Chapter 4 - Capital as Totality

Summary

Chapter 4 discusses how capital for Marx functions as a totality. It also explains how Marx’s conception of totality is based on Hegel’s conception of the logic of essence. Capital has a sui generis character, and is able to maintain and reproduce itself through individuals. Thus, the ground-level of domination in capitalism is not the domination of capitalists over workers, but the abstract domination of the totality of capital over both capitalists and workers. It is true that individuals can exert power over each other; yet they can do so not due to their personal characteristics, but in fact as a “personification of economic categories.” Finally, I observe that the power of capital has an impersonal and non-intentional character, although that power must necessarily be mediated by the action of individuals.