The Capitalist Rationality Metamorphoses: Egoism, Suffering, and Profit

Miguel A. V. Ferreira. Madrid, Catarata, 2025. 288pgs.

Abstract

The capitalist economy has undergone, since its origin, three major evolutionary phases, marked by different conceptions: classical liberal, Keynesian, and neoliberal. In each of these, obtaining profit, the fundamental objective of a capitalist economy, has been possible thanks to what the author calls the "capitalization of labor suffering," that is, thanks to compensation of a symbolic nature—linked, in its nature, to Bourdieu's concept of symbolic capital. The text offers an analysis of this evolution based on the premise that the rationale that has driven them has a foundation, not rational, but emotional, that is structurally marked by egoism and that, phenomenologically, has taken three distinct forms corresponding to three different ways in which this egoism has been able to achieve the contribution of labor suffering in exchange for compensation, of a symbolic nature, that exceeds the strict economic compensation of wages. Based on the formulations of Marx and Weber, and using Bourdieu's conceptual framework as a fundamental reference, the text explains how obtaining profit is the practical result of the relationships between the great emotional drivers of capitalism: egoism and suffering, which support the objective relationship, historically configured, between the capital and labor factors.