Currently reading a really good book by William Clare Roberts, Marx’s Inferno: The Political Theory of Capital (2016).
Loose thematic frame is Marx’s use of Dante’s Inferno as loose thematic framework for his Magnum Opus.
Getting a ton out of it. Like:
There is a fundamental conflict between the commitment of the laborers to pursue the means of enjoyment and the commitment of capitalists to pursue the endless accumulation of wealth.
It’s useful to remember that people once understood this, saw the change, remembered earlier, highly localized and dispersed economic systems that focused on entirely different things. As in, people tended to work enough to fulfill their needs. That’s it. Then, capitalist hegemony, mechanics, laws of motion changed all of that. People work harder, for longer hours today, because they work for something well beyond what they, personally, ever needed. They work to make it possible for the few to increase their wealth via surplus value that doesn’t really mean a damn thing to individual workers, and doesn’t help them, either.
I’d bet very few Americans ever stop to think what they’re doing when they work at all — why they work, and for whom.