The article argues that abstract and impersonal domination and abstract violence are two fundamental and constitutive aspects of modern bourgeois society. Drawing on the late theoretical production of Karl Marx—particularly the money chapter of the Grundrisse—and secondary sources grounded in a categorical reading of his work, our findings reveal that the capitalist social formation is characterized by a high degree of abstraction, which entails the subsumption of social interdependence under ca…
Read moreThe article argues that abstract and impersonal domination and abstract violence are two fundamental and constitutive aspects of modern bourgeois society. Drawing on the late theoretical production of Karl Marx—particularly the money chapter of the Grundrisse—and secondary sources grounded in a categorical reading of his work, our findings reveal that the capitalist social formation is characterized by a high degree of abstraction, which entails the subsumption of social interdependence under capital as the dominant social relation of modernity. This implies, on the one hand, that individuals are enmeshed in structures of social domination (abstract and impersonal) and, on the other, they are mediated by a form of violence defined as an abstract thirst for value.
