Capitalist Bulimia: Lacan on Marx and crisis

When, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Jacques Lacan confronted Marx’s critique of the political economy, he went to the heart of its most crucial notion: surplus-value. In developing his psychoanalytic approach, he claimed that Marx’s surplus-value occupies the position of the symptom/sinthome as a kernel of non quantifiable enjoyment (jouissance) that defies valorisation. This paper offers an interpretation Lacan’s discourse theory, highlighting its socially critical character as it appears, particularly, in the Capitalist discourse (the fifth discourse that subverts the structure of the previous four). It then focuses on Lacan’s approach to Marx’s understanding of surplus-value, arguing that by reading surplus-value as symptom, Lacan gets to the heart of the enigma of the capitalist mode of production as unveiled by Marx. Finally, the paper examines the relevance that Lacan’s reading of Marx might have for the understanding of the crisis of contemporary capitalism and its substantial deadlock