Political economy as a discipline of biopolitical organization in modernity

Abstract

The biological life of individuals in the capitalist mode of production is a commodity prepared to be utilized in the manufacturing of other merchandise, just another good available to be bought and sold according to its constitutive components. The utilization of human brains, muscles, nerves, and senses to fabricate products is directly related to the reproduction of capital, so wherever this regime for producing goods is instituted, a system grounded upon the exploitation of human lives is established concurrently, one that takes advantage of corporeality, reason, and communities of people to support production. This article analyzes the dynamics of the commoditization and instrumentalization of the organic lives of people based on the postulates of political economy, a field recognized as belonging to the biopolitical devices developed to manage, optimize, discipline, protect, and exclude the biological lives of men and women through its role as the substantive discipline for the administration of life in modernity through relations of domination.