This dialogue with Marx continues the inquiry opened in the previous essay. It is a living conversation, and I expect it to change as the climate of the work changes.

Marx: – “You have severed praxis from history. If praxis is no longer the engine of historical movement, then what remains of materiality? What prevents your actor from becoming a bourgeois individual floating above the forces that shape the world?”

Marshall: – “I have not severed praxis from history. I have severed it from historical necessity.

“Materiality remains – but not as a determinant. It appears as the prevailing conditions in which the self must act when legitimacy decays. The actor does not float above these conditions; the actor is pressed by them, shaped by them, wounded by them. But the actor is not produced by them.

“You tied praxis to the movement of history. I tie praxis to the collapse of the practico‑inert – to the moment when inherited structures no longer organise action.

“Materiality remains. Materialism does not.”

Marx: – “You have made praxis contingent. If praxis is only a horizon, a possibility, a contingent emergence, then how can it resist domination? How can it transform the world rather than merely endure it?”

Marshall: – “Contingency is not weakness. Contingency is the truth of action once legitimacy collapses. Domination is not resisted by necessity. It is resisted by authentic action under pressure, taken without guarantees. You believed contradiction would produce its own resolution. I do not. Contradiction produces exposure, not destiny. It reveals the climate in which action must occur, but it does not dictate the outcome.

“And as for transformation: the dominion of praxis is not knowable in our current historical state. Within the prevailing conditions of An Aimsir, we cannot say what praxis can or cannot transform. We can only say that it becomes possible when the world no longer guarantees coherence.”

Marx: – “You have removed class. Without class, without collective subjects, without the movement of production, how can you speak of history at all? Have you not reduced history to biography?”

Marshall: – “No. I have not removed class. I have removed the guarantee that class is the subject of history. Collective action remains. Identification with class remains. But in the present climate, these appear primarily as responses to Wounding – as attempts to find shelter, coherence, or protection when legitimacy decays. I have not denied the collective. I have denied that its destiny is knowable.

“History is not biography. History is the accumulation of actions taken by selves navigating the decay of legitimacy – sometimes individually, sometimes collectively, always under pressure.”

Marx: – “You have abandoned teleology. Without teleology, how can contradiction be resolved? How can history move forward?”

Marshall: – “Contradiction does not resolve. Contradiction reveals. It reveals the collapse of legitimacy. It reveals the weakening of the practico‑inert. It reveals the conditions in which the self must act.

“History does not move forward. History accumulates. It accumulates the actions taken by selves acting authentically within the pressures of Wounding. It accumulates the consequences of actions taken without guarantees.

“Teleology is not needed. The world moves because actors act – not because history demands it.”

Marx: – “Then what becomes of revolution? If praxis is not the engine of history, if the group is not the subject, if contradiction does not resolve, then what remains of transformation?”

Marshall: – “Transformation remains – but not as destiny.

“Revolution is not the inevitable outcome of contradiction. Revolution is the rare moment when enough actors act authentically within the same prevailing conditions, under the same pressures, through the same Wounding, and their actions accumulate into structural change.

“Revolution is not the telos of history. Revolution is the event that becomes possible when legitimacy decays and actors act without the practico‑inert to guide them. You saw revolution as the culmination of necessity. I see revolution as the emergence of possibility.

“Transformation remains. But it is not guaranteed. It is not promised. It is not destined. It is simply what can happen when actors act authentically in a world that no longer holds.”

David Marshall
Montory
April 2026

Reader‑facing interpretation: Marx – What the Dialogue Reveals (opens in new tab)