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Marx as Ally: Deleuze outside Marxism, Adjacent Marx

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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2012

Aldo Pardi
Affiliation:
Université Lille III
Dhruv Jain
Affiliation:
York University, Canada
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Summary

Abstract

Deleuze reworks Marxist concepts in order to identify those that represent discontinuity and produce a theory of revolution. Marx is important because, along with Spinoza and Nietzsche, he is a part of a project to leave behind concepts such as transcendence and univocity which underlie the totalitarianism of traditional philosophy. Deleuze is looking for concepts that might form a different theory, within which the structures of production are not organised vertically by the domination of universal concepts, such as ‘being’ or ‘essence’, but flow horizontally through a multiplicity of relations of conceptual singularity. The production of a different series of concepts is a strategic and tactical operation that, in confronting prior notions of transcendental philosophy, turns philosophy itself into a battlefield. Marx provides the general methodology for this tactical approach through two fundamental categories: production and conflict. Deleuze practises Marx's theoretical method and by using Marx's own central concepts challenges traditional Marxism, to arrive at a totally different and revolutionary philosophical structure based on concepts such as those of force, variation, difference, singularity, production and the war machine.

Keywords: Conflict, production, forces, linking, battlefield, substance, immanence, transformation

Marx is at our side. That is to say, to reconstruct a thought worthy of a possible revolution means to cross the threshold of Marx. He has always been thought of as the eldest brother who, representing the beginning of a lineage, assigned and distributed roles and positions within a family tree.

Type
Chapter
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Deleuze and Marx
Deleuze Studies 2009 (Supplement)
, pp. 53 - 77
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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