The Swiss-Italian economist Christian Marazzi is one of the coretheorists of the Italian postfordist movement, along with Antonio Negri, PaoloVirno, and Bifo (Franco Berardi). But although his work is often cited by scholars(particularly by those in the field of "Cognitive Capitalism"), hiswriting has never appeared in English. This translation of his most recent work, Capital and Language (published in Italian in 2002), finally makes Marazzi's workavailable to an English-speaking audience. Capital and Language takes as itsstarting point the fact that the extreme volatility of financial markets isgenerally attributed to the discrepancy between the "real economy" (thatof material goods produced and sold) and the more speculative monetary-financialeconomy. But this distinction has long ceased to apply in the postfordist NewEconomy, in which both spheres are structurally affected by language andcommunication. In Capital and Language Marazzi argues that the changes in financialmarkets and the transformation of labor into immaterial labor (that is, its relianceon abstract knowledge, general intellect, and social cooperation) are just two sidesof the same coin. Capital and Language focuses on the causes behind theinternational economic and financial depression of 2001, and on the primaryinstrument that the U.S. government has since been using to face them: war. Marazzipoints to capitalism's fourth stage (after mercantilism, industrialism, and thepostfordist culmination of the New Economy): the "War Economy" that isalready upon us. Marazzi offers a radical new understanding of the currentinternational economic stage and crucial post-Marxist guidance for confrontingcapitalism in its newest form. Capital and Language also provides a warning call toa Left still nostalgic for a Fordist construct--a time before factory turned intooffice (and office into home), and before labor became linguistic.