William Clare Roberts
The Origin of Political Economy and the Descent
of Marx
And, putting his hand on mine
with a cheerful glance from which I drew strength,
he introduced me into the secret things.
Dante,
Inferno, 3.19–21
This essay offers a novel reading of Marx’s project
in Capital. First, I want to dislodge the standard read-
ing, which sees in Capitalsimply a continuation of
the modern techno-scientific project, an attempt to
reveal the truth about capitalism which will allow
us to finally control the economy. Marx does construct
a science of capital, I argue, but not for the sake of
knowing how capitalism works. Rather (and this is
my second thesis), Marx leads his readers through
a presentation of the idea of capital in order to work
a poetic transformation on them. I will argue that
Marx based Capital, in part, on Dante’s Inferno, and
that Marx’s goal is similar to Dante’s, a conversion
of the reader by means of a trial. Finally, I will dis-
cuss the nature of this converted subjectivity. Together,
I hope these arguments will convincingly portray a
Marx quite other from the one we’re used to.
Of course, I am hardly the first to claim to present
a “new Marx.” It seems, however, that these periodic
efforts to rediscover Marx, to find a “Marx beyond
Marx,” must proceed under the assumption that there
