Mute Compulsion. A Marxist Theory of the Economic Power of Capital

Discussion with Søren Mau, Cannelle Gignoux (Centre Marc Bloch) and Jacob Blumenfeld (Kritische Theorie in Berlin)

Why do we obey the economy, even when we know it harms us? What if capitalism relied less on visible violence than on a more insidious force: the mute compulsion of economic relations?

For Soren Mau, the power of capital cannot be reduced either to coercion exercised by the state or to ideological forms of power. It takes the shape of a more diffuse force, rooted in—and acting upon—the very material conditions of life. Mute Compulsion thus sheds light on the ways in which capital appropriates our time, our activity, and nature itself in order to shape social life and bind us to endless growth.

By focusing on what is essential to capitalist logic, Mau’s analysis profoundly renews debates on biopolitics, social reproduction, our metabolic relationship to nature, and the role of crises and mass under- / un-employment. Through a rigorous and uncompromising examination, this book opens new perspectives for understanding the present and for nourishing future struggles—calling for the abolition of a game whose rules we are forced to obey but never allowed to write.