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After Happiness

Article in Journal of Political Ideologies · February 2007

DOI: 10.1080/13569310601095630

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After Happiness

Grant Duncan, PhD

Address for Correspondence:

Massey University Albany

Private Bag 102-904
North Shore MSC
Auckland
New Zealand

Email: L.G.Duncan@massey.ac.nz

This is a preprint of an article submitted for consideration in the Journal of Political

Ideologies 2007, 12(1), 85–108 [copyright Taylor & Francis];
Journal of Political Ideologies is available online at:
http://journalsonline.tandf.co.uk/
After Happiness1

Abstract

Happiness, as a goal of good government, is one of the founding concepts of

modern political and economic theory, and it has enjoyed a resurgence of interest
among sociologists, psychologists and economists recently, resulting in various
prescriptions for public policy. The utilitarian concept of happiness that is
deployed by this literature is examined here for its ideological implications. This
is contrasted with the pessimistic views about happiness deriving from the
psychoanalytic theories of Freud, Lacan and Zizek. Thus an ideological role of
happiness in the political ‘organisation of enjoyment’ is suggested. The present
paper outlines problems with both the utilitarian and the psychoanalytic views,
but they both contribute to this inquiry into the political uses of happiness in an
age of advanced consumer capitalism. While utilitarian happiness research has
sought to establish itself on an ‘objective’ scientific basis, and to question some
assumptions of neo-classical economic theory, its political uses emerge as a
renewal of an ideological discourse that is well adapted to third-way governance.

Introduction

Let me begin with two passages (from Richard Rorty and Slavoj Zizek respectively) that
place convenient survey-pegs into the contested ground on which the term happiness has
fallen:

I have never understood how to make Lacan or Derrida or Foucault relevant to

political deliberation. For these thinkers specialize in impossibility and
hopelessness, whereas political deliberation presupposes hope. It presupposes that
things can be changed for the better. . . [W]hat should guide our political struggles

p. 2
 is the hope that unnecessary suffering can be decreased, and human happiness
thereby increased.2

Happiness . . . is inherently hypocritical: it is the happiness of dreaming about

things we do not really want.3

The New-World pragmatism hinted at by Rorty suggests that, even within a post-
Enlightenment ethos, we should not give up on the idea of human progress and well-
being, as connoted by happiness. Zizek, on the other hand, inherits a Continental tradition
that harks back to Kant’s categorical imperative and comes via Freud’s pessimistic views
on cultural malaise and the inherent place of neurosis in everyday life. Kant did not
object to the pursuit of happiness, but he did object to its use as a principle for morality
due to its partial or egotistical character. Schopenhauer was even more skeptical about the
very possibility of happiness and treats the idea scornfully; and Nietzsche founds
morality on power, while his contemptible Last Men claim to have ‘discovered
happiness’. The rejection of the ideal of happiness continues with existentialism, for
example in de Beauvoir’s statement that her interest is ‘in the fortunes of the individual
as defined not in terms of happiness but in terms of liberty’.4 Happiness, conventionally
defined as a desirable state or goal, is thus ascribed to a subjectivity that is less than
authentic.

At a superficial level, because of its new-age associations, the idea of happiness may not
be taken seriously by many intellectuals. A more profound objection would be the
association of happiness with out-moded renderings of utilitarianism, mostly beginning
with Jeremy Bentham. And yet, as Rorty hints above, there is something wrong about
refusing to take a positive interest in people’s happiness. And indeed there is a renewed
social-scientific and political interest in happiness and its maximisation, much of it based
on psychological and social research. (Relevant literature is reviewed below). Can
political theory take this interest in happiness seriously? Does the contemporary
discourse convince us that the Enlightenment ideal of happiness as a legitimating goal of
good government has been rehabilitated by third-way ideology?

p. 3
Enlightenment thinkers passionately debated the potential for human happiness and the
perfectibility of society and human nature. Indeed, happiness may be positioned as a
sister-signifier to liberty itself: ‘emancipating the people will bring universal happiness’;
or, ‘a happy nation will engage in and foster the institutions of liberty and democracy.’
But happiness evokes our understandings of ethics and psychology, as well as politics.
This broad meaning goes as far back as Aristotle who describes happiness (eudaimonia)
as an activity of the soul, and links the achievement of happiness to ethical goodness
(virtue) and to the proper constitution of government. And today, authors on happiness
develop behavioural guides for the individual to achieve greater happiness, and argue for
reformed social values or public policies to support this goal.

One of the features of happiness in the modern era, especially in affluent nations,
however, is the ideal that happiness is and should be attainable by everyone – and a
certain alarm or sense of injustice if it appears that not everyone reports improved
happiness. While Aristotle said that true happiness requires leisure time and a
philosophical education – which Greek women and slaves could not have hoped for –
modern western notions of universal human rights and liberties present a demand for a
universal pursuit of happiness.5 This latter ideal has not been shared by all people
throughout history, but nevertheless it has become a political claim – often taken as ‘self-
evident’ – based on the tautology that ‘everybody desires happiness’ (tautological
because, by definition, all desire the desirable). This political claim for happiness needs
instead to be examined relativistically, and not taken as something that all humans agree
upon.

Not all of the uses of happiness can be traversed here. It is not intended to survey utopian
literature. Assuming, as is sometimes claimed, a global political trend in which ‘the
utopian itself has been in general suspension’,6 the theme of ‘after happiness’ evokes not
just the pursuit of happiness, but also the place of happiness in a ‘post-political’ age in
which there appears no longer to be an alternative vision for a reformed – let alone
perfect – society. This article presents some of the modern political uses of happiness and

p. 4
explores the problems inherent in the very meaning of the word happiness. It suggests
that happiness may be emerging as a key signifier for third-way ideology, reflecting the
loss of the alternative utopian vision supplied by socialism, on one hand, and a loss of
confidence in unfettered capitalism, on the other. A utilitarian and a psychoanalytical
perspective on happiness are each portrayed here, though this is not an exhaustive survey
of the possible philosophical positions. The purpose is to represent two contrasting views,
as a way of stimulating further inquiry.

The meanings of happiness

The use of happiness in English has changed over time, and one cannot assume that its
use in translations with other languages is unproblematic. Its root word is hap, which
refers to chance, fortune or luck, or to a fortunate occurrence, success or prosperity.
Happy is thus a relative of mishap and happen, and does not originally refer to feelings.
This etymological background helps to explain how T.R. Malthus, writing in the 1790s,
was able to describe a nation as ‘happy’ at those times when it is able to feed its whole
populace. The earliest recorded instances of happiness in the Oxford English Dictionary
date from the sixteenth century, and its meaning begins to extend beyond ‘fortune, luck,
success’ to include the pleasurable feelings associated therewith. Happiness is used
frequently, in the early nineteenth century, in such texts as Shelley’s Frankenstein and
Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. For these novelists, happiness is a life-long concern,
involving not only feeling good, but also financial security, advantageous marriage,
familial harmony, and social respectability. Making suitable ethical choices in life is
intimately bound to a person’s achievement of happiness in these narratives.

Today’s self-help literature is similar in as much as happiness is seen as a product of our

thoughts, choices and actions, and is often associated with wealth and romance. The
semantic shift that has taken place in English, however, has seen happy move from being
constituted by good fortune (wealth, marriage, etc.) to referring to the feelings that derive
from good fortune – or sometimes to good feelings that derive from no discernible cause

p. 5
at all. In fact, happy can now be used to mean merely ‘satisfied’ or ‘willing to accept’ (as
in ‘I’m happy to try’), and this peculiarity of English usage means that often translation
with other languages can be misleading.7 While the association of happy with lucky is no
longer so common in English (with exceptions such as ‘a happy coincidence’), this
connotation is stronger in the French bonheur and German Glück, for example.

The English happiness has acquired a private, subjective meaning, largely to do with
good feelings. This is reflected in the definitions of happiness provided by researchers.
For example, Layard defines happiness as ‘feeling good – enjoying life and wanting the
feeling to be maintained’;8 and Myers calls it ‘a high ratio of positive to negative
feelings’.9 And this may be understood politically in terms of changing values regarding
what provides happiness: the locus of responsibility shifting away from government or
society and towards the private individual, especially in affluent societies that have
succeeded in meeting the survival needs of citizens.10 What theorists have meant by the
word (not to mention different words in different languages) over the centuries, then, has
changed in scope and reference. The connotations of happiness get caught up in the
historical currents of philosophical and theological debates about free will and
predestination, virtue and vice, reward and punishment, needs and expectations, etc. The
meaning of the political uses of happiness by, say, Paine, Jefferson and Malthus (writing
at a time of widespread poverty) are not what today’s reader would normally assume. In
short, happiness has a history.11

Furthermore, happiness has had an active role in political-ideological discourse.

Happiness may signify an intangible social future, or a nostalgically imagined past, or the
state of a whole community. Nations are now ranked by surveyors according to their
relative ‘happiness’,12 and some claim that appropriate policies can improve people’s
happiness.13 Happiness evokes the hearts and minds of a docile and contented populace;
it is supposed to give meaning to life itself, and to guarantee the Governor’s right to
govern. To govern well is to govern in the cause of happiness; and to make that one’s
political aim performs an ideological function.

p. 6
Modern ideals of happiness

The possibilities for human happiness were hotly debated in the late eighteenth century.
Utopian ideas about the perfectibility of human nature and society often employed the
term happiness. Condorcet and Godwin, for example, argued that a rationally governed
society could be progressively perfected to the point that all members could live
peacefully and happily. Malthus, however, objected that the pressures of population
growth would inevitably threaten the sustenance of life and that the only means by which
over-population could be kept in check were ‘moral restraint, vice and misery’.14 For
Malthus, then, popular happiness is equated with the ability of a nation to feed its
populace, but there can be no promise that humankind can become progressively happier,
nor that ‘the happiness of all’ could be a credible social goal. For Paine and Jefferson, in
contrast to Malthus, the happiness of the general populace – or, more precisely, in the
Jeffersonian version, the liberty of all to pursue happiness – is a central legitimising goal
of just, constitutional government. Freedom from war, tyranny and famine was a vision
for many who supported the French and American Revolutions, and liberty itself would
enable the people to find happiness. Given widespread poverty at that time, any reforms
that would allow people to address basic survival needs would have appeared to be
productive of a genuine improvement in human happiness, especially if defined in terms
of prosperity and good fortune.

The utilitarian use of happiness in relation to problems of government was elaborated by

Jeremy Bentham:

A measure of government … may be said to be conformable to or dictated by the

principle of utility, when … the tendency which it has to augment the happiness
of the community is greater than any which it has to diminish it.15

Although utilitarian thought has developed various refinements since Bentham, a simple
gloss of this doctrine views happiness as the sum of pleasures experienced, less the pains,

p. 7
such that happiness could, in theory, be ‘calculated’. The right actions of a person, a
community or a government could thus be judged by the aggregate happiness – the good
– that results. While there have been numerous criticisms of utilitarianism16 – and
numerous elaborations of this branch of ethics in response – the basic doctrine needs to
be mentioned here as a precursor of neo-classical economic theory which is also based on
a concept of utility. Twentieth-century economic theory, however, abandoned the
subjectivism of Bentham’s principle of utility and adopted Samuelson’s notion of
‘revealed preference’. Subjective preference-satisfaction, it was argued, cannot be
compared between persons, nor aggregated; but the prices and volumes of goods chosen
by supposedly rational actors in a market can be. Neo-classical economic theory reduces
the subject to a demand function and eliminates happiness, deducing utility from the
revealed preference of the decision-making individual or firm. Homo oeconomicus thus
appears as an empty subject that simply performs objectively observable actions.17 This
oblation of subjective happiness from the neo-classical theory of utility reduces debates
about welfare to analyses of economic output.

The utilitarian principle of ‘the greatest happiness for the greatest possible number’ may
have lent itself to individualist rational-choice theories, but it was also taken up by
utopian thinkers of a more ‘socialist’ persuasion. Robert Owen, for example, agreed that
the greatest happiness should be the test of social progress, and he objected to the
competitive individualism and the perpetual demand for increased productivity of the
modern industrial system. He attempted instead, at New Lanark, to set an example of
harmony, co-operation and social planning. Industrial and social change was seen by
socialists as the cause of misery and poverty, and a more harmonious and rational
ordering of society was called for. Charles Fourier’s principle of ‘passional attraction’
leads to rather more fanciful ideas than Owen’s, but it does include a theory of social
harmony and a definition of happiness that differs from the utilitarian version: ‘Happiness
. . . consists in having many passions and many means of satisfying them’.18 An unhappy
society is one where the means of satisfying passions are insufficient. Marx, too, uses
happiness. Immediately following his famous denunciation of religion as a source of
alienation and illusion – ‘the opium of the people’ – he writes: ‘To abolish religion as the

p. 8
illusory happiness of the people is to demand their real happiness’.19 Socialists, then,
extended the political use of happiness. The capitalist mode of production and its social
relations distort and alienate human life, setting up false expectations of happiness, and
causing unhappiness – while a genuine happiness-to-come awaits us in a more
democratic socialist order.

So, both socialist and liberal-utilitarian theories made teleological uses of happiness.
Even the positivist natural and social sciences envisaged by Auguste Comte were
intended to lead to the achievement of human happiness: ‘By leading modern man to gain
clear insight into his position as part of a natural and social history, Comte seeks to reveal
to the citizens of a new Republic the sphere of their dignity as well as of their
happiness’.20

Furthermore, the political use of happiness as a rationale for good government assisted in
the establishment of social rights, reflecting a belief that all humans have a positive right
to the opportunity for happiness. The Beveridge Report, which laid the groundwork for
Britain’s welfare state, referred to ‘the happiness of the common man’ as a basic
objective.21 ‘Freedom from want’ would be the platform for such popular happiness.
Similarly, but in nostalgic retrospect, historian Keith Sinclair described New Zealand’s
welfare state as ‘an investment in the future personnel of industry as well as in the
happiness of the citizenry.’22

Happiness, therefore, has been adapted to a range of ideological and political enterprises
as a justificatory and teleological concept. These uses of happiness come to signify far
more than a state of good luck or good feelings attributable to the individual, and they
may refer to communities or to humanity as a whole.

p. 9
Contemporary happiness research

In the last three decades, moreover, research and theory in psychology, sociology and
economics have ‘rediscovered’ happiness as an object of inquiry,23 and this research
literature has been translated into a surprising number of new texts, appearing in the last
couple of years, intended for a more general readership.24 This ‘political economy of
happiness’ has generated some critical reflections for economic theory and public policy
– and reintroduces problems of subjectivity. In doing so, some of the axioms of neo-
classical economic theory are challenged.

Attempts by researchers to correlate national surveys of subjective well-being and macro-

economic data25 have found, on average, that individuals and indeed whole nations do not
report greater happiness as they become wealthier. No clear linear relationship is found
between income and subjective well-being – at least, not beyond poverty-level incomes.
To explain this, researchers have suggested that, as people acquire greater wealth or
income, their expectations also rise, and hence they return to their accustomed level of
happiness. And, to the extent that the average individual’s income (in an affluent society)
rises more or less at the same rate as that of others in the same community, any positive
effect on subjective well-being is diminished, as we tend to estimate the subjective effect
of wealth in relative, not solely in absolute, terms. The competitive effects of conspicuous
consumption may, it has been argued, lead to static growth in utility and even to reduced
self-reported happiness.26 The conclusion is that economic growth fails to improve
happiness because, first, we are on an ‘hedonic treadmill’ of rising expectations, and
secondly, the perception of one’s own well-being is partly conditioned by comparing
oneself with others whose incomes are likely to rise at similar rates.

Furthermore, it appears that individuals are rather poor at estimating the utility
(subjective satisfaction or happiness) that they will derive from achieving financial goals
or acquiring material goods.27 The economic model of utility (each good chosen adds
marginally to utility) has been profoundly questioned,28 as has the idea that greater
freedom of choice per se is necessarily beneficial.29 In fact, researchers find that a single-

p. 10
minded commitment to materialistic values and goals (with effects such as longer
working hours and less time with family and friends) tends to be negatively correlated
with life-satisfaction and happiness.30 Authors in this field advise a shift away from a
culture of competitive consumerism, and they advise governments to implement social
policies that, it is claimed, would achieve the well-being gains that economic growth
apparently fails to achieve. Layard describes a ‘new science’ of happiness, and claims
that this science has already produced enough evidence to cause us ‘to rethink
government policy and to reappraise our personal choices and philosophy of life’.31 To
drive home the case that this is a science, happiness is said to be ‘objective’ (thanks to the
physiological evidence of brain-scanning techniques), and universally cross-culturally
recognised, and all languages are said to have a word that means exactly what we mean
by happiness in English.32

Although this line of discourse has challenged some assumptions of economic theory,
little of it would come as a surprise to most thinking people. Indeed, Aristotle
acknowledged that acquiring anything more than moderate wealth will not result in
greater happiness or fulfillment in life (eudaimonia). But, for neo-classical economic
theory, these research findings present a ‘paradox’.33 Why does it appear that people are
not more satisfied and happier as they gain more things? What could be lacking in the
lives of affluent people? We have thus ventured into the psychological question of desire,
and hence we may turn to psychoanalytic theory to further the understanding of
happiness, though from an opposing critical perspective.

Cultural malaise and the impossibility of happiness

The programme of becoming happy, which the pleasure principle imposes on us,
cannot be fulfilled; yet we must not – indeed, we cannot – give up our efforts to
bring it nearer to fulfillment by some means or other.34

p. 11
Freud’s key text on unhappiness is Civilization and its discontents (Das Unbehagen in
der Kultur). He had originally chosen the word Unglück (unhappiness) for the title, but
eventually used Unbehagen (malaise or discontent). Freud’s views about culture imply
both the inherent place of malaise and the impossibility of happiness. The achievement of
happiness must be suspended by a kind of social contract wherein we accept perpetual
malaise, anxiety and unhappiness in return for the security that the social order permits.

If civilization imposes such great sacrifices not only on man’s sexuality but on his
aggressivity, we can understand better why it is hard for him to be happy in that
civilization. In fact, primitive man was better off in knowing no restrictions of
instinct. To counterbalance this, his prospects of enjoying this happiness for any
length of time were very slender. Civilized man has exchanged a portion of his
possibilities of happiness for a portion of security.35

The demand to submit drives to the restraints of the superego means an inescapable
tension and a perpetual source of anxiety and guilt.

The evolution of civilized, cultured life is represented by Freud as ‘the struggle between
Eros and Death’. Civilization serves the ends of Eros by creating the psychological
conditions by which humans may live happily together in groups, communities or nations
– ‘to be libidinally bound to one another’ – and yet this alone will not suffice, as
civilisation must also inhibit the aggressive instincts that humans direct towards one
another – which Freud, in Hobbesian tones, describes as ‘the hostility of each against all
and of all against each’.36

One of the social-institutional means for the resolution or containment of this conflict is
organised politics. And while Freud speaks pessimistically of the prospects for subjective
happiness (Glückheit), traditional political theory has set up the notion of popular or
national happiness as a goal of good government or as a standard for evaluating the worth
of a policy. Hence, notions like ‘the greatest happiness’ or ‘the pursuit of happiness’ may
be seen as representing an ‘etho-political’37 compromise of the possibilities of pleasure or

p. 12
enjoyment, in the interests of human bonding and the inhibition of mutual aggression.
Such a compromise may be expressed in ethical notions of equality, social justice or
fairness.

What appears later on in society in the shape of Gemeinsgeist, esprit de corps,

‘group spirit’, etc., does not belie its derivation from what was originally envy. No
one must want to put himself forward, every one must be the same and have the
same. Social justice means that we deny ourselves many things so that others may
have to do without them as well, or, what is the same thing, may not be able to ask
for them. This demand for equality is the root of social conscience and the sense
of duty . . .
Thus social feeling is based upon the reversal of what was first a hostile
feeling into a positively-toned tie in the nature of an identification.38

Social policy and the principles of social justice, which often use happiness and well-
being as their defining terms, may thus be seen as collective means for containing a form
of hostility that one first experiences in life as sibling rivalry – a hostility which is based
on competition, among supposed equals, for parental love and which must be controlled
by paternal authority: a demand not to demand. Paternal authority is later internalised as
the superego, on the one hand, and externalised in images of public authority, on the
other. The envy or resentment and, correlatively, the spirit of equality, in socio-political
life are thus (to extrapolate from Freud’s comments) repetitions of the familial situation.
The individual in society reacts to political authorities and employers in their organised
settings in ways that are toned by the neurotic resolutions achieved in childhood.

The trauma of sibling rivalry is thus repeated at a collective level as we become

conscious as adults that we must compete with millions of others who are, in a purely
abstract legal sense, our supposed equals. In social life, we do not enjoy equal standards
of living, status or privilege. Hence, we demand, as a fantasy-construct within the wider
ideology of liberal-democratic rights, an abstract equality, reflected practically in efforts
to achieve an equalising redistribution of rights and resources; and we relate to powerful

p. 13
Others (government, employer, etc.) as if They were reincarnations of the parent. The
political demand for equality may thus be understood psychoanalytically as a re-
articulation of the primal demand for the unconditional love of the parent.

In Totem and Taboo, Freud suggested further that the origin of social organisation and
moral values can be found in a patricidal crime that marked the end of the primal horde
and the founding of the tribal band. He admits to the speculative nature of this theory –
noting that the earliest stage of human society ‘has never been an object of observation’ –
but we may at least accord his theory a symbolic ‘truth’ that augments the
psychoanalytical account in general. Freud describes this foundational, but traumatic,
event as follows: the primal horde was dominated by ‘a violent and jealous father’ who
kept all the women to himself and excluded all his sons; but the exiled sons banded
together to kill and devour the primal father, and thus effected the transformation to a
tribal band of brothers. In consequence of this act, and to avoid its literal repetition, the
male siblings were then forced to deal with the guilt that arose from it and to renounce
their individual aspirations to become like the primal father. Totemic ritual is seen by
Freud as the symbolic re-enactment of, and atonement for, their crime. The prohibition
against fratricide (or murder in general) prevents further violence, while the incest taboo
and restrictions on marriage ensure a fairer, more equal distribution of the main prize
sought by the rebellious sons: access to the women ‘who had now been set free’.39

Freud hints at the fantasmatic nature of this ‘history’ by remarking that ‘the dead father
became stronger than the living one had been’,40 and that the fearful prohibitions that he
once enforced come to be reinstated symbolically in taboos or laws. A longing to
reinstate the murdered father himself is eventually realised symbolically in the worship of
gods, and later God-the-Father. Totemic ritual and the worship of gods are thus seen by
Freud as fantasy re-enactments of an original violence that inaugurates social prohibitions
and laws, and that must be repeated symbolically – and yet forgotten or obscured due to
the guilt and horror associated with it. The crime that led to the death of the ‘real’ Father
is thus the origin of the paternal Law itself, as invested in the figure of a male god, a
fantasmatic Father. None of the male siblings may claim the unbridled enjoyment of the

p. 14
primal Father; but instead all may aspire to a limited, regulated residue of his enjoyment,
constrained by prohibitions and careful distribution as codified in a paternal Law.

Freud argues that modern cultures have inherited the Oedipal conflict originating in this
primal crime, as reflected in monotheistic religions and social prohibitions. No attempt at
reform through social rights and duties, however, will finally resolve the impasse that
civilisation poses for happiness. The pleasure principle demands the pursuit of happiness,
but the need to survive within a cultured group makes the goal of happiness impossible.
The best we can achieve is a compromise between the need to satisfy inner drives and the
need to live harmoniously with others. Happiness is thus unattainable, and there is only a
socially-constrained residue of enjoyment, as permitted within the symbolic order of law
and custom. Happiness is conceived as if the body’s excess of excitation could be devoid
of suffering and inner conflict, and hence it is impossible, no matter how desirable.
Indeed Freud would hold that, in striving to be happy, we inevitably run up against
something quite unpleasant.

Desire and happiness

Freud’s pessimism about happiness may be viewed in the context of a tradition,

especially among Continental thinkers, that expresses reservations about, and even
hostility towards, the concept of happiness. Zizek argues that happiness in political
discourse is ‘inherently hypocritical’. The demand to fulfil numerous social rights is not
only an impossible one, but those who demand them do not really wish them to be
realised. The power to make such demands assuages the social conscience of those who
make them and exposes the impotence of ‘the Master’; whereas the meeting of such
political demands would confront privileged intellectuals and critics with the threat of
genuine popular liberty and equality, and thus undermine their positions of privilege. But
these comments on ‘happiness’ seem inconsistent, as he also says: ‘[in countries] like
Czechoslovakia in the late 1970s and 1980s, people actually were in a way happy’, in

p. 15
part because they were dreaming of things they could not have41 – revealing perhaps a
nostalgia for the period prior to the transformation to capitalism.

Zizek’s thoughts derive from the psychoanalytical tradition of Freud and Lacan, and
hence this introduces the theory of desire, which is pertinent to understanding happiness.
As Lacan42 described it, desire emerges with our entry into the symbolic order. While all
organisms have unconditional needs for various objects as a matter of survival and
reproduction, humans acquire the necessary skill of asking for what is needed. Speech
thus creates an unbridgeable gap between a pre-existing network of signifiers (by means
of which we negotiate the terms of our relations with others) and inner drives and needs.
In humans, then, satiable need re-presents itself as open-ended desire.

Freud’s approach to happiness could be described as tragic-romantic. The individual in a

modern civilised culture is doomed to be caught up in the struggle between Eros and
Death. The superego imposes moral demands that require a perpetual deferment of
happiness, for the sake of the security of social belonging. The Lacanian approach, on the
other hand, uncovers a form of enjoyment (not to be confused with happiness) derived
from subjection to the superego. The superego internalises the moral law, and then also
reverses it, producing ‘the pressure of the “unwritten law” within myself, its obscene call
to enjoyment . . .’.43 The superego performs two reversals: it turns duty into pleasure, and
pleasure into duty.

The concept of the superego designates precisely the interzone in which . . . the
command to enjoy doing your duty overlaps with the duty to enjoy yourself.44

The former is exemplified by the totalitarian Master’s command not only to obey, but to
enjoy obeying, perhaps using a promise of the coming Utopia, but based upon the secret
masochistic enjoyment of sheer subjection. The ‘duty to enjoy oneself’, on the other
hand, is illustrated by the new-age guilt in which one punishes oneself for not being
happy and self-actualised: ‘It’s my duty to be happy, because I can choose to be (and so
it’s my own fault if I’m not).’ Hence, ‘the pursuit of happiness’ expresses a command of

p. 16
the superego. Naïve discussion of happiness as a self-evident – indeed, imperative –
social goal fails to take account of the obscene injunction to enjoyment and the
construction of a political subject that must choose happiness. The politically optimistic
utilitarian use of happiness, from this Lacanian perspective, would be treated scathingly –
just as Lacan himself dismisses American ego-psychology for its reliance upon ‘a down-
at-heel mirage’ of an ‘autonomous ego’45 that may be guided therapeutically towards
happiness. The political use of happiness, according to Zizek, comes laden with superego
demands.

According to Saint-Just’s famous motto, Revolution has established happiness as

a political factor. What Saint-Just meant by “happiness” has of course little to do
with enjoyment: it implies revolutionary Virtue, a radical renunciation of the
decadent pleasures of the ancien régime.46

So, while Freud may have lamented the unattainability of happiness, Zizek would appear
to treat it as one of the moral-ideological weapons of the superego.

In thinking, then, of relations between people and commodities, happiness as ‘good

feelings’ that arise from the ‘satisfaction of needs and wants’ is insufficient in the light of
a theory of desire. The goal of marketing, for instance, is to make of the mundane ‘need-
satisfying’ commodity an object-cause of desire, a condition of access to enjoyment (sex,
status, etc.). It must have that X-factor, ‘the Real Thing’ that constitutes ‘something in it
more than itself’. Production and consumption under advanced capitalism are premised
upon the ceaseless and unbalanced search for growth, innovation and ever-new objects of
desire that serve to incite Desire per se. Capitalism’s reigning discourse, in Lacanian
terms, is that of the hysteric: ‘this vicious circle of a desire, whose apparent satisfaction
widens the gap of dissatisfaction . . . [or] as in capitalism, where a growth of production
to fill out the lack, only increases the lack’.47

Capitalism, rather than providing for happiness and satisfaction, manufactures an ever-
widening field of desire, and innovative ways in which commodities create invidious

p. 17
distinctions, and hence ever-widening gulfs of resentment, dissatisfaction and anxiety.
While happiness blandly evokes the pleasure principle, the ‘organisation of enjoyment’
(jouissance) underlying the injunction ‘consume!’ (or ‘desire more!’) cannot be equated
with unalloyed pleasure. Instead, it is predicated upon envy and upon the anxiety that
accompanies not having something. The fantasy of Happiness may help to sustain our
desire in a capitalist economy, but it is in the very nature of the desiring subject not to
satisfy desire. (As Proust puts it: ‘every paradise is a paradise lost’.) That which is
negated by Happiness discourse (anxiety, envy, loneliness, etc.) is instead constitutive of
Happiness as an ideological fantasy.

A Lacanian psychoanalytical account of the politics of happiness would base itself on the
notion of the constitutive role of ‘lack’: the idea that existence and identity are founded
upon a negativity that cannot be represented symbolically, and that must be repressed in
the interests of the coherence of the symbolic order and of the imaginary constructs of
self and community. Symbolic systems of identity formation, including broader social
institutions such as political ideologies, seek to construct an illusion of completeness or
universality, focused upon a ‘master-signifier’, such as Liberty or Equality, that acts like
a ‘quilting-point’ in the field of discourse. This serves to exclude elements that may erupt
to disturb the impression of universality – but this exclusion is violent in origin and must
be disavowed or repressed.48 From this kind of theory, Happiness would simply be
viewed as another master-signifier, necessarily masking the foundational violent act. It
would not be hard to identify retrospectively what was excluded through a political
discourse of Happiness in an affluent society, by pointing to phenomena like depression
and addiction, or by balancing the wealth of the North against the poverty of the South.
For social critics who argue that the affluent society has failed to maximise human
happiness, the most disturbing revelation would be that there is really no ‘obstacle’ to a
happier society – because there is no such thing to aim for. The enjoyment of these critics
is thus invested in the identification of these very ‘obstacles’ (materialism,
competitiveness, SUV owners, etc.) because these are the images that sustain the fantasy
of a happiness-to-come.

p. 18
Problems in utilitarian and psychoanalytic theories

The utilitarian optimism of contemporary happiness research contrasts sharply with

psychoanalytic theory’s skepticism about the political use of happiness – though, as will
be observed below, they do share some common ground. The purpose of the present
article is not to adjudicate between the two traditions, but rather to amplify our
understanding of the politics of happiness by placing them as counterpoints to one
another.

An accusation often leveled against the utilitarian goal of ‘the greatest happiness for the
greatest possible number’ is that its achievement could come at the expense of a morally
unacceptable form of misery for the few. If happiness means that securing the well-being
of the majority is seen to require the suppression of a disruptive minority, then the trade-
off may be undesirable from the point of view of, say, universal human rights. Or, if an
aggregate growth in wealth or well-being occurs in tandem with growing inequalities,
then any subsequent social conflict could be undesirable. Happiness researchers would
reply to this by saying that one of the first ways to maximise happiness is to address the
worst miseries, poverty and mental ill health. Hence, such researchers often prescribe
policies that redistribute wealth (the loss of one dollar means little to the rich, compared
to the well-being gain for the poor) or that promote better mental-health services.49

Psychoanalytical theorists, on the other hand, may argue that the undifferentiated
maximisation of happiness, posed as a universal human goal that must be supported by
government, maintains its ideological effect by obscuring the contingency of the very
concept of happiness – and hence the efforts of happiness researchers, such as Easterlin
and Layard, to ‘prove’ the objectivity and universality of happiness. The fantasy of a
‘happy nation’ is achievable, however, only at the expense of some form of exclusion and
repression, involving violence against those ‘others’ whose disruptive lifestyles may
collectively threaten ‘our’ national Thing, this special quality of life that makes ‘us’
happy.50 Bearing out this point is the case of Bhutan, which prides itself on its official

p. 19
Buddhist philosophy and its policy of Gross National Happiness. The Bhutanese
happiness policy may be lauded by western social theorists,51 but, according to the
UNHCR, over 100,000 Nepali-speaking Hindus were expelled from Bhutan in the 1990s,
and these refugees have languished in camps in Nepal since then. Negotiations between
the two countries have failed to bring about any repatriations. Perhaps one way of
achieving ‘national happiness’ is simply to expel people who do not conform to official
religious and cultural norms.

Some of the traditional critique of capitalist accumulation and materialism has focused on
the importance of ridding society of the pursuit of mere wants and conspicuous
consumption, and returning to the meeting of genuine needs – even though no-one can
reliably distinguish basic needs from superfluous wants, other than at the extremes of
wealth and poverty. The utilitarian research on happiness tends to recreate this kind of
discourse. This may be a politically well-intentioned purpose, but it lacks a critical
understanding of the articulation of desire in the symbolic order. Utilitarian happiness
tends to be, at best, two-dimensional: it views happiness as the absence of misery and the
presence of good feelings, plus personal satisfaction with one’s objective life
circumstances.52 It does not account well for any unconscious or fetishistic factors
affecting enjoyment; and it needs to qualify the place of harmful or perverse pleasures,
such as drug use or compulsive shopping, by weighing long-term misery against such
short-term pleasures. Fetishism and compulsion, and their sources in the unconscious, are
at least theoretically comprehended by psychoanalysis – whereas utilitarianism struggles
to incorporate them into its more superficial theory of pain and pleasure. Utility weighs
the latter two terms as opposites, whereas psychoanalysis can consider an
interdependence between them. Hence, to the psychoanalyst, striving to rid people of
their misery may not make them happier – and striving to make them happier may not
reduce their indulgence in misery.

Recent research on happiness has modified the notion that the individual is always the
best judge of what maximises his or her own welfare, finding that people frequently mis-
predict the utility to be derived from future income or consumption. The latter

p. 20
conclusion, though, illustrates also how happiness research, while basically utilitarian in
philosophical terms, challenges some of the reigning axioms of neo-classical economics.
It questions the idea that the choices made by consumers in a free market can be taken as
‘revealed preferences’ that reflect how people are acting in the interests of their own
welfare-maximisation. Greater consumption is not necessarily a reflection of greater
aggregate welfare, if happiness surveys are taken as evidence. People may be the best
judges of their own happiness (an assumption required for the validity of happiness
surveys), but they do not necessarily always choose the best means to increase their own
happiness. Happiness researchers thus characterise the materialistic culture of affluent
societies as an economic treadmill, driven largely by social comparisons and status envy,
but not necessarily leading to anyone’s betterment. But then it is unclear as to whether
happiness researchers genuinely believe that the individual really is the best judge of his
or her own happiness. Easterlin, for example, says, on the one hand, that ‘the only one
who can make authoritative judgments on a person’s feelings of well-being is the person
concerned’, and yet, on the other, that rising material aspirations mean that people ‘tend
to think they are better off than they were in the past, rather than realising that there has
been no net improvement’.53 Who then is the best judge of one’s own well-being?

Psychoanalysts, by contrast, have never been afraid to tell us that we do not fully know
our own minds. To them, it comes as no surprise that enhanced personal wealth and
national economic growth do not result in greater happiness. The rising expectations and
the malaise of the upwardly-mobile can be easily comprehended by the Lacanian theory
of an open-ended desire for Desire. The very idea of an ever-expanding, globalising,
universal market-society that ‘produces’ progressively higher levels of happiness would
be conditional upon a (repressed) exception, appearing in the form of human misery.
While this misery may consciously be accounted for as a ‘failure’ that can be fixed, or as
an unfortunate ‘negative externality’, a Zizekian analysis would insist that we
reincorporate this view of a supposed ‘failure’ and see it instead as an integral part of
how capitalism works. The ‘growth’ of capitalism is conditional upon the production of
envy, anxiety and poverty – not only upon the ‘satisfaction of wants and needs’.

p. 21
Zizek’s theory, however, leaves us little from which to construct a positive political
programme for human well-being. The Lacanian ‘politics of lack’ consider any
governmental programme to improve the status quo to be based upon repression,
exclusion, and the misrecognition of an a priori negativity. Any attempt to improve
society from existing power structures, no matter how well-intentioned, cannot pass this
theoretical test. Robinson, furthermore, accuses Lacanian political theorists of ‘an
underlying conservatism’ as often their more radical-sounding prescriptions may amount
to little more than a change in the ‘symbolic and libidinal inscription’ with which existing
policies are enacted.54 It is not possible to extract from Zizek’s writing a programme for
social reform.

While some would find the utilitarian optimism of happiness researchers to be

psychologically too simplistic, psychoanalytic theorists may go further to say that
utilitarianism is the truly cynical viewpoint, as it promotes an unachievable ideal of
happiness as an ideological cover for fundamental social antagonism and repression.
While psychoanalysis is often accused of pessimism, it does at least permit the
exploration of unconscious fantasy as a means of addressing human suffering.

One view may thus serve as a counterpoint for the other, and the purpose of the present
article is not to settle these differences, but rather to extend them, and to analyse the
politics of the uses of happiness in contemporary theory. It should also be acknowledged,
though, that there are points where psychoanalysis and utilitarian researchers basically
agree. They both see the modern affluent consumer on a treadmill of desire (or rising
expectations), and both are aware of the role of invidious social comparison – in
psychoanalytic terms, a generalisation of the phenomenon of sibling rivalry – in driving
excess consumption.

p. 22
Ideology and happiness

Happiness has acquired a self-justifying role in the utilitarian political discourse

described above: it is an unquestioned good that governments should seek to maximise
our happiness, since that is surely what everybody wants. In the context of a liberal-
democratic, social-contract discourse, based on the theory that we are governed by
consent, this proposition about happiness becomes self-evident. Rorty considers it a
‘conversation-stopper’ to assert that governments must aim for ‘the greatest happiness’,
not unlike the assertion of religious faith55 – but it gathers even greater persuasive power
with the contemporary claims to have discovered a ‘science’ of happiness. How may we
question this ‘self-evident’ claim about the political use happiness, then?

Adam Smith’s version of economic liberty would hold that happiness and benevolence
are the province of the private individual, and that an obligation thereto only extends as
far as his or her family and immediate community. Strangers in a market society interact
more on the basis of self-interest, and so, in public political life, happiness cannot be a
projected goal for governments, by this reasoning. Happiness researchers, such as Layard
and Veenhoven, who draw conclusions for public policy and law, rely fairly heavily
instead on Bentham’s principle of utility. They argue that pain and pleasure form a
reliable (though not always perfect) guide to our overall welfare. Happiness (meaning
‘feeling good’ or ‘a preponderance of positive emotion’) may be partly determined by our
genetic predispositions, but there are personal and political choices that we can make to
enhance it.

An objection to the principle of utility is that it may lead to a hedonistic individualism,

and it promotes negative freedom only, as it is solely up to the individual to determine the
contents of ‘the good life’ that will maximise happiness. The role of government
therefore would be simply to protect this freedom. If the illiterate are happy, then there
would be no need to educate them – let them watch TV. Contemporary happiness
researchers are moving beyond such a position, however. They argue that not only are
there choices that individuals can make to maximise their own happiness, but that there is

p. 23
now sufficient evidence to show that there are choices that governments can make that
will create a social environment more conducive to popular happiness. Hence, they are
bringing the principle of utility into a position of a positive freedom, entailing an
obligation on public policy and law to create conditions that will help the individual to
maximise happiness.

Happiness can then serve to justify retrospectively the genesis of liberal-democratic

government (that is, ‘we consented to be governed in the interests of our own well-
being’) and to justify teleologically our political projects (‘the goal of a just government
is happiness’). Happiness appears to be self-evident – and, ever since Aristotle, may be
conceived as the ultimate goal, the goal to which all other goals are leading and are
ethically subordinate. But the political use of happiness creates a number of problems.
An acquisitive and permissive liberal-democratic society insists on the free pursuit of
happiness; but, there is also an underlying imperative that the citizen ought to be happy,
if only because (it is said) we can choose to be happier by choosing the things (be they
material things, lifestyles, friends, lovers, or even the right thoughts and feelings) that we
believe will give us happiness. (If you are unhappy, as a corollary to this reasoning, it
must be the result of misguided choices you have made.) Each person is considered to be
at liberty to make of happiness whatever he/she wants; but, while an individual can relate
the meaning of happiness to his or her feelings, a collectivity of persons (a nation) can
only be imagined to have feelings, and its use at this level becomes empty of content.

This elision of personal and political uses of happiness creates a double tautology: If
happiness is, by definition, ‘feeling good’, then everyone, without exception, would want
that; and, moreover, everyone would want the government that promotes it. To say
‘everyone wants happiness’, however, is no more significant than to say ‘pain hurts’. But
the apparent ineluctability of happiness-as-a-goal can set up a discursive practice that
predetermines the framework of political and personal choices. Similarly, in the
marketplace, the economic subject may have a range of goods to choose from, but the
very actions of marketing are intended to monopolise that ‘choice’ and to predetermine
the kinds, styles and brands of goods that consumers will ‘choose’. The new-age

p. 24
marketing myth that ‘happiness comes from within if we make the right choices’ ignores
how the framework of choices is already created by a pre-existing and impersonal mode
of production. If all people were miraculously freed from envy, capitalist production and
the very ideal of happiness would both suffer. But so long as happiness is before our
sights as a ‘self-evident’ personal and political goal, the forced choice that is implicit in
an already-existing market will not be questioned – unless it becomes equally evident that
participation in the market has limited benefit.

Happiness researchers, therefore, are urging us to see that the market in affluent societies
is failing to provide, or even detracting from, certain qualities of social life that are vital
to our well-being – for example, friendship.56 Hence, they ask if governments can create
policies that may be able to compensate for this by guiding people’s choices back
towards these non-commodifiable goods. A new tax regime, for example that proposed
by Frank,57 may create incentives to choose less production and consumption of
unnecessary commodities, and to choose instead certain beneficial non-commodities that
are currently being crowded out. If the market has begun to structure people’s choices in
ways that no longer serve to maximise happiness, why not use public policy to re-balance
things? Could tax policies and controls on advertising help reduce the urge to buy bigger
homes and sexier SUVs?

At first reading, because of some similarities with socialist critiques of alienation under
capitalism, this may look like a radical critique of the free market, but it isn’t. It is only
an extension, under contemporary conditions of affluence, of a well-established economic
concept of ‘market failure’, which can lead to justifications for limited compensatory
interventions by governments. The tradition of liberal distrust which has informed the
modern western understanding of capitalism – to define the limits of government, and
hence to maximise the scope of political and economic freedoms – is easily comprehend
in this literature. The happiness literature also complements theories about civil society,
social capital and sustainable development that have also become safely incorporated into
third-way liberalism.

p. 25
So, for example, a discussion paper on happiness by the New Economics Foundation58
founds its logic on the liberalism of J.S. Mill and Isaiah Berlin, and concludes by
recommending better education on ‘the good life’, a ban on advertising ‘bad food’ to
children, and supporting book groups. It does not resemble The Communist Manifesto.

Being founded upon Benthamite utilitarianism, the conclusions of happiness research

could easily find their way into the orthodoxy of capitalist economic theory. Ultimately,
this research will be put to the task of helping capitalism to function more effectively –
including the battle of ideas for the legitimisation of global free markets. Some of these
understandings of happiness, however, will not find a comfortable place. For example,
the finding that self-reported happiness is, in part, a function of how well-off one is in
comparison to others may suggest that the abject poverty of ‘others’ (that is, those outside
the OECD countries, conveniently located in distant places) may help to explain why
people in wealthy countries see themselves as relatively happier.

Happiness, no matter how desirable it may be – Who, after all, would rather be unhappy
than happy? – needs to be analysed as an ideological term, rather than as a self-evident
and imperative goal for government.

Happiness and the Third Way

The neo-liberal ideology that has promoted the need for sustained economic growth and
efficiency has to an extent been supplemented by a so-called ‘third way’ that seeks to
reconcile the achievements of deregulatory, supply-side policies with the goals of
reducing social exclusion and improving social justice by increasing people’s active
engagement in employment and community. Happiness has a resonance with the ideals of
third-way government that lends it a potentially strong discursive role in contemporary
politics.

p. 26
Social policy often seeks the renunciation of transgressive or decadent pleasures in favour
of pleasure without risk or pain (longevity, thrift, healthy lifestyle, safe sex, etc.):
pleasure without displeasure, otherwise known as maximum utility or the greatest possible
happiness for the greatest possible number. The logic of the free market enjoins us to be
good consumers, though some forms of consumption (such as junk food) may conflict
with the well-being goals of social policy. In a permissive society, happiness becomes a
right or even a kind of duty. The injunction ‘be happy’ operates in a complex set of
political requirements to live a healthy, safe and productive life, linked with ideal
lifestyles. We are perpetually reminded by the agencies of the State (and associated
researchers and educators) how to avoid various costly bads and thus how to prolong the
enjoyment of a safe and healthy lifestyle. This ranges from warnings on cigarette packets
to policies that encourage retirement savings. And now happiness researchers advise that
conspicuous consumption and excessive working hours should be added to the list of
targettable bads. The injunction to achieve happiness through a prudently regulated
lifestyle conforms to the objective of keeping people contented and productive and
preventing them from becoming a burden on taxpayers and investors. And governments
take increasingly sophisticated efforts to monitor the populace’s performance of personal
well-being and risk-aversion. The development by contemporary governments of social
indicators59 creates a form of statistical reporting that actively constructs political
understandings of various social and health risks, including subjective experiences such
as ‘loneliness’ and ‘trust in others’. They help to broaden out political planning beyond
the more accountable macro-economic indicators, notably GDP – but, the measurement
of a social phenomenon is an active part of its construction as a social problem.

Such collections of social well-being indicators could, in principle, be enveloped into an

overall programme for the ‘maximisation of happiness’ with the backing of official social
statistics and national surveys of happiness and life-satisfaction (though no claim is being
made here that this is actually happening). Such efforts would serve to construct
happiness as a positive social goal, but it would not sever policy-making from the
ideological problems of politics. Happiness has a self-evident, tautological effect that
lends itself to ideological use; and it can be filled with whatever objects – or objectives –

p. 27
meet the needs of the economic system it serves. It also has a political inclusiveness that
makes it compatible with the multi-culturalism of the third way. Gone are the class
antagonism of social democracy and the cruel equality of neo-liberal meritocracy. In its
place is the legacy of Tom Paine, with a twist: good government stands for the happiness
of all people – regardless of whether they want to wear burquas or to marry someone of
the same sex. Political antagonisms are thus elided by posing an undifferentiated ideal of
happiness (feeling good) as a goal of good government. But, in a democracy, any public-
policy proposal intended to maximise happiness will still be subject to political debate
and deliberation, exposing it to the ideological differences it seeks to overcome. For
example, while some happiness researchers advocate for increased progressive taxes,
others disagree,60 and the unhappiness of supposedly ‘over-taxed’ wealthy people is
always a political force to be reckoned with.

Happiness researchers almost always conclude with some kind of prescription for public
policy, though this case – which follows in the tradition of Bentham’s principle of utility
– is not always very thoroughly argued.61 While the research literature correlates
happiness data with social and economic statistics, this does not necessarily mean we
have evidence that shows that the political reform of those same social and economic
conditions will raise happiness-survey results in future. There is a logical error in such
utilitarian thought that seeks to leap from an empirically-based claim about human
behaviour to a normative claim about ethics and politics. Hence, while we may accept
that ‘more wealth’ does not lead to happiness, especially if it crowds out social
connectedness, we are not necessarily compelled (in the absence of evidence) to accept
that ‘better government’ will restore the maximisation of happiness that capitalism failed
to procure.

Neither, though, is there evidence that happiness is being widely taken up with any
vigour by governments as a policy goal, or even as a measurable social indicator against
which to evaluate governmental activities and the quality of life. Bhutan, with official
Buddhist principles shaping its policy of Gross National Happiness, is exceptional.
Caution is needed here, though, as Buddhist and utilitarian concepts of happiness and its

p. 28
attainment are not the same.62 Buddhism is not concerned with the immediate satisfaction
of the individual’s need to feel good; and instead it seeks liberation from attachment to
negative influences as a pathway to spiritual enlightenment. The Buddhist first principle
of doing no harm to sentient beings in the process of change does not fit well, though,
with Bhutan’s denial of citizenship to, and expulsion of, Nepali refugees.

Nonetheless, the message about the findings of utilitarian happiness research have
reached high-level policy debates in the West. The UK Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit,
for example, hosted a seminar based around a paper on life-satisfaction which drew
heavily on the happiness research cited above. The conclusions of this discussion paper
included the claim that there is ‘a case for state intervention to boost life satisfaction due
mainly to evidence of direct impacts on life satisfaction of government activities, together
with strong evidence of the dependence of individuals’ wellbeing on the actions of
others’.63

The New Economics Foundation, an NGO, uses happiness research findings to build a
strong case for the reform of policy objectives, particularly arguing to shift national
priorities away from materialistic acquisition and wealth accumulation, and instead
towards activities that are found to be more closely correlated with well-being, such as
civic and family life and meaningful employment. NEF also contends that happiness
research supports the case for redistributive policies that reduce inequality, and their
manifesto promotes the idea of a universal citizen’s income.64

This latter case for redistribution does not, however, take into account research that finds
that subjective well-being may not be higher or more equally distributed in nations with
stronger welfare-state programmes that decommodify labour.65 Norwegians, in short, are
not likely to be happier than Americans on account of their stronger welfare state. So, one
could argue that happiness research tells us that government intervention cannot increase
our happiness, and that policy should not do anything to discourage economic
opportunity or productivity. While personal well-being may be enhanced for some
through fewer hours of work and more time with family and friends, Norberg66 would

p. 29
argue that such decisions must be left in the hands of individuals. He thus draws on the
same kind of happiness research, but concludes instead that ‘free societies’ are the most
likely to foster the conditions for the pursuit of happiness – thus adopting a libertarian
standpoint which opposes redistributive policies.

Happiness-survey findings can thus lend themselves to a range of social-democratic,

green or liberal political ideals. Happiness researchers often urge the reader to see
happiness surveys as productive of ‘scientifically objective’ findings that could support
policy recommendations to maximise well-being. They try to position happiness as a
concept that can steer policy from a position that is ‘above’ ideology and of universal
appeal – a scientific process that trumps political antagonisms. The above discussion,
however, is intended to show that this is not credible. Happiness research results can be
interpreted in different political-ideological terms to serve different political interests.
Any policy recommendation that uses happiness surveys as its evidence-base still
requires some kind of public, democratic and deliberative process in order to be tested
against the standards of diverse value-systems and interests. And, as the case of Bhutan
reveals, any official policy on maximising happiness must be examined critically for its
application to – or exclusion of – actual populations. The real psychological investment
of happiness advocates may be in their negative perceptions of the ‘obstacles’ to
happiness (be they wealthy consumers or unwanted populations) rather than in any
substantial social progress.

Conclusion

Posing critical questions about research on the maximisation of happiness places one
perilously close to the position of a Scrooge, refusing to believe in the Spirit of
Christmas. It’s worth returning, then, to Richard Rorty in order to begin a conclusion:

What matters for pragmatists is devising ways of diminishing human suffering

and increasing human equality, increasing the ability of all human children to start

p. 30
 life with an equal chance of happiness.67

For Rorty, there is no universal rational, empirical or supernatural ground on which to

base this principle, but he just describes it as ‘a goal worth dying for’.

The above analysis has questioned totalising assumptions implicit in the use of
happiness, and it has located its use by contemporary social research within a political-
ideological discourse. It has also considered the psychoanalytical case that happiness may
be unattainable and illusory – although we should not forget that Freud did say ‘we must
not – indeed, we cannot – give up our efforts to bring it nearer to fulfillment by some
means or other’.68 In other words, an argument that critically analyses the socio-political
uses of happiness should not be mistaken for an argument that denies that happiness is
worth having.

The happiness research literature has been seen as a bonus by social-democratic and
green theorists, because it presents an apparently ‘scientific’ case against a politics driven
by economic growth, competitiveness, greed and materialism. Indeed, it is especially
attractive because many happiness researchers are economists using economic models to
produce results critical of key neo-classical assumptions. Hence, many writers on the left
of the political spectrum have failed to analyse the use of happiness for its ideological
context.

It should not be assumed that the meaning of the word happiness is a given, nor that its
application to social science and public policy can be taken as self-evident. There is a
tendency for happiness researchers to try to steal in happiness as another value-free,
cross-culturally universal concept. The implication appears to be that happiness research
can guide policy-making from a level that is somehow above political contestation, and
one aim of this article is to identify and disprove that assumption. Happiness may appear
to have a compellingly universal appeal (‘everyone desires happiness’), but, when used in
political discourse, this impression is created by means of tautology and empty
signification: ‘nation’ and ‘society’ are theoretical constructs, and are not strictly the

p. 31
subjects of ‘good feelings’. Happiness’s putative universality is guaranteed only by its
sheer emptiness and circularity. And, if we follow the psychoanalytical critique, the
fantasy of happiness-maximisation is sustained by its very unattainability.

A wider question motivating this essay is why, in the present climate of globalising
capital and third-way ideology, happiness should be enjoying a resurgence of interest
among researchers and political thinkers. The neo-liberal version of deregulation and
globalisation relied more on the heritage of Adam Smith and Friedrich von Hayek who
see justice as liberty and policy as the maximisation of economic efficiency. Happiness,
for them, is the private concern of the individual. Happiness researchers challenge the
neo-classical paradigm of utility-maximisation, efficiency and productivity, and urge
instead that socio-political priorities turn more towards a non-economic agenda that will
keep us on the path to greater popular happiness. Hence, happiness should become a goal
of good government. This may comply with some versions of the third-way aspiration to
square the circle of economic growth and free trade plus social justice and well-being. As
an ideological term, happiness gives the appearance of a universal, apolitical category
that compels acceptance because of its self-evident goodness and desirability. It has also
acquired the status of scientific validity thanks to a mass of research with relatively
consistent and robust findings. The claim that this provides a policy goal or decision-
making criterion beyond partisan politics would naturally have a persuasive appeal – but
the present investigation contradicts this aspiration.

While happiness can be used for diverse ideological purposes, it finds a niche in
contemporary third-way discourse for simple reasons. The collapse of the socialist
utopian vision of an alternative democratic society (in which ‘real happiness’ may
flourish) has been accompanied by the Anglo-American neo-liberal attack on the welfare
state’s aspiration to be an ‘investment’ in the greater happiness. Happiness research,
however, revives the critique of free-market materialism and its failure to maximise
happiness – without seeking alternatives to capitalism per se. Hence, it suggests a middle
path somewhere between unfettered capitalism’s unsustainable competitive consumption
and ‘traditional’ reformist socialism’s universal welfare, thus providing a research-based

p. 32
conceptual ‘handle’ perfectly fashioned for today’s third-way ideologists.

Hence, Happiness, which once shared a place alongside Liberty at the origins of modern
political theory, may be making a late run for prominence in post-modern political
discourse. The burgeoning social-scientific literature of happiness is a symptom of this,
but the political use of happiness must nevertheless be read in its ideological context.

p. 33
Endnotes

1
The author is grateful to Warwick Tie and Glyn Daly for their feedback and encouragement.

2
Richard Rorty, ‘Hope and the future’, Peace Review, 14 (2002), pp. 149–155.

3
S. Zizek, Welcome to the Desert of the Real (London: Verso, 2002), p. 60.

4
S. de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (London: Picador, 1988), p. 29.

5
While the ideal of happiness (like liberty and equality) may be spoken of as universal, it is worth noting,
by contrast, the class analysis of happiness by Ilouz: ‘The sociology of domination should . . . enquire
about the social distribution of the moral resources that are available to the self to achieve the prevailing
forms of eudaimonia’. E. Ilouz, ‘Who will care for the caretaker’s daughter? Toward a sociology of
happiness in the era of reflexive modernity’, Theory, Culture & Society, 14 (1997), pp. 31–66.

6
P. Anderson, ‘The river of time’, New Left Review, 26 (2004), pp. 67–77, p. 71.

7
A. Wierzbicka, ‘“Happiness” in cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspective’, Dædalus, 133 (2004),
pp. 34–43.

8
R. Layard, Happiness: Lessons From a New Science (New York: Penguin, 2005), p. 12.

9
D.G. Myers, Psychology (New York: Worth, 2004), p. 522.

10
Z. Bauman, Society under Siege (Cambridge: Polity, 2002).

11
D.M. McMahon, Happiness: A History (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006).

12
See for example, R. Inglehart and H.-D. Klingemann, ‘Genes, culture, democracy, and happiness,’ in E.
Diener and E.M. Suh, (eds) Culture and Subjective Well-being (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2000), pp.
165–184.

p. 34
13
‘Appropriate public policies can increase the average level of subjective well-being’, R.A. Easterlin,
‘Towards a better theory of happiness,’ conference abstract for The Paradoxes of Happiness in
Economics, 21–23 March 2003, University of Milano-Bicocca.

14
J. Avery, Progress, Poverty and Population: Re-reading Condorcet, Godwin and Malthus (London:
Frank Cass, 1997).

15
J. Bentham, ‘An introduction to the principles of morals and legislation’, in M. Warnock (ed),
Utilitarianism (Glasgow: Collins, 1962), pp. 33–77, p. 33.

16
One example of the logical problems of utilitarianism is that it leaps from a (superficially) reasonable
observation about human behaviour (people seek out pleasure and happiness, and they avoid pain) to the
use of this as an evaluative moral principle (our actions can be judged by the extent to which they
maximize happiness).

17
This leads, however, to a tautology: A person’s preference determines his choice. He chose it. Therefore
he prefers it and is better off for having it. The same circular logic allows marketers who track television
ratings to claim that the most sensationalist and attention-grabbing ‘reality’ shows are ‘simply providing
the market with what it prefers’ (thus attempting to close down ‘élitist’ arguments about programme
‘quality’).

18
C. Fourier, The Theory of Four Movements (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 95.

19
K. Marx, ‘Contribution to the critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law’, in K. Marx and F. Engels,
Collected Works: Volume 3 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1975), pp. 174–175

20
B. Plé, ‘Auguste Comte on positivism and happiness’, Journal of Happiness Studies, 1(4), 2000, pp.
423–445.

21
Sir W. Beveridge, Social Insurance and Allied Services (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office,
1942), p. 171.

22
K. Sinclair, A History of New Zealand (4th ed.) (Auckland: Penguin, 1991), p. 271.

23
M. Argyle, The Psychology of Happiness (Hove: Routledge, 2001); E. Diener and M.E.P. Seligman,
‘Beyond money: Toward an economy of well-being’, Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 5

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(2004), pp. 1–31; R.A. Easterlin (ed), Happiness in Economics (Cheltenham: Elgar, 2002); R.H. Frank,
Luxury Fever: Money and Happiness in an Era of Excess (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press,
1999); B.S. Frey and A. Stutzer, ‘What can economists learn from happiness research?’, Journal of
Economic Literature, 40 (2002), pp. 402–435; R.E. Lane, The Loss of Happiness in Market
Democracies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000); A.J. Oswald, ‘Happiness and economic
performance’, The Economic Journal, 107 (1997), pp. 1815–1831; L. Bruni and P.L. Porta, Economics
and Happiness: Framing the Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Layard, op. cit., Ref. 8.

24
For example: D. Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006); P. Martin,
Making People Happy: The Nature of Happiness and Its Origins in Childhood (London: Fourth
Estate, 2005); D. Nettle, Happiness: The Science Behind Your Smile (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2005); J.F. Schumaker, Happiness: Understanding an Endangered State of Mind (Auckland: Penguin,
2006); N. White, A Brief History of Happiness (Malden MA: Blackwell, 2006); Layard, op. cit., Ref. 8.

25
Beginning with the seminal paper of R.A. Easterlin, ‘Does economic growth improve the human lot?
Some empirical evidence’, in I.P.A. David and M.W. Reder (eds), Nations and Households in Economic
Growth: Essays in Honor of Moses Abramovitz (New York: Academic Press, 1974), pp. 89–125.

26
B. Cooper, C. García-Peñalosa and P. Funk, ‘Status effects and negative utility growth’, The Economic
Journal, 111 (2001), pp. 642–665.

27
B.S. Frey and A. Stutzer, ‘Economic consequences of mispredicting utility,’ (Unpublished paper,
University of Zurich, 2004).

28
T. Scitovsky, The Joyless Economy: An Inquiry into Human Satisfaction and Consumer
Dissatisfaction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976).

29
B. Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less (New York: Harper Collins, 2004).

30
T. Kasser, The High Price of Materialism (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2002).

31
Layard, op. cit., Ref. 8, p. 4.

32
For a vigorous attack on the latter claim, see Wierzbicka, op. cit., Ref 7.

33
A conference on this theme at the University of Milano-Bicocca in 2003, and at which some of the
authors cited in this section presented papers, had the title ‘The Paradoxes of Happiness in Economics’.

p. 36
34
S. Freud, ‘Civilization and its discontents (1930),’ in S. Freud, Civilization, Society and Religion:
Pelican Freud Library (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985), pp. 245–340, p. 271.

35
Freud, ibid., p. 306.

36
Freud, ibid., pp. 313–314.

37
The term etho-politics here is borrowed from N. Rose, ‘The politics of life itself’, Theory, Culture and
Society, 18 (2001), pp. 1–30.

38
S. Freud, ‘Group psychology and the analysis of the ego (1921),’ in S. Freud, Civilization, Society and
Religion: Pelican Freud Library (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985), pp. 93–178, pp. 152–3.

39
S. Freud, Totem and Taboo (London: Ark, 1983), pp. 141–143.

40
Freud, ibid., p. 143.

41
Zizek, op. cit., Ref. 3, pp. 58–60.

42
J. Lacan, Écrits: A Selection (London: Routledge, 2001).

43
S. Zizek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor (London: Verso,
2002), p. 240.

44
S. Zizek, The Fragile Absolute – Or, Why Is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For? (London:
Verso, 2000), p. 135

45
Lacan, op. cit., Ref. 42, p. 255.

46
S. Zizek, op. cit., Ref. 43, pp. 253–4.

47
S. Zizek, ‘Eastern Europe’s Republics of Gilead’, New Left Review, 1/183 (1990), pp. 50–62, p. 60.

48
S. Zizek, op. cit., Ref 43, p. 204.

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49
New Economics Foundation, A Well-Being Manifesto for a Flourishing Society (London: New
Economics Foundation, 2004).

50
Zizek, op. cit., Ref. 47; G. Daly, ‘Ideology and its paradoxes: dimensions of fantasy and enjoyment’,
Journal of Political Ideologies, 4 (1999), pp. 219–238; J. Glynos, ‘The grip of ideology: a Lacanian
approach to the theory of ideology’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 6 (2001), pp. 191–214.

51
See the website of the Second International Conference on Gross National Happiness (2005), which
features speakers from Bhutan: http://www.gpiatlantic.org/conference/index.htm.

52
Argyle, op. cit., Ref. 23.

53
R.A. Easterlin, ‘Explaining happiness’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the
United States of America, 100 (2003), pp. 11176-11183. See pp. 11181–2.

54
A. Robinson, ‘The politics of lack’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 6 (2004),
pp. 259–269, p. 268.

55
R. Rorty, ‘Religion in the public square: A reconsideration’, Journal of Religious Ethics, 91 (2003), pp.
141–149.

56
Lane, op. cit., Ref. 23.

57
Frank, op. cit., Ref. 23.

58
New Economics Foundation, The Politics of Happiness: A NEF Discussion Paper (London: New
Economics Foundation, 2003).

59
A good example of social indicators is that provided by the New Zealand Government’s Social Report,
see: http://www.socialreport.msd.govt.nz/.

60
J. Norberg, ‘The scientist’s pursuit of happiness’, Policy, 21 (2005), pp. 9–13.

61
The most rigorous argument found so far is: R. Veenhoven, ‘Happiness as a public policy aim: The
greatest happiness principle,’ in P.A. Linley and S. Joseph (eds), Positive Psychology in Practice
(Hoboken NJ: John Wiley, 2004), pp. 658–678.

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 62
‘[Gross national happiness] is not a question of individual happiness or of happiness in any immediate
sense. The “Happiness” that we are considering as the objective of GNH means the removal of obstacles,
the condition in which negativity is diminished, not the immediate satisfaction of the individual as such’.
M. Mancall, ‘Gross national happiness and development: An essay,’ in K. Ura and K. Galay (eds), Gross
National Happiness and Development (Thimpu: Centre for Bhutan Studies, 2004), pp. 1–54, p. 27.

63
N. Donovan and D. Halpern, Life-Satisfaction: The State of Knowledge and the Implications for
Governments (London: Strategy Unit, 2002), p. 4.

64
NEF, op. cit., Ref. 49.

65
R. Veenhoven, ‘Well-being in the welfare state: Level not higher, distribution not more equitable’,
Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, 2 (2000), pp. 91–125.

66
Norberg, op. cit., Ref. 60.

67
R. Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope (London: Penguin, 1999), p. xxix.

68
Freud, op. cit., Ref. 34, p. 271, italics added.

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