That one should not simply accept the task of collaborating with politicians and administrators to relieve contemporary discontents and sufferings, but, rather, ask how such subjective discontents are generated by the very social order whose smooth functioning they disturb: how a subjective discontent in civilization is a discontent that is cosubstantial with civilization itself? There is a cruel
irony in the fact that Lacanian orientation lost its sociopolitical critical edge at the very moment when its representatives decided to intervene in public political debates — how much more subversive was Lacan’s old arrogant “elitism”! There are situations in
which the duty of the analysts is not to participate in debates, insofar as such participation, even if it pretends to be critical, means that one accepts the basic coordinates of the way the ruling ideology formulates the problem.
However, precisely as Marxists, in keeping with our fidelity to Marx’s work,we should point out Marx’s mistake: he perceived how capitalism unleashed the breathtaking dynamic of self-enhancing productivity — see his fascinated descriptions of how, in capitalism, “everything solid melts into air,” of how capitalism is the greatest revolutionizer in the entire history of humanity; on the other hand, he also clearly perceived how this capitalist dynamic is propelled by its own inner obstacle or antagonism—the ultimate limit of capitalism (of capitalist self-propelling productivity) is Capital itself, that is to say, the incessant capitalist development and revolutionizing of its own material conditions, the mad dance of its unconditional spiral of productivity, is ultimately nothing but a desperate flight forward to escape its own debilitating inherent contradiction. … Marx’s fundamental mistake was to conclude, from these insights, that a new, higher social order (Communism) is possible, an order that would not only maintain but even raise to a higher level, and effectively fully release the potential of, the self-increasing spiral of productivity which, in capitalism, on account of its inherent obstacle (“contradiction”), is again and again thwarted by socially destructive economic crises. In short, what Marx overlooked is that—to put it in classic Derridean terms—this inherent obstacle/antagonism, as the “condition of impossibility” of the full deployment of the productive forces, is simultaneously its “condition of possibility”: if we abolish the obstacle, the inherent contradiction of capitalism, we do not get the fully unleashed drive to productivity finally delivered of its impediment, we lose precisely this productivity that seemed to be generated and simultaneously thwarted by capitalism—if we take away the obstacle, the very potential thwarted by this obstacle dissipates.