Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction: What is Antagonism?
- 1 ‘What's Going on with Being?’: Laclau and the Return of Political Ontology
- Part I Thinking the Political
- 2 Marx on the Beach: An Intellectual History of Antagonism
- 3 Beyond the ‘War Hypothesis’: Polemology in Foucault, Stiegler and Loraux
- Part II Thinking Politics
- Part III Politicising Thought
- Conclusion: Ostinato Rigore, or, the Ethics of Intellectual Engagement
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Marx on the Beach: An Intellectual History of Antagonism
from Part I - Thinking the Political
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 September 2018
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction: What is Antagonism?
- 1 ‘What's Going on with Being?’: Laclau and the Return of Political Ontology
- Part I Thinking the Political
- 2 Marx on the Beach: An Intellectual History of Antagonism
- 3 Beyond the ‘War Hypothesis’: Polemology in Foucault, Stiegler and Loraux
- Part II Thinking Politics
- Part III Politicising Thought
- Conclusion: Ostinato Rigore, or, the Ethics of Intellectual Engagement
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
‘The Final Law of Being’
In August 1880 Karl Marx received a visitor in Ramsgate, the English seaside resort where Marx and his family spent their summer vacation: John Swinton, a reporter for the New York based journal The Sun. Surprisingly, in the article where Swinton presents his account of the meeting he has little to say about political issues. Perhaps he was all too overawed and humbled by his meeting with the famous revolutionary. Instead, Swinton reports impressions from Marx's family life in the form of a domestic tale. A key moment in this narrative is his depiction of a family picnic on the beach and of the events that followed. As the evening dawned, the male members of the Marx family went on a promenade walk with their visitor. After an hour of chatting Swinton worked up the courage to pose a question which, he thought, could only be answered by a ‘sage’ like Marx – a question regarding the very ground of being:
Over the thought of the babblement and rack of the age and the ages, over the talk of the day and the scenes of the evening, arose in my mind one question touching upon the final law of being, for which I would seek answer from this sage. Going down to the depth of language, and rising to the height of emphasis, during an interspace of silence, I interrogated the revolutionist and philosopher in these fateful words, ‘What is?’ And it seemed as though his mind were inverted for a moment while he looked upon the roaring sea in front and the restless multitude upon the beach. ‘What is?’ I had inquired, to which, in deep and solemn tone, he replied: ‘Struggle!’ (Marx [1880] 1985: 443)
This, of course, is an entirely apocryphal Marx. We do not know with certainty whether Marx, on this summer evening in 1880, responded to the inquiry regarding the ground of being with the word ‘Struggle!’. Nonetheless, the Swinton text is remarkable. It draws its importance from indicating to us the shape of a Marxian ontology, that is a Marxist theory of being-as-being (rather than the conventional Marxist anthropology of being-aslabour).
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- Information
- Thinking AntagonismPolitical Ontology after Laclau, pp. 37 - 62Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2018