Conclusion

Abstract

Jacques Derrida points out that the first noun in The Communist Manifesto is “specter.” From Marx’s times to our own, forces of reaction have wanted to exorcise the specter of Communism, but Derrida makes clear that Marx himself also wants the ghost, the spirit of communism, to disappear, to be replaced with the living reality of the revolution. In characteristic fashion, Derrida opposes Marx’s ontology, materialist in nature, and dependent on a metaphysic of presence, with a “hauntology” of his own, a kind of ghost-driven ethics:

If he loves justice at least, the “scholar” of the future, the “intellectual” of tomorrow should learn it from the ghost […]. Even if it is in oneself, in the other, in the other in oneself: they are always there, specters, even if they do not exist, even if they are no longer, even if they are not yet. (Specters 176)