Frederic Lordon

Biographical note:

Frédéric Lordon is an economist and Director of Research at the CNRS, Paris. His other works include Les Quadratures de la politique économique; La Politique du capital; L'intérêt souverain—Essai d'anthropologie économique spinoziste; and La crise de trop—Reconstruction d'un monde failli.

Country of final manufacture:

US

Main description:

Why do people work for other people? The methodical defamiliarization of this seemingly naïve question is at the center 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.

Review quote:

"This ambitious but always lucid book aims to reopen the conceptual framework of capitalism" Le Monde

"This work is an initiatory voyage towards communism ... a horizon that has to be sought with perseverance rather than a definitively achieved state."—L’Humanité

"Frédéric Lordon is one of the most audacious contemporary left-wing economists."—Le Nouvel Observateur