Marx's Inferno: The Political Theory of Capital

An outstanding contribution to to what could be called Marxology. This is a rare moment of scholarship, and should be read along with a number of other books that elucidate the ever deepening content of Capital, volume One, first published in 1867. A few of those being Derrida's "Specters of Marx", Postone's "Time, Labor, and Social Domination", and "Marx at the Margins" by Anderson. Not to neglect in this reading Marx's original work.

Rather than develop a simple literary oddity (Marx's knowledge and use of Dante in his analysis), Roberts motivates the connection within the context of Marx's socialist milieu to construct a novel reading of Capital that is incredibly illuminating and will contribute to the understanding of Marx's theories well into the future.

A refreshing look at a well established line of thought. Marx said much, and in my opinion, still applies.

William Clare Roberts’ fascinating, at times bewildering, interpretation of Marx’s Das Kapital sets the great critique of political economy into relief through a rereading which suggests the influence of Dante’s Inferno on its structure and intention. Pointing to textual parallels between the texts (each consisting of 4 divisible parts), Roberts suggests that Marx’s work brings the reader through the social Hell that is capital. However, this is not the author’s ultimate purpose; the book in fact stages the claim that the purpose of Marx’s critique, was to establish an intervention against the utopian and scientific socialism of his time. Through careful reconstructions of his critiques of Proudhon, Saint-Simon, and Owen, Roberts demonstrates the insufficiency of a socialist crititque of capitalism that grounds itself in moralistic or techno-utopian categories. While Roberts gets himself into a confrontation with Moishe Postone, Michael Heinrich, and other proponents of value-form theory I don’t think he entirely extricates himself from, this is still a fascinating reading.