Book Launch: The Spectre of Capital by Chris Arthur

The author will introduce his new book (Brill 2022, Haymarket 2023), explaining how he reached his present position on the ideal nature of capital, situating the social forms addressed by Marx within a categorial framework derived from Hegel's logic. Book Introduction: What is money? What is capital? Christopher J. Arthur brilliantly tackles these fundamental questions at a deep philosophical level in The Spectre of Capital. He argues that the modern world is ruled by an unseen force, the spectre of capital. This insight is rooted in a strikingly original combination of the ideas of Marx and Hegel. Arthur here presents the most sophisticated argument to date for the 'homology thesis,' spelling out how the order of Hegel's logical categories, and that of the social forms assessed by Marx in Capital, share the same architectonic. The systematic-dialectical presentation of this thesis shows how capital becomes a self-sustaining power. Chris Arthur taught philosophy for many years at the University of Sussex. While there he specialised in Marx and Hegel, writing many papers and books on these thinkers, and especially on their relation. His first self-authored book, Dialectics of Labour (Blackwell 1986), was about Marx's concept of alienation. There followed The New Dialectic and Marx's 'Capital' (Brill2002), in which the method of 'systematic dialectic' has a central place. Throughout his career he was active in the Radical Philosophy movement, the Conference of Socialist Economists, and the Marx and Philosophy group. Links For the paperback edition by Haymarket see: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2206-the-spectre-of-capital The Spectre is on open access at: https://brill.com/display/title/15466 A recent short article about it is on Arthur's website: https://chrisarthur.net/the-idea-of-capital-2023/