Marx's Inferno

The Political Theory of Capital

Bibliographic Data

ID20002809
AuthorsWilliam Clare Roberts (0000-0003-1892-1273, corresponding author)
Year2018
Pages304
Publication date2018-03-13
Open AccessYes
TypeBOOK
VenueMarx's Inferno (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherPrinceton University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.23943/princeton/9780691180816.001.0001
OpenAlexW4250630337
Open LibraryOL30594290M
ISBN9780691180816
LanguageEN
Citations received9

This book reconstructs the major arguments of Karl Marx's Capital and inaugurates a completely new reading of a seminal classic. Rather than simply a critique of classical political economy, the book argues that Capital was primarily a careful engagement with the motives and aims of the workers' movement. Understood in this light, Capital emerges as a profound work of political theory. Placing Marx against the background of nineteenth-century socialism, the book shows how Capital was ingeniously modeled on Dante's Inferno , and how Marx, playing the role of Virgil for the proletariat, introduced partisans of workers' emancipation to the secret depths of the modern “social Hell.” In this manner, Marx revised republican ideas of freedom in response to the rise of capitalism. Combining research on Marx's interlocutors, textual scholarship, and forays into recent debates, the book traces the continuities linking Marx's theory of capitalism to the tradition of republican political thought. It immerses the reader in socialist debates about the nature of commerce, the experience of labor, the power of bosses and managers, and the possibilities of political organization. The book rescues those debates from the past and shows how they speak to ever-renewed concerns about political life in today's world

Capital (architecture) · Capitalism · Communism · Emancipation · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Proletariat · Scholarship · Socialism · History · Law · Political Economy and Marxism · Political theory and Gramsci · 1265-1321 · Communism & Socialism · Dante alighieri · Inferno (Dante Alighieri) · Kapital (Marx, Karl) · karl Marx (1818-1883) · Political aspects · Political economy · Political Ideologies