Marx's Inferno by William Clare Roberts

Marx's Inferno by William Clare Roberts

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.

"Well-researched and clearly written.. Imaginative and refreshingly enjoyable."--David Harvey, Jacobin "Marx's Inferno is highly original and informative... Regardless of whether Marx even thought about Dante in writing his masterwork, Roberts' insights open up a much broader and deeper reading of Marx. This is an excellent book, highly recommended."--Choice

William Clare Roberts is assistant professor of political science at McGill University.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780691172903
ISBN 10	0691172900
Title	Marx's Inferno
Author	William Clare Roberts
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Princeton University Press
Year published	2016-12-20
Number of pages	304
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.