Lieven Jonckheere – The Symptom Between Marxism and Psychoanalysis
 
THE LETTER 21 (Spring 2001) pages 52-54
 
‘From ‘Mehnvert’ to ‘plus-value’ and back …’: this rather enigmatic title of Gerry Sullivan’s contribution suggests a relation between the Mehnvert or surplus value of Marx and the plus-de-jouir or surplus puissance of Lacan.
 
On the one hand we know that Lacan’s plus-de-jouir is, among other things, a conceptualisation of Freud’s idea of the Lustgewinn – this Lustgezvinn being the pleasure liberated by a joke when, for a moment, we may drop our lifelong sustained effort at repression. We could say this is a free pleasure, a pleasure that costs nothing.