Automatic subject

Luca Micaloni

Chapter 7 in Marx: Key Concepts, 2024, pp 128-144 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: The chapter will deal with Marx’s account of ‘great industry’ in Capital from the standpoint of the analogy between capital and the automatic Subject. Although such an analogy has become a widely shared assumption in recent critical literature, a full application of it to the Marxian analysis of productive processes has not been, thus far, suggested. In the first part, I will give an outline of the analogy between capital and Subject, with particular regard to chap. IV of Capital I, where Marx introduces the ‘general formula’ of capital and defines it an ‘automatic subject’. In the second section, I will show that ‘automatic’ does not refer to a mechanic, passive response to external determination, but rather to something endowed with the capacity of self-motion. Through a re-reading of some key passages form chap. XIII of Capital I, I will maintain that capitalist rationalization in the sphere of production can be fruitfully interpreted as the gradual expropriation of subjectivity conducted by capital against labour-power. Not only the self-motion of the circuit of capital needs a process of valorisation in production; moreover, production is the specific domain where the Subject-capital attempts to rule out competing (human) forms of subjectivity by means of the ‘real subsumption’ of them.

Keywords: Economics and Finance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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