Emerson and Capitalism

Abstract This chapter undertakes a new appraisal of Emerson’s reflections on capitalism by rereading his most focused work of political economy—the essay “Wealth”—in the context of the volume in which it was first published, The Conduct of Life (1860). By linking Emerson’s explicit reflections on capitalism to the broader themes of The Conduct of Life—namely power, personal agency, and the developing form of personhood amidst the “colossal systems” of the industrializing nineteenth-century world—this chapter illustrates that Emerson exposits a theory of capitalist production that discordantly resonates with the work of his contemporary Karl Marx. Like Marx, Emerson recognizes that only the capitalist mode of production can foster the development of social productive forces that might emancipate humanity from the misery of proletarian labor. However, Emerson differs from the orthodoxies of Marx’s work in Capital and aligns instead with the unorthodox revolutionary theories espoused in the Grundrisse.