Surplus- Value and Surplus-Jouissance

Psychoanalysis and Marxism have a long history as an intellectual and political fusion. The most prominent contemporary theorist in this line is Slavoj Zizek. Zizek does not simply attempt to supply a theory of subjectivity or culture to Marxism, as in so many other combinations of psycho-Marxism. Rather, Zizek considers there to be a fundamental homology between the logics of the Marxist critique of political economy and Lacanian psychoanalysis. This homology is between the Marxist conception of surplus-value and Lacanian surplus-jouissance. This link, whilst regularly alluded to by Zizek, actually stems from Lacan’s 16th Seminar[i]. Lacan equated surplus-value with objet a, the object of surplus-enjoyment, although his concern was more with the psyche of the worker, rather than the structure of capitalism (Fink, 1995: 96). It is in this latter sense that Zizek has brought the link between surplus-value and surplus-jouissance to prominence. This homology adds greatly to our understanding of capitalism. This link suggests that every Marxist critique of the logic of capitalism is always a Lacanian critique, given a few twists. In this sense we can regard surplus-value to be the logic of the capitalist symbolic order under the horizon of capitalism and surplus-jouissance the logic of the imaginary. By adding the Real as the third dimension in this analysis of surplus – the Real qua class struggle or the reserve army of labour – the possibility of subverting capitalism becomes more apparent. Nonetheless, Zizek’s assertion of the constitutive nature of surplus, certainly in the psyche, if not the economy, and his rejection of a ethico-political movement from desire to drive does not bring us any closer to a notion of radical anti-capitalist politics.


Surplus-Value

Although Zizek regularly sites the homology between surplus-value and surplus-enjoyment, he does not expand upon it, particularly in regards to the manner in which he is using surplus-value[ii]. Thus, it is worth us considering the status of surplus-value, both in the traditional Marxist sense and the manner in which it is used by Zizek.

In the strictest Marxist sense of the term, the origin of surplus-value lies in the labour theory of value. According to this theory, labour is the only source of value. Surplus-value is the value produced by the worker over and above the cost of employing the worker; the value created by labour for which the worker receives no equivalent (Wood, 2004:137). For Marx, in contrast to other socialists, there is no exploitation in the appropriation of surplus-value. The capitalist does not purchase the value created by labour (as in the product of labour), but rather living labour power, or labour time. Thus once the labour has sold their labour power, thus have no rights to the products of that labour.

In this sense, the capitalist is paying full value to the worker[iii]; there is nothing in the transaction between worker and capitalist that suggests the capitalist need pay the worker for the surplus generated by labour[iv]. Indeed, the worker generally benefits more from employment that the capitalist. Where the worker risks starvation, and ultimately death, without income the capitalist is set to lose only a small amount of profit and can easily replace the worker (Wood, 2004). This, of course, is no defence of capitalist society, simply an indication of the horizon of possibility for capitalism. Additionally, and this will be vital for our later argumentation, capitalism is able to appropriate surplus-value because of the bargaining position of the capitalist class – the oversupply of workers[v] (Wood, 2004:229). Ultimately, for Marx, the production of surplus-value is the key to capitalist productivity and the expansion of capital through circulation, which ‘realises’ surplus-value, turning it into profit; it is surplus-value, based upon the historical over-supply of workers, which is the goal (object) of capital[vi].

Zizek's notion of surplus-value is fundamentally similar to Marx, in that he agrees that surplus-value is the object of capital. Conversely, Zizek goes beyond the labour theory of value in his usage of surplus-value, although definitions can only ever be inferred from his texts. Zizek’s concept of surplus-value has perhaps more in common with that introduced by Marx in Volume III of Capital. Here surplus-value comes not only from labour, but also is vitally converted into profit through the circulation of commodities. Zizek’s point is that under capitalism there is a commodity that, through exchange, produces more than itself; the natural operation of labour is surplus. The appropriation of this surplus by the owner is expanded through the circulation of commodities which turn money into capital; capital is embedded with a quality which makes it capable of producing a surplus, a surplus we can now label profit.

Thus, for Zizek, surplus-value is the core driver of capitalism. As such, Zizek contends that the production of surplus has the same structural role in capitalism as objet a has in the psyche. Indeed, surplus-value is the objet a of capitalism. However, by labelling surplus-value as objet a, Zizek suggests that there is more to surplus-value (profit) than a simple goal. Rather, profit embodies the logic of objet a, in that it simultaneously operates as the condition of possibility and impossibility of the capitalist logic. Zizek signals this when he describes surplus-value as an inner contradiction within capitalism, but one that operates as the condition of possibility of the system.

In a similar manner, Zizek describes the ‘contradiction’ between the relations of production and forces of production as that which drives the dynamics of capitalism. Capitalism cannot be stable; rather it has to operate in a state of constant revolution of its own conditions in order to function, generally either by producing new commodities or selling existing commodities in new markets. Hence, the World Bank acknowledgement of the world’s poor as the "customers of the future". Thus, the point is that capitalism is never at a state of rest, there is never just value; capitalism is a system based on movement (circulation) and the production of excess. Capitalism’s productivity is based on its instability and the imaginary illusion of jouissance.

For Zizek, Marx’s error was that he believed the obstacle – capitalist appropriation of surplus-value – whilst retaining the benefits of surplus-value. Essentially, Marx thought that capitalist productivity could be transferred to a communism modality of political economy. Zizek argues that Marx’s mistake was to “assume that the object of desire (the unconstrained expansion of productivity) would remain even when it was deprived of the cause that propels it (surplus value)” (2000:21).

Zizek contends that this system of political economy is mirrored in the libidinal economy of the psyche. Here enjoyment is never just enjoyment, it is always imbued with an excess, embodied by objet a, the object and object-cause of desire.

Surplus-jouissance and objet a

Objet a is the object of surplus-enjoyment, or jouissance. Jouissance, often translated into enjoyment, is a fundamental concept of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Jouissance is not simply enjoyment or pleasure; rather it goes beyond this into a kind of troubling, excessive pleasure that includes elements of transgression and suffering. Fink (1995:60) distinguishes between two orders of jouissance, before (J1) and after the letter (J2).

J1 is the pure unmediated jouissance that is sacrificed with the castrating entry into language. J2 occurs as a substitute for the loss of J1, a compensation that occurs through fantasy in the staging of impossible acts to regain J1 (impossible because the subject cannot return to a time before language). J1 itself is a fantasy creation, produced because of the lack within the symbolic order (maintaining the feeling that there was a time before lack). Because J1 is a creation of language, Zizek contends that there is no jouissance for the subject before j2, surplus-jouissance. Therefore, social analysis should always focus on j2, or surplus-jouissance, rather than seeing it as a secondary effect. Nonetheless, neither should the fantasmatic form of jouissance be dismissed, the operation of jouissance can only be understand as a relationship between modalities. The story to be told is not that there was a primal jouissance, then after the insertion of the signifier, we are left with only a semblance. The operation is much more complex than this, allowing surplus-jouissance to be embedded as an excesses throughout the symbolic order.

Surplus-jouissance is embodied through objet a. Like surplus-value, objet a can be considered to be the residue of symbolisation (profit being the surplus after production), what Fink labels the Real after the letter (R2). Objet a can be understood as a remainder produced with the breakdown of the unity of jouissance. By clinging to objet a, the subject is able to ignore this division (via fantasy). Yet the subject achieves a certain satisfaction from their suffering. Second order jouissance offers objet a as a substitute for unity, staged by fantasy which gives a sense of coherence to being.

Surplus-jouissance, in its form as a renunciation of jouissance is also a form of the super-ego. The super-ego is a transgressive site of jouissance; we enjoy submitting to laws through the surplus-enjoyment supplied by the super-ego. Super-ego jouissance occurs because the subject makes a forced choice away from pure jouissance and into language. The impossibility of a return is repressed; what is repressed is that the subject never had 'it' in the first place. Through the maintenance of this possibility, a form of guilt is forced upon the subject when it submits to the law. However, as this submission necessarily fails to suture the symbolic order, the more submission is required. It is through fantasy the subject learns to control their access to jouissance and thus structure their desire.

Coca-Cola as reader of Lacan

Zizek 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 certainly does not quench thirst – or 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. Zizek describes 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. ‘We drink the nothingness itself, the pure semblance of a property that is in effect merely an envelope of a void’ (Zizek, 2000:23)

The coke marketing team have perhaps taken this as a challenge; they certainly seem to have been reading Zizek’s books[vii], with the recent launch of coke ‘Zero’, literally the embodiment of zero. Coke show’s its understanding of Zizek’s theory with its accompanying marketing campaign, which portray Coke Zero as perfection as it’s malignant elements have been removed; advertising slogans are culturally specific variations of “Why can't all the good things in life come without downsides” or “Riding the world of the negative consequences that limit us all”. Ultimately, perhaps coke and Marx have more in common that one might think, both attempting utopia by attempting to retain the object without the obstacle that propels the cause.


How can we use this to understand capitalism?

- Symbolic order is established through surplus-value
- Imaginary through surplus-enjoyment and super-ego
- The Real?

The Real is the third modality of surplus to add to the equation. I am using the Real in the sense of holes in the symbolic formula of capitalism, but also in terms of the historical exclusions that found capitalism; an excess of workers have to sell their labour-power as a commodity on the market. This latter fact is a symptom, a constitutive flaw within the capitalist formula, what Fink might label R2 or the Real after the letter. That capitalism is able to operate and exploit this fault is something akin to R1, the originary Real upon which the system is founded and must be repressed. Capitalism cannot operate whilst being historically aware of its primal accumulation that produces the vulnerabilities that allow the labour market to operate. It is this surplus of workers – Marx’s reserve army of labour – which produces the vulnerability that allows the labour market to operate and as such provides the founding moment of surplus-value. Remember, for Marx, capitalist exploitation does not lie in the appropriation of surplus-value by the owners of capital, but rather the historical situation that allows this circumstance.

How can we use this to act against capitalism?

- Against Marx and his historical notion of revolution and utilising capitalist productivity for collective ownership
- So, what are the options
o Conservative
§ Acceptance of the exploitation required by capitalism
o Liberal
§ Minimise exploitation through democratic institutions
o Utopia
§ (Marxist) remove exploitation altogether within the existing shape of political economy
o Radical
§ Change the very horizon of political economy

If Zizek’s lesson, seen in his rejection of Stavrakakis argument for radical democracy and a logic of partial enjoyment, is that we are resigned to surplus-enjoyment, are we also resigned to a form of political economy based upon surplus-value?

Zizek has rejected drive as a mode of economy (moving away from surplus-value as a modality of desire) suggesting that financial capital, and other forms of ‘pure capitalism’, operate around a system of drive. Here the goal is no longer profit, but circulation. However, as Zizek reminds us in his critique of Stavrakakis ‘ethics of partial enjoyment’, the move from desire to drive does not bring with it the elimination of objet a (profit) but rather a change in relationship. Rather than a direct, yet imaginary, movement towards the object, in drive the goal is the circulation around the object. The movement of drive is thus exemplified in financial capital where the goal is circulation and movement around the goal (money for the sake of money) as opposed to surplus-value in desire, which is linked to imaginary desires for notions such as progress, under the guise of commodity fetishism.[viii]

What can be done? According to Zizek;

"The theoretical task, with immense practical-political consequences, is here: 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 mobile of social reproduction? The lesson of the past failures of emancipatory economic projects is clear: it is not enough to demand a different appropriation of the surplus (collective instead of private) while retaining its form. Surplus-value and its capitalist appropriation are two sides of the one coin"

Is this the question that will come to orientate my thesis?

[i] Lacan made very clear that the link between surplus-value and surplus-enjoyment is one of homology, a structure link, as opposed to analogy which is a functional link without structure origin
[ii] This is a regular criticism of Zizek, that he cites traditional Marxist concepts that appear in contradiction with his Lacan theoretical framework without any indication of the manner in which he is using them
[iii] Zizek acknowledges this point (2006, p.57)
[iv] This just does not stem from a political or legal framework, but rather the economic base; under capitalist political economy this is the only possible just modality of distribution (Wood, 2004: 138)
[v] The worker is forced to labour, to join the labour force, not forced in the same sense that a slave is forced, but rather because they have no alternative but to sell their labour under the terms of capitalism
[vi] This is pure Marxist critique; the question for me to address (and this requires a strong knowledge of Marx and Marxism, is how to understand this economic critique through a psychoanalytic lens; does anything change?
[vii] Previous marketing campaigns – coke ‘Enjoy!’ and ‘Coke is it’ suggest that this is the case
[viii] This movement is characterised by the change for C-M-C (The commodity is exchanged for money in order to obtain under commodities) to M-C-M (Money is used to obtain commodities in order to make more money). The latter is certainly the logic of capital, but it operates under the illusion of the former, which carries the ideological illusion of a progression towards the object. This parallax split between the two images of circulation is vital to my understanding of capitalism