revealed to him in Hades, but it is not at all clear that they were bestowed
upon him byhis descent. Dante, however, could not produce his poem with-
out undergoing the journey it relates. The proof of the descent’s productiv-
ity is that we know about the descent in the first place.
That Marx cites Dante’s katabasisin 1859, therefore, mouthing Virgil’s reas-
surance to the pilgrim, suggests to me that Marx is engaged in an analogous
project. Certainly Marx had a great interest in the Florentine poet. Citations
from Dante begin cropping up in Marx’s writings from the 1850s, and con-
tinue throughout the rest of his life. Karl Liebknecht, who was close to Marx
throughout the ‘50s, testifies that Marx declaimed aloud from The Divine
Comedy, and that he taught himself Italian by reading Dante and Machiavelli.^8
Dante also heads a list of Marx’s favorite poets – also including Aeschylus,
Shakespeare, and Goethe – in an undated “confession” in his hand found in
his daughter Jenny’s album.^9 I think Marx’s love of Dante – like his love of
Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Balzac – speaks to his understanding of his own
endeavor, and can fruitfully illuminate that endeavor if we only pay it some
honest attention.
I will use the remainder of this essay to build upon this hypothesis by out-
lining Marx’s descent into political economy. I will first examine the rela-
tionship Marx establishes between himself and his readers in the two prefaces;
this, I hope, will go some distance toward explaining why Marx tells the story
he does in the 1859 Preface. I will then, in section three, turn to Marx’s
approach to political economy. Examining Capitalitself, as well as the
Contribution, I will show that Marx does not, as is usually assumed, identify
his project with political economy, but indicates a sharp and necessary separa-
tion between the two. With this preparatory work out of the way, I will sub-
stantiate, in section four, the parallels between Capitaland Dante’s Infernoby
reference to textual and structural details, before drawing some conclusions,
in section five, about the role of science in Marx’s efforts to overcome modernity.
The Origin of Political Economy and the Descent of Marx • 37(^8) The first published citation I know of is in his column for the New York Daily
Tribune, 4 April 1853. There is also a cluster of citations from ‘59 and ‘60 – from the
NYDT, Herr Vogt, and the Contribution– and another cluster from the first volume of
Capital(Prawer 1976: especially 208, 239–40, 261–264, 338–9, 383–4, and 419–421).
Finally, there is a page of excerpts from Karl Lüdwig Kannegießer ’s German trans-
lation, Die göttliche Komödie dem Dante Alighieri, in one of Marx’s notebooks from 1859
or 1860 (IISG: B 93, S. 19), all from Inferno. These excerpts form the basis of the cita-
tions in 9 Herr Vogt.
Another version of the “confession,” from the spring of 1865, does not include
Dante (Marx and Engels 1956 vol. 42:569, 674n620).