Psychopathology of American Capitalism

This book synthesizes psychoanalytic and Marxist techniques in order to illuminatethe resistance to a socialization of the American economy, the protectionist discoursesof anomalous American capitalism, and the suppression of the capitalist welfare state.After the Second World War, Democrats and Republicans effectively eliminated thecommunist and socialist parties from the American political spectrum and suppressedtheir allied labor movements. The right-wing shift of both parties fabricated a falseopposition of left and right that does not correspond to political oppositions inthe industrialized democracies. Marxist perspectives can account for the massiveinequality of the political economy, but they are insufficient for illuminating itspreservation. Psychoanalysis is necessary in order to explain why Americans continueto vote within a two-party system that neglects the lower classes, and why theworking class tendsto vote against its own interests. The psychoanalytic techniquesemployed include doubling, repetition, displacement, condensation, inversion, denial,fetishizing, and cognitive repression. In examining the fixation upon the proxy binaryof Democrat vs. Republican, which suppresses the true opposition of left vs. right andneutralizes alternatives, the work analyses numerous contemporary political issuesthrough applications of Marxist psychoanalytic theory.