Abstract

Derrida’s deconstruction of Marx works upon the insistence on the presence of the ghost of Marx that continues to haunt the present time of capitalism. When Marx unleashed “the specter of communism” that was to haunt Europe in 1848, a common holy alliance was forged to conjure away this specter, the ghost of communism. By summoning all the powers of the capital, the specter must be put to death and all its effects exorcised so as to preserve the hegemony of the holy capitalist alliance — the symbol of old Europe. It is the exorcism of this ghost of Marx and of communism that was to characterize the struggles within the last century (the 20th) as the century of Marxism.