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The Bewitched World of Capital. Economic Crisis and the Metamorphosis of the Political

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Published Feb 2023

Giacomo Marramao

Author: Giacomo Marramao
Editor / Translator: Matteo Mandarini
Capital is a chameleon that assumes different guises while maintaining the same logic, exploiting crisis as an opportunity for regeneration. Yet each transformation opens a passage for radical conflict and new revolutionary theories and subjects. This is particularly true of the critical passage from the 1920s to the 1930s, which Giacomo Marramao presents as an incandescent laboratory of theoretical and practical transformations and fierce confrontations. Moving from Austro-Marxism to Frankfurt School Critical Theory, from Hilferding to Grossmann, and Max Weber to Carl Schmitt, The Bewitched World of Capital shows how ‘the Political’ was remade in the passage from free-market capitalism to mass society, throwing new light on forms of domination and conflict that also traverse our present.

Biographical Note

Giacomo Marramao studied philosophy at the University of Florence and social sciences at the University of Frankfurt. Visiting professor at several universities in Europe, America and Asia, he is currently Emeritus Professor of Theoretical and Political Philosophy at the University of Rome. Among his works translated into English are: Kairós: Towards an Ontology of Due Time, Davies, 2006; The Passage West, Verso, 2012; Against Power: For an Overhaul of Critical Theory, Rowmanv & Littlefield, 2016; Interregnum. Between Biopolitics and Posthegemony, Mimesis International, 2020.

Readership

Those interested in twentieth century European Marxist thought, especially postgraduate students and academics in philosophy, politics, European studies, Marxist and heterodox political economy.

Table of Contents

The Marxism of Crisis and the Political Morphology of Capital
Matteo Mandarini

Note on the Translations

1 Introduction (from Il Politico e le trasformazioni. Critica del capitalismo e ideologie della crisi tra anni Venti e anni Trenta)

2 Councils and State in Weimar Germany (with Guido De Masi)

3 The Theories of Breakdown and Organised Capitalism in the Debates of ‘Historical Extremism’ (from Il Politico e le trasformazioni)

4 ‘Theory of the Crisis and the Problem of Constitution: In the Margin to the Konstitutionsproblematik’ (from Il Politico e le trasformazioni)

5 Korsch in Italy

6 Gramsci’s Marxism and the Theory of Transition

7 Corporate Pluralism, Mass Democracy and Authoritarian State

8 From the Crisis of the ‘Self-Organised Market’ to the ‘Authoritarian State’: Notes on the Relationship between Political Economy and Critical Theory (from Il Politico e le trasformazioni)

9 Political System, Rationalisation, ‘Social Brain’

Bibliography
Index