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
