MARX’S SEVEN METAPHORS OF LABOUR AS DEATH

Author: Dr. Mehdi Morchid

ABSTRACT

This article examines Karl Marx’s Capital (1867/1887) through the lens of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff & Johnson,1980) isolating and studying seven conceptual metaphors that frame labour under capitalism as a process of death. Employing a concordance-based textual analysis, it explores the metaphors of: metamorphosis, vampirism, werewolf hunger, necromantic animation, militarisation, decimation and vegetation. All these converge into conceptualising labour as the slow annihilation of life. Each framing reveals a distinct dimension of capitalism’s mortuary logic. Capital’s perpetual transformation is construed as contingent on: the absorption of living labour, the monstrous appetite for vitality, the spectral animation of commodities, the militarisation and disciplining of the labouring body, the decimation of the labourer’s life expectancy and the reduction of survival to vegetative existence. Collectively, these metaphors articulate Marx’s vision of a system that lives only by consuming life

Keywords: Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Capital, Capitalism, Conceptual Metaphor Analysis, Cognitive Linguistic Analysis.

REFERENCE

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