“Mute Compulsion – A Marxist Theory of the Economic Power of Capital” by Sören Mau, 2023
Sören Mau explains how power is exercised in a capitalist society. It is not just through military / coercive legal power or through the impact of ideology, politics and propaganda – the typical duopoly. It is a 3rd way, through the everyday influence of economic power on the lives of workers - even the whole population, including capitalists. In other words you don't go to work because a cop tells you, or an ideology about the Puritan work ethic or 'keeping up with the Jones' compels you to, but because you need a roof over your head and food to eat. Capital forces us to punch in to survive, like a huge invisible machine. This is the 'mute compulsion' of the title, taken from a quote by Marx, based on a quote by a pro-capitalist reactionary who said: “...hunger is ... peaceable, silent, unremitting pressure...” Everyone is aware of this force, so much so that it is part of the wood-work, and as such, becomes 'natural' for most.
Much of this book has the odor of a bright young academic challenging his elders for their mistakes and praising them for their insights. It is based on his Ph.D. thesis after all and he takes pages to trace his outlook, as the book is not just narrowly focused on power. In a way it becomes an explanation of aspects of Marxist theory. He engages, debates and refutes many Marxists, semi-Marxists and bourgeois theorists in order to pursue 'mute compulsion.' He tracks Marx's idea changes too. It should come as no surprise that Marx did not come out of the egg fully-formed, but developed and changed concepts over time.
Historical Materialism
Mau has an unnecessary disdain for 'classic historical materialism.' Normally he hews to Marx quite closely and here he contends Marx left it behind! It looks like his assertion comes from a misunderstanding of the concept through a bad lens of partial quotes or erroneous interpretations by reformists. It is usually understood as grounding the mode of production of every society in history. He claims it is actually 'determinist' and assumes the 'forces of production' will automatically function as leading towards socialism or in history, to past social forms. This is a familiar canard. Yet he has no discussion of how capital's technical and economic development is 'tending' to lay the groundwork for possible world-wide socialism.
Witness the planning inside massive international firms; the growth of the internet linking humanity together; the development of sophisticated software and huge data banks that make planning easier; the rise of the proletariat in numbers world-wide; the increase in education; the obvious need for the state to manage economic crises; the rise of women; the near completion of national independence; the falling rate of profit; the disrepute in which neo-liberalism and false democratic bourgeois politics are held; unsustainable debt levels; the creeping destruction of the environment caused by this system; the obvious power of large oligopolies; a global financial, production and transport logistics system; scientific and technical advances and even the centralized success of firms like Amazon, replacing physical shopping and stores. These are not mirages, yet they guarantee nothing either.
Mau complains that 'his' view on capitalist power did not get much attention until now. Early 'classical' Marxists spent more time on coercion and violence as the form of capitalist power because it was, while Marxists in the middle 1900s looked at ideology more carefully (Lukacs and Gramsci, for instance) as more subtle form of power because it was. Mau himself can now luxuriate in the silent compulsion of capital's requirements, because silent compulsion is even more obvious now. This is due to the historical development of capital and its older, encompassing exercise of profit power world-wide.
Some Insights
This is a useful book in elucidating why we show up for work without a gun to our heads or the ideological Nazi idea that 'arbeit macht frei' -work makes you free. Mau makes these useful points: A. That economics and politics are not separate, as ordinary bourgeois economics claims. The corporate idea is that the 'free market' is a place where equal people, with the same information, freely exchange labor for pay, and make or later purchase commodities through free choice. This fantasy endures to this day, hiding the very real compulsion behind labor 'exchange' and the forces of commodification. B. That proletarian and working-class are not the same, as some proletarians do not work for a wage. Mostly female care-work in the home is the largest example. C: That tools and machines are extensions of the human body. Tools became a necessary part of the labor process, developed to reproduce human life. Humans now make their own existence, they do not live off the 'free' gifts of nature as do other animals. D. That the physical and social needs of the human body are part of 'bio-politics.' He looks into the issue of how sex and having babies is a material part of social reproduction of the proletariat - not just as an ideological identity or social construct. Being a 'women' in this sense is not a product of plastic surgery, hormone replacement or feelings. E. That wage labor is a draft on the workers' future, not just the present. He calls capital a debt system - where the past mortgages the future to control the present. F. The concept of “monopoly capitalism' has been sometimes understood as getting rid of competition. As can be seen, what actually exists are oligopolies in different sectors, which do compete, along with international competitors, even organized in state blocs, even through war. Competition below these levels is still rampant.
What some call 'bio-politics' (a questionable term...) has become more important to capital in its battle to control the population. This is witnessed in the U.S. by present 'culture war' issues like abortion, birth control, gay and transgender issues, women's rights, the drug war, health-care and day-care, pandemics and vaccines, food quality, solitary confinement and capital punishment, violent policing, etc. – anything to do with the proletarian body. Mau comes out against pure identity understandings of gender or skin color. After a confusing debate with himself, he understands that capital will use divisions within the working class, as long as these divisions do not interfere with capital accumulation. I.E. capital performs a balancing act. He ignores the financial benefits to capital of having a super-exploited part of the proletariat designated by skin color or national background or gender.
Silent but Obvious Compulsion
Mau debates 'value-form theorists' who deny that class is primary under capital regarding value. He opposes this idea but posits that forms of direct class struggle are only one aspect of the exercise of power under capital. This is where his take on 'mute compulsion' comes in. This involves both vertical class struggle and horizontal inter-capitalist and even inter-worker competition. This competition also unites each class, or can. He shows how the 'free market' is actually free only for the capitalist, while for the worker it is an abstract, impersonal force against him or her. Mau notes that workplace discipline has changed in some workplaces, with bosses now your post-modern 'friend' instead of a cruel or authoritarian overseer. Either method is used based on how much surplus value can be extracted by each, on pain of dismissal. Machines, computerization and automation powered by inexhaustible energy allow impersonal and constant pressure to be put on workers. The abstract time of the punch clock is also a silent ruler.
Mau discusses the 'deskilling' debate as a red herring, given it is really a struggle issue, not an automatic trend. Nor are the 9 kinds of intelligence within humans compensated by capitalists. Being treated as 'low-skilled' acts as a control mechanism, though it is obvious that every job requires quite specific, complex skills. Consider the roofer … without experience in physical, carpentry, endurance, pattern, material and tool skills, they'd be useless or dead. Mau also takes on how food – a human basic – is now mostly being controlled by capitalist industrial agriculture and privatization, starting in the 1950s. The development of machinery and attendant debt, artificial fertilizer, pesticides, seed patents and bio-engineering in food and agriculture, along with antibiotics, growth hormones and cruel conditions in the animal sector are the culprits. Self-sufficient farming is more and more difficult in some countries, as the market controls growing. You want to eat? You will eat their products, no matter how healthy, water-intensive, toxic or destructive they are. This reflects the penetration of capital into rural areas. This is part of capital's pressure on nature itself, which has many other aspects.
Capitalist globalism has increased competition between workers in different countries and even parts of countries, another quiet threat, and sometimes not so quiet when they threaten to move their businesses. So logistics and mobility are forms of capitalist power. Containerization and computerization has sped-up the whole economy and the work force too... another time power. Mau discusses 'surplus population,' which Marx called the reserve army of the unemployed, which he considered to have 3 layers and predicted would increase. At this point, it is worldwide, up to 1.2B people. This also puts quiet pressure on the employed ... as they see people looking in the window waiting for a job. Starvation is the terminal state of being in surplus. Lastly is the effect of periodic capitalist crises generated internally and sometimes externally. They cow the population at first, though they can lead to increased rebellion and organization. Mau argues that most of the time the former is the result. Capital seeks a new profit stability after each, only to be disrupted again. Mau's idea that crises are almost circular seems to defy historical development, as each is somewhat different and, given the world-wide nature of the economy, wider.
An excellent book, thoughtful, breaking some new ground, yet its overall impression is that capital's power is almost limitless. This impression is barely contradicted in the book by countervailing forces.
Mau has an exhaustive appendix of works by Marx cited. Some of the theorists also cited: Adorno, Althusser, Baran, Braverman, Callinicos, Chakrabarty, Engels, Federici, Foster, Foucault, Gramsci, Hardt, Harvey, Hegel, Hobsbawm, Kautsky, Lenin, Lukacs, Malm, Negri, Saito, Sweezy, Vogel, Weber, Zizek – many of whom who have been mentioned in this blog.
Prior blog reviews on this issue, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “Levers of Power,” “Facing Reality” (CLR James); “The Struggle for Power – Russia in 1923,” “Giants – the Global Power Elite.”
And I bought it at May Day Books!
Red Frog
July 18, 2023
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