Against approaches that "explain" the genesis of capitalism by describing acts of plunder and physical domination, Marxist theory must establish carefully the preconditions for the origins of capitalist exploitation in the social evolution that preceded it. The historical materialist model of successive abstract modes of production accomplishes this, by basing the expansion of the market in the emergence of a surplus on individual production, formed under the specific and unique conditions of feudal (manorial) production relations. Colonialism & horbar; the conquest and plundering of peoples by ruling classes and states from more technologically and economically developed countries & horbar; is a historically important source of accumulation and enrichment in the dominant centers. It can best be understood when both precapitalist and capitalist sources of colonial and imperialist predation are identified and clarified.
In this article, we address the specific form that intimate life takes in capitalist societies. Based on a critical review of the existing literature and the unitary approach proposed by the Critique of Political Economy, we propose that intimate life assumes a social form that results from producing us as individuals who personify reified social relations. Various studies have shown that the capitalist family is a sphere of labor force reproduction and that intimate life has a social character. However, these approaches tend to present intimacy as a space of individual freedom divorced from its historical determination. In contrast, we argue that the apparent contradiction between social life and intimate life is the result of a mode of organization in which personal ties carry social potencies that we do not control. To develop this argument, in the first part of the article, we analyze the general form of human individuation as a result of the social metabolism. In the second part, we show how the relationship with oneself entails acting as a personification of commodities. Finally, we argue that intimate life emerges from a historically specific form of individuality production, marked by the separation between personal bonds and social potencies. We conclude our work with a series of questions that outline possible directions for future research.
Drawing on original archival research, this article analyzes substantial changes that long-time Communist (and famously anti-Communist) African American author Richard Wright made to his influential autobiography, published as Black Boy/American Hunger , but originally written under the title “Black Confession.” Particular attention is given to Wright’s evolving depiction of his attraction to, and later his departing from, the Communist Party, as well as his excised accounts of inter-racial comradeship. Contrasting with the more metaphysical, fatalist account of his falling out with the CPUSA that pervades the published version, Wright’s unpublished “Black Confession” expresses a critical communism, offering us nuanced, particularized, and contingent reflections on political affiliation and struggle, replete with lessons for today.
Digital diaspora represents a modality of digital imperialism in which platform governance, IP and data capture, and a transnational reserve army of skilled labor jointly organize cross-border surplus extraction and reproduce global uneven development. The key mechanisms include sponsorship and platform rents that enable wage arbitrage under algorithmic management, concentration of value through ownership of code, patents, data, and behavioral traces institutionalized via End User License Agreements (EULAs) and Terms of Service (ToS), and the persistent oversupply of credentialed workers produced by higher-education expansion and student-to-work visa pipelines. Empirically, the article draws on the U.S. H-1B pipeline and Nairobi content-moderator litigation to illustrate how sponsorship dependency, algorithmic quotas, and extraterritorial platform governance discipline skilled labor. Holding occupation and tenure constant, greater algorithmic opacity and sponsorship dependency tend to produce wider North–South wage differentials and greater concentration of IP and data value in core jurisdictions, while restrictive EULAs further limit workers’ ability to transfer reputational capital across platforms. This article argues that digital diaspora functions as a modality of digital imperialism through three mechanisms: (1) sponsorship-based wage arbitrage, (2) IP and data capture, and (3) algorithmic control over skilled labor. Its contribution lies in unifying digital-labor and high-skilled migration studies, specifying IP/data capture as a primary circuit of extraction, and theorizing the reserve army of skilled labor as central to digital imperialism.
