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The Idea of Capital in Bourdieu and Marx

Amir Mohseni

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Philosophical Papers
Vol. 51, No. 2 (July 2022): 265–293

The Idea of Capital in Bourdieu and Marx

Amir Mohseni

Abstract: Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of cultural, social, and symbolic capital have not only
enriched sociological theory; they have also clearly established themselves in
interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research in the human sciences. Against this
background, there is a widespread notion that his concept of capital can be understood as a
fruitful extension of Karl Marx’s concept of capital. By comparing the essential features of
Bourdieu’s and of Marx’s concept, this article refutes the extension thesis, and explains the
different methodological standpoints to which their concepts of capital can be traced back.

Pierre Bourdieu’s and Karl Marx’s research programs are, on the whole,
clearly different. The French sociologist of culture is primarily interested
in the distribution of material, social, cultural, and symbolic resources in
different societies and especially in the respective power relations as well
as in their multidimensional modes of reproduction. Marx, on the other
hand, is not directly interested in particular social structures and their
underlying distributions of resources. Rather, his analysis of social for-
mations is devoted to a more general critique of economic categories as
such. Nonetheless, Marx, too, discusses the economic structure of capitalist
societies with the intention of pointing to structural domination and injus-
tice. In spite of the different objects of their research, both thinkers attach
elementary importance to the distribution of resources for understanding
social reality. Marx and Bourdieu seem to share an enlightening impulse to
reveal hidden mechanisms of power. Therefore, it seems tempting to con-
flate the approaches of the two thinkers, and in particular to explicate
Bourdieu’s concepts of cultural, social, and symbolic capital as a fruitful
extension of Marx’s concept of capital in the sociology of culture. Hans
Joas and Wolfgang Knöbl (Joas and Knöbl, 2011), for instance, argue
that Bourdieu’s theory ‘does not entail a complete break with utilitarian

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DOI: 10.1080/05568641.2022.2077230
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266 Amir Mohseni

or Marxian notions’. Instead, they believe that ‘Bourdieu deploys the term
capital, which originates in “bourgeois” and Marxian economics … extends
its meaning and distinguishes between different forms of capital’ (Joas and
Knöbl 2011, 15). Unfortunately, most of the authors who regard the Bour-
dieuian concept of capital as an extension of Marx’s devote little more than
a couple of lines to explaining this view.1
In this article, I will attempt to refute the extension thesis by undertaking
a critical comparison of their respective concepts of capital. In Section 1, I
will first outline Bourdieu’s concept of capital. There is one peculiar diffi-
culty in doing so. Bourdieu, as is widely known, never wanted his theoretical
work to be understood as a conceptual net, developed in an a priori way, that
could be spanned over any arbitrary empirical object. Hence, he seldom
engages in abstract conceptual definition, and I shall focus on rare passages
that, against this background, must be regarded as exceptions. This clearly
limits the significance of my investigation, as it is an interpretation not pri-
marily of the general modus operandi of Bourdieu’s concepts but rather of
these specific reflections of his.2 In Section 2, I will present Marx’s
concept of capital separately. On this basis, I will address the essential differ-
ences between the two conceptions in order to highlight their methodo-
logical implications (Section 3).

1. Capital as Accumulated Labor

From the outset, Bourdieu’s writings were profoundly shaped by physical
and economic terminology. He speaks about spaces, fields, relations of
force, positions, about conserving energy, embodiment, and refractive
effects, but also about exchange, markets, goods, investments, and about

1 There is one exception to this. In his essay ‘Value and Capital in Bourdieu and Marx’, Jon
Beasley-Murray (2000) has argued at greater length for the position that Bourdieu’s concept of
capital can indeed be understood as a consistent further development of Marx’s concept. I
shall address the major differences between my understanding and Beasley-Murray’s in
Section 2 of my paper. There, I will also discuss Mathieu H. Desan’s account of the relation
between Marx’s and Bourdieu’s concept of capital (Desan 2014).
2 I am very grateful to one anonymous reviewer for pointing out this specific scope of my
argument.
The Idea of Capital in Bourdieu and Marx 267

production, reproduction, and types of capital.3 Relations of power for

Bourdieu are essentially reproduced through the everyday forms of prac-
tice of individuals and cannot be adequately explained by analyzing
purely economic relations. Therefore, as he explains, it is indispensable
to define traditional economy as an integral part of a ‘unified political
economy of practice’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 4).
Such an approach to social reality calls for theoretical tools abstract
enough so that they can be applied in a wide variety of social fields. The
concepts of cultural, social, and symbolic capital exhibit this requisite level
of abstractness. It is important to note that they are not borrowings from
economics, but represent independent instances of a more general
concept of capital. In one of those rare cases in which Bourdieu reflects
on the pure concept of capital, he writes:

Capital is accumulated labor (in its materialized form or its ‘incorporated’,

embodied form) which, when appropriated on a private, i.e., exclusive, basis
by agents or groups of agents, enables them to appropriate social energy in
the form of reified or living labor. (Bourdieu 1986, 241)4

According to this definition, $100, fluent Chinese, regular chats with the
mayor, and the recognition one enjoys in one’s sports club can be ident-
ified as economic, cultural, social, and symbolic capital, respectively,
insofar as social contexts can be found in which the aforementioned
forms of ‘reified or living labor’ are scarce and in general circulation.
According to Bourdieu, the distribution of the various types of capital deter-
mines the structure of social fields, defines the social position of individuals,
shapes their perspectives, and determines their power, which is measured
by the extent and concrete composition of their absolute amounts of
capital. The living conditions of the individuals are a function of the

3 For an extensive analysis of this point, see Swedberg (2011).

4 As singular and remote as this passage may be, it can nonetheless be described as the central
point of reference in the relevant debate, since J. Beasley-Murray (2000) and M.H. Desan
(2014)—who have dealt with the same question of a possible ‘extension-model’—also primar-
ily rely on it.
268 Amir Mohseni

‘total volume of capital, understood as the set of actually usable resources

and powers’ (Bourdieu 1984, 114).
Accumulated labor is the common denominator of the genesis of these
resources. The manifest differences between the individual types of capital
reside in how they are accumulated, employed, and transferred. One
hundred dollars are placed in wallets and can be spent within seconds. Mas-
tering a foreign language (embodied cultural capital), on the other hand, is
tied to the physical existence of the individual. It lives and dies with this
individual and usually cannot be acquired and transmitted by him or her
either effortlessly or in an instant, but only with a certain personal expen-
diture of time and energy. Institutionalized cultural capital (e.g., a docto-
rate) endows the embodied form of capital with additional legal and
symbolic validation, differentiation, and recognition.5 Here, too, the appro-
priation process is not comparable to that of economic capital. As a rule,
educational titles are not transferable, let alone hereditary.
In addition to the shared characteristic of being essentially ‘accumu-
lated labor’, the general character of the forms of capital is displayed by
the social effectiveness of these forms, namely as their quality of primarily
structuring social reality. And since the different forms of capital find
their ‘universal equivalent, the measure of all equivalences’ (Bourdieu
1986, 54) in the labor-time necessary for their production, they can be trans-
formed into one another.
For Bourdieu, this idea of mutual convertibility of the different types of
capital is the conceptual means for adequately capturing the multidimen-
sionality of the reproduction of power relations. One-dimensional
notions of social reality that, for example, define success or failure in the
educational system solely in terms of the economic situation are not
capable for investigating social inequality in complex societies. The monet-
ary factor alone cannot explain why, in Bourdieu’s words, ‘students from
more cultured families not only have higher rates of academic success

5 It is not imperative that behind every title there should actually be the corresponding
amount of embodied capital.
The Idea of Capital in Bourdieu and Marx 269

but exhibit different modes and patterns of cultural consumption and

expression in a wide gamut of domains’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992,
160).
Here, education and intelligence are seen neither as natural disposi-
tions of children nor as direct results of economic prosperity. However,
insofar as, simplifying somewhat, money and education as types of capital
require labor-time for their acquisition, it is understandable that larger
amounts of economic capital can be used by members of the upper
classes, for example, to postpone the time at which their children begin
their careers, in order thereby to create for themselves and their children
the best possible opportunities for transferring and appropriating cultural
capital in free and useful time (see Bourdieu 1986, 258). Cultural capital,
especially in embodied form, plays a decisive role in shaping the habitus
of the individuals, which, as a ‘matrix of perceptions, appreciations, and
actions’ (Bourdieu 1977, 83), continues to bear fruit long after the con-
ditions for its development have ceased to pertain. Thus, Bourdieu main-
tains, economic domination is permanently reproduced via the ‘detour’
of the selection mechanisms of the education and vocational training
system.6 Since the arbitrary nature of power relations and their reproduc-
tion becomes especially apparent at moments of transmission, ‘the
holders of capital have an even greater interest in resorting to reproduction
strategies capable of ensuring better-disguised transmission’ (Bourdieu
1986, 254; see also 258).
It is at this point, though, that a problem arises. When it comes to ana-
lyzing the concept of capital, we have the following picture: On the one
hand, Bourdieu refers to the common material source of the types of
capital (accumulated labor) and their potential effects (improvement of
the social position) and assumes that they are fundamentally equivalent.
On the other hand, however, Bourdieu cannot avoid always pointing out
the dominance of economic capital when arguing for the plausibility
of his concept of capital (see, e.g., Bourdieu 1986, 253; 1987, 3–4; 1993,

6 On this, see Bourdieu (1990, 2001).

270 Amir Mohseni

33–34; 2000, 67; 2005, 153). At a first glance, this circumstance does not
necessarily imply that the different types of capital are not equal in value.
As long as social reality is marked at certain times by a contingent imbalance
in favor of one of the types of capital, it does not necessarily follow that it
enjoys a fundamentally different value that would undermine the unity of
the concept. Nevertheless, Bourdieu does appear to entertain the idea
that the types of capital exhibit such a difference in value in principle:

So it has to be posited simultaneously that economic capital is at the root of all

the other types of capital and that these transformed, disguised forms of econ-
omic capital, never entirely reducible to that definition, produce their most
specific effects only to the extent that they conceal … the fact that economic
capital is at their root, in other words—but only in the last analysis—at the
root of their effects. (Bourdieu 1986, 252)

The proximity to Marxist thought is undeniable here. If economic capital

designates those material goods that can be directly converted into
money, then it is understandable why in modern societies this specific
form of power is so prevalent and potent: in a commodity-producing
society, money, as a universal, anonymous, and abstract medium of
exchange can be accumulated and used virtually without limit.
But let us set aside for a moment the question of whether Bourdieu is
justified in referring to certain forms of power—in spite of their being
themselves dominated ‘in the last instance’—as capital in the full sense of
the term, and turn instead to the question of the scope of his main con-
cepts: Should the triad habitus—field—capital be understood merely as a
flexible tool for analyzing particular historical phenomena? Or does the
constancy and principled way in which Bourdieu uses these terms not
suggest instead that they are meant in an anthropological sense and thus
ultimately claim transhistorical validity?7

7 Craig Calhoun (1993) discusses this question with a focus on Bourdieu’s concept of social
fields. Michael Burawoy (2018, 79) is convinced that ‘for Bourdieu … symbolic domination is
of universal validity, it has no historical limits. It is a general theory of social order without a
corresponding particular theory of particular societies’.
The Idea of Capital in Bourdieu and Marx 271

The answer is clearer with regard to some of the concepts than to others.
Bourdieu would undoubtedly have agreed that the philosopher Aristotle
already had a habitus. To grant this, however, is also basically to assume
the existence of certain field effects that structure the habitus. Here, the
question of whether the social fabric in archaic Greece can already be
meaningfully divided into relatively autonomous fields can be left open.
At any rate, the imperative to analyze social structures in terms of fields
undoubtedly grows with the increasing socio-economic complexity of a
society. Of course, this circumstance has implications for how the
concept of capital is understood, since ‘it is one and the same thing to
determine what the field is, where its limits lie, etc., and to determine
what species of capital are active in it, within what limits, and so on’ (Bour-
dieu and Wacquant 1992, 98–99). To the extent that the social division of
labor and general security in the physical struggle for survival increase, the
possibility of social figurations becoming uncoupled from each other also
increases.
In his Méditations Pascaliennes Bourdieu addresses the general socio-his-
torical conditions of the possibility of symbolic production (see Bourdieu
2000, 16–25) and makes no secret of his sympathy for the basic idea of mate-
rialism according to which ‘mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter
and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.’
(Engels 1989, MECW 24, 467). Bourdieu describes this as follows:

As one moves away from the lower regions of the social space, characterized by
the extreme brutality of the economic constraints, the uncertainties diminish
and the pressures of economic and social necessity relax … the precondition
for most symbolic constructions. (Bourdieu 2000, 16–17)

At this place, Bourdieu shows himself clearly to be a proponent of a version

of socio-historical materialism, because he views cognitive attitudes in prin-
ciple under the aspect of material neediness. Such a position should not be
confused in any way with a physicalist version of philosophical materialism.
It is not a matter of reducing all mental attributes, states, and events to phys-
ical attributes, states, and events, or even of understanding them as the
272 Amir Mohseni

causal effects of the latter. Bourdieu was no doubt convinced, however, that
one can understand decisive presuppositions of the individuals in the
various fields of symbolic production only against the backdrop of their pri-
vileged living conditions. Only when the satisfaction of the most elementary
needs is completely assured can a playfully distanced way of dealing with
concrete social problems develop and, as a result, ‘a strong sense of super-
iority over ordinary mortals who have to take each day as it comes’ (Bour-
dieu 2000, 23).
If I am correct, then these ideas are at the root of his talk about the
fundamental dominance of economic capital. If capital is accumulated
labor and the possibility of accumulating symbolic capital is given only
subject to the prior availability of sufficient material capital, then the
objectivized goods needed to satisfy physical needs always remain the
prerequisite for intellectual production. This basic conviction also
shapes Bourdieu’s view of the most differentiated social spaces: ‘These
oppositions, translated with total clarity in the cardinal dualism of soul
and body (or understanding and sensibility), are rooted in the social
division between the economic world and the world of symbolic
production’ (Bourdieu 2000, 23).
Admittedly, Bourdieu never wanted his theoretical work to be under-
stood as an a priori net that could be spanned over any arbitrary empirical
object. But since he speaks of relatively autonomous fields with reference to
the philosophy even of the ancient Greeks (Bourdieu 2000, 18)—after all,
two and a half millennia before our time—he seems to be convinced by a
transhistorical dominance of economic capital.
Marx would probably have agreed with the materialism just outlined.
But he would undoubtedly have emphatically objected to ever calling the
wisdom of the ancient Greeks or the student’s knowledge of Chinese
‘capital’. For Marx, capital is a process, a social relationship, not an
object. Only in societies in which the production of objects of practical
use has taken on the general social form of commodity production and
human beings’ labor-power has itself become a commodity can one
speak of capital in the full sense, according to Marx.
The Idea of Capital in Bourdieu and Marx 273

In order to further prepare the ground for the announced comparison

between the two concepts of capital, I will outline the main features of
Marx’s arguments in what follows. His concept of capital is embedded in
a complex conceptual structure and draws on theoretical presuppositions
that I have to bracket for the most part in my summary. My primary aim
will be to assemble sufficient material for the concluding comparison
with Bourdieu.8

2. Capital as the Process of Valorization

In the preface to the first edition of Capital (1867), Marx outlines the
subject of his main work:

What I have to examine in this work is the capitalist mode of production, and
the relations of production and forms of intercourse that correspond to it. …
Intrinsically, it is not a question of the higher or lower degree of development
of the social antagonisms that spring from the natural laws of capitalist pro-
duction. It is a question of these laws themselves, of these tendencies winning
their way through and working themselves out with iron necessity. (Marx
1990, 90–91)

Therefore, Marx analyses the general laws of economic movement of all

societies in which production assumes a capitalist form. Marx does not
claim to capture everything essential about inequality and domination in
capitalist societies. He attempts to work out the necessary features of the capi-
talist mode of production, that is, the structural network that makes it poss-
ible to speak of ‘capitalism’ in the first place.
Marx declares the commodity—the basic form of wealth creation in capi-
talist society—to be the primary subject of his investigation. On the surface,
commodities exhibit two features: they are objects of utility because they
satisfy needs, and they are destined to be exchanged, as they are not manu-
factured for personal use. If a pair of jeans can be exchanged for four
T-shirts, then its exchange-value is expressed by the said number of

8 In what follows, however, I shall also distance myself from Desan (2014) and Beasley-Murray
(2000) who have dealt with the same question of a possible ‘extension-model’.
274 Amir Mohseni

T-shirts. The exchange-value is therefore the exchange relation between

one commodity and the other. The jeans I am wearing, however, will no
longer be exchanged and are therefore no longer a commodity, but
merely an object of utility.9
Here, Marx already introduces an important distinction: ‘Use-values …
constitute the material content of wealth, whatever its social form may be’
(Marx 1990, 126). Objects of utility have a material constitution: a watch
that can be wound up, for example, is an object of utility because it is
able to display the time of day through a certain material mechanism. Its
appearance on a commodity market, however, has nothing to do with its
clockwork mechanism but instead makes apparent a certain social relation-
ship between the individuals and the products of their labor.
Since commodity production has become the general form in capitalist
mode of production, there is a danger of effacing this difference between
social (and thus historically evolved and changeable) form, on the one
hand, and its material basis, on the other. Adam Smith speaks in Wealth
of Nations (1776) of the general ‘propensity to truck, barter, and exchange
one thing for another’ (Smith 1999, 117), which he deems characteristic of
our nature as human beings. Dogs fight over bones, Smith points out, but
unlike us, it would never occur to them to organize a fair exchange. Here,
Smith seems to substantialize the categories of capitalist society. Marx seeks
to show that such a ‘reification of social relations’ (Marx 1991, 969) is
grounded in the everyday practice of a society based on the capitalist
mode of production.
In a somewhat complicated attempt to explain this, Marx initially asks
what grounds the possibility of relations of exchange between different
commodities. Why is it, say, that a pair of jeans can be exchanged for
four T-shirts? What is the quantifiable quality that makes it possible for
‘the exchange-value of a palace’ to be ‘expressed in a definite number of

9 For Bourdieu, the jeans I am wearing would certainly not be merely an object of utility, but
possibly themselves a form of capital that I can use in a certain field to improve my social
position.
The Idea of Capital in Bourdieu and Marx 275

tins of boot polish’ (Marx 1971, 1)? The answer is clear, namely, what all
commodities have in common is that they are products of labor. But this
abstraction is still insufficient. The concrete expenditures of labor required
to manufacture commodities cannot serve as a tertium comparationis because
they are completely different practices—think, for example, of the diverse
trades such as glazing or plumbing. We must abstract not merely from the
quality of the various use-values, but also from the concrete modes of labor
required to produce them:

With the disappearance of the useful character of the products of labour, the
useful character of the kinds of labour embodied in them also disappears;
this in turn entails the disappearance of the different concrete forms of
labour. They can no longer be distinguished, but are all together reduced to
the same kind of labour, human labor in the abstract. All that these things
now tell us is that human labour-power has been expended to produce them,
human labour is accumulated in them. As crystals of this social substance,
which is common to them all, they are values—commodity values. (Marx
1990, 128)

Let us, for the time being, blank out the remarkable resemblance between
this understanding of the exchangeability of commodities in terms of
‘human labor’ being ‘accumulated in them’, and Bourdieu’s understand-
ing of capital as ‘accumulated labor’. Notice, also, that here, ‘labor in the
abstract’ does not mean a description of the labor process in the sense of
automation and one-sidedness.10 Rather, Marx explains the basis of the
practice of exchange: only through the practical abstraction from the object
of utility and the concrete labor are commodities compared with one
another and treated as values. But obviously, no one engages in abstract
work; therefore, it cannot be observed either. Rather, the term refers to
the necessary social way of dealing with concrete labor in capitalist societies.
On the one hand, the distinguishing feature of the market economy is

10 Such a meaning of ‘abstract labor’ can already be found in Hegel: ‘Through this division
[of labor], the work of the individual becomes simpler, so that his skill at his abstract work
becomes greater, as does the volume of his output. … Furthermore, the abstraction of pro-
duction makes work increasingly mechanical, so that the human being is eventually able to
step aside and let the machine take his place’ (Hegel 1991, 232–233, emphasis in the original).
276 Amir Mohseni

private production. There is no social plan or discourse that dictates to the

independent commodity producers what they must produce and sell. This
independence of the private producers means, on the other hand, that
the actual value of a commodity is ascertained via the interplay of the
market’s sanctioning mechanisms, and thus always manifests itself only
after the fact:
By equating their different products to each other in exchange as values, they
equate their different kinds of labour as human labour. They do this without
being aware of it. (Marx 1990, 166–167)

Therefore, abstract labor is not a purely intellectual idea, but is the result of
the actions of individuals carried out in practice. This also provides a basis
for clarifying the difference between use-value, exchange-value, and value:
only in relation to other commodities does the individual commodity
appear not merely as an object of utility, that is, an object having use-
value, but also as an object of exchange. Exchange-value is nothing other
than the relation of the exchange (x commodity A equals y commodity
B) into which the commodities can only enter together. The identical
feature that finds expression in these exchange relationships is their
value. Exchange-values bring to light the value of the commodities; they
are the ‘manifestation’ (Marx 1990, 152) of the value.
However, the size of the value cannot be measured simply in terms of the
actually expended labor-time. Nobody will pay one million dollars for a
bottle of milk just because the farmer claims that it took him four years
of milking. It is primarily a matter of the average time taken to produce a
particular commodity in a particular market sector.11 Hence, Marx
speaks of ‘socially necessary labour-time’ (Marx 1990, 129). But this deter-
mines the value of the commodities also in a further sense. ‘Socially necess-
ary’ means the average amount of labor-time that is invested by the
producers. But because the private producers do not stand in any discursive

11 The level of qualification of the workers, technological progress, and the intensity of labor
are the determining factors here (Marx 1990, 129).
The Idea of Capital in Bourdieu and Marx 277

relation to the needs of their society, they themselves learn the esteem in
which their labor is held—the value of their commodities—only on the
market. Here it is the behavior of the consumers, who usually act separately,
that manifests what is ‘socially necessary’, that is, how much of a commodity
is desired and affordable and how much is not—the relationship between
supply and demand is, thus, also a value-forming factor at this point.12 In
addition, the level of qualification and complexity of the labor also plays
an essential role in determining the magnitude of value. If the work of a
bus driver is regarded as less demanding in a certain society at a certain
time than the tuition of a tennis instructor, this shows the relative social re-
cognition of the value of their respective work.
Now, a commodity does not express its value in just one other commod-
ity. Rather, it must also be able to express it formally in all other commod-
ities. In the course of the development of an all-encompassing commodity
exchange, money emerges as a result of the socialization of value. As a means
of circulation and measure of values, money mediates the exchange of the
products of labor, which Marx calls the simple circulation of commodities:
commodity—money—commodity (C-M-C). I sell my jeans for $50, which I
use to buy myself two T-shirts—the use-values remain the motive driving
this process. In contrast to the pure exchange of products, however,
money, which separates the exchange of two commodities into the acts com-
modity-money and money-commodity, creates the possibility of holding onto the
‘mere’ means of circulation as an expression of social wealth. It creates the
possibility of not spending it. In the accumulation of treasure—think of
Carl Barks’ symbol of inordinate wealth, Scrooge McDuck swimming in
his money bin filled with gold coins—money is transformed from an expe-
dient into an end in itself, a nexus rerum (Marx 1990, 228), an independent
shape of value.
The deficiency of this independence is obvious: if money is withdrawn
permanently from circulation, being hidden, say, in a cupboard, it

12 On this, see Marx’s assertion: ‘In order to produce the latter [i.e. commodities], he must
not only produce use-values, but use-values for others, social use-values’ (Marx 1990, 131).
278 Amir Mohseni

becomes a ‘valueless’ object of utility. If, on the other hand, it is returned to

circulation through the purchase of commodities, it loses its independent
form. The money I received for the jeans and then invested in a T-shirt
that I wear has been spent. If the value is not to be lost, a commodity
must exist whose consumption itself is value production—and according to
Marx, only human labor is such a commodity. While the value of a cream
cake, once eaten, dissolves in the stomach, the capacity for labor, as a
use-value, has the characteristic of being the source of value.13
Marx mentions three essential prerequisites for labor to function as a
commodity: man must be free ‘in the double sense’ that, on the one
hand, he is not a slave or serf but is legally free and thus the free owner
and potential seller of his labor-power, and ‘on the other hand, he has
no other commodity for sale, i.e. he is rid of them, he is free of all the
objects needed for the realization of his labor-power’ (Marx 1990, 272–
273). A third prerequisite is noteworthy, especially with regard to the Bour-
dieuian concept of habitus and the associated interrelated processes of rec-
ognition and misrecognition:

The advance of capitalist production develops a working class which by edu-

cation, tradition and habit recognizes the requirements of that mode of pro-
duction as self-evident natural laws. … The silent compulsion of economic
relations sets the seal on the domination of the capitalist over the worker. …
In the ordinary run of things, the worker can be left to the ‘natural laws of pro-
duction’, i.e. it is possible to rely on his dependence on capital, which springs
from the conditions of production themselves, and is guaranteed in perpetuity
by them. (Marx 1990, 899, my emphasis, A.M.)

Therefore, the recognition of the legitimacy of the relations of production,

subject to the condition of misrecognizing their arbitrary character and
their attendant hypostatization, plays an important role in the analysis of
the capitalist mode of production. These aspects seem to be the reason
why M. Desan believes that Bourdieu’s concept of capital should not be

13 Strictly speaking, the value of the cream cake does not necessarily vanish without a trace.
Potentially, it helps to recreate labor-power. On the Marxian distinction between ‘individual’
and ‘productive’ consumption, see Marx 1990, 290 and 717–719.
The Idea of Capital in Bourdieu and Marx 279

understood as an extension, since Marx’s theory itself includes social

relations that lie outside the field of economy in a narrow sense. In
Desan’s view, Marx’s concept of capital captures a ‘totality of social
relations’ (Desan 2014, 321–322), which include ‘economic, political,
and ideological class struggles. … What all this indicates is that the relation
of exploitation that capital denotes is overdetermined by the social struc-
ture as a whole’. While I share Desan’s intention to rescue Marx’s theory
from an economistic understanding, I am skeptical of this broadened
interpretation of the concept of capital itself. Surely, capital, in Marx’s
sense, is a phenomenon which heavily shapes the social world. But not
everything that is shaped by capital is itself to be understood as an essential
part of the concept of capital.14 The danger of such an expansion is that
Marx’s concept will become indistinct, and his analysis might lose its
rigor. Regardless of this, there are other reasons to reject the extension-
model, and I shall address them at a later stage.
But first we must return to the commodity ‘labor-power’, because it is
the key to Marx’s concept of capital. As an ‘appendage’ of free persons,
the value of labor-power is determined by the value of the food that is
needed to reproduce labor-power. The working person has to eat, drink,
and sleep, must not freeze to death, has to reproduce, acquire necessary
knowledge, etc. The bundle of necessary food is by no means geared exclu-
sively to securing the physical existence of the individuals, but also depends
on what ethical life expectations have developed in a certain society at a
certain time. This may include owning, for example, a TV, and having
enough leisure time to have a beer with friends. ‘In contrast, therefore,
with the case of other commodities, the determination of the value of
labour-power contains a historical and moral element’ (Marx 1990, 275).
It is puzzling, therefore, why Jon Beasley-Murray (2000, 112), who is one
of the proponents of the extension-thesis, claims that Marx’s theory of

14 This explains, in my view, the fact that Desan can hardly substantiate his thesis—the
Marxian concept of capital addressing a ‘social totality’—with sufficient evidence from
Marx’s text itself.
280 Amir Mohseni

capital ‘implies that the worker is absolutely without culture, a creature of

necessity alone’. The main thrust of Beasley-Murray’s argument is based on
this mistaken assumption that Marx conceives of the working persons as
working animals alone.15
Marx states that the value of labor-power is in certain respects expunged
in the labor process—if someone has spent a whole day building a chair,
their labor-power is exhausted in the evening. In order to be able to be
active again the following morning, the owner of the labor-power must
consume commodities, i.e. use up value again. Where the owner of
money pays for the labor-power, applies it to the means of production
and thus ‘consumes’ it in order to subsequently sell the product of labor,
the movement C-M-C (jeans—money—T-shirt) has become that of M-C-
M (money—consumption of labor-power—money). But this value move-
ment only makes sense if the value expended on the labor-power is less
than the value that its use is potentially able to produce. If I pay $100 for
a worker who produces commodities which I can sell for just $100, I have
not derived any benefit from this process—not to mention the costs and
the wear and tear of the means of production. While the preservation of
the equivalence of the quantity of value in the movement C-M-C is a con-
dition of the process, it appears as a barrier to be exceeded with reference
to the form M-C-M. Since the endpoints in the latter are at any rate quali-
tatively identical, they can only differ as regards their quantity.
Against this backdrop, Marx introduces another important distinction
between ‘transhistorical content’ and ‘social form’. There is a necessary
condition of any economic activity: If the total labor of a group where

15 While Beasley-Murray correctly points out that the worker’s daily life may contain more
aspects of injustice than the ones taken up by Marx, he does not convincingly establish his
assertion that Marx should have integrated those aspects within his concept of capital. I do
not claim that Marx’s concept of capital is adequate in every conceivable perspective. But
the demonstration of possible shortcomings of Marx’s analysis requires a far more detailed
engagement with Marx’s text than the one Beasley-Murray offers. The general problem of
Beasley-Murray’s brief interpretation might be the fact that he rests his understanding not
so much on an analysis of the relevant parts of Marx’s own text, but mainly on Moishe Post-
one’s concept of ‘abstract time’ (2000, 110–111)—a concept that Marx himself never used.
The Idea of Capital in Bourdieu and Marx 281

just sufficient to secure the bare physical subsistence level of its members,
then no economic development would occur. Hence, there is a portion
of the effort that goes beyond what is necessary to reproduce the labor-
power; Marx calls it ‘surplus product’. The different economic epochs
are distinguished by the way in which this surplus product is socialized.
In the capitalist mode of production, this state of affairs assumes a specific
form through the surplus value. Surplus value is only possible because the
value that the labor-power generates in the production process is greater
than the value that the owner of labor-power receives to reproduce it.
Beasley-Murray (2000, 111) erroneously believes that, for Marx, this is a
‘process by which activity is not rewarded according to what it is worth’.
In Marx’s analysis, every commodity’s value is determined by the necessary
effort for its production, and not by the value that can be generated by its
consumption.16
If the second M in the value movement M-C-M is greater than the first,
originally advanced value, the movement can be expressed more precisely
as M-C-M’. And it is precisely this process that Marx calls ‘capital’. In contrast
to the simple circulation of commodities (C-M-C), the essential purpose
and conclusion of the process called capital is not the satisfaction of
needs. This is because the focus is not on the qualitatively different
objects of utility, but on the sums of money that differ only in quantity,
that is, the beginning and end of the movement. But as a result, the move-
ment lacks a measure. As the original value in this movement is in any case
only invested in order to realize higher value, it is impossible in principle to
justify when this movement should be ended, that is, when it should be
brought to a conclusion. Since the capital process as such aims to increase
value in general, seven rounds of its movement are no more sufficient than
two or thirteen. It is not possible in principle to render an interruption of
this movement plausible by appealing to a particular point in time or to a
concrete purpose. Thus, when Marx emphasizes the inordinateness of

16 This is one of the reasons why Marx’s critique of capitalism goes far beyond the demand for
better pay.
282 Amir Mohseni

the movement of capital, this should not be understood in any way as

psychological or moral polemics—for example, as a matter of excoriating
the capitalists’ greed or insatiability. Rather, what he wants to show is that
the capitalist can only act as such at all if he adapts his subjective incli-
nations to the ‘logic’ of capital:
The objective content of the circulation we have been discussing—the valoriza-
tion of value—is his subjective purpose, and it is only in so far as the appropria-
tion of ever more wealth in the abstract is the sole driving force behind his
operations that he functions as a capitalist, i.e. as capital personified and
endowed with consciousness and a will. Use-values must therefore never be
treated as the immediate aim of the capitalist; nor must the profit on any
single transaction. His aim is rather the unceasing movement of profit-
making. (Marx 1990, 254)

Therefore, according to Marx, not every bulging wallet should be called

capital but only that money which undergoes the value movement just
described: money which is employed in order to return to its owner in
increased amounts via the detour of the consumption of labor-power and
means of production and the subsequent sale of commodities.
These aspects of Marx’s concept of capital, which I have only been able
to summarize in rough outline here, may be sufficient for the comparison
with Bourdieu’s concept.

3. Bourdieu’s Moment of Self-Neglect

The insistence on the importance of relations of production is closely
linked in Marx as well as in Bourdieu to a relational method of social analy-
sis. According to Bourdieu, the social world is marked by ‘double objectiv-
ity’. On the one hand, it is determined by social structures (first objectivity)
that are the result of the distribution of material and immaterial resources,
which has hitherto been highly unequal in different societies throughout
human history. On the other hand, however, the social world is determined
by the incorporation of these structures. For they are reflected in the
mental and physical schemata of the individuals as internalized history corre-
sponding to their respective social origins and biographies (habitus). In
The Idea of Capital in Bourdieu and Marx 283

virtue of this second objectivity—an objectivity, if you like, of the subjective

—individuals tend to misrecognize something which has evolved histori-
cally as naturally given. This form of thought is relational because it seeks
to explain the attitudes, postures, and basic orientations of individuals,
their patterns of thought, perception and action, their lifestyles and
tastes, their emotions and judgments not from themselves, but from their
correspondence with the objective structures, their correspondence with
the social positions, and thus in terms of their correspondence to the struc-
tures of that first objectivity. Marx captured this relational mode of thought
in a nutshell: ‘Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum
of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand’ (Marx
1973, 265).
Marx believes that under the conditions of the capitalist mode of pro-
duction, the social conditions, which have evolved historically and as
such are in principle open to change, are misrecognized as natural and,
therefore, unchangeable:

Their own movement within society has for them the form of a movement
made by things, and these things, far from being under their control, in
fact control them. … The forms which stamp products as commodities and
which are therefore the preliminary requirements for the circulation of com-
modities, already possess the fixed quality of natural forms of social life
before man seeks to give an account, not of their historical character, for
in his eyes they are immutable, but of their content and meaning. (Marx
1990, 167–168)17

Marx discusses this attitude towards social reality not only in relation to
commodities, but also with reference to all of the basic categories of pol-
itical economy. For him, the fact that a social relation is treated like a

17 Where Adam Smith takes the natural ‘propensity to truck’ as the starting point for his econ-
omic theory, the basic categories are already presupposed instead of being developed. Smith
explains the value of a commodity in terms of the amount of effort required for its production
and thus in terms of the corresponding amount of labor. For him, it is the rational judgment of
the individual who follows his natural urge to maximize private utility that estimates the value
in each case (see Smith 1999, 133–150). Neoclassicism with its theorem of homo oeconomicus
ploughs the same furrow.
284 Amir Mohseni

thing, and thus is substantialized and as a result is inverted and transfig-

ured by this inversion, also applies specifically to the concept of capital.
To the present day, economics describes the integral interconnection of
the three basic elements of labor, capital, and natural raw materials as a
necessary prerequisite for any production. According to Marx, in this
view a social relation of production figures as an objective means of
production:

Capital, land, labour! But capital is not a thing, it is a definite social relation of
production pertaining to a particular historical social formation, which simply
takes the form of a thing and gives this thing a specific social character.
(Marx 1991, 953)

With regard to the importance of this kind of relational thinking, there is

no deep fission between Marx and Bourdieu.18 And if we focus on the
modus operandi of Bourdieu’s concept of capital, the relational character
of the concept is unmistakable: as mentioned before, analyzing the
various types of capital and their distribution among individuals is identical
with analyzing the structure of social fields, as these distributions define the
social position of individuals. Hence, I am not disputing the relational char-
acter of Bourdieu’s key concepts.
However, I do believe that in those rare paragraphs where Bourdieu
reflects on the abstract characteristics of his concept of capital, he momen-
tarily neglects his own principles. To see that, let us have one more look at
Bourdieu’s general framing of the concept of capital:
Capital is accumulated labor (in its materialized form or its ‘incorporated’,
embodied form) which, when appropriated on a private, i.e., exclusive, basis
by agents or groups of agents, enables them to appropriate social energy in
the form of reified or living labor. (Bourdieu 1986, 241)

Accumulated labor is called ‘capital’, both in an objectivized, tangible form

and in internalized form—i.e., labor that has entered the human body and

18 I would like to thank one anonymous reviewer for the suggestion to emphasize this point
more clearly.
The Idea of Capital in Bourdieu and Marx 285

has been assimilated by it. Since nothing is said about the specific social
form of this labor, that is, about whether it is wage labor, slave labor,
labor for its own sake, etc., Bourdieu seems to be thinking of human
efforts in a general sense here. In the second sentence, he asserts that
the aforementioned appropriation of the results of human labor opens
up certain possibilities of social influence (‘social energy’). To this end,
certain individuals must bring already existing capital under their control
in such a way that the use of those results of human labor excludes other
individuals from using them or from possessing them. But this social
force itself is supposed to be nothing other than ‘reified or living labor’.
This seems somewhat puzzling. The appropriation of labor enables the
appropriation of labor?
For the purposes of clarification, let me reformulate the content of
Bourdieu’s statements in a simplified form: (1) capital is accumulated
labor; (2) accumulated labor is material or living; (3) accumulated
labor can be appropriated privately; (4) social energy can be appro-
priated; (5) social energy is material or living labor. If this is Bourdieu’s
assertion, then it seems to be rather simple: anyone who appropriates
capital can appropriate social energy. But since by both ‘capital’ and
‘social energy’ is meant not much more than accumulated material or
living labor, the whole thing boils down to the following: if accumulated
labor is appropriated, then more accumulated labor can be
appropriated.
One problem with such an approach is this: it does not offer a systematic
explanation of how the social emergence of capital should be conceived.
Who engages in labor under which general circumstances? And who appro-
priates labor under which general circumstances? Capital seems to be
simply always already there, and it is only a matter of appropriating it.19
We encounter one another always in a social reality understood in terms
of a market, and we differ from each other only as regards the material

19 Burawoy (2018, 76) is even more critical in this respect: ‘I believe that a major flaw in Bour-
dieu’s oeuvre is his suppression of the concept and reality of capitalism’.
286 Amir Mohseni

shape and quantity of what we have to exchange. Everyone is conceived as

an owner of capital.
Hence, we might indeed have reason to believe that for Bourdieu, capital
is basically what Marx explicates in his analysis as commodity. If we compare
these two concepts, their strong structural homology becomes apparent.
Both lay down as a necessary condition of their object that it is based on
human labor, that is, on the productive activity of certain individuals. More-
over, both concepts emphasize that this criterion is not sufficient, since
both Bourdieu’s concept of capital and Marx’s concept of a commodity
stress that the object designated must also be recognized or evaluated as
such by other individuals. For Bourdieu as for Marx, therefore, not every
exertion that has found objective expression should be called capital or a
commodity. When Bourdieu changes the designation of the types of
capital from field to field, he usually also seeks to outline the respective
field-specific conditions of the corresponding type of capital. In this
context, Marx always states that commodities are not merely use-values,
‘but use-value for others’, social use-value (Marx 1990, 179). Thus, only
when both conditions—accumulated labor and socially effective usability
—are satisfied does Bourdieu speak of capital and Marx of a commodity.
However, in the mentioned piece from 1986, Bourdieu frames capital as
a transhistorical factor of the creation of social reality:

The social world is accumulated history, and if it is not to be reduced to a dis-

continuous series of instantaneous mechanical equilibria between agents who
are treated as interchangeable particles, one must reintroduce into it the
notion of capital … It is a vis insita, a force inscribed in objective or subjective
structures, but it is also a lex insita, the principle underlying the immanent
regularities of the social world. … Capital … is a force inscribed in the objectivity
of things so that everything is not equally possible or impossible. (Bourdieu
1986, 241)

While for Marx ‘capital’ is peculiar to those societies which have organized
their processes of production in certain ways, for Bourdieu, here, ‘capital’ is
a transhistorical element of the social world. In virtue of this transhistorical
notion of capital, Bourdieu’s approach differs in another aspect: for Marx,
The Idea of Capital in Bourdieu and Marx 287

capital necessarily involves exploitation.20 In his analysis, capital is based on

the fact that the value received by the individuals for the sale of their labor-
power is necessarily less than the value that can be created through the use
of their labor-power. Whether such a strong connection between the
concept of capital and the normative idea of exploitation is a convincing
one is a separate issue. But if we are interested in the question of a possible
extension of Marx’s concept of capital, then this mentioned connection has
to be taken into account.21 Obviously, Bourdieu has a lot to say about unjust
social structures. But he seems to tacitly assume that social inequality is an
anthropological constant which imposes itself at all times and in all
societies. In his analysis of the different forms of reproduction of inequality
and domination, he always makes their actual existence the unquestioned
starting point.22
Bourdieu agrees with Marx that any science of sociality must do justice
to the enormous importance of the material relations of production and
the material needs of individuals. Unlike Marx, however, Bourdieu is not
willing to regard the historically particular mode of production in a given
society as the fundamental part of social reality. In An Invitation to Reflexive
Sociology, for example, Bourdieu explains:

Obviously, in advanced capitalist societies, it would be difficult to maintain that

the economic field does not exercise especially powerful determinations. But
should we for that reason admit the postulate of its (universal) ‘determination
in the last instance’? (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 109)23

20 For a similar observation, compare Burawoy (2012, 37): ‘The very concept that is definitive
of the capitalist economy for Marx, namely exploitation, is absent in Bourdieu’s concept of the
field’.
21 Bridget Fowler (2011) misses this connection when she claims that Bourdieu is an unortho-
dox Marxist.
22 Bourdieu makes this position explicit in the Pascalian Meditations when he states that eth-
nology and history testify to the fact that social inequality has always existed everywhere (see
Bourdieu 2000, 16).
23 It would be interesting in this context to ask how doubts of this kind can be reconciled with
Bourdieu’s thesis that ‘economic capital is at the root of the other types of capital … in other
words—but only in the last analysis—at the root of their effects’ (Bourdieu 1986, 252, emphasis
A.M.).
288 Amir Mohseni

This attitude toward the role of basic structures of economy can also be
seen in the infrequency, casualness, and barely concealed reluctance of
Bourdieu’s explicit positions on the concept of economic capital.24 For
Bourdieu, the economic sphere is ultimately just one social field among
others.25 Marx, on the other hand, dealt with economics for around forty
years, because he believed that the specific form of social activity in
which the individuals continually reproduce their existence has a profound
influence on their understanding of the world and of themselves. The
analysis of the socially prevalent form of the reproduction of everyday life
and the associated specific shape assumed by the working process of the
members of a society is for Marx indispensable for an adequate understand-
ing of their social and cultural orientations. The upshot, then, is this: given
the multiplicity and sheer extent of the discrepancies between the two con-
cepts of capital, we must conclude that Bourdieu’s concept cannot be
understood as an extension of that of Marx.

Conclusion
Even if the identified differences suggest refraining from the idea of an
extension, Bourdieu’s and Marx’s general aim to uncover structures of
inequality can still be viewed as complementing each other. This is true,
for example, of Bourdieu’s studies of the multifaceted symbolic dimension
of social relations of inequality and power. In this regard, even Michael
Burawoy (2018, 82), who sees himself as a Marxist critic of Bourdieu,
believes that in ‘summary, like Marx, Weber and Durkheim before him,
the genius of Bourdieu lies in his theory of social reproduction, specifically

24 Such expressions as the following are typical: ‘As regards economic capital, I leave that to
others; it’s not my area’ (Bourdieu 1993, 32). Or: ‘I shall not dwell on the notion of economic
capital’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 119). It is revealing that, even in his writings on the
social dimension of the economy in the narrower sense, Bourdieu makes only very sporadic
and extremely concise statements without systemic implications on the concept of economic
capital and on the concept of exploitation. See Bourdieu 2005, 12ff.
25 This seems to be the reason why Burawoy (2018, 81) believes that Bourdieu ‘recognizes the
domination of the economic field, but offers no theory of its means of domination or its
internal structure’.
The Idea of Capital in Bourdieu and Marx 289

his theory of symbolic domination’. Bourdieu’s concept of habitus is especially

suited to mediating between the objective determinants of the behavior of
social individuals—such as their social background and their educational or
occupational biographies—and their subjective orientations—for example,
their lifestyles, tastes, cultural forms of practice or their categories of
thought and perception.26 This concept enables Bourdieu to show how the
ensemble of social conditions is reflected as embodied history, for example,
in the language of the individuals. Marx’s analysis of the capitalist mode of
production does not directly touch on these phenomena. Accordingly,
Michael Burawoy (2012, 37) believes that ‘Bourdieu pays attention to the
inner workings of the “super-structure” that in Marx is more or less dismissed
as epiphenomenal’. Furthermore, Bourdieu’s variant of the Stoic-Spinozist
concept of amor fati can also be understood as an elaboration of Marx’s
concept of fetishism. For, although both categories refer equally to the reifica-
tion and deluded transfiguration of social inequality and to the complicitous
dimension of power relations, Bourdieu places greater emphasis than Marx
on the effect of unconscious conditioning through sheer habit.27 Moreover,
Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic violence should be considered in this
context. By emphasizing the constitutive interconnection between recog-
nition and misrecognition, it can lend greater precision to the aspect of
false consciousness in Marx’s concept of ideology and at the same time
grasp the emotional and physical expressions of misrecognition.28

26 While Burawoy (2012, 38) is critical of Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, he still commends
Bourdieu for having asked important questions that Marx himself did not directly address:
‘In Marx, individuals are only studied in one field and there they act out the imperatives of
the relations in which they are embedded. Bourdieu’s analysis is more complex, for he has
to ask how individuals nurtured in one field behave in another field—how do students
coming from peasant families (as opposed to the urban middle classes) behave within the edu-
cational sphere? Does it make no difference or is there something in their cultural capital or
their habitus that makes them behave differently?’
27 As can be seen from Bourdieu (1984 or 2001), for example, the Frenchman presented a
series of materially rich and theoretically reflected studies specifically on these mechanisms
of social domination.
28 It is worth mentioning, however, that Marxist scholars have criticized Bourdieu’s idea of
misrecognition; see, for instance, Burawoy’s valuable comparison between Gramsci’s and
290 Amir Mohseni

And finally, Bourdieu’s concept of capital is itself without doubt an

effective instrument for uncovering the arbitrary character of the distri-
bution of opportunities for social participation. Not least in virtue of this
remarkable capability, Bourdieu’s concept of capital has established itself
not only in sociology and neighboring disciplines, but also in interdisciplin-
ary and transdisciplinary research in the human sciences. The important
insights that Bourdieu established with the help of his multifaceted
concept of capital can supplement Marx’s theory without making the asser-
tion that Bourdieu’s concept should be thought of as an extension. On the
contrary, mutual complementarity presupposes that the differences are
not blurred. In this context it is particularly important that Marx’s
concept of capital is not equated with Bourdieu’s concept of economic
capital. For Bourdieu, everything that is ‘immediately and directly conver-
tible into money’ (1986, 243) counts as economic capital. Marx, on the
other hand, speaks of a complex ‘movement of capital’ (Marx 1990, 253):
a production process based on the fact that the worker can create signifi-
cantly more value than she needs to reproduce her labor power. A quantity
of money is invested in the combination of labor and work equipment, the
productive result of which is sold, and a larger amount of money returns to
its starting point. Since the goal of this cycle does not lie in the satisfaction
of needs, but in the indefinite increase in value, the process of capital is a
boundless ‘end in itself’ (Marx 1990, 253). To increase the profit margin,
the capitalist, as ‘personified capital’ (Marx 1991, 958), is forced to
lengthen the working day so that the work process becomes the greatest
possible ‘valorization process’ (Marx 1990, 283). Although legally free,
the worker is structurally forced to this relationship because she lacks
the means of production to exercise her labor. This is capital for Marx.
And none of Bourdieu’s many concepts of capital is an extension of this
idea.

Bourdieu’s notions of recognition and misrecognition (Burawoy 2012, 51–67). Regardless of

such criticism, the idea of misrecognition can be considered a fruitful point of contact between
Marx and Bourdieu.
The Idea of Capital in Bourdieu and Marx 291

University of Muenster
[email protected], [email protected]

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