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* University of Canterbury, New Zeland
Filozofski vestnik | Volume XLI | Number 1 | 2020 | 331–345 | doi: 10.3986/FV.41.1.13
Cindy Zeiher*
Lacan’s Fifth and Unfinished Discourse: 
Capitalism’s Alchemist Dream
Why is it that we sometimes think of Lacan as Marxist when is so assertively 
Freudian? Perhaps it is because Lacan perceives Marx rather than Freud as the 
discoverer of the symptom and furthermore places Marx as central to his fifth 
Capitalist discourse, in contrast with his previous discourses which are all in-
spired by Freud. In this way Lacan’s final and arguably unfinished Capitalist 
discourse stands apart from all the others, yet at the same time it reveals contra-
dictions and possible parallels with them as it attempts to unravel the dialecti-
cal tensions between the problematic production and consumption of meaning. 
The centrality of Marx in discovering the symptom follows from Lacan’s con-
ceptualization of Marxian surplus-value as “the cause of the desire which an 
economy makes its principle”.
1
 Elaborating on Adam Smith, Marx theorises the 
process of capitalism as a science which seeks to enhance one’s enjoyment, and 
whose kernel of surplus-value guarantees the continuation of capitalism. Lacan 
interprets Marx’s principle of capitalism as “the extensive, and hence insatia-
ble, production of the failure-to-enjoy”
2
, where surplus-value is on the one hand 
“accumulated to build up the means of production as capital” and “on the other 
it extends that consumption without which this production would be pointless, 
precisely for its inability to procure an enjoyment such that it can slow down”.
3
 
1 Lacan (1970 [2003]). Radiofonia. J. Zahar [Trans.]. Outros escritos. Rio de Janeiro, p. 434. 
Lacan goes on: “that of the extensive production, therefore insatiable, of that lack-in-jou-
issance. It is accumulated on the one hand to increase the means of this production on the 
side of capital. It extends consumption, on the other hand, without which this production 
would be vain, precisely from its ineptitude in procuring a jouissance that would allow it 
to slow down.” 
2 Ibid., p. 39
3 Ibid. Marx’s account of surplus-value is not restricted to, on the one hand, the productivity 
of human labour and on the other to the enhancement of capital, but further identifies this 
surplus as reliant on the dual character of the commodity being produced: that this is val-
ued not only for immediate consumption in the name of satisfying desire for enjoyment, 
but also for its exchangeability with other commodities. When the commodity is human 

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cindy zeiher
This contradiction lying at the heart of capitalism provides its cogent internal 
force conditioned by time and space, where the production of surplus-value 
and of surplus-enjoyment coincide with the risk of failure-to-enjoy. Although 
surplus-enjoyment and its anticipation can speed up or slow down, when it is 
relentlessly and insatiably pursued with no possibility of remediation for lack 
of enjoyment, there nevertheless remains in this failure to enjoy, this lack, an 
implicit will towards jouissance. The more one consumes in the pursuit of pleas-
ure, the more enjoyment of this consumption reveals itself as also enjoyment of 
the pursuit. In this way lack is integral to both enjoyment and its pursuit.
4
 
Although enjoyment of one’s lack is an implicit tenet of capitalism, its pursuit 
appears a conundrum because enjoying one’s lack is simply not always enjoy-
able, a contradiction which cannot be ignored. The answer here might be that 
since the will towards jouissance is an inherent condition for the speaking being, 
the enjoyment of one’s lack necessarily remains a bona fide part of subjectivity. 
In addressing subjective lack of enjoyment Lacan proposes a discourse that is 
both independently self-supporting and one which the speaking being can make 
its own. It is here that the parallel between Lacan and Marx breaks down. For 
Marx, enjoyment is imbedded and dependent on hidden social forces whereas 
for Lacan it is a question of problematic, subjective non-rapport which for the 
speaking being does not have a social origin, nor ever could have. For Lacan, 
even where the social bond is truly implicated and recognized, for example in 
economic exchange, social origin is never just social because it is fundamentally 
a product of the Symbolic Order. 
 
Lacan distinguishes between the Capitalist discourse and that of the Master 
when stating, “Marx had not set about completing [his theory of capitalism], 
giving it its subject, the proletariat, thanks to which the discourse of capitalism 
labour purchased at its exchange value, there nevertheless remains a surplus of labour 
time which presents as an increased exchange value, a surplus-value. 
4 Todd McGowan (2016) offers in Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets 
(Columbia University Press) a robust theorisation of lack within the Capitalist discourse 
as not only crucial to the will to enjoy, but that it is enjoyment. Furthermore, Samo Tomšič 
(2015) suggests in Capitalist Unconscious (Verso) that the Capitalist discourse is a fake one, 
manufactured for the purpose of inserting the libido into social relations. 

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lacan’s fifth and unfinished discourse: capitalism’s alchemist dream
spread wherever the form of the Marxist State held sway”.
5
 What characterizes 
the Capitalist discourse, claims Lacan, is “the banishment [of castration] from 
all the fields of the symbolic…”, so that “every order, every discourse which re-
lates to capitalism leaves aside what we can call simply the things of love”.
6
 We 
can envisage the Marxist state as being, like capital, located under this typology 
wherein the symptom is precluded in order to ensure the continuation of the 
state. In confronting capitalism Marx identifies the subject as uniquely proletar-
ian, a pathology which the subject, in needing to be cured, fully supports, rather 
than remaining an inscription of Adam Smith’s rational economic man, doomed 
to carrying the symptom of pursuing surplus-enjoyment towards its inevitable 
consequence, exploitation. 
Lacan takes this up not only as a subjective struggle, but also as part of his larger 
inquiry as to whether there could be a politics which does not keep desire at bay. 
Such a theoretical politics would have to be either totally distinct from the state 
which is merely its’ manager, or a politics devoid of the state in that both it and 
the state are one and the same. Although these positions are barely conceiva-
ble as actualities, they do provide a platform from which to think politics as a 
praxis. For example, in considering how the Marxist state could be hystericized, 
Lacanians must inevitably turn to the Analyst’s discourse: how could desire be 
kept alive in the well-oiled state mechanical machine in which every subject 
is compliant? How does one live within such a politics and at the same time 
engage with the problem of one’s desire? Here we might look to Lacan’s lack 
of sexual relation as being an apt metaphor for the social bond whose absence 
similarly allows interpretation of symptoms as based on desire and therefore on 
lack. In light of this, perhaps our questions can be reframed as how can politics 
and desire coexist as one ethical form? 
5 Lacan, J. (1971-72 [2011]). Talking to Brick Walls: A Series of Presentations in the Chapel at 
Sainte-Anne Hospital. A. Price [Trans.]. Cambridge: Polity, p. 96. 
6 Ibid. What we can glean elsewhere from Lacan is that enjoyment in terms of “the things of 
love” is value in the absolute, in other words, detached from use and need. This is particu-
larly so at the level of the non-rapport where man’s enjoyment as value in use, is always 
phallic, whereas that of the woman, being exchange-value, is non-phallic. Samo Tomši č 
(2016) in Jacques Lacan: Between Psychoanalysis and Politics (Routledge) speak of this in-
herent contradiction between where “sexuality [is revealed] without the inexistence of the 
sexual relation” (p. 149), that is sexuality and its commodification emerge via repression. 

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cindy zeiher
But first, how are we to interpret these symptoms? Although jouissance asso-
ciated with apathy and ambivalence has always been a part of subjectivity, it 
is today appearing more and more in the clinic.
7
 Compared with the symptoms 
which dominated in Freud and Lacan’s clinic (hysteria, obsession and phobias), 
contemporary apathy and ambivalence differ in not signifying some sort of com-
mand to address the Other. As with addiction, there is an immediate jouissance 
associated with apathy and ambivalence, which perhaps indicates resistance 
to the social. Furthermore, unlike traditional symptoms of neurosis which pass 
through a battery of signifiers, these contemporary symptoms are neither ad-
dressed to the Other nor need its support in attaining jouissance. We could even 
say that addiction, apathy and ambivalence deliberately obliterate the Other 
as mediator of jouissance, so that in obtaining the desired object, the Other is 
not passed through in the passage towards jouissance. This by-passing charac-
terizes contemporary symptoms and points towards direct access to jouissance 
whose signification is either repressed or absent. Why contemporary symptoms 
present in this way is perhaps because the social bond has taken a new form in 
so far as we are no longer living through the discourse of the Master but rather 
the discourse of the Capitalist. 
Bearing in mind that it is a task of psychoanalysis to analyse the conditions 
in which discourses emerge and are characterized, it is important not to forget 
the complexities of symptoms which are contradictory. It seems that the subject 
of today’s symptoms harbours a certain perverse disdain towards investment 
in the Other. Yet even the figure of the Pervert needs to be heard with regard 
to how its’ law is structured, a requirement which renders the Perverse subject 
obedient to a meaningful law albiet not that of the Other. Here we can say that 
the Perverse subject of contemporary symptoms is not by-passing the law of the 
Other because it appears meaningless or senseless, but because this by-passing 
is fully accepted as itself jouissance.
8
 
7 Stephanie Swales and Carol Owen provide an excellent overview of these current clinical 
phenomena in Psychoanalysing Ambivalence with Freud and Lacan: On and Off the Couch, 
2020, Routledge. 
8 Todd McGowan (2019, Écrits Conference) gives an account of this by-passing as a way of 
fully submitting to the injunction of the law, claiming that the subject gives representa-
tion where meaning fails and that it is via representation where satisfaction can be found, 
albeit momentarily. 

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lacan’s fifth and unfinished discourse: capitalism’s alchemist dream
Arguably this is a manifestation of the Master’s discourse,
9
 where a premise can 
become law simply because it is uttered by one who is masterful, even if this is 
the subject. Discourse is language in process which bears the imprint of conflict 
and contradiction. Lacan’s typology of discourse allows the variety of discourses 
that exist – for example, those of governance, patriarchy and environment – to 
come under one of five intersecting discourses, of the Master, the University, the 
Hysteric, the Analyst and the Capitalist. Each discourse articulates agency rela-
tions variously and specifically. The discourse of the Master is hierarchical, sub-
jugating all other subject positions to the rule of the Master, whether this be the 
king, the name of the father, the law and so on. The discourse of the University 
(or of knowledge), far from being autonomous as one might expect, serves that 
of the Master which today is capitalism. The discourse of the Hysteric, by con-
trast, questions the agency as well as the knowledge of the Master and is willing 
to encounter resistance in doing so. Yet at the same time any subversive state-
ment, even one manifesting as a revolutionary subjective symptom also mirrors 
the symptom of the Master. Thus action in opposition to a particular ideological 
discourse is still caught up within that discourse, for example anti-capitalists 
are trapped within the discourse of capitalism, and so on. 
Rather than pointing towards a particular dominant discourse, what such 
symptoms reveal is lack. The structural effect of discourse is founded on the 
subject's employment of the Master signifier as an instrument indicating not 
only mastery but also that this is the sole apparatus for acquiring knowledge. 
As well as being in service to the University discourse, the Analyst’s discourse 
functions as mediator between the Hysteric's discourse and that of the Master. 
In the course of such mediation, what is revealed is that the questioning or crit-
icism of the Master yields, surprisingly, a relativized Master’s position which, 
in consequence of its loss of autonomy in succumbing to questions, produces 
a signifier of its own. It is with this relativizing of the master signifier in mind 
9 One way of interpreting Lacan’s discourse of the master is in terms of his definition of the 
subject: “the signifier (S1) represents the barred subject for another signifier (S2).” Insofar 
as no signifier ever manages to name the subject because the signifier can’t signify itself 
(Seminar XIV), a remainder is always produced, something always slips away (objet a). 
This is what gives rise to the repetitive nature of the symptom in the universe of mastery. 
The subject’s unconscious produces a number of signifying coagulations in an attempt to 
fill the lack (objet a) that can never be filled within the symbolic order. These signifying 
coagulations are symptoms of the Hysteric. 

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cindy zeiher
that Lacan’s remarks in his 1972 Milan lecture regarding the discourse of the 
Capitalist, should be considered:
What is a discourse? It is what … in the ordering of what can be produced by the 
existence of language, makes some social link function … there must be at least 
two signifiers. This means, the signifier insofar as it functions as an element … the 
signifier insofar as it is the mode by which the world is structured, the world of 
the speaking being, which is to say, all knowledge.
10
Given this definition of discourse as a productive ordering of all knowledge 
through relations between signifiers, certain clinical implications emerge re-
garding how discourse determines the structuring of the social. Lacan proposes 
four signifiers to indicate specific determinants behind the mutable relations 
which comprise the different discourses (Figure 1). 
These are the master signifier (S1), the signifier for knowledge (S2), the divided 
subject ($) and surplus-jouissance (a). In the case of the Master’s discourse, the 
function of the master signifier (S1) is to organize the social field by establishing 
dominance over it. Simply put, the master signifier commands. The signifier for 
knowledge (S2) both possesses and hides the truth that that the Master is just 
another subject divided between reason and the unconscious subversion of in-
10
 Lacan, J. (1972). On Psychoanalytic Discourse: The Capitalist Discourse. Stone, J. W . [Trans.]. 
University of Missouri, p. 12.
Figure 1: The Four Discourses

337
lacan’s fifth and unfinished discourse: capitalism’s alchemist dream
tegrity and control ($), while at the same time producing surplus-jouissance (a). 
The signifier for knowledge (S2), the University discourse, addresses the signifi-
er of surplus-jouissance in the form of the objet a. We can think of this as a par-
tial object, one which does not really exist but is nevertheless constituted within 
the Symbolic Order, for example the movement of force between things is af-
forded an object-like character. In its function, the objet a elicits a confrontation 
with one’s lack, what one does not possess yet perceives oneself as possessing.
11
 
This produces the divided subject ($) who attempts to cling on to the objet a yet 
simultaneously keeps it at bay. In this way, the objet a operates as the master 
signifier for the Analyst’s discourse and we can understand the trajectory of this 
discourse as a precise articulation of the agent. Hence the Analyst’s discourse 
addresses the split subject, producing the objet a, while the split subject ($) in 
addressing the Master’s discourse, produces the signifier for knowledge (S2). 
Regarding the discourse of the Capitalist, Lacan seems initially to understand it 
as a conflation with the University discourse.
12
 Yet at the same time, he positions 
the Capitalist discourse alongside the Master’s as the most plausible. Later on 
in his Milan lecture, Lacan comes up with a more decisive and discursive for-
mula. Instead of identifying it as a mixture of the University and the Master’s 
discourses, he calls the Capitalist discourse the most ingenious discourse to 
date, creating something like an “an eternal motion machine”.
13
 This becomes 
apparent when one looks at his formalisation of the Capitalist discourse. Its 
structure closely resembles the questioning of and rebelling against the Master, 
which in turn reveals that the Master (unlike the Hysteric) is a fake because in 
questioning the knowledge signifier it excludes questioning its own master sig-
nifier. Such questioning leads to the generation of surplus-jouissance, ironically 
dependent upon the master signifier, which is why the Capitalist discourse is the 
one in which we are all hystericized, like it or not. 
11
 A very recognisable example of this desire for self-possession is when one proclaims to 
be standing in the name of a particular ethical character such as “I am honest”, “I am 
empathic”. This is however no more an attempt to bolster the chosen master signifier in so 
far as, because we are split subjects such declarations do not preclude us from behaving 
in ways which are dishonest or uncaring. 
12
 Lacan, J. (1969-70 [2007]). The Other Side of Psychoanalysis. R. Grigg [Trans.]. New York: 
WW Norton, pp. 31-32.
13
 Lacan, J. (1972). On Psychoanalytic Discourse: The Capitalist Discourse. Stone, J. W . [Trans.]. 
University of Missouri, p. 11.

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cindy zeiher
The discourse of the Capitalist (Figure 2) postulates that the superego/master 
signifier (S1) commands the divided subject ($) to enjoy (a) in the form of com-
modities (S2). Here the key thing to notice is where the master-signifier (S1) and 
the battery of signifiers, commodities (S2) are unified. It is structurally impossi-
ble for there to ever be a direct relation between S1 and S2 because they are both 
always separated by a third term, either the divided subject ($) or jouissance 
(a). Here, fantasy functions as a supplement, providing a schema where lack is 
transformed into desire: as the desiring subject under the Capitalist discourse 
chases lack, this chasing decenters the now disavowed subject of desire. 
The Master signifiers at work today seek to manage and discipline lack. For ex-
ample belief, in uniting desire with the Law, is a way of imagining a tangible 
but possible certainty. The Master signifier functions further as a limiting field 
and prohibiting agent sustaining desire, for example empathy is an emerging 
master signifier in today’s climate of increasing liberal tolerance where anguish 
and outrage are the most expected reactions.
14
 Here the body provides an au-
thoritative locus for desire because it constitutes a reality, a way of managing 
jouissance. Desire and the body are implicitly linked not only to the promise of 
jouissance but also to its containment. Desire marks the body and enables the 
subject to speak about its’ possibility notwithstanding that for the subject the 
body is unknown and unpredictable. Desire becomes a form for the body in that 
it is both a specter of possible desire and a location in which various meanings 
14
 We are increasingly encouraged to become faithful servants in portraying empathy, even 
when we feel none. Stephanie Swales’ (2019, Écrits Conference) theorisation of empathy as 
an extimate fantasy of caring maintains that in so far as capitalism fosters dissatisfaction, 
it initiates empathy as an identification with the Other in a fantasy of empathy, a narcis-
sistic reduction of another’s experience to one’s own. 
Figure 2: The Capitalist Discourse

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lacan’s fifth and unfinished discourse: capitalism’s alchemist dream
can be construed. The body both regulates and contains jouissance as it is re-
vealed through the staging of lack and desire in the context of the social bond.
Psychoanalysis provides a way of interrogating symptoms of the subject’s at-
tempt to describe desire which is a substitute for the void. Perhaps as a result of 
today’s mediatized technology the contemporary subject presents with a num-
ber of social symptoms arising from this alienation, for example the rise in fun-
damentalist religion and identity politics. Yet these do not hold much traction 
for the subject and remain more or less empty signifiers, the result of Symbolic 
inefficiency: dogmatism, nationalism, racism and so on simply speak to lack 
and in providing an array of dubious ideologies, are counterpoints to desire. 
The problem of understanding desire as intrinsic to capitalism is one faced all 
the time by the subject of desire. From this Hysteric position, understanding 
desire is characterized by the impetus to respond to the Capitalist discourse in 
an attempt to structure and capture desire. That this, of course, cannot be done 
produces in the subject a void of anxiety in which the fantasy of fulfilling desire 
is all the time being staged. In this staging lies a promise of subjective transfor-
mation because when sublimating desire in the form of consumer objects, the 
subject is deemed to be acting (for a time at least) as if the sublimated object is 
not only enough but more than enough. Thus through consumption this subli-
mated object of desire becomes a surplus of itself. What it was promising but 
ultimately fails to deliver is a by-passing of the Other and in this we can discern 
both a method and a literacy of desire within the Masters discourse. However, 
this is a paradoxical position because for desire to be talked about and given 
symbolic meaning, it must be attached to a Master of one’s choice, notwith-
standing that a Master has already been constituted for the subject.  
In the Capitalist discourse we get an entirely different set of permutations, where 
we no longer have only the discourses of the Master, University, Analyst and 
Hysteric. This suggests that the social relation formalized hitherto by Lacanian 
discourse theory is fundamentally different under capitalism. It is also worth 
noting that the Capitalist discourse sits apart from the other four discourses 
which are always in a relation to one another. When we consider the Capitalist 
discourse, it appears to present as the master signifier of the previous four dis-
courses; whereas each earlier discourse relies upon rotation in order to transi-

340
cindy zeiher
tion to a different agent, the Capitalist discourse stands alone.
15
 By way of back-
ground to the Capitalist discourse, Stijn Vanheule says that
[i]n the late 1960s and 1970s, Lacan occasionally discussed the impact of capital -
ist culture on subject formation. In line with his general idea that the human sub-
ject comes into existence through the play of signifiers, which originate from the 
symbolic order, in this period of his work he also assumed that the symbolic order 
of capitalism moulds the subject in a particular way. Capitalist culture affects the 
way we deal with distress and suffering; it shapes the way we relate to others; 
it determines the way the unconscious functions; and it influences the kind of 
request for help that an individual might extend to a psychoanalyst. Indeed, early 
in the nineteen seventies he indicated that the capitalist discourse had started to 
replace the traditional discourse of the master.
16
In capitalist culture the command to enjoy is paramount because the divided 
subject is continually searching for a better jouissance. However for each com-
modity consumed the divided subject experiences disappointment and is thus 
compelled to pursue yet another commodity in order to fulfil the super-ego’s 
continuing imperative to enjoy. Morever, the more we obey the super-ego’s im-
perative, the more guilt we feel for obedience to something which we know will 
give us only momentary pleasure. This guilt and anxiety is relied upon by capi-
talism for its continuation and is where, for Lacan, Marxist theory engages cap-
italism as a praxis of repetition and surplus. Jan Völker (2018) takes this further 
in relation to whatever is problematic to value, that when theory engages praxis, 
all it too produces is repetition.
17
 
Because of its reliance on repetition the Capitalist discourse perfectly situates 
compulsive symptoms of capitalism such as hoarding and endless buying, 
which clearly suggest a subject who is accumulating for its own sake rather than 
15
 In Seminar XVII, when discussing the discourse of the Master, Lacan says that we are 
seeing Masters less and less, which is rather like saying that the universe of Oedipus is 
disappearing. 
16
 Vanheule, S. (2016). Capitalist Discourse, Subjectivity and Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Fron-
tiers in Psychology, 7, pp. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5145885/
 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01948 
17
 Jan Völker (2018). Marx’ Affirmation. Vortrag im Rahmen der Ringvorlesung Warum nicht 
Marx?. Freie Universität Berlin, July 21. Unpublished, untranslated manuscript.

341
lacan’s fifth and unfinished discourse: capitalism’s alchemist dream
for any use-value. Perhaps the compulsive symptoms of anorexia and bulimia 
also fit in here, with the qualification that, unlike the hoarder, the anorexic/
bulimic subjects’ refusal of the command to enjoy is nevertheless a desperate 
attempt to maintain a place for desire. 
In the universe of mastery, the discourse of the Hysteric is organized around 
identification with a master signifier (S1) in the form of a leader, for example a 
country, a political movement, a God and so on, the movement here being from 
the divided subject to the subject of mastery (($—>S1). These symbolic identifi-
cations pass through the intermediatory of the Other who is always imagined. 
Under capitalism the subject is inevitably an addict who furthers symbolic iden-
tification through attempting to put a substance/consumerable in the place of 
the master-signifier as a way of overcoming constitutive lack, by making the 
lack’s illusive object into something tangible. Here the addict is the perfect cap-
italist subject ($ <> S1), one that in attempting to assume self-mastery presumes 
there is no need to pass through the mediation of the Other in reaching for jou-
issance. Indeed through this particular relation with the object of addiction, the 
addict is sated in a jouissance that is attempting to escape the castrating effects 
of the signifier (S2).
Whereas in the universe of mastery, desire and deferral as a defense against 
jouissance predominate, the universe of capitalism is awash in individual jouis-
sance. Perhaps this accounts for the attention we today give to certain depres-
sive disorders, for as Lacan and Freud argued, the closer the subject is to the 
jouissance of the Other (that is, the objet a) the greater is subjective anxiety. 
Similarly, melancholia arises when desire is erased and the subject fades into 
the jouissance of the Other.
18
 Although the universe of mastery is characterized 
by the questioning Hysteric, this relation is increasingly absent in the universe 
of capitalism where the Other, through which enjoyment must be mediated, in-
creasingly disappears, to be replaced by the subject’s direct relationship to the 
object. Because under capitalism this relationship is inevitably confused by sur-
18
 Freud points this out in Mourning and Melancholia (1917 , p. 205) when he says, “the object 
may not have really died, for example, but may instead have been lost as a love-object… 
Indeed, this might also be the case when the loss that is the cause of the melancholia is 
known to the subject, when he knows who it is, but not what it is about that person that he 
has lost.” [Emphasis in original]

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cindy zeiher
plus-value,
19
 fetishism emerges as a symptom which actively forecloses social 
relations. Because there is here no direct relation between the master signifi-
er and the battery of signifiers, symptoms no longer signify because they are 
attempting to short circuit the Other. We have instead subjects immersed in a 
jouissance which signifies nothing beyond itself. This suggests the emergence of 
a new structure of subjectivity, one organized around jouissance rather than sig-
nification of the Other, one in which the subjective pursuit of enjoyment takes 
the place of signification. For example we might sometimes, when discussing 
a topic we know little about, say in veiled negation ‘oh, what would I know…!’. 
This acting outwardly as if one’s knowledge is woefully inadequate, this fram-
ing of subjective deficit as modesty, represents enjoyment without invalidating 
one’s position in so far as it attributes to knowledge a status whose value is 
shared. What is going on here? Unlike the subject in the universe of mastery, in 
that of Capitalist's discourse the relation of the subject is no longer a relation 
with an Other to which the symptom is addressed (in this case, as veiled ne-
gation). Rather, the subject’s symptom is now organized around masturbatory 
jouissance which, in the quest for instant jouissance, functions to foreclose the 
Other. In this scenario the focus of treatment of, for example addiction, would 
be how to establish, in place of forgetfulness of jouissance, a relation to the 
Other where (a different) demand (for a different object) might be articulated. 
So powerful is the signifier of knowledge that rituals enacted to maintain be-
lief in signifiers of for example, particular Gods, political creeds and so on, is 
upheld even by today’s atheists and cynics. The impetus to present as a fair 
minded and upright person is metonymized within notions of an ultimate sa-
cred Other which in turn signify subjective authenticity. For example, the sep-
aration of church from state is a divide which although not as straightforward 
as humanism contends, nevertheless for many people provides an alternative 
Other which, in banishing the spectre of division, affords a mode of jouissance 
preferable to that engendered by the irreconcilable fallback position of essen-
19
 In his reading of Marx, Lacan is guided by the fetish signifiant he finds there in the form 
of an object which, being divested from its value in use, takes on a different value, that of 
surplus-enjoyment. This is all there is to Lacan’s involvement with Marx, surplus-value as 
surplus-enjoyment produced during consumption through the subtraction of value in use. 
Indeed, the more surplus-enjoyment is subtracted from value in use, for example through 
renunciation, the more overall value increases. 

343
lacan’s fifth and unfinished discourse: capitalism’s alchemist dream
tialized subjectivity: you can’t know me because I can’t know you.
20
 Although a 
product of division this alternative Other nevertheless embodies a reliable ide-
ological principle that guarantees the subject’s belief as ethical. In this way 
subjects from both sides of a divide are enabled to enunciate shared sovereign 
convictions which in turn structure the network or community. Here the mod-
ern Master is renouncing jouissance in exchange for sovereign ethical belief, a 
disavowal which props up community in the face of capitalism’s alienation of 
the contemporary subject. In reconciling division through short-circuiting the 
Other, subjectivity is simultaneously, unwittingly short-circuited. 
Of this Freud was already well aware.
21
 In its traversing of human experience, 
psychoanalysis and in particular the Analyst’s discourse can easily be over-
whelmed by conformist pressures that regulate social bonds. This is why the 
Analyst’s discourse should be prioritised; it posits the realm of what Lacan 
calls the Real, which is the kernel of analytical discourse where the speaking 
being's subjectivity is determined through the unconscious discourse of the 
Other. This is the symbolic linguistic system which precludes the possibility of 
a metalanguage through which to establish the truth about anything, including 
truth itself. In the eruption of Lacan’s Real, all social and political orders in the 
Symbolic contradict one another, all discourses collide in hostile confrontation 
and any authority about knowledge is confined to the Imaginary. 
Lacan clearly had little time for the state, mainly because for him it struggles to 
accommodate potential divergence from it in so far as being driven by jouissance, 
its desire becomes irrelevant. He perceives the function of the state to be support-
ed by jouissance afforded in obeying the law, which is today enshrined in capi-
talism. Perhaps Lacan would have liked to see the state decline and eventually 
to become extinct. Neither has he much patience with liberalism, as we know 
from his provocation to the May ’68 students. The liberal participation in choice 
is somewhat comical in its veiled aspiration towards an imaginary power and its 
repressed need for a ‘stupid’ Master. For Lacan, liberalism is an unconvincing 
discourse of this Master because despite claiming to be progressive it fails to gain 
20
 That jouissance can be essentialised and particularised in a subject is testament to how 
capitalism commands the subject to be taken up as one whose jouissance is essential to 
subjectivity. 
21
 Totem and Taboo (1913), Civilization and its Discontents (1920) , The Future of an Illusion 
(1927), and Moses and Monotheism (1939).

344
cindy zeiher
forward momentum, instead moving in stationary circles whilst everything “con-
tinues to go all too damn well.”
22
 Better, he contends, to attend to the Analyst's 
discourse and to the notion of an individual liberal subjectivity which, in pursu-
ing desire, nevertheless retains a Kantian conscience and rationality. 
This practical liberty, asserts Lacan, is what enables a cut in the metonymic 
machine of the social bond, from which social ties must then emerge. For the 
libertine subject the kernel of morality is freedom to indulge in repetitive com-
pulsions, wherever these lead. However, as Lacan reminds us in Kant avec Sade, 
even freedom has limits and a cost, certainly where desire is not merely for satia-
tion via the object, but rather for release from being compelled towards satiation 
by the object. This can be difficult and as Kant reminds us, a painful freedom for 
the subject especially in so far as it confronts subjective compulsion engrained 
through the processes of consumption and production. Here, as Lacan observes, 
obedience to the law goes against the pleasure principle. 
This kind of freedom with limits can have a tragic dimension for the subject. At 
the end of his lengthy commentary on Antigone, Lacan suggests a correspond-
ence between the context in which the tragic hero exists and the one experienced 
in psychoanalysis. Given that in both cases the sole moral fault with which one 
can tarnish oneself and for which sooner or later one will have to answer, is 
that of compromising one’s desire, of betraying it in favour of ‘the good’, then 
the hero who stands by desire is the one who can with impunity, be betrayed. If 
Lacan’s ethics appear tragic it is because the analysand is required to tolerate 
the contradiction inherent in desire: in order not to betray it, the subject must 
tolerate betrayal and by accepting solitude become one with the singularity of 
the Other. No wonder that here the subject tries to short circuit desire. 
Politically, freedom has less to do with democracy than is sometimes claimed. 
Rather as Lacan knew, democracy more closely resembles its caricature in Plato’s 
Republic, where everyone does just as they like, every principle of social order is 
subverted, constitutions are bought and sold and people are impotent witnesses 
to the advent of tyranny. What counts in this caricature is that in no case should 
the State, which ostensibly acts in the name of the good of its subjects, even 
22
 Lacan, J. (1969-70 [2007]). The Other Side of Psychoanalysis. R. Grigg [Trans.]. New York: 
WW Norton, p. 259. 

345
lacan’s fifth and unfinished discourse: capitalism’s alchemist dream
when killing them, dictate to the individual what his values and actions should 
be. Today the function of the democratic state is simply to ensure that every 
individual has access to possibilities, even if these are tragic. For Lacan, this is 
the price paid for pursuing desire which inevitably requires sacrifice of some 
sort. Here Lacan’s thesis on the relationship of Marx’s surplus-value to psycho-
analysis’ surplus-enjoyment, is more than just an analogy: surplus-value is sur-
plus-enjoyment. Because of this, desire and the state cannot together comprise 
one ethical form, but are rather two categories which must remain distinct. Just 
as the alchemist’s dream is the only way in which gold might be derived from 
base metal, so capitalism is the only economic system capable of producing a 
surplus of such symbolic, pure enjoyment and value. 
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