Critique Of Capital Power

In the process of research and criticism of capitalist society,two major research ideas,the critique of ideology and the critique of surplus-value,have actually been formed.These two have their own advantages when criticizing the capitalist society,but at the same time,they also face some theoretical difficulties.Critique of capital power,as an important perspective for studying capitalist society,can organically combine the two ideas to a certain extent and complement each other,thereby deepening the overall critique of capitalist society.The core work of this dissertation is,to criticize the expression form,substance content,historical generation and internal mechanism of capital power in capitalist society from the perspective of power,so as to expand the theoretical horizon of critique of political economy,to deepen the understanding of capitalist society,and to explore the possibility of transcending capital power.The mainstream ideology of capitalist society,liberalism,thinks that on the one hand,the proper purpose of government in modern society is to protect property,so the problem of power can only exist between people and government,but not between individuals.On the other hand,they believes that market principle is an equal principle of exchange,so it will inevitably lead to an equal relation of power between people.As a result,liberalism believes that there will be no relations of domination in private area and economic area.In fact,this kind of belief masks the real existence of capital power in modern capitalist society.Through the critical analysis of modern capitalist society,this dissertation figures out that there is still a kind of power relation between people in modern society,and only from the view of Marx’s critique of political economy can we reveal the secret of capital power.On the one hand,the critique of political economy deepens the research into the field of production,and reveals the unequal power relation in the field of production,which is masked by the egalitarian illusion of market principle.On the other hand,it reveals the falseness of political liberation.Therefore,it also reveals that the relation of domination,capital power,still exists in the private and economic area of human life.First,capital,as a certain amount of money accumulated,integrates the purchasing power of money.This purchasing power also exists in the pre-capitalist era,and thus it constitutes a prehistoric form of capital power.Second,when capital can buy the living labor of workers in capitalist society,it acquires the dominance of labor that dominates workers in the field of production,which constitutes the core form of capital power.Third,with the development of capitalist society,capitalist production methods are spread all over the human society,and the forms of labor are becoming more diversified.Capital power has gained some richer,socialized forms.Like the capitalist mode of production,capital power is not natural.It is gradually established along with the historical process of human society.The progress,which goes from primitive accumulation to capital accumulation,illusory community,and then to imperialism,shows the progress of capital power from birth to maturity.In pre-capitalist society,capital power was subordinated to political power,theocratic power and other forms of power.But with the gradual development of economic activities,money has become an independent general representative of material wealth,which gave birth to people’s desire to get rich.Driven by the desire to get rich,the primitive accumulation process based on the use of political power and violent means was carried on.On the one hand,the primitive accumulation deprived the old feudal noblemen and the church of their wealth,which led to the decline of political and theocratic power.On the one hand,it deprived serfs,peasants and small handicraftsmen of their means of production,and created a large number of free workers,which laid the foundation of capitalist society.With the establishment of capitalist mode of production,capital power and capital accumulation promote each other and develop simultaneously.Capital power promotes the process of capital accumulation,and capital accumulation also contributes to the expansion and strengthening of capital power.With the gradual strengthening of capital power,labor develops from the formal subordination of capital to the real subordination of capital,which in turn promotes the enhancement of capital power.The simultaneous development of capital accumulation and capital power will inevitably lead to the birth of illusory community in domestic area,and the birth of imperialism in international area.The illusory community is in a collusive relationship with capital power,they promote each other.As a result,capital power becomes the supreme power in the illusory community.Imperialism first manifests itself as classical imperialism which concentrates on the use of political power in the international arena.Recently,new imperialism no longer only depends on the political power of the state.Instead,it tries to rely on capital power itself for global accumulation.The formation of new imperialism shows that capital power has developed to an unprecedented level.The mechanism of capital power is biopolitical.Foucault discovers the biopolitical mechanism of modern power by exploring the bourgeois governance in modern society,which mainly includes the disciplinary technology of the body and the regulatory technology of life.In fact,this also reveals the power mechanism of capital power.In the aspect of the disciplinary technology of the body,the capitalists realized the initial discipline of the workers in the handicraft industry by deepening the division of labor.With the use of the machine system,the modern factory system was established,in this case,not only the capitalists could create stricter work disciplines and more detailed division of labor,the machine itself could also play the role of discipline.Finally,the modern enterprise has completely become the panopticon,which pushes the capitalist’s discipline of workers to the peak.In the aspect of the regulatory technology of life,the capitalists are only willing to pay the workers’ productive consumption,and the wages paid to the workers can only meet their physiological needs and the needs of the necessities,but cannot meet the social needs of the workers.Therefore,the form of wages causes the workers to lose the possibility of becoming fully developed human beings,and it turns workers into bare life.The extensive use of machines makes workers’ lives attached to machines.In the modern society,with the tendency of acceleration and digitization,the combination of capital and technology achieves full control of workers’ lives.At the same time,capital power creates an industrial reserve army opposite to the active army of laborers.It transfers the contradiction between workers and capitalists to the contradiction between the active army of laborers and the industrial reserve army,and further disrupts the resistance of the workers through the competition between the two.In this way,capital power achieves full control of both the active army of laborers and the industrial reserve army.Capitalists,by using capital power,have achieved full control of all workers and the entire human society,so we must transcend capital power if we want to achieve human freedom.The exploration of transcending capital power should not only resort to a radical transcendence of capitalism at the fundamental level,but also at the level of practical feasibility and operability.The multitude revolution theory explores the possibility of regaining the revolution,but it is not enough to rely solely on the intrinsic power of the subject.The study of economic democracy theory suggests that we can use the power of the institutional legal system to restrict,overcome,and defeat capital power in the first place even when the conditions of a fundamental revolution are not yet available.Therefore,starting with the reform of the institutional legal system,we can first try to realize some new systems,such as the the co-operative factories of the labourers themselves mentioned by Marx,at the level of production organization,and then realize the fundamental transcendence of capitalist society by rebuilding individual ownership and realizing the community of free individuals.In this way,it could be possible for us to explore a possible path to transcend beyond capital power combining a fundamental level with a feasibility and operability level.