Marx and Mendacity: Can There Be a Politics without Hypocrisy?

Abstract: As demonstrated by Marx’s fierce defence of his integrity when anonymously accused of lying in 1872, he was a principled believer in both personal honesty and the value of truth in politics. Whether understood as enabling an accurate, ‘scientific’ depiction of the contradictions of the present society or a normative image of a truly just society to come, truth-telling was privileged by Marx over hypocrisy as a political virtue. Contemporary Marxists like Alain Badiou continue this tradition, arguing that revolutionary politics should be understood as a ‘truth procedure’. Drawing on the alternative position of political theorists such as Hannah Arendt, who distrusted tin; monologic and absolutist implications of a strong notion of truth in politics, this paper defends the role that hypocrisy and mendacity, understood in terms of lots of little lies rather than one big one, can play in a pluralist politics, in which, pace Marx, rhetoric, opinion and the clash of values resist being subsumed under a singular notion of the truth.

Object Details

• Location: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
• Extent: Online-Ressource
• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Marx and Mendacity: Can There Be a Politics without Hypocrisy? ; volume:37 ; number:1-2 ; year:2015 ; pages:5-22 ; extent:18 ; Analyse & Kritik ; 37, Heft 1-2 (2015), 5-22 (gesamt 18)

Contributors, Places and Time

• Creator: Jay, Martin

Further information

• DOI: 10.1515/auk-2015-1-203
• URN: urn:nbn:de:101:1-2404171646544.181441777209
• Rights: Open Access; Der Zugriff auf das Objekt ist unbeschränkt möglich.
• Last update: 14.08.2025, 10:58 AM CEST