PINS, 2015, 48, 1 – 21, http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2309-8708/2015/n48a1 Capitalism and Suffering Abstract The present article is an exploration of the relationship Bert Olivier between neoliberal capitalism and suffering in a broad Department of Philosophy, sense, which includes everything from economic and University of the Free State, physical suffering, psychic suffering in the form of Bloemfontein anxiety, self-doubt, uncertainty and stress, to more acute
[email protected] suffering, such as identifiable pathologies. Its point of departure is the patho-analytic principle, that one can Keywords: gain an understanding of the general psychic condition anxiety, capitalism, choice, of humanity by focusing on the characteristic traits of a market, neoliberalism, pathology such as, for example, obsessional neurosis, and resistance, stress, suffering examining the possibility that some of these characteristics are encountered in the population at large. Focusing first on evidence of severe economic suffering under the impact of what Klein calls “disaster capitalism”, the argument proceeds to Parker’s claim, that the typical subject under capitalism displays the character of obsessional neurosis, then to Salecl’s examination of capitalism’s “ideology of choice”, Verhaeghe’s investigation of the effects of a market- based economy on psychic health, and Federici’s claim that there are signs of increasing resistance to capitalist labour. It concludes with some prospective thoughts on Salecl’s, and Hardt and Negri’s diagnosis of present social conditions under capitalism. Prelude At the 2013 International Society for Theoretical Psychology conference in Chile there was a workshop on “The effects of the neoliberal regime on your body” in the context of the global corporatization of universities.