Of Labor and Human Bondage: Spinoza, Marx, and the “Willing Slaves” of Capitalism

Readers of contemporary Ph7losophy will not be surprised to see the name Spinoza paired with Marx in the title of a recently published book. Ever since Louis Althusser argued in the mid-1960s that he and his co-writers of Reading Capital were Spinozists and not structuralists, there has been an increased inquiry into the points of connection between Marx and Spinoza. One could even say that what the Hegel/Marx connection was to a previous generation — animating the writings of Adorno, Sartre, Lukács, etc. — the Marx/Spinoza connection is to a current collection of philosophers ranging from Althusser, and the members of his circle such as Étienne Balibar and Pierre Macherey, to Antonio Negri, Warren Montag, and Hasana Sharp.

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