This book is an attempt to introduce Kōjin Karatani and his work to a larger public, placing his reconstruction of Marx at its centre. An expository work that tries to bring out the singularity of Karatani’s systematic philosophical-theoretical reading of Marx, it particularly illuminates his vital reconstruction of Marx’s Capital.
Written with the aim not to contest but clarify, not to argue but to explain, The Unconscious Spirit of Communism seeks to praise Karatani and his unique intellectual project, which stands as corrective to a now more-than-a-century-old Marxism, as well as to the many Marxists, from Friedrich Engels on, who have distorted Marx’s thought—today no less than in the first decades of the twentieth century.