Capitalism and Desire

Introduction: After Injustice and Repression

"The turn from the critique of inequality to the critique of repression manifests itself most clearly in the case of the Frankfurt School. Whereas Marx takes capitalist inequality as the fundamental problem confronting the critic of capitalism, the Frankfurt School, in a stunning turnaround, sees the equality that capitalism produces as its chief danger. Rather than failing to engender equality, the capitalist form of injustice is a forced equality. Capitalism’s repressiveness functions through the elimination of all genuine difference, and thus even the communist attack on capitalism falls into its trap by leveling all difference through enforced economic and social equality." (6)

→ For the Frankfurt School, capitalism’s equality is what is most dangerous about it. That’s because capitalism is a form of injustice that is forced equality. The repressive function of capitalism is precisely that it eliminates all forms of difference and insists on a multicultural, assimilated body politic with the same human with the same desires whose lack can be overcome by capitalism. The communist line of thinking is also flawed as well, according to the Frankfurt School, insofar as communism, too, is attempting to eliminate difference.

Perhaps this is close to what James was getting at, as well as perhaps what Deleuze was getting at — the elimination of difference, the flattening of difference, the erasure of difference, and the fear of the unknown, is the true atrocity of capitalism; it makes the same, docile, consumerist subject everywhere, and insists on this form of subjectivity precisely because it makes the capitalist system more efficient and the consumer easier to exploit. If we have technologies like film and social media and YouTube and influencers marketing to us and mythologizing the same set of products in the same set of industries, convincing us of the special fetish character of these products, and instilling this en masse among the broad public, then capitalism can efficiently exploit the consumer and generate profits precisely because everyone, the members of the consumer subject base, all have the same desires. They can market the same object, over and over and over again, where there is little to no genuine difference between objects, where they are the same fucking thing, where there are 50 different types of marinara pasta sauce on the shelf at HEB, where there are 25 different types of toilet paper from all sorts of different brands, where we are all convinced that purchasing products from a particular brand makes us part of a nation, part of something bigger than ourselves, and it convinces us of this point precisely by eliminating difference, by assimilating the masses into one truly governable set of individuals that can be efficiently exploited, where everyone can live in a Lululemon heaven.

"Adorno goes on to offer a vision of emancipation that also veers away from that of Marx. It is not a society in which the workers appropriate the value that they themselves produce but one in which singularity could remain intact. Adorno continues, “An emancipated society, on the other hand, would not be a unitary state, but the realization of universality in the reconciliation of differences.” This idea of emancipated society takes as its starting point as much Freud’s analysis of repression as Marx’s of capitalism. Repression, according to the Frankfurt School, is the forgetting of what fails to fit within the capitalist system, and the critical task becomes one of drawing attention to this repressed material. This repression is not, however, always sexual repression, as it would be for other theorists attempting to bring Marx and Freud together." (7)

→ For Adorno: the vision of emancipation that is ideal is the vision of emancipation that rests on a world where singularity can remain intact, where “the realization of universality in the reconciliation of differences” occurs. This feels very similar to William James — this idea that we can never ever truly know what happens inside the mind of other people, like we can never see the world from another person’s perspective; we are only ever able to see the world through our own eyeballs. I guess Meta glasses might change that, and it is why VR pornography is a thing. Both give us the impression that we CAN see the world from another’s perspective, that we can understand how the world looks beyond our own. How we only experience the world through our own stream of consciousness, and that what the other considers to be significant will be foreign to us.

"The fundamental gesture of capitalism is the promise, and the promise functions as the basis for capitalist ideology. One invests money with the promise of future returns; one starts a job with the promise of a higher salary; one takes a cruise with the promise of untold pleasure in the tropics; one buys the newest piece of electronics with the promise of easier access to what one wants. In every case the future embodies a type of satisfaction foreclosed to the present and dependent on one’s investment in the capitalist system. The promise ensures a sense of dissatisfaction with the present in relation to the future." (11–12)

→ Closely connected to Wendy Brown’s idea of the “economization” of life under neoliberalism. I think this is why Mitski’s “I Bet On Losing Dogs” is so emotionally evocative — the idea of “betting” on a partner, that you will invest in a partner like some form of stock with the promise or hope of receiving a dividend, is precisely the sort of warped thinking that I think McGowan is alluding to here. Beneath capitalism, we think about attachment or love in the form of “betting” on things.

Also, it reminds me of how in the song, there is a kind of death drive that exists — Mitski seeks her own unraveling and dissatisfaction. In other words, this is where Mitski’s death drive might appear — the death drive here being the desire to return to something that results in one’s own fragmentedness, returning to something in order to feel an emptiness that can in turn create the space for value creation. Such is the logic of the sacrifice — by investing, and losing, something, the thing that is lost, the “lost object,” so to speak, is made more valuable, more meaningful. Perhaps Jesus represents a lost object in this regard.

But where I think Mitski’s song is especially fascinating is how the death drive interacts with this “economization” of life underneath neoliberalism, to use Wendy Brown’s term. Mitski’s song, I think, reveals an essential condition to economized life: by turning something like love into an investment, where the love object is perceived to be a conduit for satisfaction that can fulfill the lack, the death drive then attaches to this investment behavior and, in turn, causes the subject to desire objects that lead to their own unraveling.

Idk, that might not be the best interpretation, but I think what I’m trying to communicate is that the death drive in conjunction with this economization logic is fascinating and ripe with interpretation. Where everything can turn into an “investment” that has an “ROI” or a “payoff,” where even love can turn into a betting game, and put that in conjunction with the death drive, where the subject desires their own emptiness in a very perverted way, and I think you get a condition of life that describes so much of the present.

Think about everything as an investment — love, education, exercise, etc. — and they all, under the logic of neoliberalism, have some sort of “cost/benefit” structure, which can enable us to forecast future returns on the investment, hoping to fulfill the promise that we vest into the object. But because of the death drive, we also invest in things that are leading to our own dissatisfaction in order to create meaning in our own lives. In other words, to “bet on losing dogs,” but also, the desire to “feel it,” where the “it” is the lack, the hurt, the dissatisfaction.

But the secret of capitalism’s integration of critique lies not in the process of commodification, no matter how self-evident it appears. The secret is in the promise. If one invests oneself in the promise of the future, through this gesture one accepts the basic rules of the capitalist game. (12)

→ So in the logic of “I Bet On Losing Dogs,” the decision to view the relationship as a “bet” is already ceding to the logic of capitalism, to play capitalism according to its own game.

"The task is thus that of freeing critique from the promise of a better future. Why would one be critical at all without such a promise? What could be the possible ground for the critique?" (13)

→ McGowan then goes on later to say that the “promise must be abandoned” — that is, delete the desire to forecast, predict, and believe that there is some payoff that may or may not occur.

"This work attempts to answer these questions by situating the future not as a possibility on the horizon but as the implicit structure of the present. There is, in other words, no future to realize except to accede to the exigencies that are already written into the ruling capitalist system. The point of critique is not promissory, not futural, but wholly immanent." (13)

→ For McGowan, also, the “future” is not something that is going to come, but an imagination that is implicitly constructed in the present.

Chapter 8 – Exchanging Love for Romance

"Such a list attempts to remove the trauma of love by eliminating its unforeseen power, its ability to attack the subject at the most inconvenient time and in the most unanticipated form." (179)

→ The dating app as anti-In the Mood for Love: the list of desirable qualities on the dating app profile “attempts to remove the trauma of love by eliminating its unforeseen power, its ability to attack the subject at the most inconvenient time and in the most unanticipated form.”

The dating app obliterates the pang in the chest, the odd moment when you realize what you feel and decide to come to terms with it.

"(The) ability of love to disrupt the course of everyday life and to introduce the eternal into the temporal." (179)

→ In the Mood for Love — the ability of love to disrupt the course of everyday life and to introduce the eternal into the temporal.

In many ways, this is what In the Mood for Love is trying to do — show how affection and love as a concept changes in the midst of globalized capitalism, where partners are asked to be separate from one another, where the workplace becomes a place away from love, where leisure time and the swift movement from inside of a hallway, for a moment’s notice, debilitates and renders the self fragmented — the trauma of love, shifted, in the age of globalized capitalism.

"The promise inherent in every commodity, the promise of a permanent fulfillment of one’s desire that the commodity will never keep." (179)

→ In the Mood for Love, then, as an anticapitalist film on the grounds that it views love as gutted of the promise inherent in every commodity — the promise of a permanent fulfillment of one’s desire that the commodity will never keep.

"When I go to the dating service, I seek love as an object available for purchase, and this is the form in which love appears throughout the capitalist universe." (179)

→ The dating app is the place to go to seek love as an object available for purchase, and this is the form in which love appears throughout the capitalist universe — the dating app is the synecdoche for capitalist society.

"We can pursue the lost object through a series of inadequate replacements and endure the disappointment that follows from each successful acquisition of the object, whether in the sex act or at the shopping mall." (185)

→ The “rebound” as pursuing the lost object through a series of inadequate replacements.

"Though we tend to associate monogamy with the repressive demands of capitalist society, one is almost tempted to call monogamy an anticapitalist practice. In contrast, the subject who moves from object to object in romantic life follows the logic of accumulation. Even if this subject avoids the capitalist fantasy and doesn’t believe that any one object will have the final secret, it is often the equally compelling fantasy of quantity that drives this activity. One believes that accumulating a vast quantity of romantic objects will unlock the secret of the ultimate satisfaction, which is exactly the fantasy capitalism proffers. But love, in contrast to romance, doesn’t provide anything for the subject to accumulate. Instead of contributing to the subject’s wealth, it takes away from it." (186)

→ People that say “dating is a hobby” follow the logic of accumulation, failing to encounter the love object, sustaining the fantasy that accumulating a vast quantity of romantic objects will unlock the secret of the ultimate satisfaction, which is exactly the fantasy capitalism proffers.

Other Memorable Quotes:

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"Capitalism has the effect of sustaining subjects in a constant state of desire. As subjects of capitalism, we are constantly on the edge of having our desire realized, but never reach the point of realization. This has the effect of producing a satisfaction that we don’t recognize as such. That is, capitalist subjects experience satisfaction itself as dissatisfying, which enables them to simultaneously enjoy themselves and believe wholeheartedly that a more complete satisfaction exists just around the corner, embodied in the newest commodity." (11)

"(This) book represents a third direction in the critique of capitalism. Rather than taking inequality or repression as the starting point, it begins with the satisfaction that capitalism provides. The problem, I contend, is not that capitalism fails to satisfy but that it doesn’t enable its subjects to recognize where their own satisfaction lies. The capitalist regime produces subjects who cling feverishly to the image of their own dissatisfaction and thus to the promise, constantly made explicit in capitalist society, of a way to escape this dissatisfaction through either the accumulation of capital or the acquisition of the commodity." (11)

"Capitalism functions as effectively as it does because it provides satisfaction for its subjects while at the same time hiding the awareness of this satisfaction from them. If we recognized that we obtained satisfaction from the failure to obtain the perfect commodity rather than from a wholly successful purchase, we would be freed from the psychic appeal of capitalism. That is not to say that we would never buy another commodity, but just that we would do so without a psychic investment in the promise of the commodity, which is already, in some sense, a revolution. This change would eliminate the barrier to structural changes to our socioeconomic system and would create a different system. Problems of political organization and struggle are difficult, but they pale in comparison to the problem of capitalism’s psychic appeal. Understanding the importance of the psychic investment in the capitalist economy and the need to break from it is Freud’s legacy for the contemporary critique of capitalism." (14)

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"It is difficult to look at the array of commodities available in today’s world and not see in almost every one some influence of the fantasy of falling in love. Gym memberships, diet soda, mascara, and leather jackets all hold within them the potential to render us worthy of love. Perhaps no one goes to the gym consciously trying to create a lovable body, but keeping oneself in proper shape has some relationship to acquiring and keeping a lover. Those who are fit tend to have much better prospects." (176)

"Beer commercials promise love relations if we choose the proper beer, and jewelry advertisements assure us that our proposal will be accepted if we purchase the proper ring." (176)

"(It) is almost impossible to understand how love operates within capitalism without examining the structure of the dating service. One often turns to a dating service out of desperation, and it is this desperation that gives the dating service its revelatory power." (177)

"Unlike the gym or the jewelry store, it offers a direct path to love. I sign up in hopes of finding someone with whom I might fall in love without having to go to the trouble of sculpting my body or finding the perfect necklace that would render me worthy of love." (177)

"The dating service demands that clients list their favorable qualities. When I compile such a list, I portray myself as a desirable and potentially lovable commodity. I offer myself up to the dating service for others to examine, test-drive, and perhaps purchase. To do this, I must transform myself into a series of qualities and preferences that function as an advertisement for myself. The features that render me more appealing as a commodity are necessarily the ones that I emphasize, and I pass over in silence the features that would lessen my exchange value. I highlight my sense of humor and my doctorate in macroeconomics while making no mention of my baldness and chronic bad breath. Even my preferences become part of my commodity status. My love for the outdoors or for watching classic movies helps to render me more appealing. Preferences advertise me as much as qualities do. This mode of self-presentation reveals that one must transform oneself into a commodity when one embarks on the quest for love." (177)

Just as I go into a grocery store with a shopping list for the items that I believe will realize my desire, I provide the dating service with a description of the characteristics that I find desirable in a romantic partner. But unlike at the grocery store, I go to the dating service in search of love, not just a carton of ice cream that would provide an inherently fleeting satisfaction for my desire. (178)

"No one believes that eating a particular kind of ice cream will provide such a lasting satisfaction that I will never desire ice cream again, but many in capitalist society believe that finding one’s soul mate will permanently solve the problem of desire for a love object. This difference bespeaks the pivotal role love has within capitalism. It is not just one commodity among many but the central commodity. One might say that all other commodities are modeled on the love object rather than vice versa. (178)"

"In this precise sense, there is no difference between a romantic partner and a vacuum cleaner." (186)

"We know that someone is in love when the beloved’s most repellant qualities undergo a complete reversal of valence. A person’s unpleasant smell, slovenly attire, or obnoxious eating habits become appealing quirks rather than reasons for keeping a distance. The lover embraces the most unflattering characteristics of the beloved and treats them as sublime indexes of the beloved’s worth. The unpleasant odor resulting from a refusal to shower, for instance, would become an indication of the beloved object’s disdain for obsessive daily rituals with which others waste their time. There is no quality so universally negative that it could not undergo this transubstantiation in the act of love: fat can become cuddliness, emaciation can become fitness, bad attire can become idiosyncratic style, and so on. In contrast to desire, love depends on the embrace of what is undesirable in the object." (188)

"The soul mate is the commodity in the form of the subject’s complement. This is why the idea of the soul mate has such importance for capitalism. The subject experiences itself as lacking whenever it desires, and no object can fill this lack. But the promise of the soul mate is the promise of completion, an object that would complement the lacking subject perfectly and thereby ameliorate its lack. No such complement exists outside of ideological fantasies, but capitalism requires subjects who invest themselves in such fantasies." (192)