Socialisation and Personification as Forms of Domination in Marx

Abstract

The problem of domination [Herrschaft], as an abstract mode of violence which can be deduced from late Marx’s work, presents us with crucial elements that have fueled contemporary debates regarding the method in authors as diverse as Echeverría, Haslbauer, Elbe, Fineschi, Heinrich, Kurz, or Postone. The present text is situated within the specific context of these debates; the hypothesis that runs throughout this work is that the abstract mode of effective domination illustrates capital under the figure of the real subsumption of labour by transforming the human being’s functions of ‘formation’ and ‘individualisation’ (Balibar) into functions of effective capital ‘formation’ and ‘personalisation’. In this respect, domination of capital is primarily expressed as an abstract exercise of the bourgeois society’s formation.