Marx's Inferno

MarxΓÇÖs Inferno reconstructs the major arguments of Karl MarxΓÇÖs 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 workersΓÇÖ 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 DanteΓÇÖs Inferno, and how Marx, playing the role of Virgil for the proletariat, introduced partisans of workersΓÇÖ emancipation to the secret depths of the modern ΓÇ£social Hell.ΓÇ¥ In this manner, Marx revised republican ideas of freedom in response to the rise of capitalism.
Combining research on MarxΓÇÖs interlocutors, textual scholarship, and forays into recent debates, Roberts traces the continuities linking MarxΓÇÖs 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 todayΓÇÖs world.