Or is it? Certainly it leads us to confrontactually existing capitalism, but
does this confrontation constitute a critique? What would it mean to criticize
capitalism? The critique of political economy takes the form of a descent
through its concepts and proclamations to the point where the science decon-
structs itself, overturning its own premises. But capitalism is not a system of
concepts and pronouncements; it is a form of society. How does one descend
through a social form? Can one do so in a book? I think the answer is “No.”
Critique just is katabasis. We cannot descend through capitalism in a book
anymore than we can grow up by reading about child development. The cri-
tique of capitalism must take place in the medium of capitalism, that is, in
life, in society, in productive activity. In other words, the “critique of capi-
talism” is – and, if we are to avoid a gross category mistake, can only be –
revolution. In Capital, Marx leads us to the overturning of political economy,
the overturning of the idea of capitalism. But nothing short of overturning
capitalism will overturn capitalism.
Yet, the critical project and the revolutionary project cannot be strangers
to one another. Certainly Marx’s activity suggests that he thought his critique
of political economy and the revolutionary overturning of capitalism were
intimate partners. I will attempt, in the space remaining, to specify this rela-
tionship. This does not mean we will be leaving Dante behind. I already sug-
gested that the transformation and empowerment of the pilgrim is the point
of Dante’s katabasisas much as of Marx’s. But, whereas I have so far marked
similarities in form or appearance between the Infernoand Marx’s critique –
Marx and Virgil offer similar rhetorics, and command similar knowledges;
Hell and political economy make similar threatening promises, and present
similar structures – I must now trace the movement of the workings of these
texts. Or, to be more precise, I must trace the play between appearances and
workings in both texts. I don’t think Dante and Marx want to work the same
transformation on us, but the moments of the drama are similar enough to
be mutually illuminating.
Taking our cues again from John Freccero, Dante faced a very peculiar
poetic dilemma writing the Inferno: to depict in words a place that seemingly
precludes the possibility of meaning. Within the Christian semiotics of spirit
52 • William Clare Roberts
argument as such” (152n53). In a similar vein, Michael Heinrich writes; “In Marx’s
work we can find a superposition of two discourses: on the one hand, we have the
breach with the theoretical field of classical political economy; on the other, he remains
inside that field in many aspects. The superposition of such discourses produces quite
a number of problems and unresolved ambivalences” (1996:465n).