Todd, I am watching you from Cyprus. As someone asking my self questions about the world and about my self , I am a big fan of your channel. I've just finished your book "Embracing Alienation" and loved it. Just like your other books(I especially liked the one on Hegel) you discuss the concepts and philosophers in a clear and simple language, so that everybody can understand and engage. I think that's a great virtue for philosophy shouldn't be for the privileged elitist people. I just wanted to thank you and I hope new videos keep coming.
thoughts on Marcuses distinction between necessary repression and surplus repression? @26:12 you talk about how capitalism covers over the potential enjoyment of the excess (over necessity) that modernity provides. Isn't that exactly what Marcuse called surplus repression? Is there a political/emancipatory strategy that could be traced from this analysis of the enjoyment of the commodity form?
That link to Marcuse's concept does make sense. But contra Marcuse, I don't think that repression is the primary issue under capitalism. It's disavowal, which operates in a different way.
Two things, an enabling constraint is a constraint that enhances an outcome, and it sounds like wisdom would be finding an optimal trade off relationship between lack and excess so as to maximize pleasure. Thanks for the excellent content.
Thanks Todd. I found great insight and enjoyment in your book and this lecture. I watched "out of the past" last night. A riveting movie. I was left wondering about the ending. Jeff's death and dumb assistant perhaps one step removed from the other in language survives and prospers.
I think that Tourneur is interested in the ethical gesture of that figure, as he lies to allow Jeff's girlfriend to go on with her life. Thus the salute to Jeff that ends the film. His gesture continues Jeff's own suicidal one at the end.
Samo Tomsic's book "The Capitalist Unconscious: Marx and Lacan" (Verso, 2015) is a good companion to McGowan's excellent "Pure Excess". From my basic understanding the capitalist subject is a borderline pervert, in their denial of castration and belief in unbridled enjoyment. The passages in McGowan's book about Ayn Rand illuminate this aspect of capitalist subjectivity.
The foreclosure of castration is more in line with the psychotic subject rather than perversion. Which is explains why the capitalist subject is so susceptible to fascism; a paranoid fetish for a pure nation undisrupted by an invasive other.
@toddmcgowan8233 yeah, OK. That simple and succinct answer gives me more food for thought. Cheers bud. Miser never content. Collector can attain fleeting contentment.
I’m not sure about that distinction. I’m a rare book dealer and the best customers are in a desperate search for wholeness through acquisition of the commodity - pure lack. The collection itself is the externalized being of the collector - a control fantasy. That’s why there’s such emphasis on “perfect” (untouched) books and complete sets.
1. What you lay out in the video talk is a great lens through which to view the new Netflix documentary "Don't Die," a portrait of tech billionaire Brian Johnson's departure from the go-go world of finance and business and embrace of the pursuit of... immortality. On the one hand, he is now having experiences of true enjoyment because each 24-hour block of his life is defined by rigid limits and rigorous routine around diet, exercise, supplement taking, light exposure, etcetera. On the other hand, Johnson is pursuing what is perhaps the ultimate excess without limit: eternal life as a human on Earth. And so, even in his escape from the prison of the pursuit of pure excess as found in Silicon Valley capitalism, he finds himself pursuing pure excess once again. Nonetheless, he seems decidedly happier than the morose and suicidal man he was as an uber "successful" businessman. This appears to be due to the strict structure of limits under which he lives and that, deep down, he knows he will fail and will not achieve immortality - another limitation. 2. As regards the liberatory aspect of capitalism - that it has identified the primacy of enjoyment (even as it misunderstands what enjoyment consists of) - this achievement is perhaps not unprecedented in human history. Pre-agricultural hunter gatherer societies have been demonstrated to be highly egalitarian, on the whole, while also recognizing the primacy of enjoyment and even the fact that true enjoyment only exists within limits. The comment is not an attempt to romanticize hunter gatherer society, but rather to consider its achievements.
I know the Brian Johnson story. Great instance of the pursuit of pure excess. Thanks for bringing that up. As far as the hunter-gatherer societies go, I know that what you lay out here is the thesis of Graeber and Weingrow, but I think it's very difficult not to find what we're looking for when looking at the scant evidence from these societies. I also would say that the big question is why they weren't ultimately sustained.
@@toddmcgowan8233Interestingly, there is a large body of anthropological literature related to pre-agricultural or horticultural societies, as well as accounts from colonial and Christian observers. Their egalitarian structure and quite ample leisure time -in comparison to most agricultural and industrial workers societies - is highly documented and edifying to consider. These societies are perhaps the only long-term sustainable human societies in our history, as they are the only economies that do not eventually engage in fatal ecological overshoot. Their disappearance has been the result of conquest.
Thank you Todd for another insightful and informative video. Writer Bjørn Thomassen in his book Liminality and the Modern explores ways in which the limit is accessed by our varying ways of playing and enjoyment. I highly recommend as I think it would be interesting to draw further connections on our histories with these rituals and the continuing ways we seem to attempt a return, beyond. There’s a good discussion there as well on rites of passage, and that often these areas of excess ‘experience’ denote a transitional phase through one’s life, and we seem to be missing out on that besides a few scattered rituals in modern life. Perhaps getting a driver’s license is the least common denominator, at least socially across multiple cultures
Haven't finished the full video, but this discussion reminds me of the so-called "post-modern" or "post-Enlightenment" phase of capitalism as adumbrated by Jean-Joseph Goux in his essay (appears in the book "Bataille: A Critical Reader," ed. by Botting and Wilson) on Bataille's "Accursed Share." Goux critiques George Gilder's (Reagan's favorite economist) "Wealth and Poverty," in which he argues that rational planning in production leads to the welfare state, and Gilder writes encomium after encomium to the sovereign market, to chance, to entrepreneurship, to ventures that have no relation to any rational basis (i.e. production and distribution based on precedent demand or precedent wants); and all of these rationales were, in some sense or another, deeply investigated throughout Bataille's oeuvre. (There are also weird parallels between Gilder's use of Marcel Mauss and Bataille's use of Mauss, but Gilder claimed he never read Bataille before writing his book.) Since rational planning leads to stasis, the welfare state, and risk-avoidance-all of which needed to the dispensed with in the transition from consumerist capitalism to hyper-consumerist capitalism-according to Gilder rational planning and the Protestant ascetic mode needed to be done away with and replaced purely by bold risk-taking entrepreneurs, fashioning (as you mention in the video) desires for products that are totally superfluous or spurious, and correspond to no precedent demand. To quote Goux: "Is it useful or superfluous to manufacture microwave ovens, quartz watches, video games, or collectively, to travel to the moon and Mars, to photograph Saturn's rings, etc.?" (I remember you saying that you liked space-travel, so I guess you disagree with that last comment about photographing Saturn's rings ...) I do have a question for you: Do you refer to Bataille frequently in your "Pure Excess" book? I might consider buying it if you do, as I love Bataille's work. I apologize if you mention it later in the video, I've only watched a few minutes of it and decided to write this comment. I remember watching you on the Hermitix podcast and Bataille was brought up, but I cannot remember what you said. I know you're familiar with his work, but I was just curious if you've done a deep dive into his work.
I've spent a lot of time with Bataille, and he does form a background to all my thinking about excess, inclusive of this book. I discuss him primarily in an earlier book, however. I think it's Enjoying What We Don't Have but can't remember exactly.
Todd this has been a very thought provoking talk, particularly because it’s so hard to like. For me it sounds like you are talking to god when you speak of capitalism. Would it not be easier to begin at the meaninglessness of modern work in the industrial world, and then get into the promise of excess? For me the understanding of the pathology that comes from the division of labour(which I take to be called ADHD or lack of the executive functions) at school and work is the key to getting beyond capitalism because it points the way out through reason. To speak of the pathology of capitalism without seeing it as a simultaneous product of reason and politics(socialism and democracy) is to raise the commodity to a level that is unreachable by the worker who produces it. I feel as if capitalism as pathology is a way to keep the worker in it, rather than raise their sights back the level that their ancestors started regressing from, and beyond it. In other words, isn’t getting beyond capitalism the job of precisely the pathologized? Did you include work in the book?
I am curious about Lacan. So, your desire to please the other is an interpretation of what they want, but this is complicated by them not necessarily expressing their desire explicitly, and them not necessarily being conscious of their desire themselves, which I can sorta understand in terms of an overly complicated Hermeneutic of Otherness. But, if an other wants to harm you, Harm Affordance, it seems different, so they have to read you and determine what knowledge you lack that would enable them to maximize your experience of harm, for example, a parent teaches their offspring about the nature of sexual abuse, so that the child is psychologically harmed by the subsequent sexual abuse, you see if the language based context wasn't layed the child might think the sexual abuse was innocuous. I guess what I'm getting at is interpration of otherness dosen't seem to cover the other trying to manipulate your understanding in service of their own project, pain affordance in my case, so your interpretation of the other seems like a partial representation of the interaction with otherness, or saying that differently, personal psychological considerations aren't robust enough to cover adversarial dymanism. I'm sorry if this seems a bit incoherent, I'm enjoying learning about Lacan, and I apologize for my limitations.
my notes : expansionism, pro-natalism - a phantasmatic reactionary response to an excess model of production 01.11.25 Todd McGowan reproduction (past societies) vs (over)production (capital society) EVERY EXCESS = IMPURE capital society is dominated by the commodity form who’s promise is pure excess. the very health and heart of the regime, within a model of excess production, is found in (and depends upon) an unsustainable element. sustainability is antithetical to the capitalist system. over-productivity, surplus, useless excess is an (the) essential element of capitalism. excess in past societies had its place (ex. rituals) but in ours it is the place. insufficiency > sufficiency (commodity form) capitalism can’t solve the climate crisis because it is a society based upon a model of excess production over a model of reproduction. existence or survival is not a value but a secondary effect. pure excessiveness as social imperative. underlying this is the idea that the limit is utterly antithetical to the structure of capitalism, it sees a limit not as something that’s absolute, that is cannot go beyond, but instead a limit is just an invitation to transgress it, to infinity and beyond. a move to sacrifice the good for the sake of unrestrained excessiveness defines the capitalist epoch and system. the fact is our enjoyment HAS to involve lack, absence creates enjoyment. deciding on less, limit, lack is the essence of enjoyment. in the name of a perfect (pure, excess) enjoyment, capitalism turns away from this possibility of valuing enjoyment and recognizing its relationship to lack that modernity makes possible. so even though there’s a sense in which capitalism and modernity are coextensive, there’s also a sense in which capitalism betrays this possibility opened up by modernity. so the challenge of modernity is liberating enjoyment from the strictures of the commodity form. Karl Marx in his analysis of commodity especially in the first chapter of Capital volume one really starts us down this path and makes this insight possible. thus enjoyment is not just a practice, although it is that, it is also a theoretical struggle (capitalism lives on an enjoyment it doesn’t allow us to understand correctly). capitalist societies success is tied to MORE (need line go up). capitalism’s devotion to the production and enjoyment of excess opens up the possibility of equal access to enjoyment (the radical possibility of modernity). the unleashing of excess ties capatalism to the emergence of equality as a genuine possibility for the first time. this possibility adheres in capitalist modernity and so does its betrayal. an additional insight of modernity inaugurated by capitalism is this enabling us to see the priority enjoyment has (psychically or in reality? say) in our lives relative to the good, which frees us to enjoy what we individually lack rather than pursue more. so our aspiration should be modernity without capitalism. and we need recognize that there can be equality only when we cease submitting to the dominance of the commodity form. as long as we think enjoyment as this ability to act without limits, to act in any way we want, totally excessively, then we miss the possibility of emancipation from the commodity form and the dictates and imperatives of capitalist society. we need to see enjoyment as an effect of lack, enjoyment through lack. ^it’s crazy cause jordan f peterson of all people (i don’t know if he still says this but years ago) kinda makes point. he would say something approximating ‘the ideal number of’ limits, lack, or as i believe he puts it (as he would) ‘rules’ is ‘not none’ or nonzero. art and capitalism are opposed because art is this embrace of fecundity and productivity of the limit, whereas capitalism is this allergy to the limit. the commodity form evinces a total disdain for the limit and creates a paradigm of desire defined by a yearning for more. it privileges an excess of enjoyment over the good. art is limited excess. capitalism is pure excess. ^why, after contemplation, i see that guy’s act of refusing my friends offer to send him a song after he commented that it was great, as an artistic act. an act that put limit upon his experience in that moment and of that artistic work. an act that while obviously not proving some explicit theoretical framework hints at some knowledge of the truth or essence of enjoyment, the value in the transient and ephemeral, and the fecundity of refusal. ART, THE ARTISTIC FORM is the ANTIPODE of COMMODITY, THE COMMODITY FORM the good is marginalized for the sake of excess enjoyment. under the capitalist regime of enjoyment, which replaces the traditional regime of the good, the good is not gone but it’s always sacrificed for the sake of the production of an excess we can enjoy. this is why anyone can enjoy acting against their own good. why anyone can enjoy not working to sustain or reproduce their own life. not to mention the lives of others (aka. the world). this is what gives the thrill of enjoyment to things like drugs, motorcycle riding, anonymous unprotected sex, and so on; in each case i put my own welfare at stake which opens the door to enjoyment. plus one can find many examples in which excess enjoyment involves or necessitates putting the welfare of others, and the world, at stake. so enjoyment is always wasteful always stems from what’s not necessary or good. under capitalism excess enjoyment (‘to infinity and beyond’) is king and measured or sufficient enjoyment (what we might call ‘wisdom’ if we were inclined to use such a term) is made subordinate. it’s only capitalism that makes excess (wasteful, useless) enjoyment its foundational principle or its lifeblood. ENJOYMENT - SACRIFICE + TRANSCENDENCE THE WORLD = OTHERS LIVES enjoyment is often beyond pleasure. this is one sense in which enjoyment doesn’t change under capitalism. so capitalism or modernity let’s us see the importance of enjoyment there’s a genuine insight there that enjoyment is what makes life worth living. the failed insight is the idea that enjoyment can be pure and divorced from all lack. this is where our model goes astray. right-wing logic, which i believe worth stating can to varying degrees be found across the so called ‘political spectrum’ but is right-centralized (hence the descriptor), sustains a pseudo-pure excess by offloading lack onto an ‘other’, it makes another (ex. the homeless) the bearer of lack to sustain one’s own excess enjoyment (phantasm). so insisting on pure excess leads to inequality because it forces someone else (ex. worker) to silently sacrifice for the sake of my ‘pure’ excess, but no matter what i’m never getting the purity of excess that capitalism promises. the drive to pure excess is a seeking that will never find, it is a myth because lack or limit is the vehicle of excess and enjoyment. contrary to commodity logic, excess and enjoyment emerge as a possibility through loss or lack NOT through acquisition. we need to find the lacking excess that we already have rather than seeking it out somewhere in space or time.
To finish my thought. In an interaction with a benevolent Passive other their is interpretation on your part, but in interaction with an adversarial Active other there is realization on your part. The difference between reading a book versus realizing that you are being written by an author. Sorry, I'm so underestimated by my existence I babble a bit. I don't mean to offend.
No offense, of course. All I would say is that I don't think the problem of interpretation changes so much whether the Other is active or passive, benevolent or adversarial. In fact, that's part of what one must interpret. It's a different experience, but the problem of interpretation remains pretty much the same.
So do you see 'productivist' tendencies in communism (like the draining of the Aral Sea starting in the 60s as a result of the Soviet plan to irrigate cotton fields) as incursions of capitalism into 'communist' systems (and where now China is pretty much just state capitalism), or do you see these kinds of 'productivism' as having a different root? If it's not, I think you have to account for the 'excess' in those other systems somehow. I guess do 'non-capitalist' societies end up just doing capitalism to compete (unless they eschew modernity by just staying very poor)?
China for sure. It's an authoritarian capitalist regime. As the Soviet productivism, I'm less certain. It could easily have nothing to do with surplus and just concern the necessary. But as you say, the truth is probably that these alternatives have adopted capitalist investment in pure excess.
@@toddmcgowan8233 Thanks for the response! It feels like the Soviet system would have had a very different relationship to commodities than the west, but I wonder if the commodity could exert itself via some kind of 'spooky action at a distance' on other systems that interact with capitalism even in an antagonistic way? Maybe kinds of ineptitude in centrally planned systems can look like capitalist waste in content, while reflecting entirely different internal antagonisms in form.🤔
everything you say about capitalism applies to science too, right? The needs that are met by scientific discoveries, just like those met by developing commodities, are secondary to the overall aim of science, which is to produce a theory that will produce more theory
I do think that science can be propelled by capitalism and its logic, but I wouldn't say that science on its own is determined by the production of a useless excess. Quite often, science is trying to discover the useful.
@@toddmcgowan8233 but wouldn’t capital’s sacrifice be oriented towards the working class’ consumption instead of its productivity for the sake of its excess?
@@toddmcgowan8233 I guess what I’m getting at is that it seems like capitalism is sacrificing the working class’ consumption instead of the “good” itself
@@jeanlamontfilms5586 In a sense, this is the contradiction of capitalism. It needs the working class to consume excessively, and yet the capitalist gains its excess through restricting the capacity of this class to consume. So I guess in this sense one could say that it is sacrificed systematically and necessarily.
Investing in crypto now should be in every wise individuals list, because in some weeks or months time you'll be ecstatic with the decisions you've made today.
![Understanding Marxism: Q&A with Richard D. Wolff [June 2019]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/eU-AkeOyiOQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Todd, I am watching you from Cyprus. As someone asking my self questions about the world and about my self , I am a big fan of your channel. I've just finished your book "Embracing Alienation" and loved it. Just like your other books(I especially liked the one on Hegel) you discuss the concepts and philosophers in a clear and simple language, so that everybody can understand and engage. I think that's a great virtue for philosophy shouldn't be for the privileged elitist people. I just wanted to thank you and I hope new videos keep coming.
Thanks so much. I deeply appreciate your response.
thoughts on Marcuses distinction between necessary repression and surplus repression? @26:12 you talk about how capitalism covers over the potential enjoyment of the excess (over necessity) that modernity provides. Isn't that exactly what Marcuse called surplus repression? Is there a political/emancipatory strategy that could be traced from this analysis of the enjoyment of the commodity form?
That link to Marcuse's concept does make sense. But contra Marcuse, I don't think that repression is the primary issue under capitalism. It's disavowal, which operates in a different way.
This was awesome and so relevant. Thanks for sharing
Thank you Todd. You’re the man
Two things, an enabling constraint is a constraint that enhances an outcome, and it sounds like wisdom would be finding an optimal trade off relationship between lack and excess so as to maximize pleasure. Thanks for the excellent content.
Thanks. Our every activity has to be useful just for the purpose of the production of the useless. What a life, man
Thanks Todd. I found great insight and enjoyment in your book and this lecture.
I watched "out of the past" last night. A riveting movie.
I was left wondering about the ending. Jeff's death and dumb assistant perhaps one step removed from the other in language survives and prospers.
I think that Tourneur is interested in the ethical gesture of that figure, as he lies to allow Jeff's girlfriend to go on with her life. Thus the salute to Jeff that ends the film. His gesture continues Jeff's own suicidal one at the end.
Yes I see that now. He respectfully upholds Jeff's sacrifice
Samo Tomsic's book "The Capitalist Unconscious: Marx and Lacan" (Verso, 2015) is a good companion to McGowan's excellent "Pure Excess".
From my basic understanding the capitalist subject is a borderline pervert, in their denial of castration and belief in unbridled enjoyment.
The passages in McGowan's book about Ayn Rand illuminate this aspect of capitalist subjectivity.
The foreclosure of castration is more in line with the psychotic subject rather than perversion. Which is explains why the capitalist subject is so susceptible to fascism; a paranoid fetish for a pure nation undisrupted by an invasive other.
I love Todd's youtuber arc
Great stuff, many thanks!
Loved this one, Todd. Are you thinking with Bataille and the Accursed Share for this?
For sure, Bataille very influential on my thinking here.
This is right on time!
You again? Don't mind if I do.
Excellent!
Having read "Pure Excess," I am in need of some help in teasing out the difference between a "miser" and a "collector". Any pointers?
Great question. I think it's the difference between never having enough and focusing on the collection as enough.
@toddmcgowan8233 yeah, OK. That simple and succinct answer gives me more food for thought. Cheers bud. Miser never content. Collector can attain fleeting contentment.
I’m not sure about that distinction. I’m a rare book dealer and the best customers are in a desperate search for wholeness through acquisition of the commodity - pure lack.
The collection itself is the externalized being of the collector - a control fantasy. That’s why there’s such emphasis on “perfect” (untouched) books and complete sets.
1. What you lay out in the video talk is a great lens through which to view the new Netflix documentary "Don't Die," a portrait of tech billionaire Brian Johnson's departure from the go-go world of finance and business and embrace of the pursuit of... immortality. On the one hand, he is now having experiences of true enjoyment because each 24-hour block of his life is defined by rigid limits and rigorous routine around diet, exercise, supplement taking, light exposure, etcetera. On the other hand, Johnson is pursuing what is perhaps the ultimate excess without limit: eternal life as a human on Earth. And so, even in his escape from the prison of the pursuit of pure excess as found in Silicon Valley capitalism, he finds himself pursuing pure excess once again. Nonetheless, he seems decidedly happier than the morose and suicidal man he was as an uber "successful" businessman. This appears to be due to the strict structure of limits under which he lives and that, deep down, he knows he will fail and will not achieve immortality - another limitation.
2. As regards the liberatory aspect of capitalism - that it has identified the primacy of enjoyment (even as it misunderstands what enjoyment consists of) - this achievement is perhaps not unprecedented in human history. Pre-agricultural hunter gatherer societies have been demonstrated to be highly egalitarian, on the whole, while also recognizing the primacy of enjoyment and even the fact that true enjoyment only exists within limits. The comment is not an attempt to romanticize hunter gatherer society, but rather to consider its achievements.
I know the Brian Johnson story. Great instance of the pursuit of pure excess. Thanks for bringing that up. As far as the hunter-gatherer societies go, I know that what you lay out here is the thesis of Graeber and Weingrow, but I think it's very difficult not to find what we're looking for when looking at the scant evidence from these societies. I also would say that the big question is why they weren't ultimately sustained.
@@toddmcgowan8233Interestingly, there is a large body of anthropological literature related to pre-agricultural or horticultural societies, as well as accounts from colonial and Christian observers. Their egalitarian structure and quite ample leisure time -in comparison to most agricultural and industrial workers societies - is highly documented and edifying to consider. These societies are perhaps the only long-term sustainable human societies in our history, as they are the only economies that do not eventually engage in fatal ecological overshoot. Their disappearance has been the result of conquest.
Thank you Todd for another insightful and informative video. Writer Bjørn Thomassen in his book Liminality and the Modern explores ways in which the limit is accessed by our varying ways of playing and enjoyment. I highly recommend as I think it would be interesting to draw further connections on our histories with these rituals and the continuing ways we seem to attempt a return, beyond. There’s a good discussion there as well on rites of passage, and that often these areas of excess ‘experience’ denote a transitional phase through one’s life, and we seem to be missing out on that besides a few scattered rituals in modern life. Perhaps getting a driver’s license is the least common denominator, at least socially across multiple cultures
Thanks for that. I will check out.
Haven't finished the full video, but this discussion reminds me of the so-called "post-modern" or "post-Enlightenment" phase of capitalism as adumbrated by Jean-Joseph Goux in his essay (appears in the book "Bataille: A Critical Reader," ed. by Botting and Wilson) on Bataille's "Accursed Share." Goux critiques George Gilder's (Reagan's favorite economist) "Wealth and Poverty," in which he argues that rational planning in production leads to the welfare state, and Gilder writes encomium after encomium to the sovereign market, to chance, to entrepreneurship, to ventures that have no relation to any rational basis (i.e. production and distribution based on precedent demand or precedent wants); and all of these rationales were, in some sense or another, deeply investigated throughout Bataille's oeuvre. (There are also weird parallels between Gilder's use of Marcel Mauss and Bataille's use of Mauss, but Gilder claimed he never read Bataille before writing his book.) Since rational planning leads to stasis, the welfare state, and risk-avoidance-all of which needed to the dispensed with in the transition from consumerist capitalism to hyper-consumerist capitalism-according to Gilder rational planning and the Protestant ascetic mode needed to be done away with and replaced purely by bold risk-taking entrepreneurs, fashioning (as you mention in the video) desires for products that are totally superfluous or spurious, and correspond to no precedent demand. To quote Goux: "Is it useful or superfluous to manufacture microwave ovens, quartz watches, video games, or collectively, to travel to the moon and Mars, to photograph Saturn's rings, etc.?" (I remember you saying that you liked space-travel, so I guess you disagree with that last comment about photographing Saturn's rings ...)
I do have a question for you: Do you refer to Bataille frequently in your "Pure Excess" book? I might consider buying it if you do, as I love Bataille's work. I apologize if you mention it later in the video, I've only watched a few minutes of it and decided to write this comment. I remember watching you on the Hermitix podcast and Bataille was brought up, but I cannot remember what you said. I know you're familiar with his work, but I was just curious if you've done a deep dive into his work.
I've spent a lot of time with Bataille, and he does form a background to all my thinking about excess, inclusive of this book. I discuss him primarily in an earlier book, however. I think it's Enjoying What We Don't Have but can't remember exactly.
What is the death of a skydiver compared with the forming of a new skydiver?
Much funnier than any of my jokes
Todd this has been a very thought provoking talk, particularly because it’s so hard to like. For me it sounds like you are talking to god when you speak of capitalism. Would it not be easier to begin at the meaninglessness of modern work in the industrial world, and then get into the promise of excess?
For me the understanding of the pathology that comes from the division of labour(which I take to be called ADHD or lack of the executive functions) at school and work is the key to getting beyond capitalism because it points the way out through reason.
To speak of the pathology of capitalism without seeing it as a simultaneous product of reason and politics(socialism and democracy) is to raise the commodity to a level that is unreachable by the worker who produces it.
I feel as if capitalism as pathology is a way to keep the worker in it, rather than raise their sights back the level that their ancestors started regressing from, and beyond it.
In other words, isn’t getting beyond capitalism the job of precisely the pathologized?
Did you include work in the book?
The banker joke 😂
This was excellent! Thank you.
☮
I am curious about Lacan. So, your desire to please the other is an interpretation of what they want, but this is complicated by them not necessarily expressing their desire explicitly, and them not necessarily being conscious of their desire themselves, which I can sorta understand in terms of an overly complicated Hermeneutic of Otherness. But, if an other wants to harm you, Harm Affordance, it seems different, so they have to read you and determine what knowledge you lack that would enable them to maximize your experience of harm, for example, a parent teaches their offspring about the nature of sexual abuse, so that the child is psychologically harmed by the subsequent sexual abuse, you see if the language based context wasn't layed the child might think the sexual abuse was innocuous. I guess what I'm getting at is interpration of otherness dosen't seem to cover the other trying to manipulate your understanding in service of their own project, pain affordance in my case, so your interpretation of the other seems like a partial representation of the interaction with otherness, or saying that differently, personal psychological considerations aren't robust enough to cover adversarial dymanism. I'm sorry if this seems a bit incoherent, I'm enjoying learning about Lacan, and I apologize for my limitations.
my notes :
expansionism, pro-natalism - a phantasmatic reactionary response to an excess model of production
01.11.25
Todd McGowan
reproduction (past societies) vs (over)production (capital society)
EVERY EXCESS = IMPURE
capital society is dominated by the commodity form who’s promise is pure excess. the very health and heart of the regime, within a model of excess production, is found in (and depends upon) an unsustainable element. sustainability is antithetical to the capitalist system. over-productivity, surplus, useless excess is an (the) essential element of capitalism. excess in past societies had its place (ex. rituals) but in ours it is the place.
insufficiency > sufficiency (commodity form)
capitalism can’t solve the climate crisis because it is a society based upon a model of excess production over a model of reproduction. existence or survival is not a value but a secondary effect.
pure excessiveness as social imperative.
underlying this is the idea that the limit is utterly antithetical to the structure of capitalism, it sees a limit not as something that’s absolute, that is cannot go beyond, but instead a limit is just an invitation to transgress it, to infinity and beyond.
a move to sacrifice the good for the sake of unrestrained excessiveness defines the capitalist epoch and system. the fact is our enjoyment HAS to involve lack, absence creates enjoyment. deciding on less, limit, lack is the essence of enjoyment. in the name of a perfect (pure, excess) enjoyment, capitalism turns away from this possibility of valuing enjoyment and recognizing its relationship to lack that modernity makes possible. so even though there’s a sense in which capitalism and modernity are coextensive, there’s also a sense in which capitalism betrays this possibility opened up by modernity. so the challenge of modernity is liberating enjoyment from the strictures of the commodity form. Karl Marx in his analysis of commodity especially in the first chapter of Capital volume one really starts us down this path and makes this insight possible. thus enjoyment is not just a practice, although it is that, it is also a theoretical struggle (capitalism lives on an enjoyment it doesn’t allow us to understand correctly). capitalist societies success is tied to MORE (need line go up). capitalism’s devotion to the production and enjoyment of excess opens up the possibility of equal access to enjoyment (the radical possibility of modernity). the unleashing of excess ties capatalism to the emergence of equality as a genuine possibility for the first time. this possibility adheres in capitalist modernity and so does its betrayal. an additional insight of modernity inaugurated by capitalism is this enabling us to see the priority enjoyment has (psychically or in reality? say) in our lives relative to the good, which frees us to enjoy what we individually lack rather than pursue more. so our aspiration should be modernity without capitalism. and we need recognize that there can be equality only when we cease submitting to the dominance of the commodity form. as long as we think enjoyment as this ability to act without limits, to act in any way we want, totally excessively, then we miss the possibility of emancipation from the commodity form and the dictates and imperatives of capitalist society. we need to see enjoyment as an effect of lack, enjoyment through lack.
^it’s crazy cause jordan f peterson of all people (i don’t know if he still says this but years ago) kinda makes point. he would say something approximating ‘the ideal number of’ limits, lack, or as i believe he puts it (as he would) ‘rules’ is ‘not none’ or nonzero.
art and capitalism are opposed because art is this embrace of fecundity and productivity of the limit, whereas capitalism is this allergy to the limit. the commodity form evinces a total disdain for the limit and creates a paradigm of desire defined by a yearning for more. it privileges an excess of enjoyment over the good. art is limited excess. capitalism is pure excess.
^why, after contemplation, i see that guy’s act of refusing my friends offer to send him a song after he commented that it was great, as an artistic act. an act that put limit upon his experience in that moment and of that artistic work. an act that while obviously not proving some explicit theoretical framework hints at some knowledge of the truth or essence of enjoyment, the value in the transient and ephemeral, and the fecundity of refusal.
ART, THE ARTISTIC FORM is the ANTIPODE of COMMODITY, THE COMMODITY FORM
the good is marginalized for the sake of excess enjoyment. under the capitalist regime of enjoyment, which replaces the traditional regime of the good, the good is not gone but it’s always sacrificed for the sake of the production of an excess we can enjoy. this is why anyone can enjoy acting against their own good. why anyone can enjoy not working to sustain or reproduce their own life. not to mention the lives of others (aka. the world). this is what gives the thrill of enjoyment to things like drugs, motorcycle riding, anonymous unprotected sex, and so on; in each case i put my own welfare at stake which opens the door to enjoyment. plus one can find many examples in which excess enjoyment involves or necessitates putting the welfare of others, and the world, at stake. so enjoyment is always wasteful always stems from what’s not necessary or good. under capitalism excess enjoyment (‘to infinity and beyond’) is king and measured or sufficient enjoyment (what we might call ‘wisdom’ if we were inclined to use such a term) is made subordinate. it’s only capitalism that makes excess (wasteful, useless) enjoyment its foundational principle or its lifeblood.
ENJOYMENT - SACRIFICE + TRANSCENDENCE
THE WORLD = OTHERS LIVES
enjoyment is often beyond pleasure. this is one sense in which enjoyment doesn’t change under capitalism. so capitalism or modernity let’s us see the importance of enjoyment there’s a genuine insight there that enjoyment is what makes life worth living. the failed insight is the idea that enjoyment can be pure and divorced from all lack. this is where our model goes astray.
right-wing logic, which i believe worth stating can to varying degrees be found across the so called ‘political spectrum’ but is right-centralized (hence the descriptor), sustains a pseudo-pure excess by offloading lack onto an ‘other’, it makes another (ex. the homeless) the bearer of lack to sustain one’s own excess enjoyment (phantasm). so insisting on pure excess leads to inequality because it forces someone else (ex. worker) to silently sacrifice for the sake of my ‘pure’ excess, but no matter what i’m never getting the purity of excess that capitalism promises. the drive to pure excess is a seeking that will never find, it is a myth because lack or limit is the vehicle of excess and enjoyment. contrary to commodity logic, excess and enjoyment emerge as a possibility through loss or lack NOT through acquisition.
we need to find the lacking excess that we already have rather than seeking it out somewhere in space or time.
Please, no more U2
To finish my thought. In an interaction with a benevolent Passive other their is interpretation on your part, but in interaction with an adversarial Active other there is realization on your part. The difference between reading a book versus realizing that you are being written by an author. Sorry, I'm so underestimated by my existence I babble a bit. I don't mean to offend.
No offense, of course. All I would say is that I don't think the problem of interpretation changes so much whether the Other is active or passive, benevolent or adversarial. In fact, that's part of what one must interpret. It's a different experience, but the problem of interpretation remains pretty much the same.
So do you see 'productivist' tendencies in communism (like the draining of the Aral Sea starting in the 60s as a result of the Soviet plan to irrigate cotton fields) as incursions of capitalism into 'communist' systems (and where now China is pretty much just state capitalism), or do you see these kinds of 'productivism' as having a different root? If it's not, I think you have to account for the 'excess' in those other systems somehow. I guess do 'non-capitalist' societies end up just doing capitalism to compete (unless they eschew modernity by just staying very poor)?
China for sure. It's an authoritarian capitalist regime. As the Soviet productivism, I'm less certain. It could easily have nothing to do with surplus and just concern the necessary. But as you say, the truth is probably that these alternatives have adopted capitalist investment in pure excess.
@@toddmcgowan8233 Thanks for the response! It feels like the Soviet system would have had a very different relationship to commodities than the west, but I wonder if the commodity could exert itself via some kind of 'spooky action at a distance' on other systems that interact with capitalism even in an antagonistic way? Maybe kinds of ineptitude in centrally planned systems can look like capitalist waste in content, while reflecting entirely different internal antagonisms in form.🤔
everything you say about capitalism applies to science too, right? The needs that are met by scientific discoveries, just like those met by developing commodities, are secondary to the overall aim of science, which is to produce a theory that will produce more theory
I do think that science can be propelled by capitalism and its logic, but I wouldn't say that science on its own is determined by the production of a useless excess. Quite often, science is trying to discover the useful.
I work more, to make more money, to buy more shit, then the clutter in our house drives me crazy and makes me more irritable with my wife.
Could one say that the “good” of capitalism/the commodity form is the productivity of the working class?
I like that quite a bit, that this is the good that capital sacrifices for the sake of its excess
@@toddmcgowan8233 but wouldn’t capital’s sacrifice be oriented towards the working class’ consumption instead of its productivity for the sake of its excess?
@@toddmcgowan8233 I guess what I’m getting at is that it seems like capitalism is sacrificing the working class’ consumption instead of the “good” itself
@@jeanlamontfilms5586 In a sense, this is the contradiction of capitalism. It needs the working class to consume excessively, and yet the capitalist gains its excess through restricting the capacity of this class to consume. So I guess in this sense one could say that it is sacrificed systematically and necessarily.
@@toddmcgowan8233 totally agree
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