Franco ''Bifo'' Berardi - The Soul at Work From Alienation to Autonomy

174 I The Soul at WorkThe Poisonee) Soul / 175good and is well-disposed to his neighbor; but theof private property has corrupted his nature [. .. J. Ifproperty were abolished, all wealth held in conlrnc>n,5evetyone allowed to share in the enjoyment of it,hostility would disappear among men [ ... J. I have nowith any economic criticism of the communist system; Inot enquire into whether the abolition of private prt)pe.ttjexpedient or advantageous. But I am able to recognizepsychological premises on which the system is baseduntenable illusion."36According to Freud modern capitalism, as every civilfounded on a necessary repression of individual libido andlimating organization of the collective libido. This intuitionexpressed in many different ways in 20th-century thought.In the context of Freudian psychoanalysis, our "diiscclntelconstitutive and inevitable, and psychoanalytic theory offersthrough language and anamnesis, the neurotic forms that itprovoke. The philosophical culture of existentialistshares Freud's firm belief that constitutive alienation is unav(lid,and that libidinal drives are repressed.On the contrary, in the context of Marxist and antiallthtarian theories, repression needs to be considered as adetermined form that social action can eliminate byproductive and desiring energies already belonging to themovement of society.In both of these philosophic scenes however, the COtlCe])t.repression plays a fundamental role, since it explains thepathologies dealt with by psychoanalytic theory whilesame time elucidating the capitalistic social contradiction,ishm"n[ revolutionary movements want to make possible into overcome exploitation and alienation itself.is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization isup upon a renunciation of instinct, how much it presuppreciselythe non-satisfuction (by suppression, repressionor some other means?) of powerful instincts." [FreudJ1960s and 1970s the concept of repression was left in theitk1:rolllla of political discourse. The political influence of desireemphasized in opposition to repressive mechanisms, but thisof thinking often ended up becoming a conceptual and polititrap.As for instance in 1977 Italy: after the wave of arreststhe February and March insurrections, the movementto call a September meeting in Bologna on the question of,p,,:ssi,)n. This was a conceptual mistake: choosing repression asmajor topic of discussion, we entered the narrative machine oflosing our capacity of imagining new forms of life, asymwithrespect to power and therefore independent from it.(",,, tile end of the twentieth century, the entire question of rep resseemsto vanish and relinquish the social scene. The dominantpattlO/C)gil" of our times are no longer neurotic, determined by a!'p""SiC)ll of libido, but rather schizo-pathologies, produced by theexpre,,;iv( explosion of the just do it.Stnlcture and desireantiaurhoritarian theories of the 1970s emerge from aFreudian conceprual domain even if they expand and overturn its