an encounter with this limit, to the point where we can cross over this limit
and leave political economy behind.
4. The Anatomy of Hell
Having accepted Marx as our guide into political economy, the “anatomy”
of bourgeois society (1970:20), we can finally ask what Marx discloses of this
anatomy. What is the structure of capital, and how does the text of Capital
proceed through that structure? Of course, the structure of Capitalhas been
endlessly debated; I do not hope to provide an exhaustive exposition. I take
as a starting point that Marx approaches capital as a systematic whole, an
internally differentiated totality, akin to Aristotle’s approach to natural things,
or Hegel’s approach to Spirit (Reuten 2000). However, I will show that the
structure of this totality, as Marx presents it in Capital, bears a striking resem-
blance to the structure of Dante’s Hell. This is not as outlandish as it may
sound. Marx and Dante both bear the influence of Aristotle, and this com-
mon ontological lineage goes some way toward shaping their works, aside
from any direct influence. Nonetheless, given Marx’s intense interest in Dante
during the drafting of Capital, I also suspect the latter.^14
In Dante’s cosmology, Hell descends to the center of the earth. When Lucifer
turned against God, he was cast down to the lowest place, as far from God
as one can be. This corresponds to Satan’s absolute materiality. Dante and
Virgil descend, therefore, from the airy shades of limbo and the windblown
lovers of the circle of lust, through water, mud, and fire, to the very bodily
Malebolge and the entombed and frozen sinners in Cocytus. They also
encounter sins in the order of their increasing severity. Incontinence, going
beyond the bounds of natural desire, is a lesser representation of violence,
which is the denial of the natural order itself. Fraud, in turn, is that of which
violence is the image, for fraud transgresses the ontological distinction between
appearance and reality, which founds the natural ordering itself. But fraud
is a mere representation of a sin more fundamental yet, treachery; traitors act
directly against the foundation of their own being. The purest and most orig-
inary instance of this treason is Satan’s act of turning away from his creator
at the very moment of his creation. This archaic sin establishes the possibility
44 • William Clare Roberts
(^14) I have argued elsewhere (Roberts 2003) that Marx modeled The Eighteenth Brumaire
on the play-within-a-play in Hamlet, and I think it is worth looking for such literary
patterns in other of Marx’s works.