Economic Compulsion and the Critique of Society: A Comparison of Søren Mau and Werner Bonefeld

“Impersonal” or “structural” forms of domination have emerged as useful analytics for understanding contemporary capitalism and developing a critical social theory which articulates the domination that capitalist society employs. To this end, Werner Bonefeld’s A Critical Theory of Economic Compulsion: Wealth, Suffering, Negation and Søren Mau's Mute Compulsion: A Marxist Theory of the Economic Power of Capital offer different ways to ground such a critical social theory through their analyses of the “silent compulsion” of economic power, recentring and reinvigorating the Marxist critique of political economy. Where these two readings converge and differ, they offer fruitful grounds for theorising power and capital, developing the stakes for freedom, and providing outlines for emancipatory political practice.