Introduction

The lasting influence of Marxism on the critique of power and domination under capitalism has meant that it has been a lot easier to equate capitalist oppression with class oppression than with any other forms of domination. However analysing domination through the lens of pluriversal intersectionality holds the potential for significantly broadening our understanding of capitalism and, in turn, overcoming the limitations of male-and Eurocentric libertarian socialism. First, though, let me clarify what I intend to mean by the term ‘capitalism’.

While capitalism ‘is and always was about capital accumulation, or … economic growth’ (Streeck, 2016: 201), it ought to be studied as more than an economy or economic system. Wolfgang Streeck (2016) insists on treating it as a ‘society’, that is, ‘as a system of social action and a set of social institutions falling in the domain of sociological rather than today's standard economic theory’ (2016: 201). Under such a reading, the term capitalism is not so much a system of satisfaction of needs driven by the profit motive as a system with its own economic, political, and cultural spheres of action that are fundamental for its survival. Understanding capitalism in this way allows us to grasp the range of ‘extra-economic arrangements that enable the endless expansion and private appropriation of surplus value’ (Fraser, 2016: 173). Capitalism, it could be argued, has given rise to historically distinctive institutions, norms of behaviour, and ways of life that are ‘deeply interwoven with how people organize even their most personal and intimate social life’ (Streeck, 2016: 216).

What is also useful about adopting this understanding of capitalism shared by the likes of Michael Dawson (2016) and Nancy Fraser (2016), is that it allows one to bring a range of practices, institutions, and discourses within the scope of analysis that would otherwise be neglected under a predominantly economic treatment of capitalism. In turn, it ensures that the critique of power and domination is extended beyond the economic sphere. The various discussions included in this chapter will therefore be informed by the view that capitalist mechanisms of power and domination permeate forms of social action across the economic, political, and cultural spheres.