Both a unique witness of transformative events in the late 20th century, and a prescient analysis of our present economic crises from a major French philosopher, Michel Henry's From Communism to Capitalism adds an important economic dimension to his earlier social critique. It begins by tracing the collapse of communist regimes back to their failure to implement Marx's original insights into the irreplaceable value of the living individual. Henry goes on to apply this same criticism to the surviving capitalist economic systems, portending their eventual and inevitable collapse.

The influence of Michel Henry's radical revision of phenomenological thought is only now beginning to be felt in full force, and this edition is the first English translation of his major engagement with socio-economic questions. From Communism to Capitalism reinterprets politics and economics in light of the failure of socialism and the pervasiveness of global capitalism, and Henry subjects both to critique on the basis of his own philosophy of life. His notion of the individual is one that, as subjective affect, subtends both Marxist collectivism and liberalism simultaneously. In addition to providing a crucial economic elaboration of Henry's influential social critiques, this work provides a context for understanding the 2008 financial shock and offers important insights into the political motivations behind the 'Arab spring'.

Michel Henry (10 January 1922–3 July 2002) was a French philosopher and novelist. He wrote five novels and numerous philosophical works. He also lectured at universities in France, Belgium, the United States of America, and Japan.

The work of Michel Henry is based on phenomenology, which is the science of the phenomenon. The English/German/Latinate word "phenomenon" comes from the Greek "phainomenon" which means "that which shows itself by coming into the light".The everyday understanding of phenomenon as appearance is only possible as a negative derivation of this authentic sense of Greek self-showing. The object of phenomenology is not however something that appears, such as a particular thing or phenomena, but the act of appearing itself. Henry's thought led him to a reversal of Husserl's phenomenology, which acknowledges as phenomenon only the appearance of the world, or the exteriority. Henry counterposed this conception of phenomenality with a radical phenomenology of life.