Willing Slaves Of Capital: Spinoza And Marx On Desire

By Frederic Lordon

Why do people work for other people? This seemingly naïve question is at the heart of Lordon's argument. To complement Marx's partial answers, especially in the face of the disconcerting spectacle of the engaged, enthusiastic employee, Lordon brings to bear a "Spinozist anthropology" that reveals the fundamental role of affects and passions in the employment relationship, reconceptualizing capitalist exploitation as the capture and remolding of desire. A thoroughly materialist reading of Spinoza's Ethics allows Lordon to debunk all notions of individual autonomy and self-determination while simultaneously saving the ideas of political freedom and liberation from capitalist exploitation. Willing Slaves of Capital is a bold proposal to rethink capitalism and its transcendence on the basis of the contemporary experience of work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jun 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9781781682135

Frederic Lordon

Fred�ric Lordon is�Director of Research at CNRS. He focuses his work on blending Spinoza's philosophy and approach to social science to create a new theoretical framework called the "structuralism of passions." Lordon recently published�Willing Slaves of Capital: Marx and Spinoza,�La Malfa�on: monnaie europ�enne et souverainet� d�mocratique, Les liens qui lib�rent, and�Imperium, structures et affects des corps politiques�(La Fabrique, 2015). He has�been involved in the�Nuit Debout�French movement.