Ghostly Demarcations by Michael Sprinker; & Terry Eagleton & Fredric Jameson & Antonio Negri & Michael Sprinker

Author:Michael Sprinker; & Terry Eagleton & Fredric Jameson & Antonio Negri & Michael Sprinker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc. (Tier 1)

Contexts and conclusion

Pessimism about the willingness and the ability of the working class to fight for a better society accounts for a great deal of the kind of postmodern theorizing SM contains. Throughout Europe and in the us, intellectuals smugly declare that barricades and street demonstrations, along with the workers who were their protagonists, are relics of the industrial past – fit for prominent display in the museum, perhaps, but not viable for contemporary politics in an allegedly postindustrial age. New forms of struggle and especially new agents of social change, it is claimed, must either be found or theorized into existence. Hence, the perceived need arises for something on the order of Derrida’s New International ‘without common belonging to a class’.

I argued above that the contemporary working class includes both ‘blue collar’ and ‘white collar’ workers, and that the internationalization of capitalism has created a growing international working class. I thereby sought to contest the claim that the working class is increasingly smaller and irrelevant as a social force. I also indicated that divisions among the working class along lines of gender, race, nationality and sexual orientation have traditionally been the object of intense activity and theoretical discussion within Marxism. While recognizing the formidable obstacles encountered, I emphasized that it is possible to overcome such divisions through common struggle. Finally, I argued that only the working class – that is, individuals who may embody a number of specific identities but who act collectively on the basis of their shared interests as workers – possesses the structural capacity both to bring down capitalism and to create socialism. On this view, it is both theoretically and politically necessary to affirm the working class as the primary agent of social transformation.

Derrida’s SM provides a stinging indictment of the contemporary world system, as well as a serious critique of recently published apologies for capitalism. As I have endeavored to show, however, SM also presents an elaborate case for reform socialism over and against revolutionary socialism. This case is based on what, in a friendly spirit, might be termed a ‘misreading’ of the Russian Revolution. Moreover, the main tenet of the case is the repudiation of the notion that the working class remains central to the project of winning socialism.

Among the more astounding dimensions of SM, therefore, surely must figure the social contexts in which the book appears. Derrida suggests a reformist road to socialism precisely at the end of a period in which the political and moral hollowness of traditional social democracy could not be in greater evidence. Socialist parties all over Western Europe, but particularly in France, Spain, Italy and Germany, have failed to preserve – much less extend – the gains for workers once embodied in the so-called ‘welfare state’ (Anderson and Camiller 1994; Ross and Jensen 1994; Camiller 1994; Abse 1994; and Padgett and Paterson 1994). These same Socialist parties have not just collaborated with but in numerous instances have actually initiated the attacks on workers, immigrants and the poor.

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