‘Mute Compulsion: A Marxist Theory of the Economic Power of Capital’ by Søren Mau reviewed by Pedro H. J. Nardelli

Reviewed by Pedro H. J. Nardelli

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Pedro H. J. Nardelli is Associate Professor at Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology, Finland, …

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Søren Mau is a Danish communist philosopher who has been an active Marxist scholar contributing to the theory of the value-form. Mute Compulsion is the result of his doctoral degree work from University of Southern Demark, defended in 2019. The book is divided into thirteen chapters (plus an introduction and a conclusion), organized in three parts that progressively build theoretical contributions starting from the conditions of the economic power of capital, passing through its constitutive relations and finally reaching the dynamics it enables.

In introductory chapter, the author explains the reason the mute compulsion of the economic relations (introduced by Marx in volume 1 of Capital, and usually incorrectly translated as dull/silent compulsion) needs research. Mau defends the thesis that, in addition to the established studied domains of coercive and ideological powers, there is another type of power: one of an impersonal, abstract type, which is ‘immediately embedded in the economic processes themselves rather than tacked onto them in an external manner’ (4). The argument has two sides: (i) economic power, as mute compulsion, is an emergent property of the capitalist mode of production, being exerted indirectly through the environment by capital’s ‘ability to reconfigure the material conditions of social reproduction’ (5), and (ii) economic power is to be articulated with the coercive and ideological powers, which act more directly. Following the steps of certain theorists of value-form, Mau works with abstractions to conceptualize the capitalist mode of production as a purified scientific object, finding structural relations in terms of social forms, deriving more complex forms from more basic ones. This means that the author does not aim at actual social formations, but rather analysing the core dynamics of the capitalist mode of production.

Part I covers five chapters that deal with the theoretical background of how economic power can be conceptualised as a mute compulsion. The first two chapters are dedicated to the meaning of ‘power’ in Marx himself, in Marxist thinkers and in key non-Marxist social science scholars. After some discussion about Marx’s German use of the words ‘power’ or ‘domination’, Mau critically contextualizes his study against more usual definitions of power from social science literature, claiming their unsuitability to characterize the impersonal power of capital, which is claimed as a social logic that refers ‘to the form of wealth, not its content, analogously to the discipline of philosophical logic’ (37). This poses a challenge: by being a social logic, could capital be an actor, or a subject, even an automatic subject, or a subject in the Hegelian sense, or that it has its own agency? His answer is that capital is an emergent property, roughly defined in a complex science as macro properties of the systems that cannot be reduced to the micro relations of its constitutive elements; the way the system is organized implies that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Chapter two revisits different strands of Marxism, and their (explicit or implicit) conceptualisation of the power of capital. As expected, Mau criticises orthodox Marxism, that is, any orientation which views productive forces as a determinism that leads to a transhistorical account of the economic relations based on externally determined technological development. Among Marxist theories of the state (and the state’s coercive power), Mau first criticises the those more concerned with the ‘content of the policy and State action’ (52) than with its form. The main problem with this, when assessing the economic power of capital, is that it puts focus on the state as the key agent that supports the direct domination of capitalists against labourers. The impact of this position, and similar ones examined in the chapter, is that economic power is placed on a second plane. The theoretical path that enables the state to be understood as a specific form of relation in the capitalist mode of production comes from the state derivation debate, where the state is the political form of capital and possesses a monopoly on violence, so that, Mau claims, ‘the mute compulsion of capital presupposes the coercive force of the state’ (58). After articulating the coercive power of the state, Mau goes on and deals with the other source of direct power: ideology, which affects the way humans in society think. The author broadly associates the diverse thinkers classified within Western Marxism to themes related to ideological power, leaving unexplored different aspects of economic power. Other more recent authors have dealt with different dimensions of economic power, from the real abstractions that constitute an ‘impersonal form of power’ (66), to different traditions like labour process theory (Braverman), ecosocialism (Bellamy Foster and Saito) and communisation theory (Endnotes, Jasper Bernes).

In chapters three and four, Mau deals with the (still) controversial topic of social ontology and human nature in Marxism. The argument consistently assumes that the capitalist mode of production has specific characteristics that other modes of production from the past did not have. However, Mau claims ‘the emphasis on the specificity of capitalism implies the identification of the difference between capitalist and non-capitalist societies, and this, in turn, implies the identification of elements common to capitalist and non-capitalist societies’ (72), indicating that the differences between modes of production cannot be absolute, otherwise comparisons would be impossible. After offering commentary on the humanism of young Marx, Mau explains his view of human nature in terms of metabolism and needs, similar to other animals, but with the core difference that for human beings, they are socially mediated (92). Progressing with the argument, it is explained that what is peculiar to the human species is that they necessarily depend on tools as a result of an evolutionary process (97), so that tools are like organs but with the key difference of being ‘much easier to separate from the rest of the body’ (98). In summary, Mau argues that the human metabolism, because of a corporeal organisation, is subject to a double mediation: ‘the mediation of tools and the mediation of social relations’ (101). Against romantic perspectives about the separation between human metabolism and nature, Mau defends the idea that capital (as a social logic) organizes the metabolic relation between humans and nature, but it cannot eliminate it, and thus, the fragility of our species is also our evolutive success. In this sense, despite the biological constraints, the double mediation opens unlimited ways to constitute such a metabolic relation.

Chapter five exposes the consequence of this difference, especially when considering the capitalist mode of production as a ‘metabolic domination’, following a specific dialectical relation between the natural and the social, where ‘nature is the totality out of which emerges an animal whose corporeal organisation opens up a new field of possibility which sets these animals apart from the rest of nature’ (106). The chapter further explains human nature in the sense of transhistorical characteristics, including the capacity of surplus labour which brings the possibility of the mute compulsion of economic power, to be discussed further. It is important to highlight that, for Mau,

The corporeal organisation of the human being is a crucial part of the explanation for why human social reproduction can take so many different forms. It explains how the social emerges dialectically from nature, and thus how natural history itself gives rise to human history, without reducing the logic of the latter to that of the former. (118)

In Part II, beginning with chapter six, the fundamental social relations that allow for the emergence and maintenance of the mute compulsion are explained. Following Robert Brenner, Mau conceptualizes the relations into two groups: vertical (interclass) and horizontal (intraclass). The first refers to the relation between the exploiting, capitalist class and the exploited, proletarian class. His study employs Marx’s mature writings and revisits well-known formulations as presented by theories of the value-form. One important remark is the differentiation of workers and proletarians (the former being a subset of the latter). Two important definitions are presented: ‘“Class” thus denotes the relation of a group of people to the conditions of social reproduction’ (129), and ‘[t]he proletarian subject is, in Marx’s words, a “naked life” or a “mere subject” cut off from its objective conditions.’ (130). The main take-away is that the vertical relation in the capitalist mode of production offers the glue for unifying separated beings with conditions of their own reproduction, the necessary mediations that humans need to survive. The capital relation then becomes necessary and impersonal, a transcendental power that valorizes value.

Chapter seven deals with another important topic, partly neglected by Marx, which is the difference and consequences of the social practices related to ‘the production of goods and the reproduction of labour power, a split in which proletarian women were forced to undertake the unwaged and invisible labour necessary for the capitalist system to function.’ (152). Through a dialogue with Marxist feminists, Mau argues that it is impossible at the level of the social form of abstraction to defend the idea that social reproduction that is not directly capitalized (although always subordinated, in the last instance) will always be structurally assigned with high priority to a given group. Hence, the position taken is that a theory of gender, as well as race, cannot be reduced or derived from the theory of capital in its purified form (and vice-versa). As the book deals with the capitalist mode of production in its purified form, gender and racial theories are claimed to be beyond its scope.

Chapters eight and nine present another familiar discussion, for some a problematic limitation, of certain interpretations of value-form theory: ‘the universal power of value’. Mau argues that the market is a mechanism of mute compulsion, as a determinant of the horizontal relations defined by value and competition. Mau argues that the vertical relations between capitalists and proletarians are one-sided, and the horizontal relation must also be taken into account through those two market-defined phenomena. Important to remark here is that market relations are compulsory in capitalism, a necessary mediation for accessing produced goods and services. The first chapters of Capital demonstrate the necessary links of the social forms, also including the vertical relations needed to produce value and surplus value, determining the necessity of existence of the social class (while the opposite is not true). Mau defends the idea that ‘value presupposes class, but class does not presuppose value’ (209). He points out that ‘proletarians are subjected to capitalists by means of a mechanism of domination which simultaneously subjects everyone to the imperatives of capital’ (211), but the market’s universal domination has different effects on the different classes. Competition through markets is a mechanism that is universal and impersonal, taking place as horizontal relations. Individual capitals compete for accumulation; individual proletarians compete to become workers. This is a horizontal mechanism that presupposes and self-reinforces the vertical relation.

Part III deals with the consequences of this self-reinforcing dynamic, leading to real subsumption in the broader sense. As Mau states, ‘one of the sources of the power of capital is the very exercise of this power’ (226). Going into more concrete detail, Mau reads real subsumption as driven by two causes: (i) the need of reorganizing labour processes by capitalists to combat the resistance imposed by workers, and (ii) the drive of competition to improve productivity. The social logic that is capital dynamically modifies socially and materially the production (and reproduction) processes, strengthening the economic power through a deeper level of dependence that human beings have on capitalist mediations. This dependence is not only related to the labour process, but now much more widespread, with examples demonstrated by the reconfiguration of ‘nature’ by use of specific energy sources and agricultural interventions (chapter eleven) and the logistic revolution (chapter twelve). The real subsumption of both labour and nature is viewed as a constant systemic feature of the capitalist mode of production, which can be more or less intense depending on the conjuncture.

In chapter thirteen, Mau deals with other fundamental systemic tendencies, namely the creation of relative surplus populations and crises, but these being cyclical. The first relates to the ‘industrial reserve army’ and the cycles of increasing wages until the point of harming profits, leading to new technologies and interventions in production to decrease living labour. This tendency leads to an increase in the supply of workers (as reserve army, or surplus population), and thus, a decrease in wages. The dynamics of overproduction, which is a necessary result of capital, is similar, leading to cyclical crises that bring forth the destruction of ‘unsuitable’ individual capitals. If capital relations remain, a renewed round of accumulation takes place, reaffirming the economic power of capital as an emergent phenomenon. In the concluding chapter, Mau tries to bring hope to the gloomy reality of the mute compulsion, stating that his work may open new perspectives to the struggle for communism, although nothing specific is mentioned.

In summary, Mute Compulsion is able to articulate different strands of Marxism, following a main thread posed by certain theories of the value-form. Despite the clear focus on a purified capitalist mode of production, the theory of economic power is capable of internalizing different mechanisms that enable capital to be produced and reproduced through real impersonal abstractions. The book is not only very innovative in terms of its synthetic contribution, but also has political implications for communists, even if not always (explicitly) spelled out. Mau’s investigation indicates a preference for communizing interventions that can disrupt the mute compulsion, breaking down its self-reinforcing mechanisms through the creation of other ways of relating, without class divisions, wherefrom a new mode of production might emerge.

13 March 2023

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