Formal, real and total subsumption

The concepts of formal and real subsumption date back to Marx’s theorisations of the historical emergence of absolute and relative surplus value, produced as an appendix to Capital Volume 1.

Total subsumption is a more modern rendering, used extensively by Antonio Negri and others, to describe the full interiorisation of social relations to capital. Drawing on Marx, the economy is understood to have fully colonised the sphere of social production. This theme is strongly present too in the work of Guy Debord. The premise of the society of the spectacle is exactly such a victory of the Bourgeoisie’s economic power.

For Negri, total subsumption coincides with a new form of productivity, the social force of the multitude, whose subjectivity includes extensive effective labour and reproductive networks, not directly the result of capital, yet serving the needs of society where capital is dominant form of production. With Debord, the subsumption of society by the capitalist economy, is the basis of the spectacular universe, the real illusions which form a social relationship between individuals mediated by images (Thesis 4 SOTS)

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