Marx's Inferno
eBook - ePub

Marx's Inferno

The Political Theory of Capital

  1. 304 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Marx's Inferno

The Political Theory of Capital

About this book

Marx's Inferno 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, William Roberts 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, Roberts 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, Roberts traces the continuities linking Marx's theory of capitalism to the tradition of republican political thought. He 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. Roberts rescues those debates from the past, and shows how they speak to ever-renewed concerns about political life in today's world.

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Yes, you can access Marx's Inferno by William Clare Roberts in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Philosophy & Political Philosophy. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover Page
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Dedication Page
  5. Contents
  6. Acknowledgments
  7. A Note on References and Translations
  8. 1. Introduction: Rereading Capital
  9. 2. Taenarus: The Road to Hell
  10. 3. Styx: The Anarchy of the Market
  11. 4. Dis: Capitalist Exploitation as Force Contrary to Nature
  12. 5. Malebolge: The Capitalist Mode of Production as Fraud
  13. 6. Cocytus: Treachery and the Necessity of Expropriation
  14. 7. Conclusion: Purgatory, or the Social Republic
  15. Bibliography
  16. Index