Marxist economics and Freudian economics or politics and drive

Abstract

Reading Marx after Freud forces us to think capitalism as a phenomenon not only in terms of politics but also in terms of drive [Trieb]. The culture itself, according to Freud, “includes all regulations necessary to adjust the relations of men with each other
and, especially, the distribution of wealth available” but, he recalls, at the same time, that “the mutual relations of men are deeply influenced by the amount of drive satisfaction that the existing wealth makes possible”. In that sense, to use a concept taken from psychoanalysis of Lacan, we can think capitalism as a speech introducing a specific regulation of enjoyment [juissance]. The idea of this work is to try to include into the reflection on the economic phenomenon the dimension of drive [Trieb] discovered by Freud, thinking the economic as a concept of a border between political economy and psychoanalysis