In his Bi-centenary, Karl Marx is 200 Times More Lethal
This year we celebrate 200 years of Karl Marx and 170 years of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, the first pamphlet jointly produced by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels that critically analysed the capitalist society from the proletarian viewpoint and revealed to the working class its role and responsibility – not only of understanding the multiple nuances of the present society, but also to change it, radically and mercilessly, to bring forth the rule of the working class throughout the world.
Karl Marx is a threat to the existence of the present order, the system in which a handful of parasite rich lives by exploiting the labour of the broad masses of people, who are subjected to the most miserable and dreaded living condition. Thus, the system that rules the world is still scared of Karl Marx, because he spelled the doom of the system and his followers are carrying forward that legacy, that very weapon which will end the tyranny of capital – the revolution of the poor, the workers and the peasants.
It’s indeed a fact that after a brief stint in the 20th century, the socialist system that existed in countries like the Soviet Union (between 1917 to 1956) and China (between 1949 to 1976), is not existing on the surface of the earth anymore. The pseudo-socialist system that exists in few of the countries like China, Cuba, Laos, DPR Korea or Vietnam, are far from the socialist model that Marx, Lenin or Mao Zedong promoted. Everywhere the parliamentary communists are enthralled and captivated by the sheen of bourgeois democracy, which they considered the holiest of all path to socialism.
Though the bourgeoisie would deliberately avoid referring Karl Marx as a revolutionary and merely call him an economist and philosopher, the Wikipedia (one of the principal sources of knowledge for the youth globally) will call him names, the capitalist press will continuously mock him, even after reiterating for the nth time that his ideology has died, Karl Marx is still very relevant to the present day. He is relevant because the bourgeoisie are vehemently discarding him, attacking him and calling him a failure even now, when they themselves have declared his ideology as a “dead ideology”. Their bluffs are not able to protect their carefully erected sand castle of lies. Marxism isn’t leaving it intact anyways.
Grossly neglecting the claims made by the corporate media and the education system built by the bourgeoisie to nurture the manpower that can help them maximise profit, numerous instances every year testify the fact that Marx asserted – the capitalist system has failed and it needs an immediate overthrow all over the world, piece-by-piece. The fear and anxiety exhibited by the ruling classes globally over the theory of Marx, the hatred spewed against Marx and his teachings by the likes of highly-paid professors, journalists, mainstream politicians of all hues and even by a section of the so-called “Marxists” now testify clearly that the teachings of Marx have the potential to change the system, by inciting a rebellion of the working class against the capitalist parasites, who have more or less socialised production process and made themselves absolutely irrelevant in the entire production mechanism.
As laissez faire transformed into monopoly and finance capital, i.e. the stage of imperialism, following the route of centralisation of capital, which Marx foresaw while he was analysing the genesis and the trajectory of capital in his historic work – The Capital, the class struggle turned acute and the weak points in the chain of imperialist order started appearing. With the cannon shots of the October Bolshevik Revolution, the working class of Russia hammered and broke free of capitalism in 1917, a century ago, and then the Chinese followed the same path through a tortuous course of the revolutionary struggle to free themselves from colonialism and feudalism in 1949.
In the late 1940s, one-sixth of the world’s population was living under the banner of socialism, following the ideology set in motion by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Despite such a major victory against fascism in the Second World War, despite the valour shown by the communist guerillas in China and Korea against the US imperialism and its appendages, the bourgeoisie managed to reverse the gains of the proletarian class by sponsoring silent counter-revolutions, starting with Tito’s capitalist inclination, followed by the Soviet renegades under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev and others usurping power in the Soviet Union after the death of Stalin and then turning the first state of the working class into its opposite, a bourgeois state, with a socialist mask.
The influence of the revisionist victory in Soviet Union and the restoration of capitalism in place of socialism brought similar changes all over Eastern Europe, and though the Chinese tried to thwart a similar attempt of counter-revolution by a group of capitalist roaders who were seated at the highest positions in their party and the state, they could not hold the victory of the first phase of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) as the capitalist roaders usurped power officially after Mao’s death and turned China into a capitalist state quite soon.
Since 1992, when the Soviet Union collapsed due to the internal contradictions between the Russian ruling class and when China tore the mask of state-capitalism, the US imperialism and its followers have been calling the neo-liberal, globalised, greed-driven imperialist order as the perfect and the final stage of human society. From George Bush Sr. to Donald Trump, all chieftains of American imperialism have claimed that “communism” and “Marxism” are buried deep and they are gone forever, never to return back.
But even after writing off this theory as a dead one, they were forced to shell out money to wipe off the history of communist revolution and to distort the ideology of Marxism. They have been paying people from CIA funds to do caricature of Marxism and to vilify it with all new allegations. They call Marxism dead and yet plan to fight Marxists globally, because only in the Marxists they see a true threat to their hegemony.
Though a gloom has captivated the minds of those who call themselves “Marxists” since the advent of a new, unipolar and the US-ruled world order, as they started doubting the potential of Marxism, following the incessant propaganda by the bourgeois media about the death of “communism”, the behaviour of the rulers clearly shows that they are still scared of the “spectre of communism”, about which Marx and Engels wrote 170 years ago.
The constant state spying on citizens, the efforts to dislodge the working class’ unity, the incessant activities to bad mouth communists and the ideology of socialism and alike the mid 19th century, using the term “left” as a slang against any political opponent, and several other practices show that the rich rulers of the world are scared of Marx, because in him they see their death, their utmost destruction.
In the present era, imperialism itself is in a grave crisis and it’s unable to create such bubbles that can provide an ample amount of speculative bandwidth to multiply capital. Hence, capitalism, driven by its inherent desire to maximise profit through speculation and financial investments, is putting money and resources to create things, which have no material value for the society.
Hence, we can see the Bitcoin revolution, which the bourgeois class is promoting as a lucrative speculative industry and drawing investment from all over the world. We can see the absolute apathy for the environmental cause and the cause of life in the planet exhibited by the big corporations who are plundering natural resources of the world by aggressive deforestation, destruction of traditional livelihood, pollution of water bodies and by emitting harmful gases. Capitalism is rendering this planet lifeless and destroying the environment that has sustained human beings for hundred thousand years.
The world is divided into two parts in the present era; on one hand, we have the cities of the world, i.e. the countries of Europe and North America that are generally in the advanced capitalist stage, on the other hand, we have the countries of Asia-Africa and South America, which is called the countryside of the world, where these Western countries have established their neo-colonial rule under the patronage of the US imperialism.
In the Manifesto of the Communist Party, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels spoke about Germany as the country where the centre of the revolution was lying and they anticipated the revolution to break out in Germany and other advanced capitalist countries of Europe simultaneously. However, with the advent of the imperialist stage of capitalism and due to the uneven development of the capitalist economy in Europe due to the uneven occupation of colonies, the centre of the revolution shifted to Russia and later to China. Since the 1940s, the centre of the revolution had shifted from Europe to Asia-Africa and South America following the Chinese revolution. Massive flames of anti-imperialist struggle flared-up in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Argentina, Bolivia, Congo, etc. India too woke up and began a great revolutionary movement to free itself from the bondage of feudalism and semi-colonial oppression, however, the struggle prolonged in this country due to incessant blows of revisionist treachery and due to the adverse international conditions, which are unprecedented in nature.
Despite all attempts by the US imperialism and its puppets throughout the world to deviate the working class from the ideology of Marxism, which is a very lethal weapon to defeat imperialism, the proletariats, who are facing extreme and unbounded oppression and exploitation at the hands of the bourgeoisie, are slowly reorganising themselves in each and every country, fighting against the peculiar conditions that exist in their homeland. With the rich one per cent of Indians owning 75 per cent of the country’s resources and with 60 per cent population living below $1.00 a day, the Indian workers and peasants are also brewing in class hatred against their class enemies.
Though all mainstream parliamentary political parties of all hues try to keep high the faith of the working class and the peasantry of India on the parliamentary system and constitutional redressal mechanism, the poor of the country started seeing the similarity between all hues of political parties and started understanding their sheer opportunism. The centre of the world revolution has shifted to India in the late 1970s as it became the largest haven of imperialist plunder in the world; a lucrative destination for global finance and monopoly capital to invest and reap super profit from.
Even when India is plundered by the foreign imperialist powers in connivance with the local, indigenous comprador and bureaucratic capitalists, the Indian working class and the peasantry are unable to resist this plunder and loot due to the lack of unity among the revolutionary class itself. A breach, which is utilised by the fascist Hindutva camp to divide the working class and the peasantry on religious and caste lines and then ignite the flames of fratricidal riots among them to keep them at bay from their common enemies, the foreign finance and monopoly capital, big Indian comprador bourgeoisie and the feudal landlords.
Their bait is paying-off well and the Hindutva fascists, in connivance with the Brahminical Indian state machinery is trying to undo each and every right that the working class and the common people have won through their hard struggles against the colonial rulers and the oppressive neo-colonial rulers.
Today, the Hindutva rulers of India spew venom at every step of public discourse against Marxism, as Marx and Marxism, with Leninism and Mao Zedong’s Thought as its highest development, stands as the only lethal weapon that has the potential to defeat and decimate the Hindutva terrorist-fascists ideologically, organisationally and politically. This sole reason is making the ruling Hindutva clique headed by the fascist RSS, which is represented by its parliamentary outfit– the BJP, use all opportunities to villainise the Marxist ideology before the working class by spreading vitriol and disunite the working class on communal lines.
In their extreme zeal to wipe off the trace of red from the map of India, they are often using the pathetic condition of the Indian parliamentary left to demoralise the working class. The parliamentary defeat of the opportunist, the turn-coat left has been made an example of “defeat of communism” by the Hindutva camp, which wants to portray the ideals of Karl Marx failing before those of fascist hoodlums like Savarkar or Golwalkar.
The waning of the parliamentary left and the total dissolution of the parliamentary left governments, which were more or less social-fascist in attitude, are now the talking point of the Indian corporate media, which wants to show the people that communism won’t work in India, even when they have themselves written and sealed multiple death certificates of Marxism in the last 30 years.
The fear of Marx and his ideology that reigns in the heart of the enemies of Indian people and that of the world, testifies that Marxism is still the most relevant ideology for the poor and the oppressed people of the world and no Keynesian macroeconomics and welfare economics can prevent the inevitable fall of the empire of imperialism buttressed by the semi-colonial and semi-feudal systems of the countries of Asia-Africa and South America. When the ruling classes shudder at the slightest sound of leaves falling off to the ground, they testify themselves that they are afraid. They testify that they have failed in their doomed efforts – trying to do away with Marxism – ideologically, politically, economically and militarily. They don’t want the ideology of Marxism to echo the death knell of their predatory imperialist system at each crucial junction of imperialism’s crisis-ridden journey in the quagmire of doom. They want the peace of graveyard to prevail.
Karl Marx in his 200th year is as fierce and as much a perilous man for the bourgeoisie as he was in his 30s, or as he was in his 60s or early 70s, when he ceased thinking. Karl Marx is the very red beacon that emits the light of inspiration, knowledge and hope for the poor of the world, the creators of all material wealth and services all over the world, whose immortal teachings act as the compass that shows the struggling people their path to salvation, not in any other after-world, but in this very world they help to build every day.
Karl Marx and Marxism will always shine in the brightest crimson shade, like a sun that actually never sets, but around which rotating planets revolve forever. The victory of socialism is as inevitable as the total collapse of imperialism and the destruction of the world order it has erected. Karl Marx in 200 is 200 times more powerful and more inspiring for the workers of the world, who have nothing to lose but their chains and to win they have a world before them. So, workers of the world, unite! March towards victory as it belongs to you, and so does the future.
An avid reader and a merciless political analyst. When not writing then either reading something, debating something or sipping espresso with a dash of cream. Street photographer. Tweets as @la_muckraker