Sublimating the commodity

ABSTRACT Capitalism channels the subject’s sublimation into the commodity, which causes the subject to misidentify the nature of its freedom. The self-limiting freedom of sublimation becomes the unlimited freedom to do anything of the commodity form. Self-limiting freedom becomes liberal freedom. The liberal notion of freedom is a foundational misconception build into the commodity form itself. Even theorists of freedom not explicitly attempting to champion capitalism often fall into the trap of theorizing freedom along the lines of the misconception that capitalist society produces. When the subject directs its sublimating power to a commodity rather than to an ordinary object, it necessarily sees freedom as the opening to an ever-increasing horizon of possibility. The commodity causes the subject to see freedom as the freedom to have more because the commodity form includes within it the promise of a more bountiful future. One invests in a commodity, either financially or psychically, in order to partake in the commodity’s magical power to produce exponentially greater returns. The commodity form transforms capital into additional capital, so that the free act comes to represent unlimited possibility. Under capitalism, this logic of accumulation becomes grafted onto the free act of sublimation. Freedom becomes deformed into the choice for an unending drive to accumulate .