Pure Excess: Capitalism, Commodity Fetishism, and the Promise of More

Breht: Have you ever had the experience of chasing something, whether it's success, love, money, personal improvement, only to find that when you finally reach it, the feeling of arrival never quite comes? Maybe for a fleeting moment it seems like you've made it, but then as soon as the dust settles, a new longing emerges, another goal, another craving. Another sense that something is still missing, that you are still missing something. And so the cycle continues, stretching out ahead of you endlessly. The next job, the next relationship, the next purchase, the next version of yourself that, finally, will feel complete. Capitalism knows this feeling well. In fact, it doesn't just know it, it depends on it. Our entire system is structured around manufacturing and maintaining this feeling of lack. It's not just that capitalism exploits our labor, and it certainly does, but it also exploits desire itself. It convinces us that we can finally get whole if we just consume enough, work hard enough, own enough, optimize enough. And yet, the more we chase, the more the goalpost moves. The more we consume, the hungrier we become. The more we seek satisfaction, the more dissatisfied we are. Because in the end, capitalism doesn't just fail to provide fulfillment. It requires our unfulfillment to sustain itself. At the heart of this is a deep, often hidden paradox. We are not actually suffering from a lack of resources necessarily, but from an excess of production, an excess of commodities, an excess of choices that never bring resolution. Capitalism thrives not on scarcity, but actually on abundance, an abundance designed to keep us endlessly dissatisfied. We are surrounded by an obscene excess of wealth, information, entertainment, branding, self-help, promises of success. Yet we are more alienated, anxious, and existentially hungry than ever before. Why? Because excess does not resolve lack. It intensifies it. And the system makes sure that we remain personally invested in this particular trap. We're told that if we're still feeling unfulfilled, then it must be our fault. We must not be hustling hard enough, healing fast enough, meditating right, buying the right things, choosing the right brand of self-optimization. And when none of it works, capitalism simply offers us more, another distraction, another product, another dopamine hit to keep us from noticing that the system was never meant to satisfy us in the first place. And it's not just in our consumption habits. This structure extends to our media, our technology, and our politics. Look at the films we watch. Franchises that never end. Stories that refuse finality. Characters who can never truly die. Marvel movies, corporate reboots, endless sequels. Capitalism cannot tolerate endings. It cannot tolerate real loss. It cannot tolerate lack. Everything must continue indefinitely because if we ever actually arrived at satisfaction, we might just stop consuming. The death of a character, the conclusion of a story, the finality of an experience, these things force us to confront the limits of life itself, and capitalism cannot allow that confrontation. For too long, the left has focused on capitalism primarily as an economic system, one of exploitation, wage labor, class struggle. And it absolutely is. Don't get me wrong. But what Todd McGowan's work forces us to confront is that capitalism is not just a system of labor extraction. It's a system of desire extraction. It doesn't just produce commodities. It produces subjects who are trapped in an endless cycle of wanting, consuming, and never arriving. It creates a form of consciousness that cannot imagine desire outside of accumulation, that cannot envision enjoyment beyond consumption. And that is why breaking free of capitalism is not just a political and economic struggle, though it is primarily that, but it is also a psychological and existential one. This is why I always point to the necessity of inner transformation alongside outer transformation. It's not enough to just redistribute resources or seize the means of production, though that would be a good start. But if we don't address how capitalism has shaped our very way of desiring, we will be doomed to replicate in one form or another its logic even in a post-capitalist world. This is why, alongside materialist analysis and revolutionary praxis, which are essential, I emphasize the importance of deep internal transformation, one that allows us to relate to desire, to lack, and to enjoyment in a way that capitalism does not structure for us. And for me, one of the clearest and most effective ways to engage in that inner transformation is through Buddhist meditation and contemplative practice. Buddhism, particularly its critique of attachment and craving, goes directly to the root of this problem. It teaches that our suffering does not come from lack itself, but from the illusion that lack can be erased. The endless cycle of desire, what Buddhism calls samsara, is eerily similar to capitalism's cycle of excess, dissatisfaction, and the perpetual deferral of fulfillment. Just as McGowan argues that capitalism convinces us that one more purchase, one more upgrade, one more goal will finally bring satisfaction, Buddhism shows us that the craving mind is never satisfied. Not because we are failing, but because that is the nature of craving itself. True liberation doesn't come from satisfying every desire. It comes from changing our relationship to desire. It comes from learning to sit with lack rather than compulsively filling it with more. And if we can do that, if we can practice that and integrate that wisdom into our daily lives, then our very being, our very presence, can stand as a bulwark against what capitalism is selling us. Instead of only opposing capitalism intellectually while still engaging in its logic, we can extract ourselves from it at the deepest levels of our psychology. After all, what product could capitalism possibly sell to the Buddha? What marketing scheme would work on Jesus? What fashion trend could convince St. Francis to take off his robes and put on a Gucci belt? The whole premise of capitalism becomes laughable to a truly spiritual person. And not the pop, new age spirituality of Instagram influencers. Not the kind of spirituality that wants to sell you a course or a meditation cushion or a crystal or an app. Rather, the kind of spirituality that extracts you from that whole carnival of desire and consumption. The sort of spirituality where sitting in the grass and listening to the birds gives you everything you could ever need in that moment. So today, we're going to dive into this head on. Joining me again is Todd McGowan, whose latest book, Pure Excess, Capitalism and the Commodity, explores the deep psychoanalytic logic of capitalism, the way it shapes our relationship to desire, lack, and to enjoyment itself. We'll be talking about why capitalism cannot function without excess, how it manufactures our dissatisfaction, and what it would mean to truly break out of the system, not just structurally and materially, but also subjectively, psychologically, at the level of how we experience life itself. But before we get into that, if you like what we do here at Rev Left Radio, you can support us on patreon.com forward slash Rev Left Radio. In exchange for your support, $5 a month, you get access to bonus monthly episodes every single month and a back catalog now of over 300 bonus Patreon episodes over the last eight or so years we've been on the air. And if you don't want to get on Patreon, you don't want to do a monthly membership, you just want to support the show with a one-time donation, you can do so at buymeacoffee.com forward slash Rev Left Radio. The links to both of those things would be in the show notes. This show is 100% listener funded. We deeply appreciate everybody who supports the show in any way they can. And if you don't have money... That's totally fine. Sharing these episodes, leaving us a positive review, anything like that also helps the show grow and gets the show in front of more eyes. So thank you to everybody who supports the show in any way they can. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Todd McGowan on his newest book, Pure Excess, Capitalism and the Commodity.

Todd McGowan: So I'm Todd McGowan. I teach theory and film at the University of Vermont. I've written books like Pure Excess, Embracing Alienation, Capitalism and Desire, and a book on Hegel. So that's kind of who I am. I also, oh, I'm the co-host of the podcast Why Theory that some people listen to. Yeah, absolutely. Great to be here.

Breht: Great to have you back on. I'm a fan of Y Theory for sure, and I think the first time you ever came on the show was in 2019. So this is our fourth show together in 2025. So always a pleasure, always an honor to have you on. You're one of my favorite guests. You're a fan favorite. I really, really am excited to talk to you about this newest book of yours, Pure Excess, Capitalism and the Commodity. I just think all your work is a really important angle on a fully fleshed out sort of critique of capitalism and from an angle that oftentimes Marxists themselves don't really engage with in a serious way, I think to their own analytical detriment. But let's just go ahead and get into it. So the book's title, Pure Excess, suggests that capitalism is not merely about profit or even scarcity, but about excess itself. Can you kind of explain this concept, especially for listeners unfamiliar with psychoanalysis and how it differs maybe from a traditional Marxist critique of capitalism?

Todd McGowan: Yeah. So in a way, I think this is the book that I've written that's the most Marxist because this idea of pure excess really, I think, stems ultimately – its ultimate origin is the Marxian notion of surplus value. But – Yeah, the psychoanalytic twist on that is that – so for psychoanalysis, excess is always tied to lack. So we – because we're lacking subjects, because we're desiring subjects, we – there's a paradox or an irony of it that we – it ends up making us eclectic. excessive about things. Like we get excessively attached to certain objects. We get, and I'm sure everyone, I mean, this I think is one way to think about addiction, but even not addiction, like any cherished object we have, we have an excessive attachment to it. So if we weren't, the idea is that if we weren't lacking desiring subjects, we wouldn't develop these excessive attachments. And so the idea is that for psychoanalysis, our lack is and is inextricably tied to our excess so there's no in other in short there's no pure excess and the the way of thinking about capitalism that I try to develop in this book is that well capitalism actually provide it it proffers this fantasy of pure excess, this idea of an excess without any lack attached to it. So there's a certain incompatibility between psychoanalysis and capitalism. So that's the basic idea. And again, I think that the roots of that idea are certainly in the Grundrisse and in Capital.

Breht: Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree with you that this is a very Marxist book of yours in that sense. And this kind of relates before we move on to the next question to kind of the idea of overproduction within capitalism, right? There's a psychological and a material component. Can you kind of talk about the overproduction aspect and how that plays into this?

Todd McGowan: Yeah, yeah. And I think you're right to point out how it's certainly societal, economic, but it's also, I think, psychic, that the real psychic reward or the psychic promise of capital is in producing too much of something. And also, I think one of the things I – one of the watchwords of this book is inutility or uselessness. And I think it's really important that the things that capital produces and generates capital from are things that are necessary. And so I really play on this idea in a way that Marx, I don't think, does because he before Freud, play on this idea of use value, that it's really about something that specifically doesn't have use value. And certain Marxist friends of mine have been critical, like, you don't really understand what Marx means about use value. I do understand. I'm just trying to say that if we understand use in a different way, not just insofar as it can be that we purchase it, but insofar as it's not useful for us. That's really, I think, the key to the conversation. To the commodity and to what is being overproduced, like produced so much that it can't even be used in a way that serves our needs. And I think that's really important, that distinction between what's useful and what's excessive.

Breht: Yeah, do you have like a good example to kind of help touch ground with that with listeners? Yeah, yeah.

Todd McGowan: So I think I use this example in the book and it's one of my favorite ones. But the way in which people buy specifically Nikes but just any kind of sneakers, like I think that they – people that buy them, they buy, a lot of times they update their, they buy when a new one comes out for the year, they buy that new model. And obviously their, their shoes haven't worn out. They don't need the new model. And oftentimes they don't even wear the new model or they, they wait to wear it, but, uh, or they wear it and they keep the old one. That's not, that hasn't been used up. So there's no real, uh, need that's being served, uh, Yet, it seems like it's not a pure excess, but it is just excessive. And I think that that seems to me one of the great examples. I think other times the way people that are wealthier do this with cars, right? Like they get a new car every year, even though their old car is nowhere near being used up. So I think that those are a couple of the more... Maybe obvious examples. I mean, clothing is also a thing that we if we look at our closets, they have we have a lot of things that we never would use. And yet we're still buying more more stuff. So I feel like those are maybe the most conspicuous ones.

Breht: Yeah. I mean, I think, I mean, we might get into this a little bit later too, but obviously like the iPhone, the new one comes out. Yeah. Virtually nothing is different. And yet, and your phone works completely fine. And yet there, if you have enough money, there's an impulse to buy the newest model.

Todd McGowan: Well, not even, Brett, it's interesting, isn't it? Because not even you have enough money. Like I, my, so my son's phone actually just, this is very interesting. You brought this up because this happened just about three weeks ago. One of my son's phones broke, and we are, because we're bad parents, our twins are in college and we're still paying for their phones, broke and he goes to get a new one. And they're like, well, it would be cheaper if there's another member of the family that was also getting a new one too. Like not only is it, not only did I get a good deal, it's actually cheaper to get two than to get one. So my phone was working totally fine. I liked it. And I had to turn it in, and I'm like, can I still have the little thumb thing? They're like, no, no, no, you can't do that anymore. You'll quickly get the hang of the new way, and I'd hate the new thing.

Breht: So it's like it's not – and I think it's a great indication of how –

Todd McGowan: The new and the less useful is just pushed upon us even though the old thing is no – I mean the iPhone is the perfect example of this, right? Like it's just absolutely – like the new – what are the new features? Like the camera has more – I mean just stuff you just couldn't care less about, right? And it just – it works less well than the other one did. So it's not – there's nothing about the usefulness of it. right, that is creating the new thing. So I think, yeah, I think you hit on maybe the example, the ne plus ultra, right? Like it's the one that's perfect.

Breht: And there's this affective dimension to something like buying the newest iPhone as well. When you get it, there's obviously this initial thrill. You're getting it. You can't wait to go into it. You unlock it. There's a part of you that knows that not much has changed, but there's still a little excitement about exploring what might be there. But then very quickly, you bump up against the limitations of it, and that swelling of excitement fades away, and now you just have this – This thing that is just like the last thing, but your attempt to satisfy that itch is very, very short-lived, and we've now experienced it through many, many models, and yet we continue to kind of fall prey to that every time.

Todd McGowan: People keep doing it. Yeah, I think it's exactly right, and I think that the – What you're talking about there is what I try to talk about in the book, like this movement from like your expectation is that the excess will be pure. And then when you get the thing and it takes like, I don't know how long, it depends on who you are, I guess, like 10 minutes. For me, it happens in like 10 minutes. But for other people, maybe they get a little bit longer of this, like the thrill you're talking about. And then it's gone. And so the excess ends up being not pure at all. And that's the point, I think.

Breht: Yeah. Absolutely. Now, before we move forward, I just wanted to kind of zoom out a little bit and say why I find your work so interesting and how it dovetails with mine in an interesting way. Because as obviously a Marxist podcast, we're interested in confronting capitalism, transforming the social and the economic and the political revolution, etc. But I've always also pushed this idea that. There is an inner subjective and consciousness-oriented way in which capitalism preys on us and a dimension that we have to overcome if we actually hope to overcome the logic of capitalism externally. And for some more traditional or orthodox Marxists, they see that as unnecessary, as a flourish, as… as something that is really outside of Marxism proper to address that subjective element of the whole system. But I usually do it through the discourse on Buddhism, which we'll get to. You do it through a very sharp psychoanalytic lens. But I think we both agree that that subjective dimension is absolutely crucial, that we must face that as well as confront the external material reality of capitalism sort of simultaneously if we hope to really overcome it.

Todd McGowan: Yes. So right. So I was at a screening of No Other Land, you know, this documentary about about about Palestine and the two nights ago. And they're they're like, OK, we need to get the main point of this isn't just to watch the documentary, but to get people to sign up to take action. And I'm like, OK, you know, obviously I agree with that. But then what was interesting was that's always the question, right? Like get people to sign up to make people act. And I think what you're saying, and this is totally my view as well, like what is the real barrier to get people to taking action to vote? To to struggling against capital. Well, it's it's their psychic investment in capital. So, OK, yeah, you can you can say like, oh, that's just false consciousness. We don't even need to think about that. But I think it's a real it's a real barrier. I mean, and I think it manifests itself in every time people are saying we just need to organize. We just need to organize. I always say, yeah, that's true. But like, what is there? There still is like a tangible barrier to that. And I think it's a psychic one. And so that's I think that's that's where I that's where I'm trying to intervene and have something to say that it's not like I. And that's why I think. When you intervene, you have to intervene both with some idea of a collective action, obviously, because clearly an individual battle against capital is not going to be a successful one. It's too massive. But on the other hand, a collective one is not going to be successful if the individuals invested in it are still invested in the commodity. So I think it has to be a sort of war on both fronts.

Breht: Absolutely. Yeah. And that that inner aspect, people I mean, people would say, well, I'm not really invested in the commodity. I want to overthrow capitalism. And they consciously think of themselves as that. But in all these subtle and unconscious ways, they are pulled into the very logic of capital. And so that needs to be brought into full awareness and then dismantled through interventions like yours and others. If we're really going to address it, you can't just say, well, I'm a socialist. I don't I don't agree with capitalism. Therefore, I'm not really subject to its ideological pull or, you know, subconsciously engaging in its logics. You absolutely are, because we're conditioned.

Todd McGowan: Well, I know while you're watching Netflix and searching on your iPhone, it's probably simultaneously, which is, again, also part of the. capitalist thing right like the way attention is is diffused I think like that's so yeah I think I don't think it's yeah I just I just don't think it's that simple to say like oh I'm not a capitalist subject because I'm not I don't believe in capitalism right like that's I mean, I mean, I'm tempted to say, you know, this people say this about things all the time, but, you know, you may not believe in capitalism, but it believes in you. You're invested in it, whether you want to be or not. I think that's one of the things that's I mean, I think that's to me one of the reasons for its its incredible persistence.

Breht: Yeah, absolutely. All right, let's go ahead and move on. Capitalism presents itself as a system of rational exchange. But you, alongside Marx, argue that the commodity form is a kind of magic trick, hiding labor and exploitation, but also, according to you, manufacturing desire and sustaining the illusion of infinite novelty, which we just touched on. So how does this deception work and why do people remain invested in it?

Todd McGowan: Yeah, so one of the things that I do – and this, I think, is, again, a very Marxist example. I talk about this – you mentioned a magic trick. I talk about a real magic trick where the magician makes a bird in a cage disappear and then has the bird come out of the magician's arm or something, coat or something. Uh, and this is incredibly detailed in the Christopher Nolan film. The prestige was, I think is his, his masterpiece. But, uh, I, I, I think that the, the point is that the, what's interesting about that is that the, the one, what I'm sure people know this, that the bird in the cage is crushed when the magician claps the cage down and, And it's a different bird that emerges. And I link that crushing of the bird to the crushing of labor by capitalism. And then the bird that emerges is the commodity. And it seems like it's the same bird so that there's no – we haven't – the sacrifice is not palpable, right? Like you don't register that. The sacrifice, except unconsciously, obviously, you know something happened. You know, like when you're looking on your iPhone, at least there's some awareness that children were mining cobalt in the Congo and that things like this that you don't want to be conscious of because it would... make your enjoyment of the app less uh pure but i think that that's how i mean that that's that dimension of like the the way in which it it's also it's like there's some that magic trick is a way to also get your phantasmatic investment in the commodity because if you didn't have that I think you wouldn't be susceptible to the lure of the commodity, which I think is – it's interesting. Like how – to what extent would – and this – I sort of say this in the book in a speculative way. Like to what extent would Marx have been different if he would have – I mean, he couldn't have read Freud because Freud hadn't written anything when Marx, by the time Marx died. But it does make for an interesting question, I think, like how would the analysis of the commodity have been different? Because I think the lure of the commodity is. is really, really important. And I think, you know, when Marx says the commodities full of all these theological niceties, I think that he doesn't really see the extent to which that's true. Like it's really, it almost has a theological, religious power over us.

Breht: Yeah, it's a really interesting idea, too, to think about Marx engaging with Freud and the psychoanalytic tradition more broadly, and that actually brings up an interesting tension that maybe you could touch on, which is there are obviously attempts in the past to synthesize insights, and you're working in that tradition, but there's also genuine tension. Even a lot of the figures within psychoanalysis like Jung and Freud were very conservative, certainly not Marxist. Jung is a hardcore individualist and anti-communist and And there's to this day Nazi. I mean, yes, be fair. I mean, in a lot of ways. Yeah.

Todd McGowan: So, no, I mean, he was he was like he was a pro Aryan. Like he was he was he was not sad that the Nazis took power.

Breht: Yeah, because I've heard things with you that that, you know, people try to say that actually he he stayed in academia to kind of like help his Jewish colleagues and their work get ahead. What do you make of all that?

Todd McGowan: Yeah, I just don't think that's true.

Speaker 3: I don't think that's true.

Todd McGowan: I think a lot of people have a lot of – they really have a lot of investment in Jung and they want to – I get it. I mean, it's the same thing like this crisis that happened with Heidegger, right? Like people who were invested in him. They felt like they had to defend him until it became evident that you just couldn't and – I mean, I don't know. I guess I've never really seen that problem. Like I think you can – like a thinker can be valuable and they can have done pretty bad things. And I don't think that makes their thought necessarily less valuable. So that's not – but what you – and actually to the point, like you're right. Freud was a conservative. Jacques Lacan was a conservative. Like those guys are conservatives. But I don't think – I don't think that makes their thought less valuable or less able to be mobilized for a leftist project. I agree. Not at all. Not at all. So I just don't think that that's – I mean Freud was a conservative because he was a pessimist. And I think actually a little pessimism is a good thing for the left actually.

Breht: I agree. But I'm kind of interested. That was very interesting in and of itself. But I'm interested in what you think is one of the most credible or the best arguments coming out of a Marxist direct and that is skeptical of psychoanalysis and how you would attempt to resolve it or if you would at all.

Todd McGowan: Well, I'll just say who my favorite anti-psychoanalytic thinker is. That's Georg Lukacs, for sure. Or Jean-Paul Sartre. Although Sartre's not really a Marxist, I don't think. But I think Lukacs, I think he's very hostile to psychoanalysis, right? Yeah. And yet I think there's certain dimensions of him that are – like just – here's what I would say. His – and this is why I think Lukacs is such an interesting figure. Like his attention to form I think is actually one of the points at which psychoanalysis and Marxism come together. And so – I get his critique that it's that it's necessarily individualist. And I actually think I don't in terms of a practice and that it's actually his idea is that it's a calm. And this is a pretty center Marxist idea that it's accommodating individuals to their to their capital situation. Right. But I don't think that's even totally wrong. But I think that the theoretical insights that come along with psychoanalysis actually are part of a challenge to that capitalist system. So I actually – I don't – some of those critiques I don't have that much disagreement with and – Yeah. I just think, yeah, it's, it's the only thing I would say is it's that psychoanalysis is, is, is not therapy. And I think that's a pretty important distinction. Right. So it's not about like therapeutically making you feel healed. And so making people feel healed. Not healed, which I think is the psychoanalytic goal is a pretty, it's pretty consonant with political struggle, I think.

Breht: Very interesting. And I think we'll touch on that a little bit going forward. But your general point about taking ideas and core concepts, even from traditions that might even be outwardly hostile to a revolutionary left-wing program, is an important thing that we can and should do. And in fact, my most recent episode was a two-and-a-half episode on Marcus Aurelius' Stoicism. Marcus Aurelius, Roman Empire, what does he have to teach us 2,000 years later, interested in proletarian revolution? But inverting... Some of those ideas, taking them and putting them to work in service of a Marxist or a revolutionary program is precisely, I think, more valuable and what we should be doing instead of simply dismissing the whole thing as hostile to Marxism. Therefore, there's nothing of credibility or nothing of use in there. I think we throw a lot of babies out with a lot of bathwater when we do that.

Todd McGowan: I couldn't agree more. Couldn't agree more. And I think like that's one of the great lessons of Hegel, right? That he's, it's never just about like dismissing or critiquing, but about like seeing the truth within the thing and then moving, developing that, right? Or seeing how the, even the contradictions have something to teach us about a position. I just absolutely agree with that. I find just the dismissal. I don't see what's gained by that, really. That's why I tend not to write things or even do things where I'm just attacking a position because I just don't think it's just not that interesting and not that helpful.

Breht: And it's often very lazy and it's a cover for a refusal to engage.

Todd McGowan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean engage, right? Engage and see what's being said there, right? Definitely.

Breht: All right. Well, one of the most interesting arguments of yours and one that really hit home for me just in my own personal experience and I think will hit home to a lot of audience members is that capitalism convinces people that they can get whole if they just consume enough food Work hard enough, I might add, self-optimize enough or attain the right status symbols. But the system itself ensures that wholeness is always out of reach definitionally, structurally. So with this idea in mind, how do debt, commodity fetishism and ideological illusions sustain this endless, unachievable promise?

Todd McGowan: Well, I think debt is the big one. I think I start that chapter with, I quote Paul Manafort. I think I say something like, you know, Paul Manafort probably isn't a good person to look for advice because he even has a corruption, a corrupt guy. He's not really that good at corruption. But I guess he wrote to this guy he was... He was helping him. He's like, how do how do I use to get whole? That is, use his position in the Trump campaign to get to get whole. And I just took that as a and I mentioned this in the in the book. My grandfather was a great gambler and he not a great, bad gambling addict. And he was constantly on the phone to his bookie. And I heard him say it all the time. How can I how can I get whole here? And I thought it's really interesting the way debt functions, right? Like the main problem with debt isn't that you're in debt, that you owe money. It's that it fosters this psychic illusion that if you just pay back the debt, you can get it whole. And I think... I mean, I think that idea of wholeness is really integral to the way that capitalism functions. And that's why for me, seeing the necessity of self-division and contradiction and alienation, failure of wholeness is really part of the way that you confront that. So even if you obviously the point would be even if you pay off your debts, you're still going to be desiring lacking being not a whole being. So I think that that's yeah, that's like the to me. That's one of the main ways I have to say that was the first thing in this book that I that I wrote and I felt like God that I really kind of have to fit that in something because I think it's such a powerful thing. like debt is so omnipresent, right? Like capital can't survive without debt. And it's obviously increasing and increasing. And, and, and I felt like I needed to talk about that. And so, and I think that's, it's, it's easy to talk about the economic role that debt plays, but I wanted to get into the, into the psychic role that it played and, and, and the way it promulgates this idea of wholeness.

Breht: And there's not even – I mean there's consumer debt, of course, but the debt aspects of American life where to get an education, to get – I have deep debt, and it's just because I had the gall to not be rich and try to go to school, and then I had the gall to try to get medical help without having – Good insurance or whatever, any insurance. And so medical debt is the number one cause of bankruptcy. It's a killer. Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's just brutal how that whole aspect of your analysis here is also tied into people's ability to – Because in capitalism, you need to advance. You're told if you don't get this degree and keep moving and keep getting more credentials and getting more skills, you're going to be shitty on the job market. Nobody's going to want to hire you. So then to go after that goal, then you have to go into debt. And it's just like this horrific spiral that really feeds off each other. But it's really indicative of your point here that it's actually impossible to get hold, to finally reach an end point. Exactly. But you're chasing it full time.

Todd McGowan: And also the way that that debt, just what you're talking about, the way that that debt is absolutely crucial to sustaining the system, right? Like all the profit for capitalism is profit off the future, right? Because there's not enough in the present to keep things constantly growing. So it has to be borrowed from the future. And so it's really interesting how people have to be pushed to this position of like – getting more debt. And interestingly, I think if you stay out of debt, don't you think it's fascinating? If you're one of these people that pay your credit cards off every month, you're You're actually like you're the parasite because you're you're getting a discount on everything that you buy and everything you do. You're getting able to use your credit card. You maybe even get a cash back at the end of the year. Right. But you're doing it because there's all these other people, most users that are paying interest and are in debt. So it's a really, I mean, I think it's like a reversal. The way capitalism works, it's a reversal of the way we see the parasite. The parasite isn't the person that's in debt and relying on other people's money. The parasite is the person who pays off their debts and are surviving on the basis of the people who are in debt. And I think the same thing is true in capital, actually. Like, it's the big companies that rely on everybody being in debt that keep things going. And the parasitical – and this is a terrible thing to say – but the parasitical – firms are the little corner stores that people pay cash. Because they're not the ones that keep the capitalist system going. It's the huge conglomerates.

Breht: It's funny. One more thing I think about, even specifically in regards to just consumer debt, you want a new couch, you want a new table, but you're working class. Something that I feel is like even with me and my wife, sometimes we do this. We buy a couch and then we pay off the debt because we have to finance the couch or whatever. And then so the horizon of paying off the debt is there. And then there's that feeling of satisfaction like we have no more debt. But the first thing we do is say we need a new dining table. So let's get back into debt. We have to clear this debt so we can go into another form of debt. I know.

Todd McGowan: That's what we do too.

Breht: We're like, OK. All right.

Speaker 3: So which debt are we going to choose this time?

Todd McGowan: Because this one's terrible. This thing needs to be replaced. But it's all a question of that. But it's not a question of not going into debt, I think.

Breht: So this is another aspect of the getting whole part that I wanted to kind of touch on. And this is kind of the irony of the system is the people who succeed most at capitalism, right? It's so clear. Like you can think of Trump and Elon because they're in the news right now and in front of everybody's face. It is so clear that no matter how much wealth they have, no matter how much power they have, no matter how much they've quote unquote won the capitalist game. That they are also never, ever, ever satisfied. They need more. They need to be liked. They need the attention. And this is another aspect is like even the billionaires, even though quote unquote winners of capitalism, they think that by getting that power and that wealth and that legacy, that they will somehow be ultimately satisfied. But even at the very pinnacle of the capitalist pyramid.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Breht: are deeply unsatisfied, kind of pathological people that can never quite get there. And I wonder if you can touch on that a little bit.

Todd McGowan: Yeah, in fact, I think it's like, maybe I even used this example in the book, but it's like in The Great Gatsby, like that green light at the end of Daisy's Dock that recedes the closer that you get to it. Like, I feel like they, it's actually like compared to you and me, I think their situation is, I mean, obviously they have more creature comforts than we do, but their situation's worse because the closer that you get to that purification, And so I feel like that's the whole point of the way that that ideological structure functions, that you cannot you can't the more the closer you get to it, the more you feel like I don't have it really. And so I got to do more and more and more and more. And so that's why. like musk he's just bragging about working a hundred hours a week so what is he working for like what is the point of that right i mean it's just it's a it's a strange kind of thing where and it's very different it's it's and this is i think shows the historical nature of the system right in in in a very marxist way because like an aristocrat in the i don't know 14th century wouldn't have bragged about how much they were working you know that wouldn't have that wouldn't have that would have been ridiculous they would have bragged about how much they weren't working and I think it's because there's this absolute striving to get like the I gotta I gotta work work work to get the most possible value that I can right the most because I I need to I need to strip this excess of its impurities because it still has some impurities I want the pure and then I they never are going to get there And so the the the closer it seems you get there, the further away you are. So I feel like actually you and me are probably psychically. I mean, I know this is true. We're a lot better off than the people that are in their position psychically, I think.

Breht: Yeah, absolutely. And you can even see it with figures like Peter Thiel or whatever, where it's like, obviously, you've won everything, but they also want to be now the philosopher kings. They want to pretend like they understand Plato, and they want to take their rightful position under the Curtis Yarvin ideology of this aristocratic corporate class. You already have all the corrupted democratic quote-unquote power by infiltrating that system and buying politicians. You already have all the money you could ever want or spend in several lifetimes, and you also need to be worshipped now. And even if we started worshipping you, it wouldn't be enough.

Todd McGowan: The philosophy thing is really interesting. I was on this – I was on this – some guy made a mistake. He's a pro-capitalist guy and he saw my book called Capitalism and Desire and he thought it was a pro-capitalist book. And I'm like, you don't owe me on there. It's not – I'm not. And he's like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm open to things. And so the whole thing was just basically an argument the whole time. But the one thing I thought was really funny was he had an interpretation of Plato's allegory of the cave. And he's like, well, see, here's what's happening. The philosopher goes up, and he's like the wealthy person. And he sees in the sun, he sees gold. And he brings it down to everyone, all these workers who are enchained. And he says, look, come up. You can have gold, too. And I'm like, what? Wow. So I said, have you read the rest of it? He didn't answer this question. I'm like, you know, if you read the rest of the Republic, it's not really it's kind of about it's more of like a communist book. Actually, it's not a collective. It's not really about individuals striving. And it's certainly not about the accumulation of wealth. Plato, that wouldn't make any sense to him. He's like, no, no, every every society was about the accumulation of wealth. It's all every society is about wanting more and more and more. And so it was just fascinating that he wanted to be the expert on even on Plato's allegory of the cave. And I said, I just, I finally, I said to him, I said, look, you can have your people. You can have like Ayn Rand and, you know, Frederick Hayek. But like, leave us Plato. He's on our side. Absolutely.

Speaker 3: But he wasn't going to do that.

Todd McGowan: It's just interesting. I think it just proves your point, right, that there's not – like nothing's off limits. Like it's just I got to conquer all these new worlds.

Breht: I love to see him in a bookstore when he comes across Marxist Capital. He'd be like, oh, this is interesting. All right. Let's go ahead and move on.

Todd McGowan: Probably try to invite Marx onto his show.

Breht: Grind set. Hustle culture show. So let's move forward a little bit. And this is kind of fun and I think culturally very relevant to everybody who's just exhausted by this. But from endless Coke variations, Diet Coke, Zero Coke, Vanilla, Cherry, Orange Vanilla, to mind-numbing Marvel movie reboots, capitalism thrives on perpetual reinvention, repackaging the old as something new, which we see in modern film and TV a lot. Endless remakes, endless sequels, retreading the same ground over and over and over again. but always kind of presenting it as new. Is capitalism even capable of functioning without this illusion of the new? And do you think there's a breaking point where people start to see through, like I said, this rather exhausting cycle?

Todd McGowan: Yeah, I think that your suggestion is correct, that capitalism cannot function without the new, because I think if someone just said to you, if their advertisement for this new Captain America movie was retread, it's just basically the same story, some new characters, but it's all the same, basically. Please come see it. No one would come. No one would go see it, right? Yeah. Even though, I mean, almost no one did go see it. But I do think – I think you're – that note, that sanguine note I think that you had in your question, I tend to agree with it. That I think – I mean, I think there's a whole danger of a worldwide fascist turn that we – Would obviate this. But I do think that there is some sense of like, for instance, about the phone. My students are all they said, I hate my phone. Right. They just hate it. But they can't get rid of it and they can't stop looking at it. But the affect that they have is hatred. And I think the lack of people going to the movies, which is sad to me because I still go to the movies, reflects what you're talking about. So I do think there is a kind of saturation point. And I think there's also interesting, lying behind your question, I think, is there some way in which genuine novelty and capital are anathema. And I think certainly genuine aesthetic novelty and capital are anathema. I think that's true. So it's interesting. It's a time to live in, for sure.

Breht: Can you go deeper on that aesthetic point? What do you mean by that?

Todd McGowan: Yeah, yeah. I think that it's not an accident that capital is trying to recycle, say, Marvel things or whatever. And I think that... Let's take a film... Oh, so we'll talk about a guy that just died. So Gene Hackman, his greatest film. I think it's the greatest film of the second half of the 20th century. Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation. Well, it's a film of incredible novelty. And it couldn't, it was, it didn't, people didn't really go see it. It was nominated for Academy Award, but another Coppola film, Godfather 2, won because it couldn't be registered. Right. Like it just can't. I think and I think that's true of any genuine aesthetic novelty like Citizen Kane. It's true of like it couldn't. It was basically a bomb because it couldn't. And Hollywood tried to suppress it because it was so it's so challenged. It did a lot of things new. Yeah. And it so challenged the ways of the fetish. And I think what the fetish does is it... I mean, I think what you're talking about is really fetishism. That fetishism gives us... It covers over a lack, but it... So it... And I think... Lack is where the genuine new emerges. Like there's some kind of rupture. There's something contradictory. There's something that doesn't work. And that's how something new can emerge. But the fetish is constantly covering that over. And I feel like that's what we're getting, these fetishizing commodities. And that's why there's some kind of incompatibility between the new and capital.

Breht: I have two questions to follow up there. One is just in the psychoanalytic tradition, where does lack come from?

Todd McGowan: Well, lack comes from – yeah, it's a good question. Like it comes from this – it's basically theorized first by Jacques Lacan. But it's certainly present in Freud from the beginning. And his name for it was castration. And that just means for him that we're cut off. In a way, it's tied to everything we've been talking about. It just means that we're cut off from any kind of ultimate enjoyment, right? Like that's what lack means, that we're cut off from that. Not because, and I think this is often the way Freud has misunderstood, not because we once had it, we once had this plenitude of the breast and then it was taken away from us. No, but because it's precisely that act of being cut off that creates us as subjects, that it's desire that makes us. subjects and so that desire and lack are basically that's the they're the same thing so without that we we wouldn't be we wouldn't exist as subjects so that's where basically that's where it comes from like this idea of like another synonym of it is castration but castration for Freud and for Lacan is not literal castration it means that it just means you're cut off from the ultimate satisfaction that you imagine but doesn't but doesn't have any actual existence and it's it's never existed Never existed, right. And this is a very interesting thing. So Freud has this very fascinating discussion in a very early work called The Project for a Scientific Psychology. He never published it. But he develops this idea that Lacan would really work out further of noctreglochite or retroactivity. And the idea is that a thing comes into existence insofar as it's lost, right? So that ultimate enjoyment, it's only insofar as we have lost it that it actually once did exist, right? So it never existed. It just, we kind of lose it into existence, you might say. And that's the, I think that's a real, I find that idea really, I think that's how all nostalgia functions, right? Like I have this nostalgia for my childhood, but when I was in my childhood,

Breht: It was pretty miserable.

Todd McGowan: And so it's only because I've lost it that retroactively it's acquired the status of, oh, God, it was so great. I was playing in the backyard and it was that it was terrible. So I think that that's a I mean, it wasn't that terrible. It was fine. But it just wasn't this site of ultimate enjoyment that I nostalgically turn it into.

Breht: I always think of that in the context of reactionaries and mythologized past. Like they're so miserable with whatever modernity and they think that there's – if I could just go back to this time, I would be satisfied and I would love to just run the experiment. Put them back in the fucking 50s and watch their same pathologies and neuroses be present there. Right. Exactly, man.

Todd McGowan: Exactly. I think that's really true and I think like you could – I mean, I've heard people say this and it's right. Like, OK, make America great again. What time is exactly do you want to return to? Right. Like even like and people rightly say, like, well, if America in the 20s wasn't so great, if you were black, etc., or poor, but, but, but even for the people that were well off, it wasn't so great, right? Like, I think there's a, there's a, just like what you're saying, like you put the people back in that epoch and they're not going to, like, like, like if you put Trump back in the, like he loves William McKinley, right? Like you put him back in the epoch of McKinley, uh, is there running water?

Breht: I mean, that he has easy, you know, like there's not showers, that's for sure.

Todd McGowan: So there's a lot of things that are, that are, that you would, you, I think miss.

Speaker 3: Absolutely.

Breht: And the people that were closest to like, let's say a reactionary today, the people that were reactionary in the fifties were bitching about the progress of the fifties and wanting to go back to the 1800s. Right. Exactly. Exactly.

Todd McGowan: I mean, that's a, that's a, that kind of right-wing populism, reactionary movement, fascistic movement. I mean, I think that is coincident with capital. I think you can't have capitalism without that as this constant accompaniment to it. Precisely because this, I think it's precisely because this capitalist fantasy can't come true. So then you're like, why isn't it coming true? Well, it must have been true once before. So I'm going to go back to that.

Breht: All right. Yeah, and then there's that tension where capitalism is always seeking the new. It's always sort of revolutionizing things. It's homogenizing. It's destroying cultures and tradition. And then the conservatives and the reactionaries in capitalist societies. are always in tension with that, but they never put their finger on capitalism itself as the thing doing it. So they're kind of in a reactionary way defending the hierarchies of capitalism while in like a subconscious way contending with the fact that everything you say you believe in, like tradition and stability and patriarchy, is actually kind of being overturned and tumulted and thrown up in the air by the very processes of capitalism itself, which needs those processes to continue on and survive.

Todd McGowan: Yeah, that's a great, great point. I think like I like I have I like Tumult used as a verb.

Breht: That's pretty great.

Todd McGowan: But I think like I mean, it's the kind of Marx one. It's like Communist Manifesto. Right. Like all its solid mouths melts into air. Right. Like I think that that like, OK, yeah, I'm I'm against these like traditions being uprooted to like let's attack capital for that. I mean. I'm not necessarily. But, you know, it is interesting that like what they're really on about, what they're really upset about is precisely capital. Right. Like when you think about like the way that people are upset about like conservative state or upset about like trans transitioning and trans and like surgeries and all this. Like, why is that available to people? It's available because of the development of capital. I mean, obviously people transition to some extent all throughout human history, right? But the widespread medically available transitioning, like that's a product of capital. And it's a bunch of capitalists who are selling it, right? So the thing that they're upset about is Is the very system that they're defending. So you're right. I mean, that is, to me, one of the incredible contradictions of reactionaries today. You know, like the things that they are most riled about are the things that are directly due to the development of capital.

Breht: Exactly.

Todd McGowan: I just think it's just such a great point by you.

Breht: Yeah, and a great addition to you, and there's a million examples of that. And the second part of this follow-up, though, on the endless Coke variations in the Marvel movies, and I'm really interested in your take on this, especially with regards to film, is there seems like there – even though obviously the 70s and the 60s and the 80s were very capitalist times in the U.S., there seemed to be more dynamism in the cultural production. That it has sort of ceased now, that there's something culturally shifted, even though we're still living under capitalism, where all these remakes and these sequels, it's just so – it lacks so much imagination that even during other times in American capitalism in the last 75 years, they had much different – they had much more dynamism in their artistic creation. So what do you think accounts for that? And is there anything like maybe we're entering a terminal or a late capitalist phase or – I don't know. There's lots of different directions you can take. Yeah.

Todd McGowan: How do you make sense of that? Yeah. I just want to say one thing in support of what you're saying. Like as recently as recently as 26 years ago, as recently as 1999, it was the greatest year in the history of cinema. Just with I mean, they're just not it can't even be debated. Right. Like I could sit here and list 30 films. that are better, that were better in that year than The Matrix, which we think of, like if The Matrix came, first Matrix, if that came out now, we think like, oh, it's the best film of the year by far. There's not even anything to compete with it. So that's 26 years ago. And so you're exactly, like the kind of cultural decline that we, at least in cinema, I think it's true in popular music as well and other artistic forms that we're witnessing is just incredible. And I think, it's not just confined to the U S either. I think it's, it's worldwide. Although there, what's interesting to me is where the exceptions are, because I think Iran is one exception, which is a little bit interesting, right? Because it suggests that maybe, um, the, the tension with that fundamentalist regime has like, is producing a kind of art. And then South Korea is the other place that's, uh, is a site for like the, the film that everybody will know, um, parasite but but like I just encourage people to what there's like 30 other South Korean films of the 21st century that are better than Parasite, including like five by that same director. So, uh, it's, it's, it's, it's, it is, but, but, but I think your point in general is absolutely right. And I think my is, is, I guess that you're, is the question is, are we entering some kind of terminal phase? I don't know about that, but I do think that without that, um, without that production of I don't know how else to put it, but of works that are interesting, that works that capture people, that works to challenge people, then it does seem like it's harder to, to, to get people invested in, in, in the capital system. Like even all the stuff that people can stream, like, I don't think it, it, it excites them to consume in a way that things used to. So I do think that there is a, for instance, like on, was it February 20th, two days ago, right? This, uh, don't buy anything day. Right. Like I think, I wonder if that – which I did obey. I was really hungry at night and I wanted to go get some to eat. But we didn't have hardly anything in the house. But I did manage to obey and just ate a few stale cookies. But I was very sad. But I felt like I did my duty. But I think I wonder if that's not going to be emerging as a kind of a thing. Right. Because like if and like signing off of all streaming services. And I wonder about that. Like, I wonder if if that isn't like if in other words, if if like Marvel certainly is. You mentioned Marvel a couple of times. Rightfully, they're certainly feeling the the the loss. They have not, since the second Avengers film, or sorry, the Avengers finale, they have not had a real successful, I guess Deadpool and Wolverine, but that's not really a Marvel thing. They haven't had a real hit. And so I feel like there is some kind of sense that maybe things are winding down for capital, right? Yeah. But that leaves open the question of where it goes, sadly.

Breht: Yeah. I mean, it could go in a few different directions, obviously. There could be revolutionary movements. There could be a techno-dystopian authoritarian fascism that emerges out of it. Or there could be, as we've seen in the past, a period of capitalist rejuvenation where there is this adaptability inherent in capitalism. It's come out of the gutters many times before, created new epochs or generations of cultural production and economic growth. But it feels like that trick that it can pull out of its sleeve is not working as much as it used to. So I'm very interested to see where that goes.

Todd McGowan: Yeah, I'm very interested, too. I mean, I know that. So a friend of mine, Jody Dean, and I know you like, you know, like they're really into this idea of techno feudalism. And I get it. I see why they're saying that. And maybe that will be the future regime. But I think we're I don't I think that's sort of looking into the future. Right. Like I still my feeling is we're still in a capitalist in a capitalist regime. I think it's more and more an authoritarian. an authoritarian kind of capitalism but i i don't i wouldn't call it yet feudalism just because the way in which like i don't think feudalism depended its lifeblood wasn't the commodity right and i think i think that's how marx defines capitalism and i think i i define it that way too that it's the rule of the commodity form and i think if you don't In fact, I think that that's even more true today than it was in the epoch of Marx. So I'm a little reluctant to make this move to techno-feudalism or some kind of neo-feudalism.

Breht: I think that's a really great point, and I agree wholeheartedly. And actually, I push back explicitly on the idea that even when I use the term techno-feudalism, I'm actually not pointing to a shift in the mode of production. I'm trying to use a literary flourish to point out a certain phase in capitalist degeneration. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's still firmly capitalist. But yeah, I would call it a superstructural malaise. Yeah, that's good. That's occurring right now. I think that's nice.

Todd McGowan: I like that a lot.

Breht: And in South Korea is a brutal capitalist, deeply unequal society as well. But, you know, and like taken over by these huge corporations and massive poverty and a lot of the cultural production coming out of South Korea is anti-capitalist in form.

Todd McGowan: So that's what I was going to say. I mean, right. And about the the the.

Breht: the iranian films it's hard to say i mean it's it is that in in more indirectly but but in in korea it absolutely is absolutely for sure right right all right well let's let's go on to the next question here you argue that capitalism cannot tolerate real stakes real endings or real loss that even mass culture reflects this by endlessly resurrecting dead characters and refusing finality i also get a sense of this and how the system as a whole as we were just talking about, kind of seems to be reaching its own limits, not only ecologically, but also in its inability to kind of constrain itself and its rabidity in the form of Trump and Elon sort of hitting the acceleration as gas pedal in its direct confrontation with democracy itself, no longer able to ideologically conceal its outward disdain for it. And in the fact that people living under capitalism are living worse and worse lives materially and psychologically. So how does all of this relate to the death drive, which is one of my favorite concepts out of psychoanalysis. And what does it tell us about capitalism's fear of limits?

Todd McGowan: Yeah, that's one of my favorite concepts, too, that I think that – so here's what I'd say, that I think capitalism, like every system, has to rely on the death drive because death drive is the – it's the engine that gets us going through the day, right? Like we're driven unconsciously. to repeat traumatic events, right? To repeat loss. And even though there is this fantasy of overcoming lack and loss for good and capital, I think nonetheless, the more you do that, the more you engage in this repetition. and that's what we see all the time. But here's the thing. I think it cannot be avowed, right? Just like you're saying, loss cannot be avowed. You just have to look at this most recent horrible Deadpool-Wolverine example. Wolverine was dead and buried. He wasn't being met. So they went to a multiverse and resurrected him, right? And so it's just horrible. And I think you mentioned the word stakes. Like you can't... it's interesting because in capitalism it's life and death stakes for everybody that's working at a job right like at any moment that you could do something that offends the powers that be and you're out on the street and then how long is it till you're on the corner asking people for anything helps right like and and i think we all feel that and i but i don't think cap capitalism can never tolerate real stakes, at least aesthetically, right? Like it can't, there's never can be this moment where like, okay, like this, this is lost for good. And that's why I think the climate situation we've now, I think collectively we've just decided on, we're just, we're just in for disavowal a hundred percent, right? Like they're just, we're just not going to We're not even going to have the we're not going to purport to address it. Yeah. Right. That's just that's just out. And I think like obviously the U.S. is leading the way with Trump as the great denier. But but I think the rest of the world now, it's really fascinating, has kind of said, OK, I guess we're just giving up that. Right. So it's it's except China, maybe, which is a scary kind of prospect. But yeah, maybe.

Breht: Yeah, there's also the taking off of any pretense to guardrails with regards to AI. Who knows how that will actually turn out, if that's a bubble or not. But there's an accelerationist idea there. Can you give us an example of the death drive maybe in daily life? And do you see that resignation from even attempting to pretend to want to face climate change as a form of civilizational death drive in some sense?

Todd McGowan: For sure, for sure, because... So there's an interesting way that fetishistic disavowal and death drive function together. And so the denial of climate change is the thing that allows the death drive to keep working. But just a perfect example from my own life. So I used to run just as a way to eat a lot of cake and stuff that was bad for me. And so ostensibly you're running to stay healthy. But I would run no matter how I felt. And so I was getting a little sick and I kept running. And then I went for a run when I was really feeling bad. And I damaged my lungs terribly because I had such severe pneumonia. My heart rate was up to 200 resting. I was in really – I was like near death. But I was drawn on. And what's interesting is – I thought it was for my pleasure, right? So I could have these nice pieces of cake. But really what was driving me, and I think this is the key thing, is the destructiveness itself. Like I think we say like, oh, I like the taste of that thing or I want to get this other thing. That's why I'm sacrificing myself. But I think that psychoanalytic idea is that other thing is just a lure, that thing that seems like a pleasurable is just a lure and what you're really getting off on to put it that way is is the sacrifice itself so that's the that's the idea of death drive that it's that sacrifice is its own is in a way its own reward and and you see how that's so antithetical to this idea of a pure excess without any sacrifice that capitalism tries to promise us

Breht: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I could think of examples in my own life, but I'll just, for the sake of time, urge listeners to kind of think in their own life where the death drive might manifest. That's a fascinating self-examination.

Todd McGowan: Well, just don't you think even in a daily – in just a much more daily way, right? Like the way that you – like I – I constantly at work am taking up tasks that are just getting in the way of my free time, my ability to keep writing and reading and doing the things I like to do. Why am I doing that? There's no one's pressuring me. I just keep on doing that.

Breht: I think everyone can think of examples like that.

Todd McGowan: Where you're just taking on this thing that, why did you take that on? Why are you doing that? It's just a pure self-subversion.

Breht: Yes, absolutely. Yeah, that hits home for sure. One quick point I want to touch on before we get into the last two questions here is I really love your argument, and you don't have to spend too much time on this, but Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They'll buy certain furniture. They'll move towards a new aesthetic and they're telling themselves that they're consuming less and they're getting rid of some things. But at the same time, they're also taking on psychologically and oftentimes materially new forms of consumption. So how does this – can you talk about this and then does this mean that any rejection of excess under capitalism is doomed to be commodified in this way?

Todd McGowan: No, I don't think that's true. But I think, and I think you can, I think you can limit yourself in a way that's, I just think the way that, I think you just put it pretty well there, that the way that minimalism gets mobilized is that it stresses the aesthetic, it stresses the new commodities that you're buying. And then, so you've just defeated the point. But I do think that self, I mean, in a way, this is how the book ends, that some kind of self-limitation is the only way that we're psychically prepare ourselves to challenge the capitalist regime. I'm pretty convinced of that. So I don't think that any kind of self-limitation is immediately going to be co-opted in the way that this minimalism is. But I think that you can definitely see the way – I mean, in fact, I find people that are minimalists mostly annoying because they – I'm like, okay, yeah, you're really not challenging the thing in the way that you think you are. And what's more, you're like a – campaign slogan for capital. So I, yeah, I find that a little annoying, but I don't think we should dismiss that on the whole.

Breht: I actually, I totally agree with you. And that's a great segue into these last two questions, which now that we've kind of understood the problem, and of course, this is just an interview, you have to get the book to grapple with the full complexity of this argument. And I highly recommend people do. And as you said, it's not only your most Marxist book, I think it's incredibly accessible as well. So people that might not feel totally comfortable with psychoanalysis, I think can still find their way in to this text pretty easily, especially coming from a Marxist perspective.

Todd McGowan: I think I kept the Lacanian jargon into one little teeny footnote. That's one sentence. in so long.

Breht: So I really, really, really tried to do that. So these last two questions are going to be, now that we understand the problem, thinking of a way out. So you suggest that art is one of the few places where capitalism's illusions can be exposed. But in an era where everything, including art, is increasingly commodified, do you still believe that art can challenge capitalism's excesses? Or has capitalism already absorbed artistic critique into itself? And as a side question, What are your thoughts about new media, the likes of which you and I engage in? There's certainly a consumptive element and even an excessive one. If I can just understand this system more, if I can just get the right theory, if I can consume more content and knowledge while also having a real aspect that does attempt to confront and break down capitalist ideology. So I'd love your thoughts on both of those.

Todd McGowan: Yeah. So I do not believe that art is forever commodified. I think there's always a tension between what I would call a genuine work of art. I know that's probably a contested term, but a genuine work of art and capital. I think they're at odds with each other and they end up have that the the genuine work of art is always a challenge to capital and and and it fits roughly if it even if capital tries to capitalize on it it's also trying to squelch it and i think that's why we see so much resistance to genuine works of art in in in in this this instead desire to produce superhero movies which i don't think you can make a genuine work of art out of a out of a superhero movie uh I know that I just offended probably most of your audience with that.

Speaker 3: Not much.

Todd McGowan: Or at least half. So that's what I would say, that I think there's just – I mean, we could just go through history, right? And this is why I think these great works of art often even fail as commodities, right? Like the great – f scott fitzgerald died in a drunken stupor because he because the great gatsby failed i mean here herman melville had to stop writing novels because moby dick failed like these great great works this don't they couldn't find they couldn't they weren't successful commodities so i feel like that's a that sort of tells you what i think is the real relationship between art and and uh and the capital or in the commodity and and as far as the other question i'm i'm really i think probably you feel the same way i'm really of two minds on this question like i really feel like look so much of this of of new media and social media especially is distraction and and is getting us not to really focus on what we should be focusing on Yet at the same time, I feel like I can't tell you how many, I get probably 10, 15 emails a day from people that a lot of them are not academics. They're just ordinary people, right? That just want to talk about theoretical questions. And, and most of them are about capitalism and, and, and that, and, and, and the commodity and questions like that center in this relationship to the psyche and So I that makes and then and then there are other I mean, I'm just one person. There's a ton of other so many other outlets that are really trying to disseminate theoretical knowledge to people that otherwise wouldn't have access to it. Right. And I think that's a I feel like that's such a great thing, because I think. This whole – this long critique of academic Marxism, right? Like the problem was it was so shut up. The problem wasn't that it was intellectual. The problem was that it was shut up in the institution, in the university. And I feel like now that's not true. Like even the most – academic figure, like they, they, your work gets just, just almost de facto. I mean, you have to do some, obviously you have to do things, but it gets out, it gets out there and, and gets disseminated. And, and, and I think people, there's much more of an appetite for that. So I feel like that makes me feel like it was a good thing. So I, I, I, I, again, I don't, that's not a great answer because I'm just totally divided about it. Like, I feel like Just like you're saying, like, you can just consume... You can turn it into a thing you're consuming, but at the same time, there's this possibility of, like, getting... Broadening certain ideas to a larger audience and getting people engaged in that way about just about thinking about thinking about their economic situation in a theoretical way. So I don't know. I feel like it's both things at once. Yeah, that's dialectics, I guess. Right.

Breht: Absolutely, absolutely. And I do think on the whole, it's obviously a good thing if you're using whatever platform you have or whatever skill set you have as an artist or as a communicator or as an academic, whatever. If you're using that to militate in some way against the system, to raise people's consciousness against the system, ultimately, even though there's always going to be a consumptive element within the capitalist mode of production, even with regards to those things, you're still – you're still producing something that is of benefit and that it raises people's consciousness. And I get emails all the time in that regard. What's the alternative?

Todd McGowan: Exactly. The alternative is just to sit in your room and do nothing. Exactly.

Speaker 3: I don't think that – yeah.

Todd McGowan: If you don't want to ever be part of the commodity system, then you're not going to be doing much, right? Absolutely. Yeah.

Breht: All right. So the last question is a little wordy. I hope you'll indulge me here, but this is a great way to end this conversation. You end the book on the idea that escaping capitalism requires a transformation in how we relate to enjoyment, lack and sacrifice. If capitalism produces a subject that is always lacking, always wanting, always chasing an unachievable excess. What does a post-capitalist subject look like? What kind of transformation and desire would need to take place for people to genuinely move beyond capitalism's structuring of enjoyment? And, as I always force this question on you in one way or another when we talk, do you see Buddhism as offering a way to desire differently, one that could break capitalism's hold over subjectivity and help us imagine a relationship to lack that doesn't trap us in endless accumulation?

Todd McGowan: Okay, I'm going to answer both these questions in a way that one is probably not going to surprise you. The other one is going to surprise you. So my friend Sheldon George was given a talk. There must have been a thousand people in the audience. Maybe I'm exaggerating. It was a talk about psychoanalysis and racism. He's black and a white person stood up and said, what can I do to this classic? Even in this group of psychoanalysts. What could I do to help fight racism? And he's like, well, everybody can do something, first of all. But then he said the thing that always stuck with me. He just said, I really have a three-word answer for you. Enjoy your lack. And I think that's what a post-capitalist subject does. Like it doesn't think like, oh, I got to get over this. I got to find, I got to get over this thing that I'm missing. I got to get around this, overcome this obstacle. Instead, it sees how what I'm, I'm actually enjoying this thing, the lack itself or the obstacle itself is integral to my enjoyment, my satisfaction. Right. Like I, my favorite example of this is, is, so I, we have twin boys that are 20, this is turn 21. So we have, our cars are, you can imagine the condition that they're in because we don't have a lot of money and we don't, can't earn a for to fix them every time they get in a little fender bender. Um, so it's a, it's embarrassing. Like when we have guests come here and I got to try and they're like, well, this car is wrecked. Why are you driving? Um, but I was driving home. I was playing tennis a year ago or so, and I was at the light, and somebody comes up and hits me from behind, right, and hits me in the bumper. I mean, I didn't get whiplash or anything, but I felt it. I get out of the car, and they're like, okay, I've got to give you my insurance information. I'm like, you know what? It's the sixth one. This car's already— It's fine. You don't need to get your insurance rates raised. Just drive away. And they're like, are you kidding me? I'm like, no, I don't want to take this in and get it fixed and just to have it wrecked again. And so I was like, look at the incredible benefit. And they were like, oh, thankful. But I was thankful because I didn't have to go to the insurance and go to – And so the thing that – I think this is like a really crucial insight of dialectics that the thing that is the barrier or the obstacle, the damage to the car is actually this thing that's also – it can be freeing too. And I think that's the kind of way of like the realignment to think. Because I think the capitalist thinks like, oh, I got a chance to really get my car repaired, right? That's what they think. Yeah. um so so that's that's that's that part now the other thing is buddhism so i i just i'm i'm gonna later today record a why theory podcast in which i have to apologize for saying that buddhism is not respond that no major uh authoritarian power has employed buddhism unlike all the other major religions and of course i've received like 10 emails telling me how, what about my God? What about me and more? And so, okay. But here's what I think. I think actually religion itself is... There is obviously even more than art. It's been it gets appropriated by capitalism. Right. But I think at the core of religion and my friend Rick Booth, he wrote a book called Embracing the Void, which is about psychoanalysis and religion. And his point is that every religious experience is an experience of this void in the other. And I think Buddhism, it's very clear that that's true in Buddhism. His point is it's also really true in Christianity as well. And the love your enemy injunction is about that. And obviously in Judaism, the void is God and the inexplicability of God. And so I feel like there's something in that that is ultimately, ultimately incompatible with the logic of the commodity. So I do think that, obviously, religious fundamentalism seems like the much more likely path that we're going to go down, which is horrific. But I do think that at the core of The religious experience is this encounter with the void and the other that I think is tied to what I was just saying about the obstacle and about enjoy or lack. So I'm giving a yes to Buddhism, but I'm not just confining it to Buddhism because that got me in trouble earlier. Yeah.

Breht: No, absolutely. I love the answer. Could not agree more. I just did an episode on Sufism. I talk about Christian mysticism all the time. There is something in the deepest aspects of these religious traditions that is just completely revolutionary subjectively when it comes to the basic logic and premises of capital. So that's a great answer. And the idea of enjoying lack itself, like stop trying to – pursue excess. There is no point you'll ever get to in your life where you feel that you've finally arrived. Stop trying to pursue it. Even just something as simple as letting your car be banged up and not needing to fix it, not needing to go through the rigmarole of trying to get as much as you can out of the other person because it was their fault and you could get more money and just letting all that go, not buying the next iPhone, all these different ways.

Todd McGowan: All those things.

Breht: You're cultivating something within yourself that is antithetical. I agree. It is incredibly

Todd McGowan: That is a challenge to capital, right? That damages the functioning of capital in a very small way, but it does. And it also makes you then able to be part of some collective work.

Breht: Exactly. Yeah. If we're going to do the outward transformation of revolutionary organizing in any effective way, we have to take seriously this dimension as well.

Todd McGowan: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Breht: Beautifully said, my friend. And for any listeners out there that might be in Vermont and you want to get in a car crash, look for Todd driving around the streets. He's the most forgiving driver.

Todd McGowan: I'll be driving the beat-up Prius.

Breht: I can't miss him. Thank you so much, Todd. I really appreciate it. Hey, before I let you go, though, can you just let listeners know where they can find the book and your podcast?

Todd McGowan: Sure. The book is at Columbia University Press. So if you want to not buy it on Amazon or buy it from some independent bookstore, that'd be great. It's called Pure Excess Capitalism and the Commodity. And the podcast is Why Theory and it's Available on Spotify, which is interesting. So when Joni Mitchell left Spotify, we went to Spotify. We're not intentionally. But she's – actually, I'm kidding. I think when she went back, we joined. But we ended up having to because it ended up – the podcast only costs us money. We don't make anything. The other platform ended up being too expensive.

Breht: Nice. All right. Well, I'll link to those in the show notes. Thank you so much, Todd. Keep up the amazing work and let's talk again soon.

Todd McGowan: Right. Thanks. That'd be great. Take care.

Speaker 3: I'm adversely affected by negative environments I need to believe if I scratch and I bleed rest these machines are so smart they simulate intelligence they can do my work let them handle it i want to feel good i want to feel my best you tell me not to worry i'm obsessed Not like this I need to believe If I scratch and I bleed I'll find a way