In Defence of the Hungry

Every day 13,000 children under the age of five slowly perish from hunger or related biological deficits caused by extreme poverty (UNICEF, 2008). These children are largely part of the 880 million people at the bottom of the global ‘development ladder’ minimally existing on less than US$1.25 per day (World Bank, 2007). In 2008 the World Bank (2008) reported that global economic output reached an unprecedented US$143 Trillion, despite the beginnings of a global recession. The global population continues to expand at exponential rates, which – combined with continued economic growth – has placed unsustainable pressure upon planetary resources and supporting eco-systems. Already the affects of environmental degradation are falling disproportionally upon the poor. As a response to this suffering the United Nations developed a series of ‘Millennium Development Goals’ (MDGs), the foremost of which specifically aimed to half the number of people living in extreme poverty. Other movements prompting similar goals, such the celebrity-backed ‘Make Poverty History’, ‘One’ and ‘Red’ campaigns have received significant international publicity. Yet, by the end of 2008 little, if any, progress has been made towards reducing poverty, although the MDGs and associated campaigns have made more significant gains in reducing the dislocating impact of poverty and climate change upon the collective Western psyche.

As a response to this traumatic global problematic, the impact of the MDGs upon the emotional well-being of the developed world has perhaps been underappreciated by the hungry of the world. Instead, their attention has largely been focused on the rapid increases of food prices on the global market, which have wiped out any progress that had been made towards reducing their suffering. The rise in food prices has been part of a larger trend towards the increase-demand for resource commodities, caused by the continued growth of western wealth and the unprecedented development of Brazil, India and in particular China. Whilst this development has moved millions out of poverty, it has subsequently increased the price of food – which has had an undue effect on the world’s hungry – and placed more strain on the planet’s already stretched climatic conditions and resource limits. In response to the apparent change in the world’s climate, and the demand on the most valued commodity, Oil, the Western world has sought to develop alternative energy sources. This move – turning basic food crops such as corn into alternative fuels – has resulted in a reduction in the supply of food and has become an equal partner in the increase in the price of food and the suffering of the hungry.

The interaction between bio-fuels and world food prices reflects a deeper, if silent, crisis occurring on this planet. Unrestrained material growth, along with historically exponential population growth, has placed unsustainable pressure on global resources and eco-systems. Yet, if excessive consumption is contaminating the planet, equally horrific is the suffering of a sizable population of the world who are plagued by chronic under-consumption. The contradiction is clear. The planet cannot tolerant the necessary economic growth required to bring the masses out of poverty, but an enlightened humanity cannot accept such poverty. Capitalism, the economic system which his produced this unprecedented economic growth and prosperity (for some) cannot provide solutions to this contradiction. Rather capitalism itself is split between a requirement for continual growth and the maintenance of a system of inequality which produces the hungry, excluded, workers of the world. Under capitalism, there appears little hope neither for the hungry of the modern world, nor for planet Earth itself. Moreover, despite the current financial crisis, there exists no feasible alternative to capitalist political economy. Understood in this manner the situation cannot appear anything other than tragic.

This thesis, at its heart, is about responding to this problematic in terms of the plight of the world’s hungry.

This thesis first seeks to define the problem in terms of the structuration of capitalist political economy which causes, maintains and reproduces the dynamic contradiction between poverty and environmental unsustainability. It shall be argued that these problems are not contingent aberrations, but rather structural necessities for the continued reproduction of the capitalist mode of economy. Despite the contradictions within capitalism, there currently appears to be little prospect of the collapse of capitalism and, more importantly, no feasible alternative to the capitalist mode of political economy. Furthermore, capitalism has become so pervasive – both in terms of economy and ideology – that the space for thinking political economy outside of the epistemological limits of capitalism is rapidly shrinking.

In reply, this thesis passionately calls for a return to theory, a return to thinking outside of the limits of power, not simply to restrain that power, but to actively re-engage with societal problems – in this case, the failure of capitalist political economy. The hungry exist not because a lack of resources or a lack of compassion, but rather because the interactions between the limitations of our understanding of capitalism and the ideological structuring of the capitalist empire.

Symptomatic here is the work of Jeffery Sachs. Sachs, the director of the ‘Earth Institute’ at Colombia University in New York, is perhaps the most prominent contemporary public scholar on poverty, a position established by his seminal work The End of Poverty (2005). Sach’s most recent work Common Wealth (2008) considers the interactions between poverty and environmental limitations. In doing so, Sach’s constructs much the same problematic as this thesis; the world is facing both an environmental catastrophe and massive poverty, problems to be compounded by continued economic and population growth. Sachs, however, asserts that these problems can be solved with political will and minor alterations of capitalism.

This assertion is naturally contrary to the argumentation in this thesis. More interesting however, is Sachs symptomatic lack of consideration of the problematic outside of the limitations of capitalist ideology. Two points stand out here, both in the preface to Common Wealth. Firstly, Sachs asserts that our social philosophies always lag behind the scientific representation of the world, a category in which Sachs places his work. He then lists the broad categories of scholars working at the Earth Institute – none of which include social scientists, let alone theorists or ‘social philosophies’.

Sach’s blindness is part of a larger trend, the scientific hegemony of global problem solving. Science itself has a role to play in both the reduction of poverty and in managing environment change, but it does not consider the structuration of its own understanding. This has led to a situation where the status of global politics is considered as either moral or scientific, never human. Both social theory and politics are foreclosed from the debate – with the result that not only do we not look outside of current understanding for solutions, but human behaviour is implicitly considered to be fundamentally malleable. However, as Terry Eagleton has asserted, mountains has proved much easier to move that the structures of social life.

In response, I turn to Lacanian psychoanalysis as a form of radical theory capable of both revealing the structure and limitations of our current modality of shared social life, but also the possibilities for restructuring those limitations. Lacan’s work has inspired multiple interpretations and much controversy. In this thesis the central theoretical orientation is provided by Slavoj Zizek’s reading of Lacan.

Zizek’s work provides an exciting, insightful and powerful methodology for the critique of capitalism. Yet, neither Zizek nor the (fractured) community of post-Lacanian theorists have been able to generate a hegemonic political frontier that imagines a new form of shared social life. More importantly, Lacanian theory has been constitutively unable to consider the possibilities for the material reproduction of that shared social life, although Zizek’s reading of Marxism and class struggle shall be heavily relied upon. Moreover, in this thesis I contend that such a production of both shared social life and its material reproduction exceed psychoanalytic theory. Thus, although this thesis is informed by Lacanian psychoanalysis, ultimately to engage with political economy the Lacanian horizon must be extended by a consideration of the excessive materiality of the (impossibilities) of the economic.

Considering the Hungry

Feeding the hungry is at the same time an incredibly simple but increasing complex task. Our world has both the knowledge of the existence of hunger, and more importantly the resources, to be able respond to the problem. Feeding the hungry, is not, however, a matter of political will, as Jeffery Sachs (2008: 4) suggests. Such an argument only mediates against the dislocating affect of poverty. The more disturbing conclusion, perhaps unpalpably so, is that within our capitalist mode of economy, we simply have no solution to suffering of the hungry. More than that, in the face of our complicity, the capitalist system actively maintains this situation. Simply put, in order for capitalism to function, a certain percentage of the world’s population must remain hungry and die for a cause in which, officially they have no place. They are the constitutive exception of capitalism – necessary, yet disavowed or foreclosed from the developed eye.

The argumentation here, as I shall develop in this thesis, is complex and differentiated. It is not my purpose to prescriptively represent and map the operation of either capitalism or extreme poverty. There is no doubt that poverty is impacted by a multitude of causes. Nor should we doubt that the particular (trans-capitalist) aid measures which address some of those causes – say, reducing the spread of AIDS, or immunising against Malaria – would reduce the effects of poverty and the suffering of those in poverty. Limiting our approach to these gradual measures which act only to maintain the system risks a situation where individuals who are otherwise capitalist tyrants, like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, become the word’s greatest humanitarians (Zizek, 2008: 430). None of these measures are able to link hunger and suffering with the global economy and as such is not able to interact with its fundamental cause – capitalist political economy.

Nonetheless, one should not jump to the vulgar conclusion that exclusion, suffering and hunger are active created by capitalist subjectivity, that some mysterious conspiring agents are secretly maintaining this situation in the name of Capital[ii]. Rather, the situation is much more complex and subsequently more horrific. Extreme poverty is not the consequence of a contingent aberration in the system, soon to be eliminated by economic progress or the enlightenment of the masses. Nor are some sinister agents of power responsible, such that a mere act of political will can rectify the situation. Instead, I contend that this extreme and absolute poverty is the systematic result of our mediocre day-to-day economic interactions and pleasures. That is, for the capitalist system to remain functional, providing the wealth available in the western world, extreme poverty, hunger and death occur on a horrific scale as the necessary consequence of capitalist subjectivity.

Consequently any discourse which seeks to intervene in the suffering of the hungry cannot do so within the epistemological limits of capitalism. Instead, we must develop a new space for our globally shared social life, or rather the material reproduction of that life. This new economic space must avoid both the exceptionality and the exclusion of both the masses and the even more marginalised hungry. In our current circumstances, however, such an alternative form of economy is not on the horizon. Capitalism has become so pervasive that both conservatives and many radicals have come to support Francis Fukuyama’s ‘End of History’ thesis. While conservatives celebrate the victory of liberal-democratic (capitalism), for radicals such a resignation is tinged with more than a hint of tragedy. Meanwhile, although any alternative to capitalism is likely to be in the socialist, or at least Marxist, tradition, the existence of actually existing socialism provides little in the way of inspiration, but much in the way of melancholy and nostalgia.

Instead, given the lack of alternatives, this thesis turns to theory to consider both our current understanding of political economy and the conditions of possibility for the material reproduction of shared social life. In particular, this thesis is informed by post-Lacanian psychoanalysis and the work of Slavoj Žižek. Žižek’s work on universality (the understanding and discursive reproduction of social life) suggests that any universal, or utopian, position is ultimately impossible. Instead, universality is characterised by the dialectical operation of lack and excess, such that any universal identification is constituted upon the existence of an exception. In terms of political economy, Žižek labels this impossibility class struggle.

Post-Lacanian psychoanalytic discourse offers several ethico-political alternatives. These range from the ‘democratic enjoyment’ of Yannis Stavrakakis’ (following Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe) conception of radical democracy, Laclau’s subsequent move to populism, Alenka Zupancic’s work on the concrete universal in relation to love and comedy, as well as Ceren Ozselcuk and Yahya Madra’s focus on feminine structure and class struggle. Additionally, Žižek – certainly the most prominent post-Lacanian figure – has articulated a number of political positions, from an initial support of radical democracy to calls to traverse the fantasy, move to the Lacanian Act or practice the concrete universal. The latest instantiation of his work calls for the development of a ‘subtractive politics’.

Conversely, these alternatives have generally been focused on the political, rather than the politically economic. Nonetheless, a limited range of psychoanalytic critiques of the economy have been developed. A wide-ranging discursive frontier, characterised by the work of Stavrakakis, Todd McGowan and Jason Glynos, has emerged which considers relations of enjoyment and consumption, but pays little attention to production or class relations. Alternatively, Žižek, following Fredric Jameson, has sought to develop a new dialogue between Marxism and psychoanalysis. However, whilst this ‘psycho-Marxism’ has produced a telling critique of capitalism – one that shall be heavily relied on in this thesis – it has not been able to consider an alternative to capitalism. Indeed Žižek considers that no outside exists within or beyond capitalism under which space for the development of an alternative exists.

Žižek shares this perspective with Jameson, who understands history as capitalism’s gradual realisation that it does not exist. No doubt Jameson would consider the current financial crisis as an example of that realisation and the coming apocalypse. In this sense Jameson is a revolutionary in the same manner as Jesus Christ. Both perceived the requirement for revolutionary transformation, but neither saw the need for revolutionary action. Instead the revolution would take care of itself (Eagleton, 2007: xx-xxi). So far, despite movements in the right direction, both have been proven spectacularly wrong.

Our fundamental impotence in waiting for the downfall of capitalism is a position disputed by Madra and Ozselcuk. Working with the Association for Economic and Social Analysis (AESA) out of the University of Massachusetts, these authors have sought to use Lacanian theory to consider the possibilities for restructuring class struggle and a post-fantasmatic sense of the economy. Although such work is still in its infancy, a frontier has developed which seeks to orientate class relationships in terms of the Lacanian logic of the feminine.

In this thesis I shall argue that Madra and Ozselcuk have made the correct move in attempting to consider the conditions of possibility for political economy outside of capitalism. Whilst Žižek’s analysis of capitalism provides powerful insight, his work offers little hope for the hungry. Instead, this thesis seeks to follow the AESA discourse of new relations of class impossibility. This discourse, however, is rather underdeveloped in regard to Lacanian theory. In that regard, the goal of this thesis is to consider the progressive possibilities for instantiating the impossibility of class relationships in terms of ethic constructions of universality and exception and the material reproduction of shared social life in the name of world’s suffering hungry.

Here I take reference from Terry Eagleton, whose ‘cheerful’ work stands in stark contrast to the tragic resignation of Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek. Eagleton’s work is largely orientated by the Marxist tradition, but displays much sympathy for psychoanalytic thought. More useful for this thesis, however, is Eagleton’s consideration of the body as an ethical object at the heart of the human condition. Such a consideration allows for an enlarged understanding of the consequences of political economy beyond the standard anti-capitalism critique. Additionally, Eagleton has increasingly focused on the comedic side of love (this he shares with Alenka Zupancic) which suggests the prospect of a progressive consideration of exclusion (in this case the hungry) and the possibility of hope.

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[i] Although, in the Western world more attention has been focused on the strain on Western budgets than the plight of the hungry

[ii] As I shall expand upon later, the ‘agents’ of capitalism are actively involved in the generation and maintenance of poverty at some levels. Of most interest are the historical forces of colonisation, which has created massive inequalities and labour-vulenerabilities exploited by capital, as well as the soft-colonisation of the IMF and World Bank. These ‘Bretton Woods’ have expanded capitalist relations throughout the global economy, expanding inequalities in the name of wealth creation. Additionally, Naomi Klein (2007) has identified a new dynamic by which western companies are actively creating or promoting disasters such as the Iraqi war.

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Reply to ‘Lenin’s Ghost’

Thanks for getting in touch , it is always great to hear from fellow bloggers/scholars. I am currently half-way through my PhD. Programme, having finished my MA Thesis in 2006. In regards to the environment, I would agree that it is one of the most pressing issues for humanity and the intellectual community at large. The problem, I believe is that the issues have been hegemonised by the natural sciences, which holds that the problems, or at least solutions, are technological rather than aspects of human behaviour. The failure of theorists of human behaviour to critically consider environmental signals a much larger issue in regards to the status of environmental problems within capitalism.

Some years ago I had some hope that the discursive dislocations caused by environmental awareness would not only be wholly taken on by western society, but would also consequentially change the very contours of capitalist political economy. Now, however, embolden by the breakdown of my naivety, I have a firm belief that radical global environmental degradation will continue unabated under global capitalism, whatever form the latter takes. I hold this view for these reasons;

- The power of the empty signifier ‘sustainable development’ to take on the demands of the various threats to the system. Such is the flexibility and power of this signifier that it can be taken on to mean anything from energy efficiency, community economic programmes to sustainability increasing profits
- The ability of the capitalist system to turn threats into opportunities for further profit; witness the burgeoning ‘Green market’
- Ultimately there are two complementary demands behind these processes. The first is capitalism’s structural requirement to increase rates of profit. At the most essential level this can only mean increases in the levels of production and resource consumption. Equally, the primary structuration of the capitalist subject is one of commodity fetishism, or at least enjoyment of the consumption of commodities (whether this is a fetish is open for debate). These two complementary structures within the capitalist system forbid the thinking of environmentalism outside of the demands of capitalist political economy. By far the most obvious solution to environment problems is the reduction is levels of consumption. This, however, is an idea which is simply unable to be thought through fully. At some level Green political movements and the alike argue for a reduction in levels of consumption, but the consequences of this demand are not taken to the end. Under capitalism, a reduction in consumption levels can only result in recession, with the fall out disproportionally affecting the poor at both a local and global level.
- This brings me to my final reason: Capitalism thrives both by producing new commodities, but also by bringing them into new markets. That capitalism is thriving in the ‘developing world’, in particular India and China is a triumph in terms of bringing large sections of the population out of poverty, but in the long term can only be a tragedy; if the world is currently struggling to hold onto the resource demands of the western world, it cannot possibly support the same levels of consumption for India and China, nor can it allow for others to come out of poverty.

Thus, the capitalist system actually requires the presence of poverty at two levels; a reserve army of labour which maintains the integrity of the capitalist wage system (which I will not enter into here) and in terms of global resource consumption. In the medium to long term, if capitalism continues I can only forecast ongoing and increasingly desperate resource-based conflict, beyond that of currently seen for Oil, at both a base and ideological level.


Given these conclusions, then, it is little wonder that environmentalism cannot be thought outside of capitalist terms, given the radical consequences of this thought. Consequently, one cannot be surprised by the grip that market solutions have on both politicians and the population at large. They are, quite literally the only solution available under capitalism. And, to be fair, there is good to be seen in these solutions; both strictly market solutions like carbon trading or intra-capitalist technological developments such as energy efficient light-bulbs. At a certain level, they do bring about environmental improvements. The other side of the equation, the under-side which is of primary interest to those involved with psychoanalysis, is that these devices not only serve only to reinforce the capitalist logic of consumption, but their primary (if unconscious) purpose is to mediate against the dislocation of capitalist ideology by environmentalism.

That is why I agree with Zizek’s latest work on ecology (and I see this article on your blog). Here Zizek argues that environmentalism has lost all of its subversive sting (if it ever had any) and that it is only the divide between those included and those excluded from the system that can bring at decisive change to capitalism.

This is why, in regards to your enquiry on Zizek’s work on revolution, I have some solidarity with his idea that in these times we actually have no leg to stand on; all political attempts to rearticulate political economy can only end up being capitalist (as we see with most ‘Green’ political parties around the world – their policies may have an anti-capitalist edge, but they are quite happy to participate in capitalist democracy) or being pathetically ineffective, living in the past or not having any grip on political discourse. For this reason, under these conditions, Zizek argues that the thing to do is actually nothing – to resist the terms of the debate and to continually reveal the limits of the ideological matrix under which those terms are set. In these times, I see more value in this position than ‘revolution’, which operates as yet another fantasy position; all action is useless until the revolution. Holding to the goal of revolution, then, both prevents practical action whilst subduing the effects of the real within the current order.

Doing ‘nothing’ is a difficult position to hold. Not only does it appear to not offer any prospect of political change (and there is always some truth in appearance), but this strategy also does not allow any the holder any defence against the symptoms of the hegemonic horizon. And this is the great strength of the position – it forces us to both think outside of the square and take responsibility for those actions, there is by definition no support within the current order.

In this way it has some similarities to the Lacanian/Zizekian Act, which as you may be aware, is perhaps the most controversial part of Zizek’s work. I certainly agree with your concerns, although I can see the logic in Zizek’s argument. If capitalism has hegemonised hegemony, as he has put it, the only option is an Act(ion) that is outside of those co-ordinates. Certainly Zizek would argue against any notion that the consequences of an Act can be predicted or controlled. If we can name in advance the purpose or consequences of an Act, it is no longer an Act because it has support from the existing symbolic order. Politically and psychologically, the purpose of an Act is a radical break with the existing in which the subject takes total responsibility for the consequences.

I have never been comfortable with Zizek’s confluence of the Act with revolution, or indeed anti-capitalist politics. No doubt he would accuse me of being a liberal who wants ‘revolution without revolution’, but so be it. Nor have I supported the imperative of change for the sake of change, nor the imperative for contingency (as supported by Ernesto Laclau, both collaborator and enemy of Zizek, who has previously argued that the free society is one that is aware of the contingency of its formation) for the sake of contingency.


Where this leaves us in terms of political action, I am not sure, and this is the primary focus of my doctorate. I also find the question difficult in terms of my personal lifestyle. Despite my radical theoretical commitments, I find myself limited to typical moderate-liberal action; recycling, energy efficiency etc. And these things are fine on their own, provided they do not end up in a fantasy position of subduing environmental demand. Additionally, of course, I reduce my consumption as much as possible, although on a student budget this is a practical necessity as much as anything!

Increasingly I have been attracted by the arguments of Yahya Madra and Ceren Ozselcuk, writing out of the Rethinking Marxism journal (see my last couple of posts for a summary of their work) as an example of practical, positive (not positivising) action. Here they argue for the creation of a new space for political economy that does not enter into the logic of capitalism.

Essentially, I do think we have a responsibility to the shape of the future beyond the simple demand for change. If we are faced with a destructive form of political economy, our only alternative is for a form of political economy better suited to the dignity of the human condition. To me, hoping to destroy capitalism without any progressive purpose is hopelessly blind, whatever the theoretical calculations. Our responsibility than, is both to construct a new form and practice of political economy beyond capitalism and the ideological fantasy of communism. What shape this takes, I believe is currently an open question. Perhaps more importantly are the possibilities of breaking free from capitalism. Again, this remains an open question, with notably dimmer prospects.

Ultimately, in regards to environmentalism, I believe that the challenge for the intellectual and political community is twofold. The first step is to realise that this is human problem, caused by human behaviour and it is this behaviour which needs to alter, not to be supplemented by improved natural science. Once environmentalism becomes a problem for the humanities a further step needs to be taken in recognising that for the planet to resume flourishing, we cannot simply change behaviour within the system, but must change the system itself. How that change can come about, and in what form, is the challenge for the humanities.

Update, August 2008

The majority of my time since the last update has been spent writing an essay considering the relationship between class and capitalism in terms of the interaction between Marxist and psychoanalytic theory. I plan, taking into account several re-writes, that the content of this essay will make up the majority of the first major section of the thesis, originally planned to be ‘What is Capitalism?’. The move to class signalled a change in perspective; rather than attempting to represent or map capitalism, class is instead that which prevents capitalism from being, and the subsequent relations which result from this impossibility. Such a perspective is much more compatible with the epistemological assumptions of psychoanalytic research.

The essay was divided into three sections[i];
- A theoretical history of class after Marx
- Contemporary psychoanalytic perspectives on class
- A theory of the operation of class within contemporary capitalism

The first section proved straightforward, little more than a history lesson, although the narrative was specifically constructed to produce the context for the argumentation to follow. This research did allow me to understand the context for the issues I was considering, but will prove more useful for the introductory stages of the thesis.

The second section was the most troublesome. Here I was inspired by the conference I attended in LA, which was my first exposure to work which specifically focused on psychoanalysis and the economy. Much of this work is limited in its understanding of psychoanalysis and has not been much exposed to psychoanalytic critique, but I believe that it has allowed me to bring my work forward, particularly around class struggle.

In terms of psychoanalysis and class, I have constructed this debate as divided between two positions; Zizek and Yahya Madra/Ceren Ozselcuk[ii] from the Association for Economic and Social Analysis (AESA) group[iii]. The division rests upon an understanding of Lacan's maxim 'There is no sexual relationship'. Both consider that this maxim can be equally applied to class – ‘There is no class relationship’ – but differ in their interpretation of the statement.
For Madra and Ozselcuk, class exists – it is a process which involves the process of producing, distributing and appropriating surplus[iv] - but class relationships are impossible because there is no meta-language which would allow for a neutral approach to the class process. Nonetheless, class relationships do occur, based upon an ideological illusion which mitigates and includes the failure which haunts class, they just always fail. That is, capitalist class relationships are based upon a masculine logic whereby the formation of class relationships is reliant upon an exception[v]. This exception, like Freud’s primordial father from Totem and Taboo, operates at the top of the chain, not at the bottom, and is included within the symbolic matrix of ideology.

Madra and Ozselcuk include both capitalism and communism in this category – an ideological fantasy, based upon an exception element that is notionally outside of the class process yet controls its conditions of possibility. Within capitalism, this exception is the Board of Directors – the only entity within the capitalist enterprise, who does not contribute to, and battles for, control of surplus and the class process[vi]. Only the directors enjoy other people’s surplus without giving anything in return.

I have two problems with this argument. Firstly, within the logic of this argument, I believe that the location of the exception is misplaced. Rather than the Board of Directors (who supply strategic direction) I would argue that it is the shareholders who provide nothing but the conditions of possibility for the capitalist enterprise. My second objection is to the use of an ‘upper’ exception. If you can excuse the limitations of a spatial model, my previous understanding of non-identity had come either in the form of a ‘horizontal’ constitute outside or a ‘lower’ concrete universal. The former referring to the limitations which form the basis of a discourse, say Islam to Christianity, the latter to the exclusion which forms the discourse, third world poverty to first world wealth. Instead, I define the status of the Board of Directors/shareholders as that of a nodal point, or perhaps empty signifier. Whilst they provide a point of difference within the discourse (or rather the very instantiation of difference) this exception is very well accepted from within the discourse; the exception is not excluded from the horizon itself.

In my reading of sexuation, however, I have found that this is in the predominant understanding of exception within a masculine logic. My previous understanding of exception – that of the part with no part – is better understand as an exclusion from the field of understanding. For this reason, and for reasons I shall further elaborate once I move on to Zizek’s work, I decided that I needed to step away from my class essay and gather a greater understanding of sexuation, upon which the difference between Zizek and Madra/Ozselcuk rests. In particular I need to further develop my understanding of sexuation in relation to universality, which is at the forefront of my theoretical understanding. Of special interest is the relationship between sexuation and the concrete universal, the predominant usage of which appears to vary greatly from my present understanding.

At this stage of my research, it appears that differing understandings of sexual difference, in relation to class, is the central division, both theoretical and political, between Madra/ Ozselcuk and Zizek. This division is encapsulated in their differing readings of the maxim ‘there is no sexual/class relationship’. As I noted, for Madra/Ozselcuk, within capitalism class exists relationships do exist, but they always fail. This failure occurs within what they believe to be the hegemony of masculine logic in capitalist class relationships. Against this, Madra and Ozselcuk argue that we need a feminine logic of class, one which breaks with any fantasmatic blockage of the impossibility of class and institutes this impossibility as its founding moment. Under such a feminine logic no one entity would have exclusive rights to surplus, thus breaking with current and conventional understandings of both capitalism and communism. Thus class relationships would still be impossible, but under the feminine construction of this impossibility non-exploitative class relationships are possible. The (non) relationship would be non-exploitative because no entity has exclusive rights to surplus, in contrast to the constitutive exception of masculine class relationships[vii].

It is difficult to reconcile Madra and Ozselcuk’s understanding of non-exploitative class processes with Zizek’s conception of class, even though both start from the same moment in Lacan’s work. There is a certain structural similarity between Madra/Ozselcuk and Zizek, with the former citing Zizek as sharing the usage of the maxim ‘there is no class relationship’ and in considering class as a modality of the real[viii]. At times Zizek’s work on class does resemble Madra and Ozselcuk. He does contend that class struggle is the Real, an impossibility that cannot be instituted within capitalist ideology. Zizek’s main point is that class is the exclusion which founds the capitalist horizon, a determining cause by its very absence that inspires an infinite plurality of discursive responses, which could be read in defence of Madra and Ozselcuk’s understanding of class impossibility Although the latter do not consider this point specifically, it is commensurable within their research.

Where they differ is on sexuation. Although at times Zizek’s implicit[ix] class critiques appear to consider capitalist class relations to conform to a masculine logic, Zizek main contention is that class is already a feminine concept. The impossibility of the class relationship relates to the impossibility of any meta-language within which to discuss class because class is its own exception. If class is the exclusion which founds the symbolic order (under capitalism) than it acts as the exception for all other discourses – class is the exception that allows for our conception of race, democracy and shoe fetishes. It is this exception (making the discourse masculine) which allows for the formation of the concepts of race, democracy and indeed shoe fetishism. But class is also its own exception. For this reason, Zizek argues that class is a feminine non-all – it does not receive the same exceptional guarantee of other discourses. In this sense class ‘does not exist’.

I have always considered that statements such that ‘x doesn’t exist’ are typical Lacanian exaggerations. It is not that something doesn’t exist, it is only that it is lacking. For example ‘the Other doesn’t exist’. If we consider the other to be the symbolic order, then clearly it does exist, but not in complete form. It is like stating the one’s stamp collection does not exist because it does not contain ever possible stamp. From this perspective ‘does not exist’ can be read as ‘is incomplete’. Recently, however, I have begun to reconsider my opinion based on a different kind of reading. This reading is based on Lacan’s notion of ex-istance. As I understand it, ex-stance means that it is not so much that the object doesn’t exist in the sense that it is not there, but that the image of the concept it all its fullness does not exist. That class does not exist is not the same thing as ‘there is no such thing as ghosts’. Rather it states that the universal concept of class does not exist, no matter what particular attempts are made to fill it. In the masculine sense, object relationships are lacking because attempts are made to instantiate a particular to fill the universal

This is Zizek’s understanding of ‘there is no class relationship’. Because class is non-all, it is an impossible object that is beyond definition. One cannot research class in the same way as race or democracy. Instead, researchers can only consider the affects of class, in much the same way as they might consider the affects of the real or black holes.

An understanding of the presence of absence, or effect without (visible) cause is at the core of psychoanalysis. I am confused, however, with the implicitly distinction Zizek makes between class and the real. Class struggle, Zizek regularly reminds us, is a modality of the real. The real, however, is able to be symbolically defined. The analyst is able to understand the effects of the real and represent these effects into a formal concept of the real. The concept of the real does not extinguish the real, but it does give important insight into its affects.

Madra and Ozselcuk use a similar formal definition of class processes as an impossibility, but an impossibility that can be represented formally in its affects. Considering this gap between definitions of the real and Zizek’s reluctance to define class, which we have to assume is deliberate, we have to wonder what the difference is between the real and class as a modality of the real. If class is feminine, is the real also feminine, or is the real between the point, or rather the point itself, in terms of sexuation?

Perhaps I should expand upon my current knowledge of sexuation. As I understand it, the masculine and feminine are two different attempt at universalising the concept, both of which fails. Put another way, the masculine and feminine are two different attempts to symbolise the real. Where the masculine attempts to construct itself as all – everything is within the set, except the one that is not – the feminine is always non-all – there is nothing which cannot be included within the set. The point of failure for the masculine is the exception, for the feminine it is the inability of the set to finalise itself.

We see this in Kant’s ‘mathematical antinomy’ here Kant offers two equally valid perspectives on the universe; the universe is finite and the universe is infinite. The former, which attempts to close off the universe (in doing so producing an exception) is the masculine, whereas ‘the universe is infinite’ is the feminine non-all. The psychoanalytic point is that the symbolic is naturally non-all – it cannot be closed as a set (the focus on the incompleteness of the symbolic order has led to suggestions that Lacan is a post-structuralist) but the masculine subject through either ideological fantasy or the fundamental fantasy, depending on one’s perspective, prefers the illusion of completeness.

What these perspectives are then, is different responses to the Real. The Real of sexual difference however does not operate within the logics, but rather between them. Similar to Zizek’s work on the ‘Parallax Real’ the masculine and feminine logics are simply incommensurable; there is no possibility of translating between them. That is, any construction of sexual difference can only be caught up in sexual difference itself; there is no meta-language for mediating between them. Thus, Zizek’s sexual difference is not of the variety ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’, which implies that men and women have different symbolic universes. Zizek point is more radical than this; sexual difference means that not only are the masculine and feminine different configurations of the symbolic order, there is no point of translation between the two. There is no meta-language; sexual difference is that meta-language.

According to Zizek, the Real of sexual difference corresponds to the Real of class struggle. There is no way to mediate class struggle; class struggle is its own mediation. Just as one can consider the structure of responses to sexual difference – witness Zizek’s work on the masculine and feminine – one can consider actually existing class structures. Class struggle itself, however, cannot be considered as an object of research because it is its own exception – any attempt to define class struggle will come up against class struggle itself. In this sense class struggle and sexual difference are modalities of the Real, a kind of zero-level concept.

Of course, as with Zizek’s conceptions of the Real, the Real is not simply an a priori concept in the traditional sense of a positive determining factor. Rather it is the lack to which discourses respond. That is to say, class struggle is not ahistorical, but rather a historically contingent response to the Real. What Zizek is not clear on is whether class struggle exists only within a capitalist universe, or, as with Madra and Ozselcuk, class struggle is a fundamental impossibility in operation in all forms of economy. He is able to state that the central wager of Marxist theory is that class is the underlying antagonism of capitalism, but is not able to consider the conditions of possibility for class itself, unlike Marx who discussed in detail the possibilities of class relationships between feudalism, capitalism and communism.

To summarise the split between Madra/Ozselcuk and Zizek;
- Both consider there to be ‘no class relationship’ and class to be a modality of the real
- Madra and Ozselcuk define class as a formal process of the production, distribution and appropriation of surplus
- Madra and Ozselcuk consider class relationships to be impossible because of the impossibility of neutral position in relation to the class process
- However, they argue that class relationships do exist. Under capitalism these relations are formed under a masculine logic that produces an exception
- They argue for a non-fantasmatic approach to class under a feminine logic where no one entity has exclusive rights to surplus. They label this approach communism
- By contrast, Zizek contends that class is already a feminine concept
- Class is feminine because it is the underlying antagonism of all other discourses. As such it is the exception which constitutes these concepts, including itself
- Because class is non-all, it cannot be the positive object of research, although Zizek does make ‘class’ analyses in which he suggests that capitalism follows a masculine logic. At the same time, for Zizek any ideological critique is at the same time a class critique.

Spontaneously, I support Madra and Ozselcuk over Zizek, perhaps because they appear to produce a more viable political solution. But I have come to wonder whether this rests on my, and their, misreading of sexuation. I have really struggled to bring together Zizek and Madra/Ozselcuk on class and I think it is because they understand sexuation differing. This is why I have put on hold my essay and stopped to reflect on sexuation. Thoughts?




[i] In the thesis itself I plan to extend this essay to consider the positive relations (jouissance, ideological fantasy) that stem from the instantiation of class impossibility within capitalism. These relations revolve around the ideological triad liberal-democratic-multiculturalism and the underlying enjoyment of commodity fetishism, as well as the ‘circuit of capital’.
[ii] Madra and Ozselcuk primarily write together
[iii] This group publish primarily out of the Rethinking Marxism journal
[iv] As we shall see, the very act of defining class, let alone debating particular definitions of class, is perhaps the central political/theoretical division separating Zizek from Madra and Ozselcuk
[v] The distinction between an exception, which is accepted within the symbolic terms of the discourse and an exclusion, is vital to this understanding.
[vi] This perspective does not hold any distinction between necessary and surplus or direct/indirect labour
[vii] What I am primarily interested in is what happens to the exclusion which founds the masculine order (the reserve supply of workers) under a feminine logic
[viii] As far as I know Madra and Ozselcuk have not yet appeared on Zizek’s radar
[ix] Implicit in the sense that class is not specifically mentioned as in ‘In capitalism, class relations operate as...’ but dealing with subject matter traditionally linked with class; the proletariat, global slums etc

Update, 24th June

Having been away for a number of weeks, I have had time to reconsider my thesis and where it is headed. I don’t think that much has changed, although I may be more aware of the limitations of the project and where it fits into a wider range of literature.

My core question, slightly tweaked, is as follows; “How can a post-Lacanian conception of Marxism be utilised to produce a critique of capitalism and move beyond this form of political economy?”

I still intend to investigate this question through two fundamental enquires, which will form the major sections of the thesis;

1. A post-Lacanian theory of capitalism
2. Political economy beyond capitalism

At the conference I attended I was delighted to discover a research community working specifically on the latter question, with a particular interest in psychoanalysis and Marxism. This group, operating broadly as the ‘Association for Economic and Social Analysis’ (AESA) in association with the ‘Rethinking Marxism’ journal, are attempting to rehabilitate both Marxism and communism through psychoanalysis, taking into account the latter’s emphasis on the real, fantasy and enjoyment.

The core line of enquiry for this group of scholars has been rethinking class as a process rather than a transcendental entity. Here class becomes a fundamental impossibility - the impossibility of a fair and equal distribution and appropriation of surplus. This impossibility does not refer purely to capitalism and surplus-value, but rather to the broader category of political economy.

The fundamental condition of possibility for any modality of economy is the production of surplus labour (labour is always surplus; necessary labour cannot be distinguished as production is always a collective process) and the impossibility of a fair distribution and appropriation of this surplus. In this sense, there is no class relationship – a lack which imbues all formations of political economy. This lack produces an excessive response, in the sense that there will always be class relationships which respond to the inherent impossibility of class. Thus, class is not only an impossibility, but the range of ideological responses to this impossibility. These responses seek to pacify the affect of the real in much the same manner as I examined in my Master’s thesis.

Essentially, I am seeking to produce a post-Lacanian theory of the Marxist critique of capitalism and political economy, starting from the point that prevents these objects from being; class. I will then, by extending on the ideological analysis I outlined in my Master’s thesis, seek to understand the manner in which this impossibility plays itself out to form what we know as capitalism. Here I will label class as the concrete universal and seek to examine the various responses to the concrete universal, predominately enjoyment through commodity fetishism/consumerism but also ‘limiting apparatus’ such as democracy (the primary mode of civilisation for capitalist political economy), trade unions and charities.

I believe that my eventual position will be that some form of base-super structure relationship occurs (concurrent with psychoanalytic theory), with liberal-democratic-consumerism being the main form of ideological investment, which disavows the fundamental circuit of capitalism and places a distance between the real of class struggle and the capitalist subject.

The question of anti-capitalist politics than becomes one of how to produce a form of political economy in relation to the impossibility of class. Latest work in the ‘rethinking Marxism’ community relates to a non-fantasmatic conception of economic community where no subject enjoys exclusive rights to surplus. According to this group, in particular Yahya Madra and Ceren Oszelcuk, such a conception of political economy corresponds to the Lacanian notion of the feminine non-All.

Indeed, there appears to be a burgeoning range of literature on ‘community economics’ that takes a similar position to Madra and Oszelcuk. The field of community economics does not rely exclusively on psychoanalysis or Marxism, but is often informed by these disciplines, as well as various elements of postmodern theory.

I think that at this stage much of this work is fairly clunky, but it is reassuring to know that such a field exists. In time I will have to get to know this literature and position myself within the debates. At this stage, however, I need to focus on developing my theory of capitalism.

The most difficult question for me, I believe, is the status of capitalism. That is, what is the status of class in relation to the social? Is this the fundamental impossibility to which all relations return (or, more subtly, the fundamental exclusion which founds the horizon for the political)? Certainly one can cite any number of societal impossibilities, starting with society itself as an impossible object. It is equally valid to state the freedom is impossible, or justice, or democracy. In fact, all objects are impossible objects. This is the fundamental ontological conviction of political psychoanalysis.

Why then should class be privileged? Additionally, is there any underlying logic to capitalism, such that it is not contingent? I believe these two questions are linked, and provide the most pressing issues for me to consider.

For now though, I believe that I must begin by laying out my conception of class, moving through the genealogy of the concept, through contemporary debates before outlining and justifying my theoretical position

Zizek’s Marxism; From Surplus- Value to Surplus-Jouissance

Script of paper presented at Surplus/Excess conference, University of California, Riverside, April 4-5, 2008.

The Lacanian world of desire, fantasy, jouissance and the Real can appear quite divorced from the concerns of traditional political philosophy. Recently, however, psychoanalytic thought has become a major strand within political theory, especially in continental and radical Leftist circles. This influence stems largely from Lacanian, as opposed to Freudian, psychoanalysis.

Lacan re-developed Freud’s work by focusing on language as the structuring element of human subjectivity and social life. No longer bound to the clinic, psychoanalysis has been increasingly utilised by political theorists. A central discourse within the development of political psychoanalysis has been a return to the Marxist tradition.

The rearticulation of Marxism with psychoanalysis has been largely driven by the work of Lacanian political philosopher, Slavoj Zizek . Zizek’s political work, particularly his usage of Marxism, has proven highly controversial. This controversy stems from the apparent incommensurability between traditional Marxist categories and Zizek’s emphasis on the relationship between lack and excess through what Lacan labelled ‘the Real’ and its positivised correlate, Jouissance.

Zizek’s rejection of traditional Marxism in the name of psychoanalysis has, however, opened up a new space for rethinking Marxism and renewing a Marxist critique of capitalist political economy. In this mornings presentation, I will investigate one element of Zizek’s redeployment of the Marxist tradition; the homology he cites been Lacanian surplus-jouissance and Marxist surplus-value. Through this homology, Zizek suggests that the dynamics of lack and excess in human subjectivity are mirrored by the logic of capitalism.

Through a brief analysis of two key global economic problems, poverty and environmental degradation, I will argue that this approach to surplus opens up exciting new ground for a critique of capitalism. Conversely, the very conditions that produce the uniqueness of this critique appear to prevent Zizek’s work from developing a productive notion of radical anti-capitalist politics that is able to offer any hope for the future.

Let us start by considering the dialectic of lack and excess that is present in both surplus-jouissance and surplus-value, by first reflecting on the Lacanian category of surplus-jouissance.

Surplus Jouissance

According to Lacan, the human condition is constituted by a complex dialectic between lack and excess. Lack is generated because language creates a barrier between the subject and the world of things; any attempt at symbolisation creates a gap between the language used in that symbolisation and the object to which it refers. Lacan called this gap the Real. The Real, however, operates not only lack, but also as excess because lack is itself repressed, resulting in an unconscious belief in a time before lack. As a consequence of that repression, the subject is caught in a condition of seeking to regain the absent, but impossible fullness, which existed for them before entering language. Lacan called this state Jouissance.

Although in English jouissance is often translated as enjoyment, it is not simply enjoyment or pleasure, but rather it goes beyond this into a kind of troubling, excessive pleasure that includes elements of transgression, sexuality and suffering.

In order to deconstruct the often difficult concept of jouissance, analytically, we can distinguish two orders , although no such distinction exists for the subject of language. The first is the imagined state of jouissance ‘before the letter’, the mystical state of unity supposed to have been experienced by the body. The second occurs as a response to the impossibility of the former and the subsequent disavowel of this impossibility via fantasy.

Thus, the notion of pure jouissance is a fantasmatic creation, generated only by the entry into language. However, the subject stills holds onto the possibility of such a return, although any attempt necessarily fails. Conversely, this very failure creates the only true jouissance for the subject, surplus-jouissance

Thus, Žižek argues that there is no jouissance for the subject before surplus-jouissance. As such, social analysis should always focus on this order, rather than considering it to be secondary effect. Nonetheless, neither should the fantasmatic form of jouissance be dismissed; the operation of jouissance can only be understood as a relationship between modalities – an excessive compensation for an originary lack, one which is simultaneously both imaginary and very Real.

Surplus-jouissance is embodied through objet a. Objet a can be considered to be the residue of symbolisation, the unknowable ‘X’ that forever eludes the symbolic and produces a multitude of symbolic responses through which the subject seeks to give it form. In this sense objet a is the remainder produced with the breakdown of the unity of jouissance, the positive ‘waste’ of symbolisation.

Objet a connects the lack of the Real and the excess of jouissance because it operates as both the object-cause and the object of desire. Objet a is the cause of desire because it is experienced as the lack or gap within the symbolic realm which drives the process of desire, but also acts as the object of desire because particular objects come to embody this gap, such that they become the object of the subject’s desire.

That is, an object comes to represent for the subject that which is supposed to be missing from their existance and hence suggests the possibility of a return to original unity. The impossibility of this return has two affects. It means that desire can never be satisfied; on obtaining the object, the subject discovers that their desire has not been fufilled and moves onto another object; this is the process of hysterical consumption in the capitalist subject.

Secondly, the subject seeks out antagonisms upon which to externalise the impossibility of total jouissance. This explains the transgressive nature of jouissance; the subject acts against themself in order to explain away the impossibility of a return to unity.

Žižek describes Coca-cola as the perfect embodiment of objet a and as such the ultimate capitalist merchandise. In coke, we have a drink removed of all the objectively necessary properties of a satisfying drink; it provides no nutritional benefit, it does not quench thirst, nor provide the ‘satisfied calm’ of an alcoholic beverage. Instead, all that is left is the mysterious ‘X’, the surplus over enjoyment that is characteristic of the commodity. Coca-Cola seem to have a good understanding of jouissance, as seen in previous slogans;

‘Coke is IT’
And the imperative ‘Coca-Cola: Enjoy’

Žižek has described diet-coke as the final step in this process – the commodification of nothing itself – since the caffeine that gives coke its distinctive taste has been removed. But he did not forsee the recent launch of Coke ‘Zero’, literally nothing in a can. Coke’s marketers further revealed their understanding of Lacanian theory with the accompanying marketing campaign . This campaign portrays Coke Zero as an element of perfection as its malignant elements have been removed; their advertising slogan asks “Why can't all the good things in life come without downsides”. This could well be the misleading motto of objet a.

We can see then how the dynamic of lack and excess in subjectivity aids our understanding of capitalism. The subject’s desire can never be satisfied; instead they go on wanting more and more in a never ending process of consumption unconsciously believed to be the path to wholeness. However, although we can see that the manipulation of surplus-jouissance by capitalist advertising is certainly a source of surplus and profit, Zizek cites a stronger, structural, link between surplus­-jouissance and the operation of capitalism, in the Marxist notion of surplus-value, to which we now turn.


Surplus- Value

Žižek takes the fundamental logic of surplus-value to mirror that of surplus jouissance; a homologous process by which the existence of lack produces a constitutive and compensatory surplus. Zizek argues that this logic extends to the operation of capitalism as a totality.

He contends that surplus value occurs under capitalism because the natural state of labour as a commodity is the production of surplus above the necessary cost of labour. The appropriation of this surplus by the owner is expanded through the circulation of commodities which turns money into capital which subsquently ‘realises’ surplus-value, turning it into profit.

Importantly, however, corresponding to the logic of surplus­- jouissance, in capitalism the production of surplus is only possible because of the existance of lack. Lack is revealled by the presence of symptoms which simultaneously contradict and allow the ‘official’ operation of capitalism.

In his first book, The Sublime Object of Ideology, Zizek famously argued that Marx ‘invented’ the Lacanian symptom by detecting a constitutive exception within capitalism, a necessary excess or imbalance which, rather than signalling the imperfect realisation of these principles, reveals the truth of their constitution.

As an illustration, the notion of freedom operates as a universal principle at the core of liberal-democratic-capitalist ideology. However, within that ideology one specific freedom, the freedom to sell one’s labour on the market, subverts the notion of freedom itself, yet is necessary for the continued existance of freedom; without the wage labour system, contemporary capitalist freedoms would be impossible.

The same symptomatic structure exists in relation to the production of surplus value. Once labour becomes a commodity – that is, for sale on the market, it is negated through its own fair exchange. The worker is exploited not because they are underpaid (they are infact, fully compensated for their labour power), but because of the very position in which the worker exists; having to sell their labour as a commodity.

The symptomatic element of the form of surplus-value, then, is the existence of exploitation, even when, officially there is none; when the worker is fully paid. This constitutive exception within surplus-value produces a fundamental fissure, a Real affect that Zizek labels class. Class acts as the Real element which resists symbolisation within capitalism, the lack which drives and allows for the production of surplus-value.

For Zizek, in stark contrast to Marx, class is not a positively existing element; rather it is a hitch within capitalism that cannot be integrated into the system, yet allows for its excessive operation.

Thus, as well as a lack within the system, class is also an excess in the sense that it is the surplus of workers – Marx’s reserve army of labour – which produces the vulnerability that allows the labour market to operate, and as such functions as the contradiction which drives surplus-value and capitalism.

Indeed, the whole capitalist edifice is driven to avoid its own inner contradictions. As with the surplus-jouissance of that defines subjectivity, capitalism cannot be stable; rather it has to operate in a state of constant revolution of its own conditions in order to function. Capitalism is in essence a system in crisis, but a constitutive crisis which produces the upwards spiral of productivity which is the basis of the capitalist production of surplus

Thus, the notion of class as surplus adds another dimension to Zizek’s identification of surplus-jouissance and surplus-value as the structuring logic of capitalism. Indeed, class could be consider to be the founding moment of both, particularly if we consider commodity fetishism to be the fundamental structure of the surplus­-jouissance in the capitalist subject.

However, unlike either surplus-value or surplus- jouissance, where the surplus is positivised and counted for within the existing order, these reserve workers are offically surplus to capitalist requirements. These workers, or rather non-workers, are surplus as waste; they are not strictly required for the operation of capitalism, although, paradoxically it is this waste that allows capitalist surplus to be produced.

I witnessed an example of this waste on the beaches of Santa Monica. Here homeless people lay, completely covered by all manner of types of decaying material. The affect was that the human did not appear at all; all that was left was the appearance of rubbish, a surplus that capitalism considers pure waste.

Noticeably, the otherwise beautiful beach was covered by an excess of rubbish bins but very little rubbish. I could not help thinking the very sad thought that it would simply be easier for the people of Santa Monica if the homeless made these bins their new residence. This is the status of the reserve surplus of global workers; a disavowed waste, radically excluded from capitalist ideology.

Thus we can see how surplus operates in relationship to poverty within capitalism. Poverty is necessary; without the reserve army of surplus labour that is poverty, the capitalist wage system would be unable to function. For this reason, however, poverty as an excess is also necessarily excluded; the same capitalist dynamic of lack and excess which creates poverty allows the subject to repress it’s existance. This repression can be seen in our contemporary capitalist responses to poverty. These take the form of either band-aid super-ego solutions, such as charity and fair trade or a ‘purification’ of the capitalism process through institutions like the World Bank.

Alternatively, poverty-as-surplus is simply ignored, disavowed, much like the waste on Santa Monica beach.

What these responses have in common is that they are unable to acknowledge the fundamental status of poverty as a required reserve-surplus. A constitutive exception, which Zizek labels the concrete universal that allows for the continued functioning of capitalism.

Similarily we can use Zizek’s usage of surplus-value and surplus-jouissance to understand the failure of the environment movement, and lets be sure, as long as this movement is a capitalist movement, it will be a failure. We have previously considered the manner in which hysterical capitalist subjectivity is structured to maintain the constant desire for commodities; the green movement has been unable to break through this excessive demand for jouissance. Instead, environmentalism is articulated strictly within capitalist ideology, such that green initatives only occur if they conform to the logic of capitalism; hence the value of the green dollar and the power of the empty signifier ‘sustainable development’. This response fails to acknowledge capitalism’s fundamental requirement to revolutionise itself (just as it has in the face of the Green threat) to produce further surplus. Here we can easily understand Zizek and Fredric Jameson’s glib assertion that it is easier to imagine the end of the world then the end of capitalism.

The more radical green response is the demand for lower levels of consumption. Although this response correctly, if naively, challenges the fundamental modality of capitalist subjectivity, it again shows a total lack of awareness of the dynamics of capitalism.

Such an argument allows us to identify what Zizek labels a parallax gap between the green movement and developmentalism. The two discourses cannot be held together; an increase in economic development would only produce more environmental degradation. By contrast, a truly green economy would susbstantially increase global poverty.

Indeed, latest research by the New Zealand government suggests that if the world’s population were to consume at the same level as New Zealanders, a mid-range OECD country apparently in desperate need for economic growth, we would need another five planets to support the levels of research consumption.

If the problem then is capitalism, what are the alternatives? The traditional Leftist response is located Marx’s notion of communism. Marxist commnism has, however, been thoroughly rejected by Zizek and other psychoanalytic critics, firstly because of the actualities of totalitarian repression, but also because of Marx’s reliance on the form of surplus-value.

For Zizek, Marx’s political response to capitalism and surplus-value was ultimately fantasmatic. What Marx missed was the logic of jouissance – that there is no jouissance without the obstacle that propels it. Marx believed that by removing the obstacle – wage labour and private appropriation – the productivity generated by surplus-value would remain and could be utilised for communal good. What Marx missed, however, is that it is this the inner contradiction of capitalism – between class and surplus-value – that drives capitalist productivity. That is, without class there is no surplus-value. Ultimately, perhaps Coca-Cola and Marxism have more in common that one might think, both attempting utopia by endeavoring to retain the object without the obstacle that propels the cause.

So, what does Zizek offer in the way of a program for future radical politics? Essentially and openly, Zizek offers nothing in terms of this form of political intervention. Instead he argues that we live in pessimistic times for radical politics. Asked about the revelance of his work for anti-capitalist struggle, a cause to which Zizek’s work has been increased orientated, Zizek stated in his characterisic manner;

‘I have a hat, but I have no rabbit’

This is not to suggest that Zizek work is not without political value. For Zizek, the proper political response is to reveal the surplus exclusion which structures ideology, a technique he labels ‘practicing the concrete universal.

An example of this approach occurred recently in the States with the ‘We are America’ campaign staged by illegal immigrants. In this campaign, the immigrants attempted to articulate themselves as the concrete universal, the necessary glue of American society. However, whilst this may be a good example of a protest based political intervention, it offers little basis for future movements.

I do not believe, however, that this is any reason to outrightly reject Zizek’s work and resort to the ‘rubber chickens’ that others are claiming as their rabbits. At a time when global capitalism has generated a paradoxical position where a small portion of humanity is living well beyond the capacity of the planet to support their activity, yet the majority of humanity is struggling to support their own material needs, the need to generate a new approach to political economy and the question of shared social life is as pressing as ever. These material concerns, remind us of the need to produce theory which has grounded political application, without losing sight of its theoretical convinctions. Thus, to quote Zizek;

"The theoretical task, with immense practical-political consequences, is: how are we to think the surplus that pertains to human productivity 'as such' outside its appropriation/distortion by the capitalist logic of surplus value as the primary mode of social reproduction?

Recent work within the discipline of psychoanalytic politics has made steps to reconsider the relationship between surplus and exception, most notably in the notions of the ethics of drive, love, comedy and the associated ‘traversing of the fantasy’. Yet, so far no stable position has been developed. Neither has it been considered exactly how this new articulation would apply to the production of shared social life, particularly in regards to the economy. It is this task, I believe, which forms the shared future of psycho-Marxist theory.

Zizek's Marxism; From Surplus-Value to Surplus-Jouissance

The Lacanian world of desire, fantasy, jouissance and the Real can appear quite divorced from the concerns of traditional political philosophy. Recently, however, psychoanalytic thought has become a major strand within political theory, especially in continental and radical Leftist circles. This influence stems largely from Lacanian, as opposed to Freudian, psychoanalysis.

Lacan re-developed Freud’s work by focusing on language as the structuring element of human subjectivity and social life. No longer bound to the clinic, psychoanalysis has been increasingly utilised by political theorists. A central discourse within the development of political psychoanalysis has been a return to the Marxist tradition.

The rearticulation of Marxism with psychoanalysis has been largely driven by the work of Lacanian political philosopher, Slavoj Zizek . Zizek’s political work, particularly his usage of Marxism, has proven highly controversial. This controversy stems from the apparent incommensurability between traditional Marxist categories and Zizek’s emphasis on the relationship between lack and excess through what Lacan labelled ‘the Real’ and its positivised correlate, Jouissance.

Zizek’s rejection of traditional Marxism in the name of psychoanalysis has, however, opened up a new space for rethinking Marxism and renewing a Marxist critique of capitalist political economy. In this mornings presentation, I will investigate one element of Zizek’s redeployment of the Marxist tradition; the homology he cites been Lacanian surplus-jouissance and Marxist surplus-value. Through this homology, Zizek suggests that the dynamics of lack and excess in human subjectivity are mirrored by the logic of capitalism.

Through a brief analysis of two key global economic problems, poverty and environmental degradation, I will argue that this approach to surplus opens up exciting new ground for a critique of capitalism. Conversely, the very conditions that produce the uniqueness of this critique appear to prevent Zizek’s work from developing a productive notion of radical anti-capitalist politics that is able to offer any hope for the future.

Let us start by considering the dialectic of lack and excess that is present in both surplus-jouissance and surplus-value, by first reflecting on the Lacanian category of surplus-jouissance.

Surplus Jouissance

According to Lacan, the human condition is constituted by a complex dialectic between lack and excess. Lack is generated because language creates a barrier between the subject and the world of things; any attempt at symbolisation creates a gap between the language used in that symbolisation and the object to which it refers. Lacan called this gap the Real. The Real, however, operates not only lack, but also as excess because lack is itself repressed, resulting in an unconscious belief in a time before lack. As a consequence of that repression, the subject is caught in a condition of seeking to regain the absent, but impossible fullness, which existed for them before entering language. Lacan called this state Jouissance.

Although in English jouissance is often translated as enjoyment, it is not simply enjoyment or pleasure, but rather it goes beyond this into a kind of troubling, excessive pleasure that includes elements of transgression, sexuality and suffering.

In order to deconstruct the often difficult concept of jouissance, analytically, we can distinguish two orders , although no such distinction exists for the subject of language. The first is the imagined state of jouissance ‘before the letter’, the mystical state of unity supposed to have been experienced by the body. The second occurs as a response to the impossibility of the former and the subsequent disavowel of this impossibility via fantasy.

Thus, the notion of pure jouissance is a fantasmatic creation, generated only by the entry into language. However, the subject stills holds onto the possibility of such a return, although any attempt necessarily fails. Conversely, this very failure creates the only true jouissance for the subject, surplus-jouissance

Thus, Žižek argues that there is no jouissance for the subject before surplus-jouissance. As such, social analysis should always focus on this order, rather than considering it to be secondary effect. Nonetheless, neither should the fantasmatic form of jouissance be dismissed; the operation of jouissance can only be understood as a relationship between modalities – an excessive compensation for an originary lack, one which is simultaneously both imaginary and very Real.

Surplus-jouissance is embodied through objet a. Objet a can be considered to be the residue of symbolisation, the unknowable ‘X’ that forever eludes the symbolic and produces a multitude of symbolic responses through which the subject seeks to give it form. In this sense objet a is the remainder produced with the breakdown of the unity of jouissance, the positive ‘waste’ of symbolisation.

Objet a connects the lack of the Real and the excess of jouissance because it operates as both the object-cause and the object of desire. Objet a is the cause of desire because it is experienced as the lack or gap within the symbolic realm which drives the process of desire, but also acts as the object of desire because particular objects come to embody this gap, such that they become the object of the subject’s desire.

That is, an object comes to represent for the subject that which is supposed to be missing from their existance and hence suggests the possibility of a return to original unity. The impossibility of this return has two affects. It means that desire can never be satisfied; on obtaining the object, the subject discovers that their desire has not been fufilled and moves onto another object; this is the process of hysterical consumption in the capitalist subject.

Secondly, the subject seeks out antagonisms upon which to externalise the impossibility of total jouissance. This explains the transgressive nature of jouissance; the subject acts against themself in order to explain away the impossibility of a return to unity.

Žižek describes Coca-cola as the perfect embodiment of objet a and as such the ultimate capitalist merchandise. In coke, we have a drink removed of all the objectively necessary properties of a satisfying drink; it provides no nutritional benefit, it does not quench thirst, nor provide the ‘satisfied calm’ of an alcoholic beverage. Instead, all that is left is the mysterious ‘X’, the surplus over enjoyment that is characteristic of the commodity. Coca-Cola seem to have a good understanding of jouissance, as seen in previous slogans;

‘Coke is IT’
And the imperative ‘Coca-Cola: Enjoy’

Žižek has described diet-coke as the final step in this process – the commodification of nothing itself – since the caffeine that gives coke its distinctive taste has been removed. But he did not forsee the recent launch of Coke ‘Zero’, literally nothing in a can. Coke’s marketers further revealed their understanding of Lacanian theory with the accompanying marketing campaign . This campaign portrays Coke Zero as an element of perfection as its malignant elements have been removed; their advertising slogan asks “Why can't all the good things in life come without downsides”. This could well be the misleading motto of objet a.

We can see then how the dynamic of lack and excess in subjectivity aids our understanding of capitalism. The subject’s desire can never be satisfied; instead they go on wanting more and more in a never ending process of consumption unconsciously believed to be the path to wholeness. However, although we can see that the manipulation of surplus-jouissance by capitalist advertising is certainly a source of surplus and profit, Zizek cites a stronger, structural, link between surplus­-jouissance and the operation of capitalism, in the Marxist notion of surplus-value, to which we now turn.


Surplus- Value

Žižek takes the fundamental logic of surplus-value to mirror that of surplus jouissance; a homologous process by which the existence of lack produces a constitutive and compensatory surplus. Zizek argues that this logic extends to the operation of capitalism as a totality.

He contends that surplus value occurs under capitalism because the natural state of labour as a commodity is the production of surplus above the necessary cost of labour. The appropriation of this surplus by the owner is expanded through the circulation of commodities which turns money into capital which subsquently ‘realises’ surplus-value, turning it into profit.

Importantly, however, corresponding to the logic of surplus­- jouissance, in capitalism the production of surplus is only possible because of the existance of lack. Lack is revealled by the presence of symptoms which simultaneously contradict and allow the ‘official’ operation of capitalism.

In his first book, The Sublime Object of Ideology, Zizek famously argued that Marx ‘invented’ the Lacanian symptom by detecting a constitutive exception within capitalism, a necessary excess or imbalance which, rather than signalling the imperfect realisation of these principles, reveals the truth of their constitution.

As an illustration, the notion of freedom operates as a universal principle at the core of liberal-democratic-capitalist ideology. However, within that ideology one specific freedom, the freedom to sell one’s labour on the market, subverts the notion of freedom itself, yet is necessary for the continued existance of freedom; without the wage labour system, contemporary capitalist freedoms would be impossible.

The same symptomatic structure exists in relation to the production of surplus value. Once labour becomes a commodity – that is, for sale on the market, it is negated through its own fair exchange. The worker is exploited not because they are underpaid (they are infact, fully compensated for their labour power), but because of the very position in which the worker exists; having to sell their labour as a commodity.

The symptomatic element of the form of surplus-value, then, is the existence of exploitation, even when, officially there is none; when the worker is fully paid. This constitutive exception within surplus-value produces a fundamental fissure, a Real affect that Zizek labels class. Class acts as the Real element which resists symbolisation within capitalism, the lack which drives and allows for the production of surplus-value.

For Zizek, in stark contrast to Marx, class is not a positively existing element; rather it is a hitch within capitalism that cannot be integrated into the system, yet allows for its excessive operation.

Thus, as well as a lack within the system, class is also an excess in the sense that it is the surplus of workers – Marx’s reserve army of labour – which produces the vulnerability that allows the labour market to operate, and as such functions as the contradiction which drives surplus-value and capitalism.

Indeed, the whole capitalist edifice is driven to avoid its own inner contradictions. As with the surplus-jouissance of that defines subjectivity, capitalism cannot be stable; rather it has to operate in a state of constant revolution of its own conditions in order to function. Capitalism is in essence a system in crisis, but a constitutive crisis which produces the upwards spiral of productivity which is the basis of the capitalist production of surplus

Thus, the notion of class as surplus adds another dimension to Zizek’s identification of surplus-jouissance and surplus-value as the structuring logic of capitalism. Indeed, class could be consider to be the founding moment of both, particularly if we consider commodity fetishism to be the fundamental structure of the surplus­-jouissance in the capitalist subject.

However, unlike either surplus-value or surplus- jouissance, where the surplus is positivised and counted for within the existing order, these reserve workers are offically surplus to capitalist requirements. These workers, or rather non-workers, are surplus as waste; they are not strictly required for the operation of capitalism, although, paradoxically it is this waste that allows capitalist surplus to be produced.

I witnessed an example of this waste on the beaches of Santa Monica. Here homeless people lay, completely covered by all manner of types of decaying material. The affect was that the human did not appear at all; all that was left was the appearance of rubbish, a surplus that capitalism considers pure waste.

Noticeably, the otherwise beautiful beach was covered by an excess of rubbish bins but very little rubbish. I could not help thinking the very sad thought that it would simply be easier for the people of Santa Monica if the homeless made these bins their new residence. This is the status of the reserve surplus of global workers; a disavowed waste, radically excluded from capitalist ideology.

Thus we can see how surplus operates in relationship to poverty within capitalism. Poverty is necessary; without the reserve army of surplus labour that is poverty, the capitalist wage system would be unable to function. For this reason, however, poverty as an excess is also necessarily excluded; the same capitalist dynamic of lack and excess which creates poverty allows the subject to repress it’s existance. This repression can be seen in our contemporary capitalist responses to poverty. These take the form of either band-aid super-ego solutions, such as charity and fair trade or a ‘purification’ of the capitalism process through institutions like the World Bank.

Alternatively, poverty-as-surplus is simply ignored, disavowed, much like the waste on Santa Monica beach.

What these responses have in common is that they are unable to acknowledge the fundamental status of poverty as a required reserve-surplus. A constitutive exception, which Zizek labels the concrete universal that allows for the continued functioning of capitalism.

Similarily we can use Zizek’s usage of surplus-value and surplus-jouissance to understand the failure of the environment movement, and lets be sure, as long as this movement is a capitalist movement, it will be a failure. We have previously considered the manner in which hysterical capitalist subjectivity is structured to maintain the constant desire for commodities; the green movement has been unable to break through this excessive demand for jouissance. Instead, environmentalism is articulated strictly within capitalist ideology, such that green initatives only occur if they conform to the logic of capitalism; hence the value of the green dollar and the power of the empty signifier ‘sustainable development’. This response fails to acknowledge capitalism’s fundamental requirement to revolutionise itself (just as it has in the face of the Green threat) to produce further surplus. Here we can easily understand Zizek and Fredric Jameson’s glib assertion that it is easier to imagine the end of the world then the end of capitalism.

The more radical green response is the demand for lower levels of consumption. Although this response correctly, if naively, challenges the fundamental modality of capitalist subjectivity, it again shows a total lack of awareness of the dynamics of capitalism.

Such an argument allows us to identify what Zizek labels a parallax gap between the green movement and developmentalism. The two discourses cannot be held together; an increase in economic development would only produce more environmental degradation. By contrast, a truly green economy would susbstantially increase global poverty.

Indeed, latest research by the New Zealand government suggests that if the world’s population were to consume at the same level as New Zealanders, a mid-range OECD country apparently in desperate need for economic growth, we would need another five planets to support the levels of research consumption.

If the problem then is capitalism, what are the alternatives? The traditional Leftist response is located Marx’s notion of communism. Marxist commnism has, however, been thoroughly rejected by Zizek and other psychoanalytic critics, firstly because of the actualities of totalitarian repression, but also because of Marx’s reliance on the form of surplus-value.

For Zizek, Marx’s political response to capitalism and surplus-value was ultimately fantasmatic. What Marx missed was the logic of jouissance – that there is no jouissance without the obstacle that propels it. Marx believed that by removing the obstacle – wage labour and private appropriation – the productivity generated by surplus-value would remain and could be utilised for communal good. What Marx missed, however, is that it is this the inner contradiction of capitalism – between class and surplus-value – that drives capitalist productivity. That is, without class there is no surplus-value. Ultimately, perhaps Coca-Cola and Marxism have more in common that one might think, both attempting utopia by endeavoring to retain the object without the obstacle that propels the cause.

So, what does Zizek offer in the way of a program for future radical politics? Essentially and openly, Zizek offers nothing in terms of this form of political intervention. Instead he argues that we live in pessimistic times for radical politics. Asked about the revelance of his work for anti-capitalist struggle, a cause to which Zizek’s work has been increased orientated, Zizek stated in his characterisic manner;

‘I have a hat, but I have no rabbit’

This is not to suggest that Zizek work is not without political value. For Zizek, the proper political response is to reveal the surplus exclusion which structures ideology, a technique he labels ‘practicing the concrete universal.

An example of this approach occurred recently in the States with the ‘We are America’ campaign staged by illegal immigrants. In this campaign, the immigrants attempted to articulate themselves as the concrete universal, the necessary glue of American society. However, whilst this may be a good example of a protest based political intervention, it offers little basis for future movements.

I do not believe, however, that this is any reason to outrightly reject Zizek’s work and resort to the ‘rubber chickens’ that others are claiming as their rabbits. At a time when global capitalism has generated a paradoxical position where a small portion of humanity is living well beyond the capacity of the planet to support their activity, yet the majority of humanity is struggling to support their own material needs, the need to generate a new approach to political economy and the question of shared social life is as pressing as ever. These material concerns, remind us of the need to produce theory which has grounded political application, without losing sight of its theoretical convinctions. Thus, to quote Zizek;

"The theoretical task, with immense practical-political consequences, is: how are we to think the surplus that pertains to human productivity 'as such' outside its appropriation/distortion by the capitalist logic of surplus value as the primary mode of social reproduction?

Recent work within the discipline of psychoanalytic politics has made steps to reconsider the relationship between surplus and exception, most notably in the notions of the ethics of drive, love, comedy and the associated ‘traversing of the fantasy’. Yet, so far no stable position has been developed. Neither has it been considered exactly how this new articulation would apply to the production of shared social life, particularly in regards to the economy. It is this task, I believe, which forms the shared future of psycho-Marxist theory.

Thank You.