Abstract

This essay reconsiders Marx’ prehistory of capital through the lens of the work of Giorgio Agamben, who in the wake of Foucault has proposed a bio-political theory of sovereignty that breaks down the analytical separation between sovereignty and governmentality that Foucault in his work tries to maintain. Although Agamben mentions Marx only once in his study of sovereign power, I argue that his study nevertheless contributes to our understanding of the capitalist relation as not only a governmental but also a sovereign power relation. In the first part of this essay, I show through a philological commentary on Marx’ use of the adjective ‘vogelfrei’—translated as free, rightless, without protection, outlawed—to characterise the proletariat, that the Marxian proletariat is a figure of what Agamben in his study of sovereign power calls bare life. In the second part of the essay, I show that this sovereign dimension of the capitalist relation is also substantiated by Marx’ analysis of the logic of the capitalist relation as that of the exception. After Carl Schmitt, who wrote that ‘sovereign is who decides on the state of exception’, Agamben has argued that the logic of the exception is the logic of sovereign power. Reconsidered through the lens of Agamben’s argument, Marx’ account of the prehistory of capital reveals that there is a sovereign logic of the exception at work in the capitalist relation. In the final part of the essay, I start from Agamben’s single reference to Marx in his study of sovereign power to discuss the importance of my conclusions for Agamben’s political message.