Notes on Community and the Common in Marx

Abstract

Marx’s name evokes a crossroads at which practical and theoretical paths convergethat had rarely crossed until his irruption on the historical scene, first inthe West and then worldwide. Marx, the proper name, and signature, remindsus of this intersection of paths that is both the point of arrival of unprecedentedconvergences and the starting point of certainly divergent alternatives.Marxian thought exposes this plurality of options and demands to be interpreted,taking into account the different directions involved in its march. Forthis reason, and in view of its complex and changing condition, it has alwaysrepresented a challenge to simple, linear, and uniform reading procedures. Itscharacter as an event has to do with the deep and lasting transformations ithas brought about in recent history, but also with the interruptions that areconstitutive of it, with the cuts and breaks, with the joints and detours, withthe deliberately ambiguous or undecidable choices that make its trajectory adiscontinuous movement.