ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we will introduce the most abstract, general determinants of capitalist development, the inner structure of what is called ‘capital-in-general’. The above quotation from Marx’s Grundrisse (1973:161) in fact refers to three of these in a nutshell. First, the process of commodification. This means that the lives of ever more people are determined by tendentially world-embracing market relations (‘the connection of the individual with all’). Goods produced, services rendered, but also the raw material of nature and human beings as such, are thus subjected to an economic discipline which defines and treats them as commodities.
