Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets

by Todd McGowan

The mere investment of capital received an almost infinitely greater reward than the hours of toil that produced this reward.

If every society requires some repression in order to function, capitalism requires what Herbert Marcuse in Eros and Civilization calls “surplus repression.”

Desire directed toward commodities is inherently repressed desire. Satisfaction requires breaking from the logic of the commodity altogether, and this becomes the hope for revolution.