The ’Abstract Domination’ In Capital And Its Manuscripts

Abstractness is the basic feature of modern society.As a theory or concept,abstraction takes the real existence as the carrier,forms a non-personal and objective social form,and then dominates and controls the individual and his activities at the realistic level,which is domination.With the development of modernization and the deepening of globalization,the degree of abstract domination of individuals is deepening day by day.Based on Sohn-Rethel’s Geistige und Korperliche Arbeit:Zur Epistemologie der abendlandischen Geschichte,this paper adopts his perspective of ’realabstraktion’ to historically and logically sort out and interpret’abstraction’ and ’abstract domination’ in Capital and its manuscripts,analyze the conceptual evolution,representation and essence of domination and its occurrence mechanism,so as to deconstruct the current situation of abstract domination in which human beings are living.In the commodity-market economy,abstract domination is embodied in the domination of commodities,money,gold and silver,luxury goods,capital and digital abstraction on human beings.Its essence is the unconscious forced identity(’identifizierung’)in the reification structure.Marx attributed the root of abstraction to the reification(’versachlichung’)brought by abstract labor(including the reification of human beings and the personification of things),as well as the need for self-realization of capital and the only nature of self-proliferation.Sohn-Rethel focused on the micro level of historical epistemology or consciousness theory that Marx had not discussed,used historical materialism to explain the synthesis of innate ideas,and realized the Copernicus reversal’ of Kant ’s epistemology on the basis of materialism.In his view,the independence of innate ideas is based on the historical separation and opposition of intellectual and manual labour,which obscures the objective reality of labor,and the real social relations under the capitalist mode of production are thus obscured,and the root of the synthesis of innate ideas is actually in the real society.The root of thinking abstraction lies in real abstraction,which shapes and restricts thinking abstraction.Real abstraction is not in people ’s mind,but in the behavior of people in reality and the behavior between people.It is a social synthesis(’gesellschaftliche Synthesis’)with the core of commodity exchange and the dual nature of thinking abstraction and exchange abstraction.Sohn-Rethel attributed the value of goods to exchange abstraction,and the commodity society became an abstract existence based on the pure quantity of this ’value quantity’.However,thinking abstraction is not a direct reflection of exchange abstraction.Only when thinking is faced with the gestalt completed by exchange abstraction,nature without origin characteristics will be transmitted to thinking abstraction,and social synthesis becomes the real origin of thinking abstraction in this sense.It should be pointed out that scholars such as Sohn-Rethel mainly hold a critical and negative attitude towards abstract domination based on the actual development of Western modernization.However,in terms of China’s socio-historical traditions,modernisation processes and patterns of development,’abstraction’ is,to a certain extent,justified and historically progressive.