Mind Control Without Controller. A Media-Theoretical Interpretation of Fetish and Capital in Karl Marx's Works

Abstract

This paper problematises the distinction between the spheres of media-technology and political economy. It reconstructs the value forms in Karl Marx’s critique of capitalism (commodity, money, and capital) as medial forms with inherent laws that lead to abstract domination. Their thing-like appearance, and thus their fetish character, arises because the mediation by which they are constituted remains opaque to social agents. It is shown that a similar opacity is the source of the fetishisation of media-technological quasi-objects like “AI”. Another parallel with digital systems is present in the movement of capital, where value is transformed into an “automatic subject”. Capital processes like a cybernetic system, and this structural homology explains its potent synergy with networked computers: In digital capitalism, the inherent laws of the value forms quite literally program the algorithms. Thus, the reconstruction of Marx as a critic of socio-economic mediation also enables a fundamental critique of digital mediation.

Acknowledgement: This article was first published in German as:
Degen, Patrique. 2025. Mind Control ohne Controller. Eine medientheoretische Interpretation von Fetisch und Kapital bei Karl Marx’ Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft 17 (1) ‚Mind Control‘: 45-57. https://doi.org/10.25969/MEDIAREP/23744. Translated into English with the journal’s permission.