Staging Power: Marx, Hobbes and the Personification of Capital

Abstract

This article raises questions about the nature and status of the persona behind which contemporary capital operates. It does so by developing Marx's comments on personification in a very different direction to that intended by him, taking them, via Hobbes, into the deeper recesses of company law. The argument that develops is that modern law has facilitated the mechanism by which capital dominates civil society, an argument illustrated through the veil of the corporate persona worn by capital. The rhetorical trope around which the argument is organized is the stage of power; the barely-mentioned backdrop is the possibility of real resistance to corporate power; the broader intention is to help develop the Marxist theory of law.