"The first capitalist nation was Italy. The close of the feudal Middle Ages & the opening of the modern capitalist era are marked by a colossal figure: an Italian, Dante, both the last poet of the Middle Ages & the first poet of the modern era."

Friedrich Engels

Did Marx base Capital on Dante’s Inferno? http://isj.org.uk/did-marx-base-capital-on-dantes-inferno/

'the moral categories described in the Inferno (force, fraud, treachery, etc) were in common usage among pre-Marxist socialists like Robert Owen, Henri de Saint-Simon and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.'

'Various letters attest that Marx read the Inferno many times. Other writers, including David McNally, have previously noted the similarity between the structure of the two books.'

"They both begin on the surface, and descend beneath this surface. But they also do so in thirty-three chapters, and in four major steps."

“as a new Virgil, Marx tries to guide his readers along the internal connections” of the capitalist mode of production. This metaphorical understanding seems to align Marx with Dante as part of a common European culture"

This is from the Preface to the 1893 Italian edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, London, 1st February 1893 https://twitter.com/robinmonotti/status/1161366306542764033?s=19

Found it in fellow @biourbanism associate @melekaksoy's book called "Plato's Pharmacy"

Also see the full quote of Marx on religion: https://twitter.com/robinmonotti/status/1027198815860862976?s=19

'Capital was ingeniously modelled on Dante’s Inferno, and how Marx, playing the role of Virgil for the proletariat, introduced partisans of workers’ emancipation to the secret depths of social Hell'
http://pcritchley2.wixsite.com/beingandplace/single-post/2016/10/26/DANTE-AND-MARX

"Now, as ever, my maxim is that of the great Florentine [Dante]: Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti. [Go your own way, and let the people talk]."

Karl Marx, Preface to Das Kapital