Marxism without Marxism

Abstract

Contends that Jacques Derrida's Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International (1993) is the political project of a "man of the Left." It is suggested that Derrida's Algerian background influences both his association with the antihumanism of Marxism & the institutional nature of deconstruction. Although he claims deconstruction is of no interest except as a radicalization, Derrida must know it has not functioned in any way like radicalized Marxism, but rather as an inferior kind of textual politics at a time when academic leftists needed a new form of dissent. The two sides of deconstruction -- reformist & ultraleftist -- are examined, & notions of deconstructed Marxism are compared to Marxist revisionism. It is suggested that Marxism has become more appealing to Derrida because of its marginality & the unattractiveness of political alternatives, maintaining that he is not concerned with an effective socialism, but angered by liberal-capitalist complacency. Derrida's avoidance of the real historical/theoretical manifestations of Marxism are examined, along with the critical, negative nature of his politics, & the absence of ontology or method within his "New International.". J. Lindroth