Impersonal Domination in Marx’s Capital: On the Readings of Michael Heinrich and Søren Mau

Abstract

One of the fundamental starting points of K. Marx’s project of a critique of political economy consists in conceiving the various actors of the capitalist economy as personifications of specific economic categories. From this perspective, as recent works by M. Heinrich and S. Mau have pointed out, the economic power of capital is exercised by capitalists insofar as they function as personifications of that category. In Capital, Marx presents the conduct of capitalists as being strongly conditioned by the competitive logic of the market. This paper has two aims: to analyze the vertical, impersonal domination of the proletariat by the capitalist class, and to examine the market’s impersonal, horizontal domination over society as a whole. Finally, in our concluding reflections, we address several normative questions concerning the responsibility that can be attributed to the capitalist class for the dual form of impersonal domination endured by the proletariat under the capitalist mode of production.