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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.
Acknowledgments ix
A Note on References and Translations xiii
1 Introduction: Rereading Capital 1
Reading Capital as Political Theory 3
Reading Capital as Political Theory 9
Outline of the Argument 17
2 Taenarus: The Road to Hell 20
The Elements of the Case 24
The Social Hell 32
Marx's Katabasis 40
Conclusion 54
3 Styx: The Anarchy of the Market 56
Republican Socialism and the Money Mystery 58
Marx's Innovations 74
Fetishism and Domination 82
Conclusion 101
4 Dis: Capitalist Exploitation as Force Contrary to Nature 104
Exploitation before Capital 108
Capitalist Exploitation in Capital 119
Exploitation as Forza contra Natura 134
Conclusion 142
5 Malebolge: The Capitalist Mode of Production as Fraud 146
Capital with a Human Face 153
The Monsters of Fraud 163
Conclusion 183
6 Cocytus: Treachery and the Necessity of Expropriation 187
Primitive Accumulation as a Problem 193
Negating the Negation 208
Conclusion 222
7 Conclusion: Purgatory, or the Social Republic 228
Marx's Midwifery 231
The Shape of Things to Come 244
Conclusion 256
Bibliography 259
Index 277
Description
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.
