Rev Left Radio - Pure Excess: Capitalism, Commodity Fetishism, and the Promise of More

Episode Date: March 10, 2025

Todd McGowan joins the show once again, this time to discuss his newest book "Pure Excess: Capitalism and the Commodity". Together, he and Breht discuss commodity fetishism, the tensions between Marxism and psychoanalysis, what a critique of the subjective aspects of capitalism offers anti-capitalist politics, the "superstructural malaise" of late capitalism, Desire and Lack, capitalism's death drive, how to resist becoming a neoliberal subject, and much more.  "Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, McGowan shows how the production of commodities explains the role of excess in the workings of capitalism. Capitalism and the commodity ensnare us with the image of the constant fulfillment of our desires―the seductive but unattainable promise of satisfying a longing that has no end. To challenge this system, McGowan turns to art, arguing that it can expose the psychological mechanisms that perpetuate capitalist society and reveal the need for limits. Featuring lively writing and engaging examples from film, literature, and popular culture, Pure Excess uncovers the hidden logic of capitalism―and helps us envision a noncapitalist life in a noncapitalist society." Check out all our other episodes with Todd HERE Check out Todd's podcast Why Theory? on your preferred podcast app! Outro Song: I Want to Work Less by Grand Commander ----------------------------- Support Rev Left and get access to bonus episodes: www.patreon.com/revleftradio Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio Follow RLR on IG HERE Learn more about Rev Left HERE

Have you ever had the experience of chasing something, whether it's success, love, money, personal improvement? Only to find that when you finally reach it, the feeling of arrival never quite comes. Maybe for a fleeting moment, it seems like you've made it, but then as soon as the dust settles, a new longing emerges, another goal, another craving, another sense that something is still missing, that you are still missing something. And so the cycle continues, stretching out ahead of you endlessly, the next job, the next relationship, the next purchase, the next version of yourself that finally will feel complete. Capitalism knows this feeling well. In fact, it doesn't just know it, it depends on it. Our entire system is structured around manufacturing and maintaining this feeling of lack. It's not just that capitalism exploits our labor, and it certainly does, but it's

also exploits desire itself. It convinces us that we can finally get whole if we just consume enough, work hard enough, own enough, optimize enough. And yet, the more we chase, the more the goalpost moves. The more we consume, the hungrier we become. The more we seek satisfaction, the more dissatisfied we are. Because in the end, capitalism doesn't just fail to provide fulfillment. It requires our unfulfillment to sustain itself. At the heart of this is a deep, often hidden paradox. We are not actually suffering from a lack of resources necessarily, but from an excess of production, an excess of commodities, an excess of choices that never bring resolution.

Capitalism thrives not on scarcity, but actually on abundance, an abundance designed to keep us endlessly dissatisfied. We are surrounded by an obscene excess of wealth, information, entertainment, branding, self-help, promises of success. Yet we are more alienated, anxious, and existentially hungry than ever before. Why? Because excess does not resolve lack. It intensifies it. And the system makes sure that we remain personally invested in this particular trap. We're told that if we're still feeling unfulfilled, then it must be our fault. We must not be hustling hard enough, healing fast enough, meditating right, buying the right things, choosing the right brand of self-optimization. And when none of it works, capitalism simply offers us more, another distraction, another product, another dopamine hit to keep us from noticing that the system was never meant to satisfy us in the first place.

and it's not just in our consumption habits this structure extends to our media our technology and our politics look at the films we watch franchises that never end stories that refuse finality characters who can never truly die marvel movies corporate reboots endless sequels capitalism cannot tolerate endings it cannot tolerate real loss it cannot tolerate lack everything must continue indefinitely because if we ever actually actually arrived at satisfaction, we might just stop consuming. The death of a character, the conclusion of a story, the finality of an experience, these things force us to confront the limits of life itself, and capitalism cannot allow that confrontation. For too long, the left has focused on capitalism primarily as an economic system, one of exploitation, wage labor, class struggle, and it absolutely is. Don't get me wrong. But what What Todd McGowan's workforces us to confront is that capitalism is not just a system of

labor extraction. It's a system of desire extraction. It doesn't just produce commodities. It produces subjects who are trapped in an endless cycle of wanting, consuming, and never arriving. It creates a form of consciousness that cannot imagine desire outside of accumulation, that cannot envision enjoyment beyond consumption. And that is why breaking free of capitalism is not just, the political and economic struggle, though it is primarily that, but it is also a psychological and existential one. This is why I always point to the necessity of inner transformation alongside outer transformation.

It's not enough to just redistribute resources or seize the means of production, though that would be a good start. But if we don't address how capitalism has shaped our very way of desiring, we will be doomed to replicate in one form or another its logic, even in a post-capitalist world. This is why, alongside materialist analysis and revolutionary practices, which are essential, I emphasize the importance of deep internal transformation, one that allows us to relate to desire, to lack, and to enjoyment in a way that capitalism does not structure for us.

And for me, one of the clearest and most effective ways to engage in that inner transformation is through Buddhist meditation and contemplative practice. Buddhism, particularly its critique of attachment and craving, goes directly to the root of this problem. It teaches that our suffering does not come from lack itself, but from the illusion that lack can be erased. The endless cycle of desire, what Buddhism calls samsara, is eerily similar to capitalism's cycle of excess, dissatisfaction, and the perpetual deferral of fulfillment. Just as McGowan argues that capitalism convinces us that one more purchase, one more upgrade, one more goal will finally bring satisfaction. Buddhism shows us that the craving mind is never satisfied,

not because we are failing, but because that is the nature of craving itself. True liberation doesn't come from satisfying every desire. It comes from changing our relationship to desire. It comes from learning to sit with lack rather than compulsively filling it with more. And if we can do that, if we can practice that and integrate that wisdom into our daily lives,

then our very being, our very presence, can stand as a bulwark against what capitalism is selling us. Instead of only opposing capitalism intellectually, while still engaging in its logic, we can extract ourselves from it at the deepest levels of our psychology. After all, what product could capitalism possibly sell to the Buddha? What marketing scheme would work on Jesus? What fashion trend could convince St. Francis to take off his robes and put on a Gucci belt? The whole premise of capitalism becomes laughable to a truly spiritual person. And not the pop, new age spirituality of Instagram influencers,

not the kind of spirituality that wants to sell you a course or meditation cushion or a crystal or an app. Rather, the kind of spirituality that extracts you from that whole carnival of desire and consumption. The sort of spirituality where sitting in the grass and listening to the birds gives you everything you could ever need in that moment. So today, we're going to dive into this head on. Joining me again is Todd McGowan, whose latest book, Pure Excess, Capitalism, and the Commodity

explores the deep psychoanalytic logic of capitalism, the way it shapes our relationship to desire, lack, and to enjoyment itself. We'll be talking about why capitalism cannot function without excess, how it manufactures, our dissatisfaction, and what it would mean to truly break out of the system, not just structurally and materially, but also subjectively, psychologically, at the level of how we experience life itself. But before we get into that, if you like what we do here at Rev Left Radio, you can support us on patreon.com forward slash Rev Left Radio. In exchange for your support, $5 a month, you get access to bonus monthly episodes every single month and a back catalog now of over 300.

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Sharing these episodes, leaving us a positive review, anything like that. also helps the show grow and gets the show in front of more eyes. So thank you to everybody who supports the show in any way they can. And without further ado, here is my conversation with Todd McGowan on his newest book, Pure Excess, Capitalism and the Commodity. So I'm Todd McGowan. I teach theory and film at the University of Vermont. I've written books like Pure Excess, Embracing Alienation, Capitalism and Desire,

and a book on Hegel. So that's kind of who I am. I also, oh, I'm the co-host of the podcast, Why, Theory, that people, some people listen to. Yeah, absolutely. Great to be here. Great to have you back on. I'm a fan of Y Theory for sure, and I think the first time you ever came on the show was in 2019. So this is our fourth show together in 2025.

So always a pleasure, always an honor to have you on. You're one of my favorite guests. You're a fan favorite. And I really, really am excited to talk to you about this newest book of yours, Pure Excess, Capitalism, and the commodity. I just think all your work is a really important angle on. a fully fleshed out sort of critique of capitalism and from an angle that oftentimes Marxists themselves don't really engage with in a serious way, I think, to their own analytical detriment. But let's just go ahead and get into it.

So the book's title, Pure Excess, suggests that capitalism is not merely about profit or even scarcity, but about excess itself. Can you kind of explain this concept, especially for listeners unfamiliar with psychoanalysis and how it differs maybe from a traditional Marxist critique of capitalism. Yeah, so I, in a way, I think this is the book that I've written that's the most Marxist because this idea of pure excess really, I think, stems ultimately its ultimate origin is the Marxian notion of surplus value. But yeah, the psychoanalytic twist on that is that, so for psychoanalysis, excess is

always tied to lack so we because we're lacking subjects because we're desiring subjects we it's there's a there's a paradox or an irony of it that we it ends up making us excessive about things like we get a sex excessively attached to certain objects we get and i'm sure every i mean this i think is one way to think about addiction but but even not addiction like any any cherished object we have we have an excessive attachment to it so if we weren't the idea is that if we weren't lacking, desiring subjects, we wouldn't develop these excessive attachments. And so the idea is that for psychoanalysis, our lack is and is inextricably tied to our excess. So there's no, in short, there's no pure excess. And the way of thinking

about capitalism that I try to develop in this book is that, well, capitalism actually It proffers this fantasy of pure excess, this idea of an excess without any lack attached to it. So there's a certain incompatibility between psychoanalysis and capitalism. So that's a basic idea. And I think that, and again, I think that the roots of that idea are certainly in the Grundressa and in capital. Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree with you that this is very, a very Marxist book of yours in that sense. And this kind of relates before we move on to the

next question to kind of the idea of overproduction within capitalism, right? There's a psychological and a material component. Can you kind of talk about the overproduction aspect and how that plays into this? Yeah, yeah. And I think you're right to point out how it's certainly societal economic, but it's also, I think, psychic that the real psychic reward or the psychic promise of capital is in producing too much of something. And also, I think one of the things I, I, that one of the watchwords of this book is inutility or uselessness. And I think it's really important that the things that that capital produces and, and, and generates capital from are things that are, that aren't things that are necessary. And so I really play on this

idea of, in a way that Marx, I don't think does, because he lived before Freud, play on this idea of use value, that it's not really, that it's really about something that's not, that does, it specifically doesn't have use value. And I, and I, I've, certain Marx's friends of mine have been critical, like, you don't really understand what Marx means about use value. I do understand. I'm just trying to say that if we understand use in a different way, not just insofar as it's, It can be that we purchase it, right? But insofar as it's not useful for us, that that's really, I think, the key to the commodity and to what is being overproduced, like, produced so much that it can't even be, it can't even be used in a way that's, that serves our needs. And I think that's really important, that distinction between what's useful and what's excessive.

Yeah, do you have like a good example to kind of help touch ground with with listeners? Yeah, yeah. So I think I use this example in the book and it's one of my favorite ones, but the way in which people buy specifically Nike's, but just any kind of sneakers, like I think that they, people that buy them, they buy, a lot of times they update their, they buy, when a new one comes out for the year, they buy that new. model and obviously their shoes haven't worn out they don't need the new model and oftentimes they don't even wear the new model or they wait to wear it but uh or they wear it and they keep the old one that's not that hasn't been used up so there's no real uh need that's being served yet that it's just a pure it's it seems like it's it's not a pure excess but it is it is just excessive and i think that that that seems to me one of the

great examples. I think other times the way people, people that are wealthier do this with cars, right? Like they get a new car every year, even though their old car is not, it's nowhere near being used up. So I think that those are a couple of the more maybe obvious examples. I mean, clothing is also a thing that we, if we look at our closets, they have, we have a lot of things that we never would use and yet we're still buying more stuff. So I feel like those are maybe the conspicuous ones. Yeah, I mean, I think, I mean, we might get into this a little bit later, too, but obviously like the iPhone, the new one comes out, virtually nothing is different. And yet, and your phone

works completely fine. And yet there, if you have enough money, there's an impulse to buy the newest model. Well, not even, Brett, it's interesting, isn't it? Because not even you have enough money. Like I, my, so my son's phone actually just, this is very interesting, you brought this up, because this happened just about three weeks ago. One of my son's phones, it broke and we are because we're bad parents our twins are in college and we're still paying for their phones um uh broken and he goes to get a new one uh and they're like well it would be cheaper if if there's another member of the family that was also getting a new one too like not only is it not not only is it i did get a good deal it's actually cheaper to get two

than to get one so my phone was working totally fine i liked it and i had to turn it in and i'm Like, can I still have the little thumb thing? They're like, no, no, no, you can't do that anymore. You'll quickly get the hang of the new way, and I'd hate the new thing. So it's like, it's not, and I think it's a great indication of how the new is, the new and the, and the less useful is just pushed upon us, even though the old thing is no, I mean, the iPhone is the perfect example of this, right? Like, it's just absolutely, like the new, what are the new features? Like the camera has more, I mean, just stuff you just couldn't care less about, right? And it just, it works less well than the other one did.

So it's not, there's nothing about the, the usefulness of it, right, that is creating the new thing. So I think, I think, yeah, I think it's, you hit on maybe the example, the no pluce ultra, right? Like, it's the one that's perfect. And there's this affective dimension to something like buying the newest eye, phone as well when you when you get it there's obviously this initial thrill you're getting it you can't wait to go into it you unlock it there's a part of you that knows that not much has changed but there's still a little excitement about exploring what might be there but then very quickly you bump up against the limitations of it and that swelling of excitement fades away and now you just have this

you know this thing that is just like the last thing but you're you're sort of your attempt to satisfy that it's very very short-lived and we've now experienced it through many many models and yet we continue to kind of fall prey to that every time. People keep doing it. Yeah, I think it's exactly right. And I think that what you're talking about there is what I try to talking about in the book. I like this movement from like your expectation is that the excess will be pure. And then when you get the thing and it takes like, I don't know how long.

It depends on who you are, I guess, like 10 minutes. For me, it happens in like 10 minutes. But for other people, maybe they get a little bit longer of this like the thrill you're talking about. And then it's gone. the excess ends up being not pure at all and that's that's that's that's the point yeah i think absolutely now before we move forward i just wanted to kind of zoom out a little bit and and say why i find your work so interesting and in how it dovetails with mine in an interesting way because as obviously a marxist podcast we're interested in confronting capitalism transforming um the social and the economic and the

political revolution etc but i've always also pushed this idea that there is an inner subjective and consciousness-oriented way in which capitalism prays on us and a dimension that we have to overcome if we actually hope to overcome the logic of capitalism externally. And for some more traditional or orthodox Marxists, they see that as unnecessary, as a flourish, as something that is really outside of Marxism proper to address that subjective element of the whole system. But, you know, I usually do it through like the discourse on Buddhism, which we'll get to. You do it through a very sharp psychoanalytic lens, but I think we both agree that that subjective dimension is absolutely crucial that we must face that as well as confront the external material reality of capitalism, sort of simultaneously if we hope to really overcome it. Yeah, so, right. So I was at a screening of no other land, you know, this documentary about Palestine and two nights ago.

And they're like, okay, we need to get the main point of this isn't just to watch the documentary, but to get people to sign up to take action. And I'm like, okay, you know, obviously I agree with that. But then what was interesting was like, that's always the question, right? Like you get people to sign up to take it, to make people act. But I think what you're saying, and that this is absolutely my view as well, like, well, what is the real barrier to get people to taking action to, to, to, struggling against capital, well, it's their psychic investment in capital. So, okay, yeah, you can

say like, oh, that's just false consciousness. We don't even need to think about that. But I think it's a real, it's a real barrier. I mean, and I think it manifests itself in every time people are saying, we just need to organize, we just need to organize. I always say, yeah, that's true, but like, what is, there still is like a tangible barrier to that. And I think it's a psychic one. and so that's I think that's that's where I that's where I'm trying to intervene and and have something to say that it's not like I and that's why I think when you intervene you have to intervene both with some idea of a collective action obviously because clearly an individual battle against capital is not going to be a successful one right it's too

it's too massive but but on the other hand a collective one's not going to going to be successful if the individuals invested in it are still invested in in in the in the in the commodity right so i think i think it has to be a sort of a war on both fronts if you will absolutely yeah and that that inner aspect people i mean people would say well i'm not really invested in the commodity i want to overthrow capitalism and they they consciously think of themselves as that but in all these subtle and unconscious ways they are pulled into the very logic of capital and so that needs to be brought into a full awareness and then you have disciplined dismantled through interventions like yours and others, if we're really going to address it.

You can't just say, well, I'm a socialist. I don't agree with capitalism. Therefore, I'm not really subject to its ideological poll or, you know, subconsciously engaging in its logics. You absolutely are because we're conditioned in the society. Well, I know while you're watching Netflix and searching on your iPhone. I mean, right? Like, it's like, you know, probably simultaneously, which is, again, also part of the capitalist thing, right? Like, the way attention is, is diffused, I think. that's so yeah I think I don't think it's yeah I just I just don't think it's that simple to say like oh I'm not a capitalist subject because I'm not I don't believe in capitalism right like I mean I mean I'm tempted to say you know this people say this about things all the time but you know you may not believe in capitalism but it believes in you if you're invested in it whether you want to be or not I think that's one of the things that's I mean I think that's to me one of the the reasons for its it's incredible uh assistance. Yeah, absolutely. All right, let's go ahead and move on. Capitalism presents itself as a system of rational exchange, but you, alongside Marx, argue that the commodity form is a kind of

magic trick, hiding labor and exploitation, but also, according to you, manufacturing desire and sustaining the illusion of infinite novelty, which we just touched on. So how does this deception work and why do people remain invested in it? Yeah, so one of the things that I do, And this, I think, is, again, a very Marxist example. I talk about this, you mentioned a magic trick. I talk about a real magic trick where the magician makes a bird in a cage disappear and then has the bird come out of its, out of the magician's arm or something, code or something. And this is incredibly detailed in the Christopher Nolan film, The Prestige, which is his masterpiece.

piece. But I think that the point is that what's interesting about that is that the one, what I'm sure people know this, that the bird in the cage is crushed when the magician claps the cage down. And it's a different bird that emerges. And I link that crushing of the bird to the crushing of labor by capitalism. And then the bird that emerges is the commodity. And it seems like it's the same bird. So, that there's no, we haven't, the sacrifices is not palpable, right? Like you don't, you don't register. The sacrifice, except unconsciously, uh, obviously you, you know something happened that you know, like when you're looking on your iPhone, at least there's some

awareness that children were mining cobald in the Congo and that things like this that are, you don't aren't, you don't want to be conscious of because it would make your enjoyment of the app less, uh, pure. I think that that's how, I mean, that, that's that dimension of like the, the way in which it, it's also, it's like there's some, that magic trick is a way to also get your phantasmatic investment in the commodity. Because if you didn't have that, I think you wouldn't, there would, you wouldn't be susceptible to the lure of, to the lure of the, of the commodity, which I think is, it's interesting, like, like how, to what extent. would, and this, I sort of say this in the book in a speculative way, like, to what extent would Marx have been different if he would have read Freud? I mean, he couldn't have read Freud because Freud hadn't written anything when Marx, by the time Marx died, but it does make for an interesting question, I think, like how would the analysis of the commodity have

been different? Because I think the lure of the commodity is really, really important. And I think You know, when Marx says the commodities full of all these theological niceties, I think that he doesn't really see the extent to which that's true. Like, it's really, it almost has a theological religious power over us. Yeah, it's a really interesting idea, too, to think about Marx engaging with Freud and the psychoanalytic tradition more broadly. And that actually brings up an interesting tension that maybe you could touch on, which is there are obviously attempts in the past. to synthesize insights, and you're working in that tradition. But there's also genuine tension, you know, even a lot of the figures within psychoanalysis like Jung and Freud. We're very conservative, certainly not Marxist.

You're a hardcore individualist and anti-communist. And there's, to this day, Nazi. I mean, yes, be fair. I mean, in a lot of ways, yeah. No, I mean, he was like a, he was a pro-Aryan. Like, he was not sad that the Nazis took power. Yeah, because I've heard. things with Jung that people try to say that actually he

stayed in academia to kind of like help his Jewish colleagues and their work get ahead. What do you make of all that? Yeah, I just don't think that's true. I don't think that's true. I think a lot of people have a lot of there really have a lot of investment in Jung and they want to I get it. I mean the same thing like this crisis that happened with Heidegger, right, like people who were invested him. Oh, yeah. They felt like they had to defend him until it became

evident that you just couldn't and and I don't I mean I don't know I guess I've never really seen that problem like I think you can like a thinker can be valuable and they can have done pretty bad things and I don't think that makes their thought necessarily less valuable so that's not but but but what you and and actually to the point like you're right Freud was a conservative Jacques Lacan was a conservative like those guys are conservatives and and and but I don't think I don't think that makes their thought less valuable or less able to be mobilized for a leftist project. I agree. Not at all. Not at all. So I just don't think that that's, I mean, Freud was a conservative because he was a pessimist. Like he just thought, and I, and I think actually

a little pessimism is, is a good thing for the left, actually. I agree. But I'm kind of interested. That was very interesting in and of itself. But I'm interested in what you, what you think is one of the most credible or the or the best arguments coming out of a Marxist direct and that is that is skeptical of psychoanalysis and how you would attempt to resolve it or if you would at all. Well, I'll just say who my favorite anti-psychoanalytic thinker is. That's that's Georg Lukach for sure. Like I think he's or Jean-Paul Sart.

I think both of that, although Sart's not really a Marxist, I don't think. But I think I think Luch, like I think he's what I would say, he's very hostile to psychoanalysis, right? And yet, I think there's certain dimensions of him that are, like, just, here's what I would say. His, and this is why I think Lukach is such an interesting figure. Like, his attention to form, I think, is actually one of the points at which psychoanalysis and Marxism come together. And so I get his critique that it's necessarily individualist. And I actually think, I don't, in terms of a practice and that it's actually, his idea is that it's a common, and this is a pretty Santer Marxist idea, that it's accommodating individuals to their, to their capital situation, right? But I don't think that's even totally wrong.

But I think that the theoretical insights that come along with psychoanalysis actually are part of a challenge to that capital. capitalist system. So I actually, I don't, some of those critiques, I, I, I, I don't have that much disagreement with. And, and yeah, I just think, yeah, it's, it's, the only thing I would say is, it's, that psychoanalysis is, is, is, is, is, is not therapy. And I think that's a pretty important distinction, right? So it's not about, like, therapeutically making you feel healed. And so, making people feel not healed, which I think is the psychoanalytic goal, is a pretty, it's pretty consonant with a political struggle, I think. Very interesting.

And I think we'll touch on that a little bit going forward. But your general point about taking ideas and core concepts, even from traditions that might even be outwardly hostile to a revolutionary left-wing program is an important thing that we can and should do. And in fact, I just, my most recent episode was a two and a half episode on Marcus Aurelius' stoicism. Marcus Aurelius, a Roman empire, what does he have to teach us two thousand years later interested in proletarian revolution? But inverting some of those ideas, taking them and putting them to work in service of a Marxist or a revolutionary program is precisely, I think, more valuable in what we should be doing instead of simply dismissing the whole thing as

hostile to Marxism, therefore, there's nothing of credibility or nothing of use in there. I think we throw a lot of babies out with a lot of bathwater when we do that. I couldn't agree more. Couldn't agree more. And I think, like, that's one of the great lessons of Hegel, right? That he's, it's never just about, like, dismissing or critiquing, but about, like, seeing the truth within the thing and then moving, developing that, right? Or seeing how the, even the contradictions have something to teach us about a position. I just absolutely agree with that. Like, I just absolutely agree with that. I find just the dismissal, just, and I don't see what's gained by that, really. That's why I tend to not to write things or even do things where I'm just attacking a position

because I just don't think it's, it's just not that interesting and not that helpful. And it's often very lazy, and it's a cover, it's a cover for a refusal to engage. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, engage, right? Engage. And see what, see what's being said there, right? Definitely. All right. Well, one of the most interesting arguments of yours and one that really hit home for me just in my own personal experience and I think we'll hit home to a lot of audience members is that capitalism convinces people that they can get whole if they just consume enough, work hard enough. I might add self-optimize enough or attain the right status symbols. But the system itself ensures that wholeness is always out of reach, definitionally, structurally. So with this idea in mind, how do debt, commodity,

fetishism and ideological allusions sustained this endless, unachievable promise. Well, I think debt is the big one. I think I start that chapter with, I quote, Paul Manafort and I think I say something like, you know, Paul Manafort probably isn't a good person to look for advice

because he even has a corruption, a corrupt guy, he's not really that good at corruption. But he, I guess he wrote to this guy he was helping him. He's like, how do I use to get whole? That is, use his position in the Trump campaign to get to get whole and I just took that as a and I mentioned this in the

in the book my grandfather was a great gambler and he not a great game a bad gambler a gambling addict and he was constantly on the phone to his bookie and I heard him say it all the time how can I how can I get whole here and I thought it's really interesting the way debt functions right like the main problem with debt isn't that you're in debt that you owe money it's that it fosters this the psychic illusion that if you just pay back the debt you can get it whole and I think so much of I mean I think that idea of wholeness is really integral to the to the way that capitalism functions and that's why for me seeing the necessity of self-division and contradiction and alienation failure of wholeness is really part of the way that you confront that system so

obviously the point would be even if you pay off your debts you're still going to be desiring lacking being not a whole being so i think that that's yeah that's like the to me that's one of the main ways i have to say that was the first thing in this book that i that i wrote and i felt like god that i really kind of have to fit that in something because i think it's such a powerful like debt is so omnipresent right like capital can't survive without debt and and it's obviously increasing and increasing and I felt like I needed to talk about that

and so and I think that's it's easy to talk about the economic role that debt plays but I wanted to get into the into the psychic role that it played and the way it promulgates this idea of wholeness yeah and there's not even I mean there's consumer debt of course but the debt aspects of American life where to get an education to get medical I have

I have deep debt and it's just because I had the gall to not be rich and try to go to school and then I had the gall to try to get medical help without having good insurance or whatever any any insurance and so in medical debt is the number one cause of bankruptcy. It's a killer. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's just brutal how that whole aspect of your analysis here is also tied into people's like ability to like you know, because in capitalism you need to advance. You're told like if you don't, you know, get this degree and keep moving and keep getting more credentials and getting more skills. You're going to be shitty on the job market. Nobody's going to want to hire you. So then to go after that goal, then you

have to go into debt. And it's just like this horrific spiral that really feeds off each other, but it's really indicative of your point here that there is, it's actually impossible to get whole to finally reach an endpoint. But yeah. But you're chasing. And also the way that that debt, just what you're talking about, the way that that debt is absolutely crucial to sustaining the system right like you like all the profit for capitalism is profit off the future right because there's not enough there's not enough in the present to to keep things constantly growing so it has to be borrowed from the future and so it's really interesting how people have to be pushed to this position of like in getting more debt and if and interestingly i think if you if you stay out of debt

like you don't you think it's fascinating like if you if you if you're one of the of these people that pay your credit cards off every month. You're actually like, you're the parasite because you're getting a discount on everything that you buy and everything you do. You're getting able to use your credit card. You maybe even get a cash back at the end of the year, right? But you're doing it because there's all these other people, most users that are paying interest and are in debt, right? So it's a really, I mean, I think it's like a reversal. The way capitalism works, it's a reversal of the way we see the parasite. The parasite isn't the person that's in debt and relying on other people's money. The parasite is the person who pays off

their debts and are surviving on the basis of the people who are indebted. And I think the same thing is true in capital, actually. Like, it's the big companies that rely on everybody being in debt that keep things going. And the parasitical, and this is a terrible. thing to say. But the parasitical firms are the little like corner stores that, you know, people pay cash. Because it's, they're not the, they're not

the ones that keep the capitalist system going. It's the, it's the huge conglomerates, right? It's funny. Yeah. One more thing I think about, even specifically in regards to like just consumer debt, you know, you want a new couch, you want a new table, but you know, you're working class.

Something that I feel is like, like even with me and my wife, sometimes we do this like we buy a couch and then we pay off the debt because we have to we have to finance the couch or whatever um and then so may you know the horizon of paying off the debt is there and then there's that feeling of satisfaction like we have no more debt but the first thing we do is say we need a new dining table i know so let's get back into debt i know we have to clear this debt so we can go into another form of debt i know that's what we do too we're like okay all right so which debt are we going to choose this one right like because this one's terrible though we know this thing

needs to be replaced. But it's all, it's all like a question of that, right? Like it's, yeah, but it's not a question of not going into debt, I think. Yeah. So this is another aspect of the of the getting whole part that I wanted to kind of touch on. Yeah. Is, is, this is kind of the irony of the system is the people who succeed most at capitalism, right? It's so clear, like you can think of Trump and Elon because they're in the news right now and in front of everybody's face. It is so clear that no matter how much wealth they have, no much, how much power they have, no matter how much they've quote unquote won the capitalist game, that they are also never, ever, ever satisfied. They need more. They need to be liked. They need the attention. And this is another aspect is like even the

billionaires, even though quote unquote winners of capitalism, they think that by getting that power and that wealth and that legacy, that they will somehow be ultimately satisfied, but even at the very pinnacle of the capitalist pyramid are deeply unsatisfied, kind of pathological people that can never quite get there. And I wonder if you can touch on that a little bit. Yeah. In fact, I think it's like, maybe I even use this example in the book, but it's like in the Great Gatsby, like that green light at the end of Daisy's dock that recedes the closer that you get to it. Like I feel like they, it's actually like compared to you and me. I think their situation is, I mean, obviously, they have more creature comforts than we do,

but, but their situation's worse because the closer that you get to that pure excess, the further it seems to recede away from you. And so I feel like that's the whole point of the way that, that ideological structure functions, that you cannot, you can't, the more, the closer you get to it, the more, you feel like I don't have it really. And so I got to do more and more and more and more. And so that's why, like Musk, he's just bragging about working 100 hours a week. So what is he working for? Like, what is the point of that? Right.

I mean, it's just, it's a strange kind of thing where, and it's very different. And this, I think, shows the historical nature of the system, right? In a very Marxist way because like an aristocrat in the, I don't know, 14th century, wouldn't have bragged about how much they were working. You know, that wouldn't have, that wouldn't have, that would have been ridiculous. They would have bragged about how much they weren't working. And I think it's because there's this absolute striving to get, like the, I got to, I got to work, work, work to get the most possible value that I can, right? The most, because I, I need to, I need to strip this excess of its impurities because it still has some impurities.

I want the pure. And then they never are going to get there. And so the, the closer it seems you get there, the further away you are. So I feel like actually you and me are probably psychically. I mean, I know this is true. We're a lot better off than the people that are in their position, psychically, I think. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

And you can even see it with figures like Peter Thiel or whatever where it's like obviously you've won everything. But like they also want to be now the philosopher kings. They want to pretend like they understand Plato and they want to take their rightful position under the Kurdish-Yarvin ideology of this. this aristocratic corporate class. It's never like you already have all the, all the corrupted democratic quote unquote power by infiltrating that system and buying politicians. You already have all the money you could ever want

or spend in several lifetimes. And you also need to be worshipped now. And even if we started worshipping you, it wouldn't be enough. The philosophy thing is really interesting. You know, I was on this, I was on this, some guy made a mistake. He's a pro capitalist guy.

And he saw my book called Capitalism and Desire. And he thought it was a pro-capitalist book. I'm like, you like, you don't owe me on there. It's not. It's not. I'm not. And he's like, no, no, no, no. I'm open to things.

And so the whole thing was, it was just basically an argument the whole time. But what he said, the one thing I thought was really funny was his, he had an interpretation of Plato's allegory of the cave. And he's like, well, see, here's how, here's what's happening. The philosopher goes up and he's like the wealthy person. And he sees in the sun, he sees gold. and he brings it down to everyone, all these workers who are enchained. And he says, look, come up, you can have gold too.

And I'm like, wow. I said, have you read the rest of the world? He didn't answer this question. I'm like, you know, if you read the rest of the republic, it's not really, it's kind of about, it's more of like a communist book, actually. It's about a collective. It's not really about individuals striving.

And it's certainly not about the accumulation of wealth. he said plato that wouldn't make any sense to him he's like no no every every society was about the accumulation of wealth it's all that every society is about wanting more and more and more and so it was just fascinating that he he wanted to be the expert on on even on plato's allegory of the cave and i said i just i finally i said to him i said look you can have your people you can have like anne rand and you know frederick hyac and but like leave us plato because like he's on our side But he wasn't going to do that.

It was just interesting. I think it just proves your point, right, that there's not, like, nothing's off limits. Like, it's just, I got to conquer all these new worlds. I love to see him in a bookstore when he comes across Marxist Capital. He'd be like, oh, this is interesting. All right, let's go ahead and move on. You probably try to invite Marks onto his show. His grind set, hustle culture show.

So let's move forward a little bit, and this is kind of fun and I think culturally very relevant to everybody who's just exhausted by this. But from endless Coke variations, Diet Coke, Zero Coke, Vanilla, Cherry, Orange Vanilla, to mind-numbing Marvel movie reboots, capitalism thrives on perpetual reinvention, repackaging the old as something new, which we see in modern film and TV a lot, you know, endless remakes, endless sequels, retreading the same ground over and over and over again, but always kind of presenting it as new. Is capitalism even capable of functioning without this illusion of the new? And do you think there's a breaking point where people start to see through, like I said, this rather exhausting cycle? Yeah, I think that your suggestion is correct that capitalism cannot function without the new, because I think if it, if someone just said to you, if their advertisement for this new Captain America movie was retread, it's just basically the same. story, some new characters, but it's, it's, it's all the same, basically. Please come see it. No one would come, you know, no one would go see it, right? Even though, I mean, almost no one did go see it. But I do think, I think you're, that note, that sanguine note, I think that you had in

the, in your question, I, I, I, I tend to agree with it that I think, I mean, I think there's a whole danger of a worldwide fascist turn that we, that would obviate this. But I, I, I, I, I think, I do think that there is some sense of like i for instance about the phone my students are all they they said i hate my phone right they just hate it but they can't get rid of it and they can't stop looking at it but they're the affect that they have is hatred and i think the lack of people going to the movies which is sad to me because i love i still go to the movies um is it reflects this what you're talking about. So I do think there is a kind of saturation point. And I think there's also interesting in lying behind your question, I think, is there some way in which

genuine novelty and capital are anathema? And I think certainly genuine aesthetic novelty and capital are anathema. I think that's true. So it's interesting. It's a time to live in for sure can you go deeper on that aesthetic point what do you mean by that yeah yeah i think that i think that that that's not an accident that capital is trying to recycle say marvel things or whatever but and i think that let's take a film oh so we'll talk about a guy that just died so jean hackman his greatest film i think it's the greatest one the second half second half of the 20th century um francis ford coppel is the conversation well it's a it's a film of incredible novel and it couldn't it was it didn't people didn't really go see it uh it was nominated for academy

award but another couple of film godfather two won because it couldn't be registered right like it just can't i think and i think that's true of any genuine aesthetic novelty like citizen cane it's true of like it couldn't it was basically a bomb because it couldn't and hollywood tried to suppress it because it was so it's so challenged it did a lot of things new and it's so challenge the ways of the fetish. And I think what the fetish does is it, I mean, I think what you're talking about is really fetishism. That fetishism gives us, it covers over a lack, but it, so it, and I think lack is, is where the genuine new emerges. Like there's some kind of rupture. There's something, there's something contradictory, there's something doesn't work. And that's how

something new can emerge, but the fetish is constantly covering that over. And I feel like that's what we're getting, these fetishistic, fetishizing commodities. And that's why there's some kind of incompatibility between the new and the capital. I have two questions to follow up there. One is just in the psychoanalytic tradition, where does lack come from? Well, lack comes from, it's, yeah, it's a good question. Like, it comes from this, it's basically theorized first by Jacques LaConne, but it, but it's certainly, it's certainly present in Freud from the beginning. And, and his name for it was castration. And, and that just means for him that we're cut off, in a way, it's tied to everything we've been talking about it.

It just means that we're cut off from any kind of ultimate enjoyment, right? Like, that's what lack means, that we're cut off from that. Not because, and I think this is often the way Freud is misunderstood, not because we once had it, we once had this plenitude of the breast and then it was taken away from us. No, but because it's precisely being, that act of being cut off that creates us as subjects, that it's, it's desire that makes us subjects. And so that desire and lack are basically, that's the, they're the same thing. So without that, we wouldn't be, we wouldn't be, we would.

exist as subjects. So that's where, basically, that's where it comes from, like, this idea of like another synonym of it is castration, but castration for Freud and for Lacanne is not literal castration. It just means you're cut off from the ultimate satisfaction that you imagine, but doesn't, but doesn't have any actual existence. And it's never existed? Never existed, right. And this is a very interesting thing. So Freud has this very fascinating discussion in a very early work called a project for a scientific psychology, never published it. But he develops this idea that Lacan would really work out further of noctreglachite or retroactivity.

And the idea is that a thing comes into existence insofar as it's lost, right? So that ultimate enjoyment, it's only insofar as we have lost it, that it actually once did exist, right? So it never existed. It just, we kind of lose it into existence, you might say. And that's the, I think that's a real, I find that idea really, I think that's how in all nostalgia functions, right? Like you, like I have this nostalgia for my childhood, but when I was in my childhood, it was pretty miserable.

Yes, yes. And so it's only because I've lost it, that retroactively it's acquired the status of, oh, God, it was so great. I was playing in the backyard. and it was terrible. So I think that that's a, I mean, it wasn't that terrible. It was fine. But it just wasn't this sight of ultimate enjoyment that I nostalgically turned it into.

I always think of that in the context of reactionaries and mythologized past. Like they're so miserable with whatever modernity. And they think that there's, you know, if I could just go back to this time, I would be satisfied. And I would love to just run the experiment. Put them back in the fucking 50s and watch their same. pathologies and neuroses be present there. Exactly, man. Exactly. I think that's really true. And I think

like you could, I mean I've heard people say this and it's right like, okay, make America great again. What time is exactly do you want to return to? Right? Like even like, and people rightly say like well, if America in the 20s wasn't so great if you were black, etc. or poor. But but even for the people that were well off, it wasn't so

great. Right? Like I think there's a, there's a, just like what you're saying, like, you put the people back in that epic and they're not going to, like, like, like, if you put Trump back in the, like, he loves William McKinley, right? Like, you put him back in the epic of McKinley, uh, is there running water? I mean, that he has easy, you know, like, there's not showers. That's for sure. So, there's a lot of things that are, that are, that you would, I think, miss. Absolutely. And the people that were closest to, like, let's say a reactionary. today. The people that were reactionary in the 50s were bitching about the progress of the 50s

and wanting to go back to the 1800s, right? Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, that's a, that's a, that kind of right-wing populism, reactionary movement, fascistic movement. I mean, that's, I think that that is coincident with capital. I think it's impot. I think you can't have capitalism without that as this constant accompaniment to it. Precisely because this, I think it's precisely, because this capitalist fantasy can't come true. So then you're like, why isn't it coming true? Well, it must have been true once before, so I'm going to go back to that.

Yeah, and then there's that tension where capitalism is always seeking the new. It's always sort of revolutionizing things. It's homogenizing. It's destroying cultures and tradition. And then the conservatives and the reactionaries in capitalist societies

are always in tension with that, but they never put their finger on capitalism itself as the thing doing it. So they're kind of in a reactionary way defending the hierarchies of capitalism while in like a subconscious way contending with the fact that everything you say you believe in, like tradition and stability and patriarchy is actually kind of being overturned and tumulted and thrown up in the air by the very processes of capitalism itself, which needs those processes to continue on and survive. Yeah, that's a great, great point, I think. like I like I have I like Tomol used as a verb that's pretty great but I think like

I mean it's the kind of Marx one it's like communist manifesto right like all it's solid mouths melts into air right like I think that that like okay yeah I'm against these like traditions being uprooted too let's attack capital for that I mean I'm not necessarily but you know it is interesting that like what they're really

on about what they're really upset about is precisely capital, right? Like, like, when you think about, like, the way that people are upset about, like, conservatives today, like, or upset about, like, trans, transitioning and trans and, like, surgeries and all this stuff. Like, why is that available to people? It's available because of the development of capital. I mean, obviously, people transition to some extent all throughout human history, right? But, but, but the widespread. medically available transitioning like that's that's a product of capital and it's a bunch of capitalists who are selling it right so so they're the thing that they're upset about is the very

system that they're defending so you're right i mean that is to me one of the incredible contradictions of of of reactionaries today you know like the the things that they are most riled about are the things that are directly due to the development of capital exactly I just think it's just such a great point by you. Yeah, and a great addition to you, and there's a million examples of that. And the second part of this follow-up, though, on the endless Coke variations in the Marvel movies, and I'm really interested in your take on this, especially with regards to film, is there seems like there, even though obviously the 70s and the 60s and the 80s were very capitalist times in the U.S.,

there seemed to be more dynamism in the cultural production that it has sort of ceased now, That there's something culturally shifted, even though we're still living under capitalism, where all these remakes and these sequels, it's just so, it lacks so much imagination that even during other times in American capitalism in the last 75 years, they had much different, they had much more dynamism in their artistic creation. So what do you think accounts for that? And is there anything like maybe we're entering a terminal or a late capitalist phase or, I don't know, there's lots of different directions you can take it. How do you make sense of that? Yeah, I just want to say one thing in support of what you're saying. Like, as recently, as 26 years ago, as recently as 1996 years ago, as recently as 1999, it was the greatest year in the history of cinema.

Just with, I mean, they're just not, it can't even be debated, right? Like, I could sit here and list 30 films that are better, that were better in that year than the Matrix, which we think of, like, if the Matrix came, first Matrix, if that came out now, we think, like, it's the best film of the year by far. There's not even anything to compete with it. So that's the 26 years ago. And so you're exactly like the kind of cultural decline that we, at least in cinema, I think it's true in popular music as well and other artistic forms that we're witnessing

is just incredible. And I think it's not just confined to the U.S. either. I think it's worldwide. Although what's interesting to me is where the exceptions are because I think Iran is one exception. which is a little bit interesting, right? Because it suggests that maybe the tension with that fundamentalist regime is producing a kind of art. And then South Korea is the other place

that is a site for, like the film that everybody will know, Parasite. But like, I just encourage people. There's like 30 other South Korean films of the 21st century that are better than Parasite, including like five. by that same director. So it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it is, but, but, but, but I think your point in general is

absolutely right. And I think my, is, is, is, is, is, is, I guess that you're, is the question is, are we entering some kind of terminal phase? I don't know about that, but I do think that without that, um, without that production of, I don't know how else to put it, but of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of works that are interesting, that works that capture people, that works to challenge people, then it does seem like it's harder to get people invested in the capital system. Like even all the stuff that people can stream, like, I don't think it excites them to

consume in a way that things used to. So I do think that there is a, for instance, like, was it February 20, two days ago, right? This don't buy anything day, right? Like, I think, I wonder if that, which I did obey, I was really hungry at night and I wanted to go get some to eat. But we didn't have hardly anything in the house, but I did manage to obey and just ate a few stale cookies. But I think it was very sad. But I felt like I did my duty. But I think, I wonder if that's not going to be emerging as a kind of a thing, right?

Because, like, if, and like signing off of all streaming services. And I wonder about that. Like, I wonder if, if that isn't, like, if, in other words, if, like, Marvel certainly is, you mentioned Marvel a couple times, rightfully, they're certainly feeling the loss, right? Like, they're, like, they have not, since the second Avengers film, or the, sorry, the Avengers finale, they have not had a real successful, I guess the war, I guess Deadpool and, and Wolverine, but that's not really a marvel thing. They haven't had a real hit.

And so I feel like there is some kind of sense that maybe things are winding down for capital. Right? Yeah. But that leaves open the question of where it goes, sadly. Right. Yeah. I mean, it could go in a few different directions.

Obviously, there could be revolutionary movements. There could be a techno-dispopian, authoritarian fascism that emerges out of it. Or there could be, as we've seen in the past, a period of capitalist rejuvenation where there is this adaptability inheriting capitalism. It's come out of the gutters many times before, created new epochs or generations of

cultural production and economic growth. But it feels like that trick that it can pull out of its sleeve is not working as much as it used to. So I'm very interested to see where that goes. Yeah, I'm very interested too. I mean, I know that so a friend of mine, Jody Dean, and I know, like, you know, like, Marifakis, like they're barely into this idea of techno feudalism. And I get it. I see why they're saying that.

And maybe that will be the future regime. But I think we're, I don't, I think that's sort of looking into the future, right? Like I still, my feeling is we're still in a capitalist, in a capitalist regime. I think it's more and more an authoritarian kind of capitalism. But I don't, I wouldn't call it yet feudalism just because. the way in which like I don't think feudalism depended its lifeblood wasn't the commodity right and I think I think that's how Marx defines capitalism and I think I I define it that way too that it's the rule of the commodity form and I think if you don't I don't see how in fact I think that that's

even more true today than it was in in the epic of Marx so I'm a little reluctant to make this move to techno feudalism or some kind of neo-futalism. I think that's a really great point, and I agree wholeheartedly. And actually, I push back explicitly on the idea that even when I use the term techno-futalism, I'm actually not pointing to a shift in the mode of production. I'm trying to use a literary flourish to point out a certain phase in capitalist degeneration, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's still firmly capitalist.

But, yeah, I would call it a super structural malaise that's occurring right now. I think that's nice, I think. like that a lot. And in South Korea is a brutal capitalist deeply unequal society as well, but you know, and like taken over by these huge corporations and massive poverty

and a lot of the cultural production coming out of South Korea is anti-capitalist in form. Well, that's what I was going to say. I mean, right. And about the the Iranian films, it's hard to say. I mean, it is that in more indirectly, but

in Korea, it absolutely. is absolutely for sure right all right well let's let's go on to the next question here you argue that capitalism cannot tolerate real stakes real endings or real loss that even mass culture reflects this by endlessly resurrecting dead characters and refusing finality i also get a sense of this and how the system as a whole as we were just talking about kind of seems to be reaching its own limits not only ecologically but also in its inability to kind of constrain itself and its rabidity in the form of Trump and Elon sort of hitting the acceleration as gas pedal in its direct confrontation with democracy itself, no longer able to ideologically conceal

its outward disdain for it. And in the fact that people living under capitalism are living worse and worse lives materially and psychologically. So how does all of this relate to the death drive, which is one of my favorite concepts out of psychoanalysis? And what does it tell us about capitalism's fear of limits. Yeah, that's one of my favorite concepts, too, that I think that, so here's what I'd say that I think capitalism, like every system, has to rely on the death drive because death drive is the, it's the engine that gets us going through the day, right? Like we're driven unconsciously to repeat traumatic events, right?

we're to repeat loss and even though there is this fantasy of overcoming lack and loss for for good in capital i think nonetheless the more you do that the more you engage in this repetition and that's what we see all the time so but but here's the thing i think it cannot be avowed right like that like just like you're saying like loss cannot be evad like you just have to look at this most recent horrible Deadpool wolverine example like wolverine was dead and buried he he wasn't being so they went to a multiverse and resurrected him right and so uh it was just horrible because and i think you mentioned the word stakes like you can't it's interesting because in capitalism it's life and death stakes for everybody that's working at a job right like at any

moment that you could do something that offends the powers that be and you're out on the street and then how long is it till you're on the corner asking people for anything helps right like and And I think we all feel that. But I don't think capitalism can never tolerate real stakes, at least aesthetically, right? Like it can't, there's never can be this moment where like, okay, like this is lost for good. And that's why I think the climate situation, we've now, I think collectively, we've just decided on we're just, we're just in for disavow 100%, right? Like they're just, we're just not going to, we're not even going to have the, we're not even going to purport to address it.

Yeah. Right. That's just, that's just out. And I think like, obviously the U.S. is leading the way with Trump as the great denier. But, but I think the rest of the world now, it's really fascinating, has kind of said, okay, I guess we're just given up that. Mm-hmm.

Right. So it's, it's, except China maybe, which is a scary kind of prospect. But, yeah, maybe. Yeah, there's, there's. there's also the taking off of any pretense to guardrails with regards to AI. Who knows how that will actually turn out if that's a bubble or not?

But there's an accelerationist idea there. Can you give us an example of the death drive maybe in daily life? And do you see that resignation from even attempting to pretend to want to face climate change as a form of civilizational death drive in some sense? For sure, for sure, because

I mean, that's, so there's an interesting way that fetishistic disavow and death drive function together. And so the denial of climate change is the thing that allows the death drive to keep to keep working but i just just a perfect example from my from my own life so i was a i was a i was a i was a i was a i used to run just as a way to eat a lot of cake and stuff that was bad for me and so ostensibly you're running to stay healthy but i i i i would run no matter how i felt and so i i was getting a little sick and I went to run and I kept running and then and then I went for run why I was really feeling

bad and I I I I damaged my lungs terribly and I I because I had such severe pneumonia my heart rate was up to 200 resting like I was in really I was like near death and I was just but I was drawn on and what's interesting is the I I thought it was for my pleasure right so I could have these nice pieces of cake but really what was driving me I think this is the key thing is the destructiveness itself. Like, I think we, we say like, oh, I like the taste of that thing or I want I want to get this other thing. That's why I'm sacrificing myself. But I think that psychoanalytic idea is that other thing is just a lure, that thing that seems like a pleasurable is just a lure and what you're really getting off on, to put it that way, is the sacrifice itself. So that's the

that's the idea of death drive, that sacrifices its own, is in a way its own reward. And you see how that's so antithetical to this idea of a pure excess without any sacrifice that capitalism tries to promise us. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I could think of examples in my own life, but I'll just, for the sake of time, urge listeners to kind of think in their own life where the death drive might manifest. That's a fascinating self-examination. Well, just don't you think even in a daily, in just a much more daily way,

right like the way that you like i i constantly at work and taking up tasks that are just getting in the way of my free time my ability to keep writing and reading and doing the things i like to do why am i doing that like no there's no one's pressuring me i'm just keep on doing that right like i think that's a i think everyone can think of examples like that where you're just taking on this thing that why did you take that on like why are you doing that like it's just no, it's just a pure self-sabversion. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. That hits home for sure. One quick point I want to touch on before we get into the last two questions here is I really

love your argument and you don't have to spend too much time on this, but the argument that minimalism has been transformed into another form of excess, this idea that less is more as an aesthetic choice rather than an actual reduction in consumption or even a new way to consume while convincing yourself that you're actually consuming less. But, you know, I've seen this in the way that this actually manifest in people's real lives is like they'll buy certain furniture. They'll move towards a new aesthetic. And they're telling themselves that they're consuming less and they're getting rid of some things. But at the same time, they're also taking on psychologically and oftentimes materially new forms of consumption.

So how does this, can you talk about this? And then does this mean that any rejection of excess under? capitalism is doomed to be commodified in this way? No, I don't think that's true. But I think, and I think you can, I think you can limit yourself in a way that's, I just think the way that, I think you, you just put it pretty well there, that the way that minimalism gets mobilized is that it stresses the aesthetic, it stresses the, the new commodities that you're buying.

And then, and then, so you're, you've just defeated the point. But I do think that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, the. self, I mean, in a way, this is how the book ends, that some kind of self-limitation is the only way that we're psychically prepare ourselves to challenge the capitalist regime. I'm pretty convinced of that. So I don't think that any kind of self-limitation is immediately going to be co-opted in the way that this minimalism is. But I think that you can definitely see the way. I mean, in fact, I find people that are minimalist mostly annoying because they, I'm like, okay, yeah, you're really not challenging the thing in the way that you think you are. And what's more, you're like a campaign slogan for capital.

So, yeah, I find out a little annoying. But I don't think we should dismiss that on the whole. Yeah. I actually, I totally agree with you. And that's a great segue into these last two questions, which now that we've kind of, have understood the problem. And of course, this is just an interview. You have to get the book to grapple with the full complexity of this argument. And I highly recommend people do. And as you said, it's not only your most Marxist book. I think it's incredibly accessible as well. So

people that might not feel totally comfortable with psychoanalysis, I think, can still find their way in to this text pretty easily, especially coming from Marxist perspective. I think I kept the Lacanian jargon into one little teeny footnote. That's one sentence long. So I really, really, really tried to do that. Yeah. So these last two questions are going to be, now that we understand the problem, thinking of a way out. So you suggest that art is one of the few places where capitalism's illusions can be exposed. But in an era where everything, including art, is increasingly commodified, do you still believe that art can challenge capitalism's excesses, or has capitalism already absorbed artistic critique into itself? And as a side question,

what are your thoughts about, you know, new media, the likes of which you and I engage in? There's certainly a consumptive element and even an excessive one, if I can just understand this system more, if I can just get the right theory, if I can consume more content and knowledge, while also having a real aspect that does attempt to confront and break down capitalist ideology. So I love your thoughts on both of those. Yeah. So I do not believe that art is forever commodified. I think there's always a tension between what I would call a genuine work of art. I know that's probably contested. term, but a genuine work of art and capital. I think they're at odds

with each other and they end up that the genuine work of art is always a challenge to capital. And it fits rough even if capital tries to capitalize on it, it's also trying to squelch it. And I think that's why we see

so much resistance to genuine works of art and this instead desire to produce superhero movies, which I don't think you can make a genuine work of art out of a out of a super hero movie uh i know that i just offended probably most of your audience with that but that's not long but uh or at least half but um so that that's what i would say that i think there there's just i mean we could just go through

history right like like and and this is why i think these great works of art often even fail as commodities right like the great f scott fitzgerald died in a drunken stupor because he because the great Gatsby failed i mean here herman melville had to stop writing novels because moby dick failed like these great great works this don't they couldn't they couldn't they weren't successful commodities so i feel like that's a that sort of tells you what i think is the real relationship between art and and and and the capital or in the commodity and And as far as the other question, I'm really, I think probably you feel the same way. I'm really of two minds on this question.

Like I really feel like, look, so much of this, of new media and social media especially is distraction and is getting us not to really focus on what we should be focusing on. Yet, at the same time, I feel like I can't tell you how many, I get probably 10, 15 emails a day from people that, But a lot of them are not academics. They're just ordinary people, right, that you just want to talk about theoretical questions, and most of them are about capitalism and that, and the commodity and questions like that, and it's a relationship to the psyche.

So that makes, and then there are other, I mean, I'm just one person. There's a ton of other, there's so many other outlets that are really trying to disseminate, theoretical knowledge to people that otherwise wouldn't have access to it, right? And I think that's a, I feel like that's such a great thing because I think this whole, this long critique of academic Marxism, right? Like the problem was it was so shut up. The problem wasn't that it was intellectual. The problem was that it was shut up in the, in the institution, in the, in the

university. And I feel like now that's not true. Like even the most. academic figure like they they your work gets just just just almost de facto i mean you have to do so obviously to do things but it gets out it gets out there and and gets disseminated and and i think people there's much more of an appetite for that so i feel like that makes me feel like it's a good thing so i i i again i don't that's not a great answer because i'm just totally divided about it like i feel like just like you're saying like you can you can just consume can you can turn it into a thing you're consuming, but at the same time, there's this possibility of, like, getting, broadening certain ideas to a larger audience and getting people engaged in that way,

just about thinking, about thinking about their economic situation in a theoretical way. So, I don't know. I feel like it's both things at once. And that's dialectics, I guess, right? Absolutely, absolutely. And I do think on the whole, it's obviously a good thing if you're using whatever platform you have or whatever skill set you have as an artist or, you know, as a communicator or as an academic, whatever, if you're using that to militate in some way against the system, to raise people's consciousness against the system, ultimately, even though there's always going to be a consumptive element

within the capitalist mode of production, even with regards to those things, you're still producing something that is of benefit and that it raises people's consciousness. and I get emails all the time. I mean, but what's the alternative? Exactly. I mean, the alternative is just to sit in your room and do nothing. Exactly. And I don't think that, yeah, yeah.

Like if you don't want to ever be part of the commodity system, then you're just, you're not going to be doing much, right? Absolutely. All right. So the last question is a little wordy. I hope you'll indulge me here. But this is a great way to end this conversation. You end the book on the idea that escaping capitalism requires a transformation in how we relate to

enjoyment, lack, and sacrifice. If capitalism produces a subject that is always lacking, always wanting, always chasing an unachievable excess, what does a post-capitalist subject look like? What kind of transformation and desire would need to take place for people to genuinely move beyond capitalism's structuring of enjoyment? And as I always force this question on you in one way or another when we talk, do you see Buddhism as offering a way to desire differently, one that could break capitalism's hold over subjectivity and help us imagine? imagine a relationship to lack that doesn't trap us in endless accumulation. Okay. I'm going to answer both these questions in a way that one is probably not going to surprise you. The other one's going to surprise you.

So my friend Sheldon George was given a – so he was given a talk. I must have been a thousand people in the audience. Maybe I'm exaggerating. But it was a talk about psychoanalysis and racism. And someone – he's black. And someone – a white person stood up and said, what can I do? to this classic even this group of

psycho dolls what could I do to help fight racism and he's like well everybody can do something

first of all then he got but then he said the thing it always stuck with me he just said I really have

a three word answer for you enjoy your lack and I think that's what a post capitalist subject does

like it doesn't think like oh I got to get over this I got to find I got to get over this thing that I'm missing. I got to get around this, overcome this obstacle.

Instead, it sees how what I'm, I'm actually enjoying this thing, the lack itself, or the obstacle itself is integral to my enjoyment, my satisfaction, right? Like, my favorite example of this is, so I, we have twin boys that are 20, this is turned 21, so we have, our cars are, you can imagine the, condition that they're in because we don't have a lot of money and we can't earn if we're to fix them every time they get in a little fender bender so it's it's embarrassing like when we have guests come here and i got to try and they're like when this car is wrecked why are you driving but i was driving home i was playing tennis a year ago or so and i was at the

light and somebody comes up and hits me from behind right and hits you in the bumper and pretty I mean, I wasn't, I didn't get whiplash or anything, but I felt it. I get out of the car and they're like, okay, I got to give you my insurance information. I'm like, you know what, it's a six one have to, this car's already, it's fine, you know, just don't need to get insurance, your insurance rates rate, just drive away. And they're like, are you kidding me? I'm like, no, I don't want to take this in and get it fixed and just to have it wrecked again. And so I was like, look, look at the incredible benefit.

they were like, oh, thankful, but I was thankful because I, like, didn't have to go to the insurance and go to the, right? And so the thing that, I think this is like a really crucial insight of dialectics, that the thing that is the, the thing that is the barrier of obstacle, the damage to the car is actually this thing that's also, it can be freeing too. And I think that's this, that's the kind of way of, way of like the realignment to think. Like, because I think the capitalist thinks like, oh, I got a chance to really get my car repair train, like that's what they think. So, so that's, that's, that's that part. Now, the other thing is Buddhism.

So I, I, I'm going to later today record a Y Theory podcast in which I have to apologize for saying that Buddhism is not respond, that no major authoritarian power has employed Buddhism, unlike all the other major religions. And of course, I received like 10 emails telling me how, what about, what about my God? what about me and more and so okay but here's what i think i think actually religion itself is a kind is there is obviously even more than art it's been it gets appropriated by capitalism right but i think at the core of religion and and my friend rick boothie wrote a book called him embracing what's it called uh embracing the void

which is about psychoanalysis and religion and his point is that every religious experience is an experience of this void in the other and I think Buddhism it's very clear that that's true in Buddhism his point is it's also really true in Christianity as well

and that and the love your enemy injunction is about that and obviously in Judaism the void is God and the inexplicability of God. And so I feel like that, that there's something in that that is ultimately, ultimately, incompatible with the logic of the commodity. So I do think that, obviously, religious fundamentalism seems like the much more likely

path that we're going to go down, which is horrific. But I do think that at the core of the religious, experience is this encounter with the void and the other that I think is tied to what I was just saying about the obstacle and about enjoy or lack. So that's, so, so I'm giving a yes to Buddhism, but I'm not just confining it to Buddhism because that got me in trouble earlier. No, absolutely. I love the answer. Could not agree more. I just did an episode on Sufism. I talk about Christian mysticism all the time. There is something in the deepest aspects of the of these religious traditions that is just completely revolutionary subjectively when it comes

to the basic logic and premises of capital. So that's a great answer. And the idea of enjoying lack itself, like stop trying to pursue excess. There is no point you'll ever get to in your life where you feel that you've finally arrived. Stop trying to pursue it. And even just something as simple as letting your car be banged up and not needing to fix it, not needing to go through the rigmarole of trying to get as much as you can out of the other person because it was their fault. And you could get more money and just letting all that go,

not buying the next iPhone, you know, all these different ways. All those things. You're cultivating something within yourself that is antithetical. And it is, that is a challenge to capital, right? Like that is a, that damages the functioning of capital. Yeah. In a very small way, but it does. And it also, it also makes you then able to be part of some collective work. Exactly. Yeah. If we're going to do the outward transformation, of revolutionary organizing in any effective way we have to take seriously this dimension as well absolutely absolutely beautifully said my friend and for any listeners out there that might be in Vermont and you want to get in a car crash look for Todd driving around the street

the most forgiving driver driving the beat-up Prius I can't miss them thank you so much Todd I really appreciate that hey before I let you go though can you just let listeners know where they can find the book and your podcast sure the book is at Columbia University Press so if you want to not buy it on Amazon or buy it from some independent bookstore that'd be great um it's called pure excess capitalism in the commodity and uh the podcast is why theory and it's available on spotify which we is interesting so um when when jony mitchell left spotify we went to spot we're not intentionally but she's i actually i'm kidding i think when she went back we we joined but we ended up having to because it it ended up

the podcast only costs us money we don't make anything The other platform ended up being too expensive. Nice. All right. Well, I'll link to those in the show notes. Thank you so much, Todd. Keep up the amazing work, and let's talk again soon. Brett, thanks.

That'd be great. Take care. I don't want to work more. I want to work less. I don't want a cold shower to endure what's next. I want to kill my ambition. Disappear into the forest. So when you tell me why I'm wrong, I won't hear it.

I need to take a break. I need to hurt less. There's pressure in my throat from too much stress. Take a look around. It makes perfect sense. I'm adversely affected by negative environments. I need to be. Believe, if I scratch and I bleed, I'll find a way through the unknown, headed for home.

Someday, play the game they say, pass every test, learn to be a leader, no time for rest. These machines are so smart They simulate intelligence They can do my work Let them handle it I want to feel good I want to feel my best You tell me not to worry

I'm obsessed And possibly unsettled A panic-stricken mess I want to feel secure Not like this I need to believe If I scratch and I bleed I'll find a way

Through the unknown headed for home Someday Bloody out of time Not much left Gotta keep moving One more step The sun may be shining

It's time to get dressed I don't want to work more I want to work less I want to work less I want to work less I want to work less