Spurious radicalism
Radical republicanism and the critique of capitalist social domination
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11951178 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Fabian Arzuaga (0000-0001-9449-3173, California University of Pennsylvania, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-02-23 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Capital & Class (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0309-8168 • E-ISSN: 2041-0980 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/03098168261423825 |
| OpenAlex | W7131295663 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 24 |
For more than a decade, a sizable contribution to the theory of neo-republicanism has attempted to critique domination in capitalist society. Within this emergent ‘radical republicanism’, theorists have attempted to assimilate Marx’s critique of political economy by arguing that capitalist society is typified by dependency on arbitrary power —a form of domination— that is also systematic, impersonal, and structural. However, in purporting to critique capitalist domination through neo-republican means, these attempts fail to grasp the specifically capitalist character of domination. By theorizing capitalist domination as dependency on arbitrary will between individual subjects, radical republicanism regresses to a subjectivistic and decidedly liberal social theory that renders invisible Marx’s emphasis on the peculiar social and objective dimensions of capital’s compulsion for surplus labor as a form of domination. While capitalist society is unthinkable without human subjects, it cannot be understood subjectively – as the product of willful actions and decisions – because it obtains a peculiar autonomy and objectivity as a force of human-made (second) nature impelling human subjects to reproduce a form of society that is antagonistic to them. Marx’s critique of capital as a specific form of domination becomes apparent in his analysis of the ‘real subsumption of labor under capital’. This concept explains how the compulsion for surplus labor is transformed by capital into a form of ‘objective social domination’ wherein society confronts us as an alien power through a series of subject-object inversions
Autonomy · Capital (architecture · Capitalism · Capitalist state · Objectivity (philosophy · Politics · Power (physics · Surplus value · Political Economy and Marxism · Political Philosophy and Ethics · Political Theory and Influence
Time, Labor, and Social Domination
Chains and Invisible Threads
The Limits of a Basic Income
The History of Political and Social Concepts
From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth
Marx's Inferno
Radical Republicanism and the Future of Work
Marx’s Social Republic
Should socialists be republicans
Adorno, Marx, and abstract domination
Socially necessary superfluity
From Neo-Republicanism to Socialist Republicanism
Republican Freedom in the Labour Market
What Is the Wrong of Capitalism
Private Government
Labor Republicanism and the Transformation of Work
Structural domination in the labor market
A socialist republican theory of freedom and government
The two faces of domination in republican political theory
Labor and Republican Liberty
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |