What is the spectre that is haunting Europe today? Not, of course, Communism – not the 'spectre' of which Marx and Engels spoke in 1948 – but neo-liberal Capitalism and the ruin and desolation that, as was to be expected, it has brought about and that it continues to inflict upon Europe and the whole world. How has it happened that this capitalism has become invisible, in its very infrastructure, as a process of exploitation, even as it permeates our unconscious and our very skin? How have we come to speak of the human condition, of a human nature, of a human ontology without, at the same time, being able to speak of human existence as a product of capitalism? Are we perhaps to assume that history has ended? This book constitutes an attempt to translate Marxist language into an idiom applicable to the present conjuncture, with the aim of transforming this conjuncture. Beginning with a close reading of the Marxist tradition and by drawing upon an extensive body of works, both philosophical and literary, the author poses crucial questions, with suggestions as to how they might be answered, that will help define more precisely what we talk about when we talk about Marxism.