JASPER BECKER in Beijing Communism is not dead and China has an important role to play in the development of Marxism, French philosopher Jacques Derrida said yesterday.
Speaking to a packed lecture hall in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the left-wing founder of the school of "deconstruction" attacked the notion that the democratic revolutions in Russia and Eastern Europe had killed off communism.
"It's not over yet, we are not at the end of history" he said, referring to Francis Fukuyama's book The End of History, which predicted the end of ideological debate in favour of the market economy and liberal democracy.
"Marxism exists in a multiplicity of forms. The Chinese interpretation of Marxism is one of the most important interpretations and evidence of the legacy of Marxism."
Left-wing French philosophy including the works of Sartre, Barthes, Kristeva, Foucault and the entire post-modern movement, has been the vogue among Chinese intellectuals.
The authors' contributions have inspired Chinese political philosophers as they try to combat American influences and work towards a redefinition of Marxism in a country fervently embracing capitalism.
Professor Derrida, who became famous while teaching at the Sorbonne in the early 1960s, was invited to China by the French Embassy and has already been welcomed at Beijing University. Next week he will lecture in Shanghai and Hong Kong.
The professor argued the "spectre" or "phantom" of communism still hung over the world.
"Who can say when it will reappear or in what form," he said, launching into a discussion about messianism and beliefs in the return of a messiah.
Marxism could also reappear in many forms, he said, pointing out that the texts of Marx had already been re-interpreted and adopted by different cultures including China's, and this process would continue.
The key question Professor Derrida posed was how to retain the theory of Marxism but "without reproducing the misery that humanity experienced during the 20th century in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and China".
He also argued that Marxism was a necessary tool to criticise capitalism in its many new forms.
In his efforts to argue that Marxism was still relevant and could take many forms, Professor Derrida said they somewhat resembled the notions expressed by the "Three Representatives", which say the party must be representative of the most advanced production forces, cultural forces and the fundamental interests of the majority.
Asked about the role of the intellectual in safeguarding human rights, Professor Derrida argued it was the responsibility of intellectuals to affirm the importance of human rights but also to keep questioning the actions and intentions of those who act in its name and who define it. The answer may have disappointed some of those who hoped the Frenchman would have made an outright condemnation of such policies as Nato's intervention in Kosovo.