Even amid the current outpouring of scholarship on Marx, leftist philosopher Søren Mau’s Mute Compulsion: A Marxist Theory of the Economic Power of Capital stands as a significant contribution. First published in German and Danish in 2021 and published in English by Verso earlier this year, the book meticulously develops a theory of what Mau calls “economic power,” a form of capitalist domination that is not strictly bound to notions of class and, unlike the forces of violence or ideology, that acts upon subjects indirectly.

Building on a diverse body of Marxist thought, Mau details how economic power shapes the terrain of social reproduction, influencing subjects by determining material conditions. In this rendering, subjects of economic domination are not directly restrained or blinkered by false consciousness, as they are often understood in the context of post-Marxism. Rather, they are subjugated by the oblique logics of capital. Forced to conform to capital’s demands, people are dominated insofar as, per Mau, “the worker wants to live.”

Both an insightful introduction to many of Marx’s core concepts and an original theoretical intervention, the book promises to substantively inform current conversations on capitalism, power, and resistance.