a threat to one another. This situation is due to a phenomenon of alienation
(‘We are so estranged from our human essence...’), of which everyday language
is the product and the expression: the only language that could serve as a
social bond is the alienated language of objects, of ‘material values’. Alternatively
put, we become speakers, and hence subjects, only in so far we accept to
alienate ourselves in a language of objects, which the language-system – an
external entity that imposes its constraints of meaning on us – embodies. There
is a second inversion here: the interiority of human beings – subjective
consciousness – is the product of an externality, the alienated language that
interpellates human subjects to their places. Obviously, I am translating this
old text into a subsequent language, that of a theory of ideology (whose
Althusserian origin will not have escaped readers). But, for me, this text is of
the utmost importance for what appears in it by way of anticipation: the
possibility of radical break with what I have called the dominant philosophy
of language.
The second illustration is drawn from The German Ideology. The texts are
well known and have often been commented on. In them language is described
as ‘the immediate actuality of thought’,^32 ‘practical, real consciousness’:
The ‘mind’ is from the outset afflicted with the curse of being ‘burdened’
with matter, which here makes its appearance in the form of agitated layers
of air, sounds, in short, of language. Language is as old as consciousness,
language ispractical, real consciousness that exists for other men as well,
and only therefore does it also exist for me; language, like consciousness,
only arises from the need, the necessity, of intercourse with other men.
Where there exists a relationship, it exists for me: the animal does not ‘relate’
itself to anything, it does not ‘relate’ itself at all. For the animal its relation
to others does not exist as a relation. Consciousness is, therefore, from the
very beginning a social product, and remains so as long as men exist at all.^33In this famous passage, we find the totality of what now feature as Marx’s
‘theses’ on language: the stress on the materiality of language; the stress on
language’s character as a social practice (the text seems to be unjust on the
subject of my cat, with whom I have the most affectionate relations and who,
The Marxist Tradition • 93(^32) Marx and Engels 1976, p. 446.
(^33) Marx and Engels 1976, pp. 43–4.