Supersuming Subsumption: Theory and Politics

In Supersuming Subsumption, Marco Briziarelli develops a dynamic and holistic theory of capitalist social power and shows how relevant Marx’s theory of subsumption still is for anti-capitalist struggles today. Despite renewed interest in the subject, subsumption remains an underexplored category, used either as a ‘floating signifier’ to describe a vague and wide-ranging tendency of capital to colonise social life, or, alternatively, as a highly technical concept in the specialist literature on Marx's later writings. Based on the Marxian understanding of subsumption, as well as Briziarelli’s socially and historically situated reading of it, the book maintains the specificity of the concept while bringing it to bear on the analysis of everyday life and practical politics.