Dialectical relation of temporal domination and class exploitation in Marx’s value theory

In this article, I demonstrate that temporal domination over subjects and producers in capitalist society is Marx’s central category in the critique of political economy. Hartmut Rosa who is well known in the critical tradition for his works on social acceleration refers to Marx’s value theory to explain the economic motor of social acceleration in the sphere of production and distribution, but he does not reach the very depth of Marx’s critique of abstract time domination and considered it as a subordinate and marginal aspect of Marx’s theory. I argue that Marx’s critique of class exploitation and commodification of social relations, in the final analysis, consists in the critique of domination of time over man. In particular, I articulate their relationship by representing the Hegelian onto-logical couple of essence and appearance; it is demonstrated that class exploitation as an internal and substantial structure of capitalism posits the temporal domination as an form of appearance which presupposes the first. Moreover, this article shows that class domination has taken a more inverted and mysterious form in digital capitalism through new time appropriation strategies. This implies that in contrast to Rosa who considers social acceleration above and beyond class boundaries, it still reinforces class exploitation and acts through it.