Politics and economy as form of domination: intellectual labor in Marx

Abstract

This essay aims at systematizing the theoretical analysis that Marx makes of pre-capitalism and of capitalism as social structures of power, bearing in mind that political relations predominate in the former and economic relations in the latter as forms of domination. In pre-capitalism, political power and the monopolized exercise of physical, social and psychological violence are determined by the manner in which social agents appropriate objective, material and symbolic conditions of social production. In capitalism, production, when it is already commanded by capital, on top of producing surplus value, it also produces a system of general exploitation of the natural and human properties with the support of science. In other words, it fulfills the appropriation through science and not violence or personal power, putting scientific knowledge at its service, in the form of fixed capital. This extraction of surplus value takes on the form of scientific activity, in spite of being a result of the economic relationship. It is within this context that the analysis of intellectual labor is made, not only as value producer, but also as producer of concepts to justify the historical forms of power and of capitalist domination.