Many commentators posit a stark conflict between Marx and Lacan—or, more generally, between Marx and post-structuralist thinkers. But Lacan’s discussion of desire and alienation might be useful for a reading of Marx. It may serve to enrich the questions of desire and alienation that infuse Marx’s discussion in the Paris Manuscripts, rather than undermine them. [To read more, continue here…]
Sigmund Freud
2 posts
Karl Marx, in the *Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844*, talks a lot about how the goal of the capitalist economic system is the “unhappiness of society.” In his book *Not Working*, British psychoanalyst Josh Cohen points out that he nowadays encounters more and more patients who want the world or themselves to stop. Some patients talk about the bliss of catatonic exhaustion, the festive morning of the weekend, staring at a single line of a newspaper until it acquires a complete emptiness of the Buddhist mantra. Lacanian notions of desire in jouissance become handy in understanding this logic. As Lacan explained in his analysis of Freud’s theory of dreams, neurotic subjects often find a particular satisfaction in keeping their desires unsatisfied. [Read more here…]