资本主义的有限性及对此的倒错性否认

The Finitude of Capitalism and the Perverse Charm of Utopian Denial

本文探讨和发展了雅克·拉康的'资本主义话语',将它与马克思的理论相结合以分析当前的资本主义危机。本文同时吸收了马克思与拉康的观点,主张必须与危机的症状性特征建立联系,而不是倒错地迷信资本主义具有永恒自我更新的能力。特别是在20世纪60年代后期到70年代初的教学当中,拉康力图解决一直沉寂的马克思劳动价值理论的前提问题,他提出价值——这种根植于人类劳动的、资本主义特有的抽象——源于无意识,换句话说,源于工人本身内在固有的创造性知识,只不过这种知识已经被无意识能指所过度决定。在拉康看来,资本主义的抽象给自己设定了历史任务,那就是将人类知识的无意识实质转换为看起来可计算、可量化的价值以便交换并从中获利,以废除人类知识的无意识实质。对这一困境的分析使我们在探讨当前危机时能够注意到,资本通过剥削人类劳动产生利润的能力正在消失,当前的危机与这种能力的消失而导致的灾难性后果有关。本文对与今天的绿色资本主义的'创新悖论'相关的这一困境加以探讨,并提出以下观点:与相信新一轮的科技攻势所具有的变革能力相对应的是一种具有潜在灾难性的否认。

This essay engages with Jacques Lacan’s "discourse of the capitalist " by developing it in conjunction with a Marxian analysis of the crisis of contemporary capitalism. Our perspective draws on both Marx and Lacan in advocating the necessity to establish a connection with the symptomatic character of the crisis rather than perversely rely on the illusion that capitalism possesses the ability to renew itself ad infinitum. Particularly in his teaching of the late 1960 s and early 1970 s, Lacan strove to unravel the silent presuppositions of Marx’s labour theory of value by arguing that value —the specific capitalist abstraction rooted in human labour —originates in the unconscious, that is to say in the worker’s intrinsically creative knowledge insofar as it is over-determined by unconscious signifiers. For Lacan, capitalist abstraction sets itself the historical task of abolishing the unconscious substance of human knowledge by converting it into a value that has to appear countable and quantifiable in order to be exchanged profitably. The analysis of this predicament leads us to explore the current crisis in connection with the inability to grasp the calamitous consequences of capital’s vanishing capacity to generate profits through the exploitation of human labour. We explore this quandary in relation to today’s "innovation paradox" of green capitalism, arguing that the belief in the transformative power of a new science and technology offensive corresponds to a form of potentially catastrophic denial.