Chapter Four The Marxist Tradition
Two Marxists converse with us about
language
‘There is no Marxist philosophy of language’ is a
paradoxical thing to say. It is clear that, within
Marxism or Marxisms, there is no body of constituted
doctrine in linguistic matters in the same way that
there is for other fields, like political economy or
even (to a certain extent) aesthetics. This has at least
one advantage: we are not labouring under the weight
of a dogma when it comes to language. And it is also
a disadvantage: there is no tradition of debate on the
issue between Marxists. This has deleterious political
consequences. It leads to abandoning the field of
language to our opponents, who have occupied it to
their satisfaction: the ideology of communication has
thus duly invaded politics, where it constitutes an
essential weapon; it has informed the spontaneous
philosophies of scientists in the field; and it has
infected existing philosophies of language.
But there is another aspect to the paradox. For it
is wrong to say that there has never been a book or
opuscule devoted by Marxists to the philosophy of
language. The book by Voloshinov-Bakhtin, which I
shall deal with in the next chapter, carries precisely
such a title, as does Stalin’s pamphlet.^1 And a(^1) See Voloshinov 1973 and Stalin 1973.