Labor, Poverty, and Migration

Abstract

In the previous chapter, I claimed that language or discourse is what power fears most. Of course, language also means thinking, and discourse means theory. In an important and famous passage of the introduction to the critique of G. W. F. Hegel’s philosophy of right, Karl Marx says, “The weapon of criticism obviously cannot replace the criticism of weapons. Material force must be overthrown by material force. But theory also becomes a material force once it has gripped the masses” (1994a: 34). Not only is theory a material force, but it is also the only force available to radical thinking that is superior to the force of the state and the system as a whole. This is so because true theory is based on ethics, which is the truth of justice and the truth in general. It does not serve the particularistic interests of a group of people, a class, or a caste, but it has universal outlook and scope. The distinction between the true and the false hinges on it. As an example, we can think about the truth that the poverty of labor is nothing but the result of exploitation and the exclusion from the wealth it produces.