Capital is the core and soul of modern capitalist society, and also the object that Marx researched and criticized all his life - an important category of capitalist production relations. Capital, with its powerful force, has promoted the transformation of social history, but it has also become a shackle to realize the free development and complete liberation of human. Marx criticized it deeply. From the era in which Marx lived to the present, capital, as the “dominant economic power in bourgeois society”, has existed like the “shine light” and ghost. It not only gains dominance in capitalist countries, but also has a profound impact on the development of contemporary China. It does not withdraw from the stage of history but instead caused a new alienation problem of human existence with a new mode of existence. Therefore, to solve a series of development problems in reality, it requires us to re-examine Marx’s criticism of capital power from the perspective of human liberation.

Historical materialism believes that nothing comes out of thin air but rooted in the soil of history and reality. Capital power does not exist naturally, but is the product of historical development. It is the result of the combined action of multiple factors such as historical, realistic, relational and irrational etc. From the perspective of endogeneity, the generation of capital power has gone through the historical evolution from commodity, currency to capital. From the perspective of exogeneity, the generation of capital power has its realistic conditions. Primitive accumulation is the basis for the generation of capital power and capital accumulation is the means of capital power expansion, and private system is the guarantee for the maintenance of capital power. From the historical point of view, capital power is the highest form of power in modern capitalist society, surpassing natural theocracy and secular regime and jumping into a powerful force occupying a dominant position in the power spectrum.

Although capital power has grown from the horizon of history, it is outside the sight of liberalism. Liberalism does not recognize the still prevailing dominant power relations between people in modern capitalist society. They established the thinking mode of the dichotomy between the “private sphere” and the “public sphere” based on modern political philosophy and denied the existence of unequal power in the “private sphere”. Classical political economy obscures the issue of capital power with the principle of equivalent exchange in the free market. Based on the grand vision of historical materialism, focusing on the historical height of human liberation and adhering to the principles of historicity, reality and value, Marx accomplished the mission of demasking the power of capital, ended the narrow understanding of the dichotomy of the power existence filed in the modern political philosophy, deconstructed the illusion of freedom and equality advocated by classical political economy, unveiled the mystery of the rational kingdom constructed by Hegel and restored the essence of capital power and highlighted the original appearance of capital power. Marx believes that capital is not an object, but a relationship mediated by objects, and more importantly, a kind of power. He profoundly illustrated that capital is the dominant power to wage labor and its products; it is the economic power to dominate everything, both the world of things and the world of people; it is an alienated and independent social power.

As the economic power that dominates everything, capital power is not a fixed static state, but it has its own internal mechanism of operation. It is a dynamic process that continues to expand with the production of surplus value and the realization of surplus value. Taking typical industrial capital as an example, capital power operates in the various processes of capital formation, capital proliferation and capital accumulation, and is reflected in the cyclical evolution of money capital, production capital and commodity capital, is occurred in each part of purchase, production and sales, and is embodied in the exchange power in market activities, the dominance power in production labor and the manipulation power in the consumption process. Capital power not only dominates the economic field, but also penetrates into the political field, spreads to the cultural field and has a crucial impact on political and cultural life. The operation of capital power reflects multiple distinctive characteristics, which are embodied in the concealment of exploitation means, the expansion of the operation scope and the aggravation of the domination degree.

Marx’s critique of capital power is not a pure critique of political economy, but a political economy-philosophical critique that contains the theory of human existence. In Marx’s view, although capital power has certain historical progress and temporary rationality, in essence, capital power exercises all-round control and rule over people from body to spirit, from production to consumption and from time to space, devouring human subjectivity, destroying free personality of human and causing labor alienation and spiritual materialization of human. It is a force that restrains, binds and enslaves people and seriously hinders the realization process of human liberation. Even though capitalism has developed to the contemporary era, digital information technology has swept the world, and capital power has taken on a new form of digital capital power, in essence, it is only the extension and development of capital power in the contemporary era, rather than qualitative change and elimination. Digital capital is still the capital power to exploit，enslave and rule people. People fall into digital fetishism from capital fetishism and fall into the dilemma of digital survival.