This paper aims at contributing to some reflections upon the founding features of the current capital accumulation patterns. It thus analyzes the historical process in which the formal subsumption of labor under capital, expressed through the extraction of absolute surplus value, set the stage and conditions to decrease the value of workforce and, hence, produce relative surplus value. The latter required the real subsumptionof work under capital, materialized by the work process control which, in turn, paradoxically entailed a reduction of the price of the workforce. In an exponential way, this phenomenon, in addition to capital taking over almost all human activities, nowadays resulted in a real subjection of the workers' lives to the capital, that is, in a real subsumption of social life under capital.
Formal; Real subsumption of social life under capital; Absolute