"Perhaps it's the _pluralism_ of Derrida's call for a new International that has you spooked?"
charles, don't try to tar me with that old line about marxists being afraid of pluralism, as if derrida's so-called pluralism weren't just the obverse of his dogmatic opposition to all actually existing marxisms, no matter what their historical origins and effects. "for many of us the question has the same age as we do [i.e. "whither marxism?"]. in particular for those who, and this was also my case, opposed, to be sure, _defacto_ 'marxism' or 'communism' (the soviet union, the international of the communist parties, and everything that resulted from them, which is to say so very many things) . . ." (spectres 14). so here's the guy who has always insisted on nuanced analysis, on heterogeneity and differance, on de-sedimenting the orthodox ideas handed down in the archive, on rejecting binary oppositions, telling us, in fact, that whatever calls itself a democracy or pluralist is already better than whatever does or did call itself communist or marxist. is he kidding? whatever happened to his self righteous harangue in his open letter to rob nixon and anne mclintock, about distinguishing, but remembering the relationship between word and history? "no, what i find repulsive is the thing [in this case, apartheid] that history has linked to the word, which is why i propose keeping the word so that the history will not be forgotten. don't separate word and history!" ("but, beyond . . ." [in race writing and difference] 358). so what does derrida know about the history of the soviet union? what does he have to know? should it take more than a mention of chile to remind him that actually existing marxism and "pluralism" and "democracy" aren't categorially, historically opposed? by what fiat of the imagination is "democracy" under suharto or yeltsin better or different than "communism" under castro or allende? where's the deconstruction of that? put simply, how could he be *less* skeptical about cold war ideology and its smug condescension about the virtues of so-called liberalism?
as for the international's pluralism, here's what derrida has to say: "barely deserving the name community, the new international belongs only to anonymity. but this responsibility appears today, at least within the limits of an intellectual and academic field, to return _more imperatively_ and, let us say so as not to exclude anyone, _by priority, in urgency_ to those who, during the last decades, managed to _resist_ a certain hegemony of Marxist dogma, indeed of its metaphysics, in its political or theoretical forms" (all emphasis, jd's; spectres 90). but what marxist dogma? althusser? althusserians? and why issue this special call to all the people who have "resisted" this "dogma"? i mean, he says that the international belongs to anonymity, and then insists on, once again, drawing up this historical table of personae--one the one hand, the bad old marxist dogmatists, and on the other hand, all those brave boa deconstructors who are busy being fluid, differant, heterogenous, etc. in other words, the spectre that haunts the "new international" is the spectre of some old, bad, orthodox marxism that derrida is so confident existed exactly as the liberal media have represented it that he never questions that image, looks at that history, or even thinks its necessary to. did he ever read lenin? i mean read lenin like he reads schmitt or heidegger? hardly. but then, he's pretty confident--and rightly so, given his readership--that he needn't do so.
again, i don't stake any claim to being a "real" marxist, or knowing what one is. but i know that calling for this international hardly does more, in my mind, than establish derrida as an unreconstructed cold warrior, rather than make some serious rapproachment with marxism.
i'll get back to you on the analysis of captial/ surplus/ etc.
best christian