From Communism to Capitalism

First published in France in 1991, From Communism to Capitalism is finally available for the English speaking public thanks to a superb translation by Scott Davidson. -- Michael Laurence, Northwestern University, Canada * Marx & Philosophy Review of Books * Michel Henry remains 'the philosophers' philosopher' within the Continental tradition, having deconstructed Husserl, theorised affect, elevated immanence, and proclaimed a material phenomenology long before such gestures became commonplace. In From Communism to Capitalism, we are given access to how this maverick thinker of affect and life arrived at the political and economic implications of his thought at the decisive moment when Communism appeared to give way to the hegemony of late Capitalism. -- John O Maoilearca, Film and Television Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Kingston University, UK Originally published in 1991, Michel Henry writes From Communism to Capitalism on the heels of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Thus From Communism to Capitalism goes from the failure of communism to the success of capitalism. But for Henry, the success of capitalism is only alleged. Capitalism is a failure because, like the Marxist thought that animated communism, the liberal thought behind capitalism eliminates subjective life and the living individual. Thus, and this is the most powerful claim of Henry's book, communism and capitalism are only two figures of the same death. While From Communism to Capitalism extends the criticisms of capitalism and technology that Michel Henry had initiated in his 1987 Barbarism, it could be read as a companion text to Derrida's 1993 Specters of Marx. -- Leonard Lawlor, Sparks Professor of Philosophy, Penn State University, USA