In order to reapproach the relation between words and things, one important step, as we have seen, is to recognise that there is a manner to how the world unfolds or occurs. Language, as part of the world, also has its manners of expression. Words, phrases and sentences are not inert, they are not presented in a vacuum; they always have a certain quality. Words are spoken loudly, written floridly. As Whitehead puts it: ‘No verbal sentence merely enunciates a proposition. It always includes some incitement for the production of an assigned psychological attitude […] This incitement is conveyed partly by the grammatical mood and tense of the verb’ (Whitehead 1933: 312).

This chapter will attempt to render Karl Marx's work within the problematic relations of words and things that have been raised in previous chapters. Marx's thought will be presented as sharing with Whitehead, Deleuze, Dewey and Irigaray the view that processes are central to existence, and to thinking, speaking and writing about existence. The reading of Marx offered below will focus on the importance of the ‘tone’ or ‘force’ of language. This is not merely a matter of rhetoric. Rather, it points to the need to develop Dewey's emphasis on the manner of existence so that this also applies to the form of language. It is not a question of language being either neutral or biased, describing an objective state of affairs or subjective feelings. These, again, are unnecessary bifurcations. What is required is a recognition of the specific form, the manner, of language. Indeed, this is something advocated by Frege, even as he set out the parameters of analytic philosophy's ‘scientific’ approach, although this aspect of his thought has not received much attention. For Frege, language statements involve not only sense and reference but also tone and force (see Daly 2013: 87–94). Although Marx does not use such terminology, the extent to which his writing manifests different tones, and certainly a force, is striking: for example in the extensive use of theological terms and concepts to describe the operations of capitalism. Such apparently ‘rhetorical’ devices, I will argue, are not to be overlooked, as they are an inherent aspect of the argument and point to the complexity of thinking about words and things.