The Unconscious of Political Economy

Abstract

The libidinal tensions described by Freud are not simply characteristic of the subject, but are part of interpersonal politics (family) of the struggle for power. This is the reason why Etienne Balibar points out that, in his description of the crowd formation and the genesis of the superego, Freud does not provide a "psychoanalysis of politics" (an explanation of the political dynamics of the crowds, through processes which are themselves apolitical), but their opposite: the politics of psychoanalysis (the explanation of the emergence of the triadic structure of the Ego-Id-Superego, through family "political" power struggles). This is what Marx does in A Critique of Political Economy: he brings out his unconscious, and that is why he calls the object of his critique "political economy."