Capitalismo: una historia de terror: Del marxismo gótico y el lado oscuro de la imaginación radical

by Jon Greenaway, Matheus Calderón Torres (translator)

A horror-story history of capitalism and its relationship to the haunted and the gothic, and a manifesto of Gothic Marxism, which finds revolutionary hope in the nightmare of modernity.

Capitalism is a horror story. In this book, pioneering film critic and cultural theorist Jon Greenaway dives into the dark side of the radical imagination. What does it mean to see horror in capitalism, and what can horror tell us about the state and nature of capitalism?

The book offers a new analysis of Marxist theory and culture, drawing from Romantic anticapitalism from Andre Breton to Walter Benjamin as well as literature and film from the nineteenth century to the present. Moving across literature, film and philosophy, from Frankenstein and Dracula to modern horror like The Platform, Parasite and The VVitch , this book offers one of the first full-length analyses of Gothic Marxism.

The book explains the “dark way of being red” drawing off the warm stream of Marxism from Ernst Bloch. From there, the book explores the socio-political function of the monstrous, the haunted nature of the digital world and the inescapable horror of contemporary capitalist politics. Most shockingly, this book argues that we can find hope in horror — a site of monstrous becoming, that opens the door to a Utopian future.

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy, Horror, Theory, Politics, Film, Cultural

192 pages, Paperback

First published July 9, 2024

Reviews

[Nathan Shuherk · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had a lot of fun with this and the shift in definitions for the concept of Utopianism was something I definitely want to read more about - a great recontextualization of horror media gave the philosophy a comfortable grounding

[Keen Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

Initially I felt that this was just a little too academic, too dry and needed something to lift it up, something to animate it more. But then it seemed to pick up the deeper we got into things and Greenaway began to find his rhythm a bit more and he did go onto make a number of worthwhile and interesting points.

As well as Marx and the like, he draws on a number of compelling philosophers and thinkers and also references a wide selection of contemporary horror/Sci-Fi/Dystopic movies, coming up with some surprisingly convincing arguments as well as treating us to new terms such as necro-neoliberalism!

We also get a good list of films to check out though you have to navigate a spoiler minefield, so beware! This also includes the unintentionally laugh aloud line..."The Saw films echo the argument of Cameroonian political theorist and historian Achille Mbembe."

[Skylar Jon Izzard · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good analysis of Gothic horror in films and novels. However, the theoretical contribution Greenaway makes leaves much to be desired. A good book if you're interested in film interpretations, but not a necessary read if you're looking for theory.

[Hana Wasserman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've had a vague notion that my love of horror and interest in marxism are neighbors my heart and wanted a more formalized understanding of why that is. Although I found the writing unnecessarily convoluted and pedantic, I came away with an appreciation of "gothic marxism" and liked how Greenaway described the subversive "monstrous utopia". This book shed light on why I, and so many others, often love and empathize with the monsters of horror stories more than the human protagonists themselves. A passage I bookmarked:

The Gothic and horror show that change is always possible; try as it might to prove otherwise, captialism is haunted by something: what the theorist Mark Fisher called...the "specter of a world that would be free." (pg. 179)

For disclosure, I would not say this book is very accessible to readers without the fundamentals of marxist theory. I can appreciate if it was intended for a more academic crowd but I think that it leaves a gap for a more general audience who would appreciate the material.

[iris irimia · Rating 5 out of 5]

«como Bloch señaló en gran parte de su obra, las ensoñaciones y las fantasías son el terreno en el que nos damos cuenta de lo que nos falta.
[…]
Si hay un futuro utópico por hacer, tiene que incluir todo lo que atormenta a la imaginación capitalista, cada retazo de la cultura que nos susurra incesantemente que el mundo no tiene por qué ser así»

[Spacebob (P.T.) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book with teeth

This little books paints an engaging picture how the horrors of our systems are revealed through monsters of our fictional worlds while we become the monster(ed) of this reality.

The discussions of individual types of stories illustrating, e.g., the haunting of the present by our suppressed history as a major theme in ghost stories and the dehumanizing nature of employment through body horror does provide fresh motivation to dive into the Horror genre with a sharper and surprisingly hopeful eye on things. The language of the book and its necessarily Gothic nature are a pleasure to read.

(Minor gripes: I personally found the text a bit verbose in the beginning and wished instead of repetition of general themes it could in places be a bit more explicit in its systematic critiques. It also leans heavy on the works by Bloch where sometimes there seems to have been a wider view on the literature possible.)

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and found my major regret in its brevity.

[Caio Maximino · Rating 4 out of 5]

From nations, to cultures, to class strata, and to individuals, a Gothic Marxist history is one driven by fidelity to the ghost — to the spectre that is still haunting all of the capitalist world.

[Alejandro Pereira · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reflexiones muy interesantes sobre el terror y sus implicaciones políticas y sociales. "El terror es el género más esperanzador".

[Allen Soberanes · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

"The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters."

- Loose translation of an excerpt from Antonio Gramsci's Selections from the Prison Notebooks

I've always had an infatuation with horror as a genre of media and with the horrifying as a mode of understanding. Two of my favorite pieces of media are John Carpenter's The Thing and Hidetaka Miyazaki's Bloodborne. The former is a movie that paradoxically combines the lonely isolation of the Antarctic with the extremely personal relationship between a group of scientists and an alien visitor. The latter is a video game that seamlessly combines traditional Gothic horror with Lovecraftian horror to create a world where the past's mistakes almost literally weigh "like a nightmare on the brains of the living."

Please, bring an end to the horror...
...So our forefathers sinned?
...We hunters cannot bear their weight forever…
...It isn’t fair, it just isn’t fair...

But what is it about horror that makes it so easy to fall in love with when at the surface it is a genre of violence, shame, sadness, death, and hopelessness? And how can we take advantage of horror's language to better understand the world and how to change it?

These are the questions that Jon Greenaway attempts to tackle in this book, which feels like an extension to Mark Fisher's The Weird and the Eerie. Like Mark Fisher, it borrows from the language of continental philosophers and of the extremely online intellectual types, a language that I've grown quite tired of in the last two years or so.

Thankfully, Greenaway doesn't take it too far, so this ends up being pretty digestible and contains interesting Gothic Marxist analyses of many famous pieces of horror media. Also, I had no idea Frankenstein's monster was an intellectual! The more you know 💫

Horror as a genre is generally looked down upon in the mainstream. For good reason. It's easy for horror to be done wrong (there's no way all 13 Halloween movies and all 12 Friday the 13th movies are bangers.). When it's done right, the haunting shines through the more disreputable interpretations of the genre to reveal a hopefulness for something new. It's this underlying hopefulness that keeps me coming back to horror, and it's this disreputableness that should attract us to give it a chance and to identify with the monstrous.

If now is the time of monsters, then let us be the monstered that bring something new.

Last time I try to do nice formatting for a Goodreads review. What's the point when the formatting doesn't even work on Goodreads's own app 😤😤

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book more than I did. The combination of a study of horror and Marxism is the perfect coalescence of my political and literary interests. But, I found this book too academic. Not in the sense that it lives in the world of academia, but that a large portion of it is written like a particular academic text. Often, Greenway spends pages and pages summarising the media that he is analysing. This provides useful context, but it doesn't make it any less repetitive to read.

Greenway's strengths come into play towards the end of the book, unfortunately. He makes apt connections between the concept of 'othering' and monsters, referred to as 'monstered' within the text. A cultural process where communities outside the structures that reinforce capitalism are demonised and used to influence our cultural understandings of what is 'wrong', and what we should fear. This process has an oversized impact on horror as a genre. The genre is very much informed by the dominant cultural understandings of what we fear, and it is impossible to separate that from capitalism or its self-reinforcement.

However, Greenway explores how horror can be used to resist capitalism, highlighting its wide array of potential that other genres don't have. Greenway understands that living under capitalism (especially if you are outside the social categories that are deemed ideal reinforcers of it) is horrible. It is, even if not intended, what informs the genre the most. Body horror, psychological horror, and more are all based on what capitalism does to us. The process of losing your body to strenuous labour, your mind to constant anxieties around what capitalism subjects us to, is central to capitalism and other oppressive forces. Horror understands this, and Greenway shows that throughout this book.

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good as I thought it would be, but I will hopefully have the energy to write a more lengthy review soon

[Joshua Lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

Capitalism: A Horror Story is a "branch" book. Even if you think it's not well written (I'd argue that it is good, but for the sake of discussion let's say it's not) you'll still get solid recommendations of other things. That's one of Greenaway's talents. He has a thorough knowledge and admiration of horror as a genre and Marxism as a political theory; ranging from Shelley's Frankenstein to Bloch's Principle of Hope to The Purge Series to Hobbes' Leviathan to Brown's The Beach House, and everything in between.

Every time Jacobin writes shorter form pieces analyzing media from a Marxist perspective, there's this weird backlash. Genuinely surprised that Greenaway never wrote there, but there's a specific memory of backlash to a Megan Day piece about You've Got Mail. A subset of Marxists believes that media analysis isn't worthy of our time. That looking back at fiction isn't worth nearly as much because of how personally malleable reactions to art are. They're wrong; analysis of themes matters.

Looking into something such as the Saw franchise — which reached $1.1 billion as recently as Saw X — is another attribute of Marxism that's needed to succeed. People critically thinking of media and using it as a connection to discuss serious political ideas with others is an entry point. I can talk about various horror things to my less class-conscious friends more than I can talk to them about Engels' work directly.

Greenaway succeeds with C:AHS, he just has to ride the difficult line of standing on the shoulders of giants and trying to push political theory forward. He's smart, books are dense and have a lot of great nuggets... it just feels weary to criticize Bloch. We all have our writers (mine is Zinn) where we're like "surely this is right because why would my favorite writer say it if it wasn't." It's both in debt to and held back by Bloch's ideas, I'd have liked to see Greenaway branch out more. But hey, that's for the next book!

This is a solid recommendation.

[Ryan Denson · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Capitalism is a horror story. This is the central claim of everything that follows: that behind the apparent rationality and ordered patterns of the world is a mass of violence, and nightmare of ghosts and hauntings that still lingers on the edge of our collective cultural consciousness . . . The ideological structures of capitalism impact us all outside of strictly economic ways, determining social being and even worming its ways into our psyche and our dreams."

"A Gothic Marxism is one that is alive to the possibilities of what seems to be unrealistic, finding in the haunting persistence of ghosts and monsters the dark traces of what Ursula Le Guin called the realism of a larger reality."

A short, but quite engaging examination by the cultural theorist Jon Greenaway on the ways that the horror genre can be used to elicit the inhumanities of capitalist cultural imagination, and how such ideas have twisted and distorted modern human thought and behaviors into profoundly unhuman ways. In this, Greenaway primarily deals with such themes in film, but also with some classic works like Shelley's Frankenstein and Stoker's Dracula. Here, the Gothic Marxist perspective is put forth as a combination of those two theoretical lenses to explore specific ways that capitalist ways of thinking have manifested within popular culture. The ultimate aim is shedding light on elements of capitalist realism, features of modern societies so often falsely claimed to be part of human nature.

Greenaway's first chapter establishes the theoretical underpinning of how we can examine the horror genre in this way, mainly using the works of Walter Benjamin and Ernst Bloch. This serves also as a good introduction to some concepts that not all readers may be familiar with, such as Bloch's theory of the cold and warm streams of Marxism. The remaining chapters are thematically structured on different elements within the horror genre. One such chapter looks at monsters. There is, for instance, famously a class dimension to the creature of Shelley's famous novel. Although articulate and reasonable as well, the creature is shunned by Victor Frankenstein as a monster, merely because he himself is so terrified of an alternate form of being. Meanwhile, Dracula, though most often read as a Victorian fear of the other, can also be read as embodying the shallow psyche that capitalist realism creates. Dracula enacts much violence throughout the novel, yet seemingly not even taking pleasure in such violence, but driven by pure need itself. That hollow drive for need can be read as eerily resembling blood-sucking monsters like Elon Musk with their accumulation of more and more wealth seemly for the mere sake of accumulation alone.

There's especially relevant themes to recent event with the chapter that concern the Saw and Purge franchises. Both horror franchises work particularly well to highlight elements of the neoliberalization of modern politics and culture. The latter Saw films are particularly relevant for commenting explicitly on the horrors and inhumanity of the American healthcare system. The Purge films, meanwhile, offer a glimpse at life under a Christo-Fascist regime, not entirely dissimilar to some factions within the Trump administration, and far-right politics more generally. The idea of the purges at the heart of those films are framed as a release value for some supposedly fundamental aspect of human nature. That feature mimics the faulty claim of far-right politicians that their intellectually lazy and moronic ideas are more in tune with human nature.

Greenaway's final chapter "We're all monsters now," then, deals with the ways that capitalist cultures otherize (or monsterize) those whose behaviors or lifestyles are different from conventional norms. This uses the rampant transphobia in UK media as a particularly obvious and recent example. That, then, transitions into a closing discussion involving Bloch's ideas about Utopia, illustrating the value of examining popular culture in this manner to keep alive alternate thought processes in the face of the attempts of capitalist realism to constrain the limits of what is possible. Imaginative capacity itself is, after all, so frequently the initial catalyst for societal change. As Greenaway notes, such a possibility of a better world is something that haunts capitalism itself.

[Malcolm · Rating 4 out of 5]

"A spectre is haunting Europe..."

So begins the Communist manifesto. Leftist essays are often tinged with lines that wouldn't be out of place in horror media. Seeing the marks of capital on the bodies of the workers leaves no mystery as to why. The pursuit of endless growth and bottomless profit is setting the planet on fire.

Greenaway is a host of a left-leaning horror podcast and he gets to combine his two loves in this essay. It covers a variety of different pieces of horror media and examines them through a Marxist lens. Some of the pieces may interpreted a bit more aggressively than others but you get to look at media with whatever lens you want and find the meaning you can to see if it sticks. Some pieces, like The Platform, wear their leftist interpretations on their sleeves.

The book is breezy, clocking in at less than 200 pages. This does mean that no piece can be exhaustively examined but there's ton of YouTube video essays if you want a horse beaten past death. It's a fantastic resource if you're looking to find a list of left-leaning horror media to consume and my reading list certainly got a bit longer.

[Gemma Milne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is so great! I'm a total wuss when it comes to horror movies and books, but I've had this desire to 'get over it' so I could appreciate what it's all about for a long time - I therefore went into this book hoping it might give me another angle with which to approach the genre, and it did so much more! It's a mix of literary criticism, cultural analysis, political economy and - wonderfully - polemic. It manages to have a whimsy about it whilst also being deadly (ha!) serious, and I felt both cleverer and happier having read it. Will it get me to watch more horror movies and read more gothic novels? Maybe. Has it totally transformed how I think about the genre and the imagination-disruption potential it has / role it plays in our capitalist realist culture? 100%.

[Eleanor · Rating 4 out of 5]

A concise and accessible exploration of this intriguing topic: gothic Marxism. Albeit more horror (general) than gothic horror that I was expecting, but maybe that was my own misunderstanding.

I would have appreciated more examples from women, even the chapter on gender was looking at films by male writers/directors. Not to put gender exploration in a box, because the chapter does include an example from a trans man, but I did raise my eyebrows that it was the conclusion that offered the most examples from women (intentional when talking about utopia?) - after all women's use of horror and applying it to Marxist thought could have offered something Silvia Frederici would nod in approval at.

But it was interesting and well written and the writer clearly knows his stuff.

[Rui Santos · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this exploration of Gothic Marxism to be deeply fascinating. I found this to be a challenging yet ultimately rewarding read. I discovered the book after hearing Greenaway on Revolutionary Left Radio, and I was captivated. The book does not disappoint but will need your full intellectual attention and engagement like most things that might wake you in fright at night!. Highly recommended for anyone interested in cinema and culture perculated through a Marxist persepctive.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/capital...

[Fred Is Red · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book investigates horror media as a way of analysing culture under capitalism as well as the hope for utopia. There are several interesting concepts within that description that serve as tools for helping you to enjoy horror media much more.

As a great bonus, the book recommends a slew of awesome horror movies and novels, as well as important texts from various thinkers. In that regard it is an excellent resource.

[Eóin Dooley · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thoughtful, wide-ranging, and engaging book which offered me a new lens with which to examine horror (and darker subgenres in general). It offered just the right balance of philosophy to pop-culture commentary. Easy recommendation for any fan of horror, or who wants to get a bit deeper in their media criticism generally.

[Márcio Moreira · Rating 4 out of 5]

uma boa introdução ao conceito de marxismo gótico e à obra de Ernst Bloch que despertou vontade de conhecer mais sobre ambos. gostei das análises de filmes e livros, mas também senti que o autor não lida tão bem com a ambiguidade do monstro em alguns momentos. vale a leitura.

[Severin M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good commentary on a number of films, themes, and mechanisms in horror. What emerges is a characteristically utopian approach to the disturbing that finds hope vindicated precisely at those times when it is everywhere thrown into question.

[Adrian A · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well paced. Not too academic but there's terminology I'll forever use now
How the themes are threaded as well with movie annotations is really well thought out. There's movies here I'll definitely take a look at but if anything it's made me respect horror as a much more reputable genre.

[Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel bad giving this book a low rating, because it is probably brilliant. I say "probably" because most of it was way over my head. Extremely academic, obscure references and even more obscure vocabulary.

[Lonnie Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Greenaway accomplishes that for which every teacher strives: a compelling and understandable communication of topics and ideas that educate and inform as well as propel the reader towards continued inquiry.

[Brian Hanson · Rating 1 out of 5]

"We live in an all-encompassing web of micro-fascisms". Still want to read the book this quote is taken from? Go ahead.

[Goldendigital · Rating 5 out of 5]

Based

[Jefferson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good ideas, and expands on those that are most obvious (capitalism as vampire, alienation, etc). Also great source for further readings/viewings. Language sometimes feels imprecise though.

[yana · Rating 4 out of 5]

indulges a little in its recapping of some texts without enough related analyses to really justify it but overall pleasantly surprised by how much legitimate theory is discussed here

[Sarbajit Ghosh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the references seemed forced, but appealing none the less