Mute Compulsion: A Marxist Theory of the Economic Power of Capital

Pretty much the hit of Marxist theory for 2023.

The book positions its analysis in pretty abstract terms, not analyzing particular historical instances of the capitalist mode of production, but "capital in its ideal average" - tendencies, structures and laws that constitute the essence of this mode of production, regardless of, or across, its different historical and geographical instantiations. While this mode of analysis might seem harder to grasp at first, it elucidates the logic and concepts that enable our domination, and give as the necessary theoretical tools to further analyse concrete examples and dynamics.

As the title suggests, the book sets forward a theory of the "economic power of capital". In the Marxist tradition, two forms of power have been thoroughly discussed and analyzed as the means by which capital relations of production manage to take hold and maintain their grip over society: violence and ideology. Violence refers to direct coercion, mostly by the state and its repressive apparatus, through which market relations are established and workers are disciplined to the temporality and needs of the capitalist mode of production. Ideology is the set of beliefs that naturalizes capitalist relations, by shaping the way that the worker sees and understand herself as part of class society. A third form of power, hinted at by Marx but not extensively analysed, is the economic power of capital - the ability of capital to reconfigure the material conditions of social reproduction, channeling productive forces into market and capital compatible forms of operation, and making other forms of reproduction that operate outside market relations harder and eventually impossible to exist. Economic power thus, referred to by Marx as "mute compulsion" - compulsion without a direct actor - operates in the transcendental plane, shaping the necessary conditions of possibility for social production to take place.

But how does this mute compulsion come to be? Mau, reconstructing Marx's reasoning, argues that the possibility of this sort of power rests in the "corporeal organization of the human being". First, he stresses that human needs are socially mediated, in the sense above any biological determination, our needs and wants are created in a social environment. Further more, to fulfill those needs humans need to a) use extrasomatic tools, and b) enter into relations with other humans. Since tools and relations rest outside the physical body of a human, we get a notion of human nature as characterized by a cleavage, a fissure that is constitutional of our life and way being. There is no original unity with nature, that was disrupted by capitalist relations, from which we can launch a critique of alienation, or strive to return to. Our metabolism with nature is and always has been characterized by this cleavage, which makes our nature non-deterministic: there's infinite ways (under some physical constrains) that we can organize our social intercourse and metabolism. But this cleavage is exactly what is exploited by capitalists to establish the dominion of private property onto human society. By inserting itself in the gap between people and the way they reproduce their lives, capital is able to exert immense power on how society is organized, and submit the vast majority of the population to the command of the few.

But since it perpetuates class domination, why call it "mute compulsion"? It is mute because after being established it operates by its own laws, forcing proletarians and capitalists alike to obey to the same dynamics, albeit from two different positions. It forces (and also enables) capitalists to expand their power over workers, while making workers all the more dependent on capital for their survival. This dynamic is expressed in several transformations in the organization and methods of production, captured by the concept of "real subsumption". Real subsumption refers to the the changes that production (or later, nature itself) undergoes under the dominion of capital that fundamentally alters its process and character, to the point that production itself becomes inconceivable without the mediation of capital. At this point, the mute compulsion of capitalist relations presents itself as a natural necessity, where individuals are forced to abide by its commands as the only rational thing to do. Not that violence and ideology don't play any role after mute compulsion is established - they are constantly at play and even have their periodic spikes - but this third form of power is perceived as not originating from a particular actor or class, but as a law of nature.

Overall a very valuable contribution in Marxist theory as it sheds light and brings into focus an important concept that helps us understand the predicament where in, by also relating it to other more concrete aspects of the operation of capitalists societies, like the transformations in the workplace, subsumption of nature, logistical chains, etc. I definitely recommend you to check it out, and if you are of any Marxist persuasion then it's required reading.