War and Money

By Maurizio Lazzarato | Translated by Jason Francis McGimsey | Verso (2025)

The business of imperial conflict: Why capitalism needs war.

Maurizio Lazzarato’s War and Money explores the connections between capitalist expansion, international economic conflict, and war, via an analysis of the imperialism of the American dollar. He examines why contemporary left-wing theorists such as Michel Foucault and Antonio Negri have failed to recognize war as a fundamental aspect of capitalism. Renewed readings of Marx, Lenin, and Rosa Luxemburg argue for class struggle against capitalist war as a fundamental aspect of leftist theory.