Marx and the Making of the Social Individual

With this book, Alfonso Maurizio Iacono offers a bold reappraisal of Marx’s thought, demonstrating its enduring relevance for understanding the contradictions of labour, cooperation, and human development under neoliberal capitalism. Despite seismic shifts—from the collapse of industrial society to the rise of digital hyperconnectivity—Marx’s insights into work, fetishism, and method remain essential for grasping the deep structures of exploitation and the fading horizon of collective futures. Marx and the Making of the Social Individual explores the dual nature of cooperative labour: its capacity to unlock human potential and its role in reproducing control and despotism. Iacono examines how neoliberal ideology reframes workers as autonomous entrepreneurs, concealing precarity and intensifying psychological and material vulnerability. He traces the erosion of temporal agency—the ability to plan and imagine a future—arguing that today’s workers inhabit a present stripped of possibility, where hyperconnectivity coexists with global labor exploitation. Through incisive studies on fetishism, Marx’s anthropological vision, and the ideological displacement of work, the book challenges the dominant logic of market individualism and calls for renewed political imagination. This volume is intended for academics, researchers, and students engaged with Marxist theory, social philosophy, and labor studies. It will also appeal to readers interested in critiques of neoliberalism, the future of work, and the relevance of Marx’s ideas in confronting today’s economic and ideological crises.