björn thorsteinsson
Now, if there is a spirit of Marxism which I will never be ready to
renounce, it is [...] a certain emancipatory and messianic affirmation, a
certain experience of the promise that one can try to liberate from any
dogmatics and even from any metaphysico-religious determination,
from any messianism. And a promise must promise to be kept, that is,
not to remain “spiritual” or “abstract,” but to produce events, new
effective forms of action, practice, organization, and so forth. (89/146–
147)In other words: we should inherit, in an active way, the messianic
promise contained in the Marxist doctrine. This means that the prom-
ise cannot make do with remaining on the “spiritual” or “abstract”
level, the promise needs to promise to be kept — but such a formula-
tion quite clearly invites an insistent and poignant question: will it be
kept? And, in any case, what is its content — what is it that it promises,
and in what way can we contribute to its being kept? It is precisely in
relation to this question that Derrida severs himself from Marx — or,
at the very least, from the Marxist tradition. Admitting, as we have
already indicated, that there is always more than one spirit of Marx in
the sense that “inheriting Marx,” like any other inheritance, “is never
a given, it is always a task” (54/94), Derrida feels compelled to choose
between the spirits on offer, as it were, in such a way as to leave out
anything that remotely looks like a determinate content — an ontology,
a system or — that word again — materialism. For, as Derrida writes,
there is, again, a certain “spirit of the Marxist critique, which seems to
be more indispensable than ever today” and needs to be distinguished
“at once from Marxism as ontology, philosophical or metaphysical
system, as ‘dialectical materialism,’ from Marxism as historical mate-
rialism or method, and from Marxism incorporated in the appara-
tuses of the party, State, or workers’ International” (68/116–117).
It is with such a spirit of Marx — which, it must be said, looks rather
skeletal since it has been stripped of most of what is usually associated
with Marxism^13 — that Derrida wants to have commerce. However,
- For a relentless critique of Derrida’s reductive reading of Marxism, as well as
a forceful reply by Derrida to his accusers, see the articles gathered in Michael
Sprinker (ed.), Ghostly Demarcations: A Symposium on Jacques Derrida’s Specters of
Marx, London and New York: Verso, 1999.