An examination of the history of economic thought reveals that whether capital is understood as goods, money or credit, once it enters the process of capital circulation and capital proliferation，its social attributes cannot be concealed any more. From the perspective of social relations， the essence of capital is a form of power. At the micro level, capital has greater dominant power when combined with labor and other factors of production. In the broader sense of capital as a whole, it can leverage this dominant power to reinforce the scope and manner of state coercion, thereby strengthening its own power and expanding the scope of its dominance. To regulate the overall power of capital, it is essential to set up “traffic lights” at the micro level, so as to avoid the overall corrosion of and detriment to the society while allowing it to engage in practices of innovation.

　　Editor: Zhong Yao  LiuTingting

　　From: World Socialism Studies.2024.No.5.