Lacan based his theory of the subject on Hegel’s master-slave dynamic. Drawing from Kojeve’s interpretation of the Phenomenology of Spirit, the same core concepts can be traced from Lacan’s early writings on the mirror stage up to his late reflections on the four discourses: subject (Subjekt), master (Herr), slave (Knecht), desire (Begierde), Jouissance (Genuss), labor (Arbeit), Angst, circulation (Kreislauf), inversion of places (Umkehrung), object (Objekt), truth (Wahrheit), certainty (Gewissheit), knowledge (Wissen), dialectic… This is not to say that he was a “Hegelian”. The actual question is why a figure of bondage became the model for subjectivity par excellence.
This text gained notoriety among left-leaning Hegelians, Marxists, and liberal political theorists for its depiction of a philosophical journey toward liberation. It served as a blueprint for collective emancipation. However, Lacan interprets it oppositely, as the indestructible foundation of the subject. He rejects the idea of a “third” moment in which roles are inverted and canceled simultaneously. Some will say that this is precisely the point: to show that subjectivity has a structure of bondage and domination and that the only way out is beyond all dialectics. Yet Lacan finds an answer to the conundrum of the master-slave dialectic through another Hegelian motif: the story of Antigone. As we know, she is, for Lacan, a hero of desire, as she surrenders her life to the latter. She is tragic. The world is nothing but the social order, and the social order is nothing but domination, a play of non-recognition that leads to war and subjugation. Beyond that lies only a tragic ending, where life is offered in sacrifice to desire.
From a political standpoint, this proposed solution is perplexing. Lacan, in his unmatched pessimism, offers this alternative: either bondage or immolation to desire. This means either dying to the world by surrendering to our own desire or following social rules, thus becoming a living death. There is only an aesthetic justification for existence: to die with subjective dignity, turning our little comedy into a grand tragedy. This is not a mere tragedy; it is a horrifying reality—the world is deserted because it is deemed beyond redemption, and subjectivity plummets into the dark abyss of its own arbitrariness.
In his youth, Hegel was captivated by Schiller’s Wallenstein, a tragic tale about a general’s downfall during the Thirty Years’ War. As the commander-in-chief of the Holy Roman Empire’s imperial army and held in high regard by his troops, Wallenstein finds himself at odds with the emperor after refusing to follow an order. He then makes desperate efforts to maintain his soldiers’ loyalty and gain the favor of the Swedes, who are enemies of the emperor. Ultimately, he is left alone and brutally murdered. Hegel hated this ending because it meant that the political hero, aiming at a new political world order, was crushed by the ancien régime. With this work, Schiller was warning about Napoleon—the real Wallenstein. Hegel stood at the antipodes of Schiller’s conservative view; he saw in Napoleon not only “the Spirit on horseback” but also the unstoppable figure of the new world order. Despite the destruction and war associated with his arrival, Hegel believed this was the necessary price to pay.
Antigone and Wallenstein, Schiller and Lacan, seem oddly close in this respect: they recognize the drama of the modern subject, torn apart by forces he cannot control. Schiller cautioned against the rise of Napoleon, while Lacan warned against the ongoing communist revolution. We can recall the conversation he held with students in Paris in 1968: “What you aspire to as revolutionaries is a master. You will get one.” Both Schiller and Lacan were acute readers of their time. They each perceived, early on, the dark side of revolution(s). But Lacan went even further, making the structure of domination intrinsic to subjectivity itself.
In his later period, Lacan proposed his theory of the four discourses, all based on Hegel’s master-slave dialectic, with variations in the position of the terms. These are the discourses of the master, the university, the hysteric, and the analyst. Discourses are defined as “social bonds,” each characterizing a specific type of subjectivity. The master’s discourse is the properly Hegelian one: it presents truth as supported by a master, who makes the subject work for him. The university discourse critiques the master as a figure of opaque authority, transforming knowledge (savoir) into the new absolute power. The hysteric’s discourse is represented by a subject who claims that something lies beyond knowledge—some desire that exceeds the social order. The fourth discourse, that of the analyst, is more obscure. It represents, mutatis mutandis, Lacan’s view on desire. In this discourse, there is no agent: neither the subject, nor the order, nor knowledge. There is only desire and its mysterious source.
These “discourses” are not independent modes of subjectivation; they are variations on the same Hegelian dialectic. In reality, the master’s discourse can take many forms: knowledge, political power, identity, and more. The university discourse is merely one variant of the master’s discourse. The hysteric’s discourse is not a discourse in the strict sense but a rupture within the master’s discourse. Finally, the analyst’s discourse is what remains for a subject condemned to live within the everlasting master’s discourse.
However, a fifth discourse was on the verge of emergence as Lacan reflected on the preceding four. He began to wonder whether capitalism could constitute a fifth possibility. During this period, Lacan drew heavily from Marxist ideas and concepts. He interpreted surplus value as surplus enjoyment (plus-de-jouir) and viewed the subject as a worker. The concept of domination became more explicit.
So, what is the capitalist discourse? It is one without any stopping point—where subjectivity knows no boundaries or limits. It is trapped within a structure of ever-growing craving for its object, delivered in the form of a commodity. Yet commodities inevitably disappoint the desiring subject, plunging him once again into the spiral of consumption. Here we can clearly recognize Marx’s theory of capitalism as a self-valorizing value, eventually leading to self-destruction.
At this point, Lacan hesitates to call capitalism a discourse, since it seems to break with the classical role of the social order. In capitalism, the hysterical subject is impotent: there is no master, and there is no knowledge
Hegel’s dialectic, with its traditional structure of bondage, appears to have provided the subject with more than capitalism ever could. Lacan considered subjectivity a realm of mastery, where tragedy could unfold. However, under capitalism, dominance is no longer rooted in direct authority or constraint. There is no space for tragedy in capitalism. Aesthetic achievement holds no value—it becomes just another commodity in the market of existence. Transgression, resistance, and excess cease to be opposing forces to the social order. The capitalist world is both control and abandonment, vigilance and careless existence: people are either pursued or left to die. Too much State and too little at the same time.
Lacan didn’t know what to do with capitalism. He thought the old subjective régime still offered a place for desire through tragedy. But the new régime was capitalism. However, it is incorrect to say that Lacan theorized an already dead mode of subjectivity—that of the Hegelian world. He never believed in knowledge, recognition, the State, politics, or the university. His psychoanalysis was never fully tragic. He was no Nietzsche. He relied more on farce and comedy. His subject didn’t exist in a State or in a factory, but in the ethereal world of desire and hallucination.
While trying to theorize the disappearing subject of the ancien régime, Lacan was already characterizing the capitalist subject. He never realized that capitalism was the reverse of the master’s discourse. His theory of the subject was a new form of bondage: the Hegelian subject living in capitalist times. This is why clinging to authoritarian communism became our own way of remaining Hegelians in a capitalist world.
Lacan was a lucid reader. He acknowledged Marx for “discovering” the symptom, the role of the “imaginary,” the social structure, etc. But he read Marx against all his motivations. For Lacan, Marx was right in his observations but wrong in his conclusions. Revolution was a relapse into the fantasy of completion; dialectics, an overture to the master’s discourse; and the Soviet experiment, a full restoration of it. So, what kind of subject was Lacan uncovering? The subject of capitalism. Marx discovered the unconscious while seeking class consciousness, and Lacan discovered the capitalist subject while searching for a way out.
