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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.

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