is that there is no class relationship; no externally guaranteed manner in which surplus can be distributed. At the same time however, a (failed) class relationship always exists. That is, surplus-value is necessarily produced for the material reproduction of society. In our capitalism economic system that surplus (profit) is appropriated amongst the owners of capital[vi]. Under capitalist ideology this appropriation is considered fair reward for the risk taken by the owner in their investment of capital. Contrastingly, Marxist ideology equates profit with the exploitation of the workers who produced the surplus. What both these ideological positions are responding to is class as the Real; that there is no class relationship.

Both these ideological positions, capitalist and socialist, attempt to rid themselves of the symptoms of the exclusion of class as the Real, although via differing methods. Socialism both repressed and externalised the symptom. Surplus production was considered the territory of the worker. The cause of the failure to bring about the perfect economic system/class relationship was externalised to ‘enemies of the state’ through various infamous exterminations.

In contrast, capitalist, the more successful ideology, has acknowledged (in a more palpable fashion) the presence of the symptom. Within capitalist society there are various devices for this acknowledgement, the democratic process, unions, and charitable organisations. Additionally externalisation occurs, notably that the economically unsuccessful are themselves at fault for their status.

Additionally, within capitalist society the notion of class itself is disavowed, displaced to a number of fetishes. Class, particularly within western societies, is considered to be an increasingly redundant notion. Instead other concepts have sought to explain social stratification, such as social class and ethnicity. Additionally, the affect of class as the Real has been transferred onto various cultural fetishes, such as culture itself (e.g. working class culture, sport, drinking etc) and most significantly commodity fetishism.

Thus the role of ideology, and its various mechanisms, is to repress the necessary exclusion which stems from the instantiation of any class relationship. If class relationships are impossible, yet necessary, any attempt at universality in terms of surplus-value must exclude in order to constitute itself. This exclusion - the universal exception - is the concrete universal. The concrete universal is the element which is part of the set, yet incommensurable with that set. It constitutes the totality of universality. The universal is split between an abstract universal imaginary – the signifiers and images by which we guide our sense of shared social life – and the concrete universal, the exclusion which allows for the operation of the abstract universal.

Within our capitalist economic system, shared social life – abstract universality – is constituted by the production, and in particular the consumption of surplus-value, primarily in the name of surplus-enjoyment. This system is constituted on the jouissance of commodity fetishism and an ideological supplement of liberal democracy. Indeed, as something of a side bar, capitalism itself is left out of the hegemonic self-descriptions of western societies. It is almost as if to identify with capitalism is too brash, capitalism itself being too strong (Zizek, 2007: 212). Instead, it is liberal-democracy that is the primary societal value-identification in western societies. Capitalism, and the production of profit, is taken to be a natural existing state of affairs.

Within this universal imaginary, class relationships do not exist. Rather, we are all constituted on the same side of surplus-value. Ideologically, a sense of formal equality exists; all have the potential to consume and enjoy the fruits of production. Here exceptions to the rule are contingent aberrations, soon to be included in the universal set. Witness the construction of 3rd world nations as ‘developing countries’.

With the notion of the concrete universal, however, a different logic appears. Instead of focusing on the ideology of the abstract universal, the concrete universal considers exceptions to be part of the totality of capitalism. Exclusions, such as the workers of the developing world, are an essential, internal element of the capitalist totality. They are an exception to the set – incommensurable with the consumption standards of western capitalism – yet constitutive of the set. That is, for the consumption standards of the western world to function, an excess supply of workers is required. This excess of workers keeps wage prices low and production costs down. For this excess of workers, however, extreme and absolute poverty, possibly resulting in death, is a likely result. Indeed, the planet simply does not have the carrying capacity to be able to support bringing the majority of the population out of poverty.

It is this massive contradiction within capitalism that is repressed as the concrete universal. Thus, the concrete universal holds the very material Truth of class in terms of the predominant class relationship that operates within capitalism. Additionally, class as the concrete universal operates as the second modality in which class functions as a modality of the Real. Not only is there no class relationship, which acts as the Real in any economic system, but the instantiation of class relationships produces a gap between the abstract and concrete universal. This gap, which appears as symptoms throughout the symbolic order, is a modality of the Real.

It appears that we have returned full circle to the originary Marxist position, that is, of a base superstructure which is repressed by the operation of ideology and commodity fetishism. This move is perhaps Žižek’s most radical break (Miklitsch, 1998: 484); away from the contingency of post-Marxism, Žižek’s re-emphasises essentialism - an essentialism of the Real - which avoids the positivising constructions of traditional Marxism, yet maintains its traditions.

Indeed there is a strong link between these perspectives, a link which retains much of its original emphasis. However, critically a dialectical reversal has occurred. This reversal centres on the negative ontology which founds Žižek’s work. Here, instead of class as a positively existing entity, class is the exclusion (negative) which allows for the constitution of the positive order. Thus, while class is not simply one type of struggle amongst the battle for hegemony, as Laclau claims (2000a:292), but rather the key element which overdetermines the chain, conversely, the overdetermination of the chain does not occur from a positivisation of class, but rather a fundamental negativity that is excluded from the system. The absence of class from the symbolic order, therefore, is not evidence that class struggle does not exist. Rather class peace is already an effect of class struggle – of the power of contemporary capitalist ideology (Zizek, 1994: 23-25).

Žižek signals this conception in his discussion of historicism and historicity in Contingency, Hegemony, Universality. History is not an epistemological movement from essentialism to post-modernism, but rather a series of responses to class struggle (Zizek, 2000a: 112). That class struggle is largely absent from western contemporary struggle does not mean that class struggle is irrelevant, as Laclau would have it (Laclau, 2000a:300). Rather, for Žižek, Laclau’s very move into post-Marxism, into the explicit privileging of the political and the democratic, is a response to capitalism and class(Zizek, 2000a: 98).

It is only by means of a short-circuit analysis, which reveals the exception in its status as the concrete universal, that the true positioning of class in relation to capitalism can be considered. That is, while class is not a positive element in itself within the abstract universal imaginary of capitalism – here it appears as a marginalised category – through a short-circuit analysis, which reveals the exclusion from the universal imaginary, the role of class is revealed to the analyst. Thus the short-circuit analysis allows the analyst to grasp a concept which is unable to be positivised within the existing order. It is this kind of analysis which is required to restore class as a truly subversive category in the Marxist tradition of anti-capitalism.

Future issues

- What are the implications of this theoretical investigation for political action?
- How does this conception of class relate to Marxism, both from Marx himself and followers of Marx?




References

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[i] Sharpe highlights Žižek’s repeated class to politicise the economy, his tendency towards journalistic-style critique, ad hoc analyses and directive to other writers. These are valuable areas of critique to which I plan to return. Sharpe’s work is especially insightful for me as it considers many of the issues that I am covering. Essentially it argues that Žižek does not produce a coherent theory of capitalism because of the above reasons. I would like my thesis to build on this statement and construct a Žižekian inspired critique of Political Economy.
[ii] The notion of a priori is difficult in this context. Class as an a priori does not mean that absolutely universal, predating language. Rather, in the society in which we live, constructed in language, class is an exclusion from language, by language that consitutes the foundations on which language operates. But this is not to suggest that class operates univerisally in all possible formations. Rather it is politically a priori.
[iii] Note that both Sharpe and Devenney contend that Žižek constantly calls for a renewed critique of political economy, yet does not achieve this task. Devenney takes to account Žižek labelling capital as the Real, where post-Marxism is not welcome. Conversely, Žižek attacks the very form of current critiques of political economy. These attacks at policising the economy stay within it’s very parameters, achieving the policisation of the adminstration of the economy, but not considering the exclusion which consitute the economy (Zizek, 2000a: 97). Indeed Žižek considers that postmodern politics (within which he includes Laclau) cannot repolicise the economy because ‘the very notion and form of the political in which it operates is grounded in the depoliticisation of the economy’ (ibid: 98, emphasis in original).
[iv] We should also note the link between the production of surplus-value and surplus-enjoyment as the fundamental link between Lacan and Marx (Zizek, 2000c: 23-4; 2006: 82).
[v] But I have not quite worked out what the ‘correct’ relationship to class as the Real should be
[vi] Although it should be noted, of course, that the surplus appropriated by owners is taxed for community use, as well as the income of workers.