The Ages of Capital: The Dialectic of Undead Rejuvenescence and Ossification

In Capital (3 vols, 1867–1894), Karl Marx personified Capital in gothic terms through a series of disordered ages whose shifting appearances defy natural ageing processes. He imaginatively represented capitalist derangements of age and ageing, portraying Capital as a perpetual newborn, strange god, machinic monster and undead vampire, whose inner drive to immortality violently disjoints, shortens and sacrifices human life. This article examines Marx’s portrayal of Capital’s Bildung as daily and eternally youthful, god-like, monstrous and verrückt (crazy and deranged). It argues that Capital’s incessant rejuvenescence and its ossification and obliteration of life are inseparable processes, dialectically united, of its living-dead ageing. The article conceptualises the gerontological unconscious of capitalist society and demonstrates how Gothic Marxism can unfold the class struggles inhering in motifs of ageing and non-ageing shared by Capital and the Gothic. These include monstrous birth and rejuvenation, torturously foreshortened life, premature senescence, and vampiric longevity and immortality.