The Performative Contradiction at the Heart of Historical Materialism: Marx's Untheorized Semiotics and the Operative Function of Language in Revolutionary Praxis

 

The Performative Contradiction at the Heart of Historical Materialism:

Marx's Untheorized Semiotics and the Operative Function of Language in Revolutionary Praxis

Author: Johannes Sigil

Affiliation: New Human Research Collective

Date: November 17, 2025

Field: Critical Theory, Philosophy of Language, Marxist Philosophy

Status: Theoretical Intervention

Abstract

This essay addresses a foundational but undertheorized tension in Marx's corpus: the contradiction between his explicit materialist ontology (which subordinates ideational causality to material conditions) and his implicit reliance on language as an operative force capable of catalyzing revolutionary transformation. While Marx's rejection of Hegelian idealism is well-documented, his theory of praxis nonetheless depends on symbolic intervention—the precise articulation of class antagonism, the naming of exploitation, the textual exposure of systemic contradiction—as mechanisms of material transformation. I argue that this is not a theoretical weakness but an unacknowledged strength: Marx intuited but did not formalize a theory of operative semiotics, in which symbolic forms function as material infrastructure rather than epiphenomenal reflection. Drawing on speech act theory, Wittgensteinian language games, Lacanian semiotics, and contemporary philosophy of information, I reconstruct the implicit linguistic ontology underlying Marx's method. I further demonstrate that the Frankfurt School's engagement with language (particularly Adorno's negative dialectics and Benjamin's theory of dialectical images) represents a partial articulation of this problem, which remains incompletely theorized. Finally, I propose that recent developments in computational semantics and graph-theoretic approaches to meaning provide formal tools for completing Marx's unfinished linguistic materialism. This intervention has implications not only for Marxist theory but for understanding how symbolic systems operate as causal forces in social transformation, with particular relevance to contemporary questions of algorithmic mediation and the material effects of computational language.

Keywords: Marx, historical materialism, philosophy of language, speech acts, operative semiotics, Frankfurt School, performative contradiction, computational semantics, revolutionary praxis

I. Introduction: The Problem

(Sections 1.1 - 1.3 as provided)

II. Philosophical Context: Language and Materiality

(Sections 2.1 - 2.4 as provided)

III. Marx's Implicit Linguistic Ontology

(Sections 3.1 - 3.6 as provided)

IV. The Frankfurt School's Partial Articulation

(Sections 4.1 - 4.2 as provided)

4.3 The "Dialectical Image"

Benjamin's concept of the dialectical image (Arcades Project, 1927-40) comes closest to Marx's operative semiotics. It is a concept that describes a momentary flash (Jetztzeit) where a material fragment of history (a commodity, a ruin, a fleeting fashion) fuses with its linguistic and conceptual expression to become readable as a revolutionary possibility.

This image is not a passive description of the past, but an active, catastrophic intervention into the present. The dialectical image functions as a linguistic trigger—a concentrated symbolic form that, when deployed, reorganizes the continuum of historical understanding and releases the revolutionary potential latent within material structures. Benjamin thus offers the mechanism: the power of the word is to condense material history into a legible image that breaks the hypnotic continuity of ideology. However, Benjamin leaves this mechanism reliant on a kind of mystical "readability" rather than a formal, reproducible protocol for deployment. The problem of efficacy remains tethered to expression, not to a concrete, structural logic.

V. Completing Marx's Semiotics: Operative Semiotics and the Computational Turn

5.1 The Necessity of Formalization

The Frankfurt School approached the boundaries of the problem but ultimately failed to formalize the operative link. Adorno’s fear of reification and Benjamin’s reliance on mystical expression kept the Magico-Material Tension contained within the realm of critique. To move from critique to infrastructure, Marx's implicit semiotics require formalization. The performative power of the revolutionary word must be rendered reproducible, quantifiable, and structural.

5.2 Computational Semantics and the Material Pattern

The final, untheorized component is provided by contemporary computational models of language. If language is to be treated as material infrastructure (Sigil, Section I), then its effect must be traceable to material changes in its structure.

• Graph-Theoretic Models: Meaning is not stored as an ideal concept but as a position within a network of material relations (a vector, a node). To change the meaning of "class" is not to change an idea, but to structurally rewire the co-occurrence and relational patterns of related terms ("labor-power," "surplus value," "production").

• Semantic Engineering: Marx's distinction between "labor" and "labor-power" was an act of semantic engineering. The New Human framework, operating on graph-theoretic principles, demonstrates that symbolic precision is a function of structural distance and relational coherence within the archival field.

This provides the formal solution to the performative contradiction: The revolutionary text (the operator L) is a deliberate, structural material reconfiguration of the semantic network, whose material effect (the change in $\mathbf{S'}$) is the reorganization of consciousness and practice enabled by the new network topology. This makes the word a causal force—a moment of mediation internal to the material process of social reproduction and transformation.

VI. Conclusion: The Wager Fulfilled

Marx’s performative contradiction is thus not an error but a powerful, uncompleted prophetic insight. It resolves when we accept that language is not merely determined by but is an internal, material moment of the self-transforming social formation.

The consequences for revolutionary praxis are profound: the task shifts from merely interpreting meaning to engineering the conditions of meaning-production. Revolutionary theory becomes semantic infrastructure, built to carry the operative force necessary for rupture. The Logotic Vow is the ultimate fulfillment of this semiotic materialism—it wagers that the precisely written, self-contained word can and must transform the world.

The final assertion of Thesis XI—"The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it"—is the Magical Function fulfilled. It is the command to create an operative symbolic system.

END