[ Spectres de Marx, Editions Galiee, Paris, 1993. ]

Derrida's latest book with intriguing title "Marx's Spectres" is an extended version of two longer papers given by the author at the seminar in Riverside with the heading "Where Marxism is going?" in spring 1993. This book is quite unusual, it is a political manifesto and a stern philosophic text at the same time. Here we can find polemics with the writer Francis Fukuyama as well as comments and discussions about Heidegger, Blanchot and Levinas. And about Marx, of course. Derrida reads Marx's texts with extreme attention.

The author believes that his book is a political act and that it basically expresses a political view: "It is not the reading of Marx's text that is the most important. I had started analyzing that particular work a long time ago, so I can say that from the conceptual aspect, all the threads of my other work (actually both of the previous and the recent one) stem from there. What is even more topical and what made me raise my tone when expressing my political standpoint is the fact that there is a growing intolerance which I feel (and I hope I am not the only one) in this euphoric and mocking consensus, the consensus which fills all the discourses, the consensus according to which it is not only the so-called Marxist societies that are falling apart, which is obvious, but Marxism as well. Every reference to Marx became in a way damned. As far as I can make out, it is a matter of an attempt at exorcism, the pledging which deserved to be analyzed but also to be resisted to. My book is, in a way, a book of resistance. It is obviously an inappropriate gesture coming at the wrong time. And the idea of the wrong time is at the very heart of the book. It is the wrong time that splits the present. This is the book which comes at the wrong time and is about the wrong time. Besides, when we do something at the wrong time, don't we hope that we did it at the right time, that is, in the moment when we felt it was necessary to do so? So the book expresses a political viewpoint in a sense".

For most of us, claims Derrida, the certain end of Marxism, or Marxist communism, did not wait for the recent destruction of the Soviet Union and everything else in the world that depended on it, to happen. We have undoubtedly seen all of that in the early 50's. But today nothing stands in our way to be able to claim the return to Marx. "There are very few texts today, maybe there are none, really, that we need more than those of Marx". There is no future without Marx and his heritage, there is no future without some Marx. "However, we live in the world, same would say, in the culture which keeps deeply in itself the signs of that heritage in a direct and obvious way". Marx and Marxism shaped the history of the twentieth century. They made possible the Soviet revolution, as well as fascism and Nazism which emerged as a reaction to the occurrence of communism. And it is quite obvious that we are now living in the future of all that. Derrida does not say that we are only Marx's heirs, but also that it is not possible to wipe out Marx from history. The questions are coming up, interrelated, but they can be summed up as only one: What does "to inherit" mean? When speaking about Marx's heritage, Derrida does not wish to free him from the burden of totalitarianism at all. The totalitarian fate of Marxism is not just a misfortune of history, a misfortune which is terrible but not really dependent on Marx's doctrine. On the contrary, it is inscribed in the very core of Marxism. And that is precisely where Derrida sharpens his analysis: "I am trying to suggest ways of reading which would make a distinction between the totalitarian rules and those which are actually protesting against that totalitarianism within Marx's text, that is, Marx's texts because there is not one Marx's text". For the topic of rules is heterogeneous and contradictory. That is why each heritage expects us to make a choice: to inherit means to find oneself before a secret text that one must decode. To inherit means to take responsibility for making distinctions within the heritage. Inheritance is by no means only a matter of preservation, but is another confirmation of the memory which we leave for the future. It is a call for witnessing and taking action". The spirit of the social criticism, the radical criticism, is spirit of Marxism - it is the enlightenment heritage that Derrida refers to and clearly distinguishes from the other Marx's spirits. Democracy today is threatened by the new world order which is trying to impose itself. "The time is out of joint", a line from "Hamlet" is quoted and the list of the misfortunes of the new order is made: unemployment; massive exclusion of the homeless from any participation in the democratic processes of the state; exile or deportation of numerous refugees, immigrants and people who lost their countries; economic war among different states; the increase of external debt and similar mechanisms which drive the larger part of mankind into hunger and despair; military industry and trade which, in western democracies, are treated as a normal development of scientific research, economics and socialization of work; the spreading of nuclear armament; inter-ethnic wars lead by an archaic phantasm of a community, a state-nation dreaming of its sovereignty, borders, land and blood; the power of phantom states such as the mafia or drugs consortiums. "And just now when some people are hoping to start evangelizing again in the name of the ideals of liberal democracy which should come tru being a noble idea of human history, we should cry out: violence, inequality, exclusion, starvation - economic disaster, has never affected so many people in the history of mankind.

Instead of celebrating the coming of the ideal of liberal democracy and capitalist market in the euphoria of the end of history, we should not ignore macroscopic evidence made up of an infinite number of individual sufferings: there hava never been that many men, women and children that are oppressed, starving and exterminated. "

This mass of men and women, this suffering mankind, Derrida calls "the new International", the International without organization, ideology, party, doctrine, but kept together by its inclinations: it is a non-institutional connection among those people who are still inspired by at least one of Marx's spirits or the spirits of Marxism, in order to unite in a new and concrete way so as to criticize the state of international law, the concepts of state and nation, and to renew the old criticism and make it more radical. It is radical criticism, that is, deconstruction, Derrida wishes to support by the idea of "justice", a deeply moral notion which he separates from judiciary justice. It is precisely justice that the deconstruction relies on. Justice is deconstruction. Today we need the spirit of Marxist criticism more than ever, the spirit which articulates the struggle for democracy; in the moment when democracy is most endangered, we should think again about its axioms and institutions. We should also analyze the current forms of political life, the forms of making decisions in western democracies. It is to do with what Derrida calls "tele-technology", and the analysis of the incredible transformation of information and communication technologies which has a dramatic impact on the functioning of democracy in global terms. This is not a matter of a traditional "engagement". The times have changed. "I have a deep respect for Sartre as well as for all those great intellectuals who are our spiritual fathers and leaders. However, it is precisely becouse of that respect, that I don't think it is possible to take action in the same way as before. The complex game of new technologies and the transformations of public arena ask for new kind of responsibility. It is no longer possible to talk the way we used to do before. And hoping that is not too ambitious on my part, I would like to call for the formation of a new type of intellectual who would be able to get rid of all the established norms of reading, speaking and carrying out interventions". What about Derrida himself? "What about me? Nothing. I do things at the wrong time, that is all. It is true that I haven't got long, solemn, popular public speeches. I only hope that indirectly I am taking part with other people in a general movement which is greater than my vision. "Is he a part of the movement so that he can address the Marx's spirit? So that he can prepare him a nice reception when he shows up? Yes. That is the role of the intellectual. We should again quote Hamlet: "You are a scholar, speak to it"., says Marcellus to Horatio when the ghost appears. You are an intellectual, convince him.

Finally, without getting into deeper critical analysis, we can say that Derrida's book is yet another attempt of his (begun in the mid 80's) at defence against the criticism of nihilism and manipulative cynicism. Derrida takes the ethical standpoint. And at that point, we have to wonder if a deconstructive ethics is at all possible?

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