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#Capitalism #Marx #Marxism #Power #PoliticalEconomy: "Mau’s book is driven by the conviction that economic power is irreducible to this “violence/ideology couplet,” and that its distinctiveness can only be grasped once we recognize that economic power “addresses the subject only indirectly, by acting on its environment” — in particular, by reshaping “the material conditions of social reproduction.” This is a valuable insight, and Mau’s careful attention to its elaboration and to thinking about its ramifications makes his book one of the most fruitful additions to Marxist theory in recent years. Economic power is indirect, mediated power. It shapes our choices by shaping the material and social environment in which we make choices.
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Capital is not a cabal of capitalists or government officials. Nor is it a supra-individual Hegelian subject acting of its own accord. Rather, it is “an emergent property of social relations,” a “fixation” of our own social activity. We make it — but we seem incapable of unmaking it. This is the power of capital — the ability of this emergent choice architecture to reproduce itself, even in the face of organized efforts to derail or transform it."

https://jacobin.com/2023/03/mute-compulsion-soren-mau-book-review