"MARX
-Still Relevant regardless of all the slander"
A message for the 200 birth anniversary of Karl Marx
(and how the specter continues to haunt the existing rotten order)
-Still Relevant regardless of all the slander"
A message for the 200 birth anniversary of Karl Marx
(and how the specter continues to haunt the existing rotten order)
At first, it is undeniable the fact that Karl Marx has made the world realise that as society progresses so is the struggle of its inhabitants.
With statements such as "All history is consists of class struggles" (from the Communist Manifesto), or the familiar quote from "Theses on Feurbach" telling that "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it", it seems that as people noticed that societies divided unjustly, what more of forcing to get used in that unjustness, it became necessary for the have-nots who toiled for hours to realise an inconvenient truth, as well as to stand up and fight for a society they think as "just"- even at the expense of their lives.
Quite chaos-provoking isn't it? But Marx, as any other thinker who hath witnessed the scenarios of those times, sought the inevitability of social change regardless of those who stubbornly maintain the order people detested for its interest-driven unjustness. And events like the Peasants War in Germany, the French Revolution, up to today's mass actions, the oppressed masses cannot just get content in its sordid existence as the elites been churning off profits from their hardships.
And from them it is argued that a class is formed when its members achieve class consciousness and solidarity- and this largely happens when the members of a class become aware of their exploitation and the conflict with another class. A class will then realize their shared interest, identity, and destiny. For as struggles around the globe has showed how these folks not just aim to satisfy their needs, but to realise a future that cannot be done simply by an act of kindness.
And from this no wonder why Mao Zedong, in reading the experiences of past struggles, and the drivels that pished the masses to revolt against corrupted orders, afforded to say that:
"The aim of every revolutionary struggle in the world is the seizure and consolidation of political power."
Sounds usual as well as annoying to some in seeing direct actions- and usually reduced their sentiments into meaningless noises worth mockingble. At one time they would mock the poor for rallying in the streets, if not blaming them for the traffic jams and the trash being left after protests; for sure they would insist that let the legislators do their work if not the usual mantra that "hard work and good character is enough"- but did it stop the crisis?
Anyway, despite all the scorn pointing against these laboring folks as well as from the view that brought them their will to resist, today's world setting continues to be marred by recurrently worsening crises, social turmoil, and various forms of conflicts- and it cannot be resolved by just conscience-provocation, but rather through an organised and direct social action.
And to think that Capitalists and its apologists insisting Marxism as an "invalid" kind of idea or Marx himself as an unnecessary figure, for the laboring masses, the existing conflicts and corresponding actions has proven the relevance if Marxism and its further advances in history and in the current circumstances- and from there lies the most resolute and militant thinkers and leaders amongst their ranks in various struggling countries- contributing to Marxism and to the Revolution.
And like the powers of old Europe according to the Communist Manifesto, today's upholders of capitalism are still "struggling" to exorcise this spectre by preaching their brand of 'democracy' and 'freedom' when in fact it meant upholding their interests. At one time the United States hath spread the notion that capitalism as a continuing economic line as it pushed further both its neoliberal economic policy and its neoconservative policy of aggressive wars, wasting trillions of dollars on unnecessary conflicts; while China, whom supposed to be the examplar if not the forebearer of Socialist revolution, treated Marxism-Leninism-Maoism like a doormat as they emphasise capitalist agendas throughout due to their revisionism. In fairness, Xi Jinping called Marx a "teacher of revolution for the proletariat and workers all over the world" and "the greatest thinker of modern times" while his continuity of Dengism and its actually-existing unjustness (such as those of suicides in processing zones) makes Mao Zedong's warning likely:
"If our children’s generation go in for revisionism and move towards their opposite, so that although they still nominally have socialism it is in fact capitalism, then our grandsons will certainly rise up in revolt and overthrow their fathers, because the masses will not be satisfied."
And like the powers of old Europe according to the Communist Manifesto, today's upholders of capitalism are still "struggling" to exorcise this spectre by preaching their brand of 'democracy' and 'freedom' when in fact it meant upholding their interests. At one time the United States hath spread the notion that capitalism as a continuing economic line as it pushed further both its neoliberal economic policy and its neoconservative policy of aggressive wars, wasting trillions of dollars on unnecessary conflicts; while China, whom supposed to be the examplar if not the forebearer of Socialist revolution, treated Marxism-Leninism-Maoism like a doormat as they emphasise capitalist agendas throughout due to their revisionism. In fairness, Xi Jinping called Marx a "teacher of revolution for the proletariat and workers all over the world" and "the greatest thinker of modern times" while his continuity of Dengism and its actually-existing unjustness (such as those of suicides in processing zones) makes Mao Zedong's warning likely:
"If our children’s generation go in for revisionism and move towards their opposite, so that although they still nominally have socialism it is in fact capitalism, then our grandsons will certainly rise up in revolt and overthrow their fathers, because the masses will not be satisfied."
Anyway, bluntly speaking, like the powers of old Europe according to the Communist Manifesto, today's upholders of capitalism are still "struggling" to exorcise this spectre by preaching their brand of 'democracy' and 'freedom' when in fact it meant upholding their interests- and Karl Marx has been 'declared' as their bogeyman that forces capitalists to make some piecemeal changes if not equating him to tyranny and oppression.
From this, makes one would think that in blaming a single person to a tragedy committed in his name is as erroneous as to blame the Philosophers of the Enlightenment for fomenting chaos against well-rooted orders such as monarchies, if not Jesus Christ for using his teachings for colonialist ventures. There are also groups whose reactionary leanings insist that radical thoughts, including those of Social Justice, was bluntly based on nothing more than envy on the part of the masses for the privileged position and economic advantages of the elites- if not telling that the "natural order of things" (which is unjust and unfair according to their view) hath been disrupted by the philosophies leading skepticism towards established views, that all inequality as an injustice, authority as danger, and freedom as supreme good.
And if people detested views which are against the system thinking that it created chaos and instability, that change-provoking views aren't limited to Marx himself; for actually, there are those who expressed radically before him- Robespierre, Gracchus Babeuf, or even Thomas Paine. They insisted Justice and Freedom in its radical form- enough to "stir flames" on those willing to resist against orders whom perceived as oppressive and tyrannical. In fact, Babeuf, who was described by many as the "first Revolutionary Communist", expressed that:
"Ancient habits, antique fears, would again like to pose an obstacle to the establishment of the Republic of Equals. The organisation of real equality, the only one that responds to all needs, without causing any victims, without costing any sacrifice, will not at first please everyone. The selfish, the ambitious, will tremble with rage. Those who possess unjustly will cry out about injustice. The loss of the enjoyments of the few, of solitary pleasures, of personal ease will cause lively regret to those heedless of the pain of others. The lovers of absolute power, the henchmen of arbitrary authority, will with difficulty bow their superb heads before the level of real equality. Their shortsightedness will penetrate with difficulty the imminent future of common happiness; but what can a few thousand malcontents do against a mass of happy men, surprised to have sought so long a happiness that they had right at hand."
So was Marx himself, in his letter to J. Weydemeyer in New York, affirmed that long before him (like Babeuf) there were those who recognise the unjustness of a stratified society based on wealth and power, its antagonisms between the haves and the have-nots, and the drivel of the oppressed class to overturn the ruling and to set the foundations of the new order:
"...And now as to myself, no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists, the economic anatomy of classes. What I did that was new was to prove:
(1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with the particular, historical phases in the development of production,
(2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat,
(3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.
Ignorant louts like Heinzen, who deny not merely the class struggle but even the existence of classes, only prove that, despite all their blood-curdling yelps and the humanitarian airs they give themselves, they regard the social conditions under which the bourgeoisie rules as the final product, the non plus ultra [highest point attainable] of history, and that they are only the servants of the bourgeoisie. And the less these louts realize the greatness and transient necessity of the bourgeois regime itself the more disgusting is their servitude."
From this, no wonder why Marx, Engels, and his successors desired that ideal- and from their works lies the most compelling framework for analyzing how the conflicting tendencies in today's society contain the seeds of a just, humane future.
From this, makes one would think that in blaming a single person to a tragedy committed in his name is as erroneous as to blame the Philosophers of the Enlightenment for fomenting chaos against well-rooted orders such as monarchies, if not Jesus Christ for using his teachings for colonialist ventures. There are also groups whose reactionary leanings insist that radical thoughts, including those of Social Justice, was bluntly based on nothing more than envy on the part of the masses for the privileged position and economic advantages of the elites- if not telling that the "natural order of things" (which is unjust and unfair according to their view) hath been disrupted by the philosophies leading skepticism towards established views, that all inequality as an injustice, authority as danger, and freedom as supreme good.
And if people detested views which are against the system thinking that it created chaos and instability, that change-provoking views aren't limited to Marx himself; for actually, there are those who expressed radically before him- Robespierre, Gracchus Babeuf, or even Thomas Paine. They insisted Justice and Freedom in its radical form- enough to "stir flames" on those willing to resist against orders whom perceived as oppressive and tyrannical. In fact, Babeuf, who was described by many as the "first Revolutionary Communist", expressed that:
"Ancient habits, antique fears, would again like to pose an obstacle to the establishment of the Republic of Equals. The organisation of real equality, the only one that responds to all needs, without causing any victims, without costing any sacrifice, will not at first please everyone. The selfish, the ambitious, will tremble with rage. Those who possess unjustly will cry out about injustice. The loss of the enjoyments of the few, of solitary pleasures, of personal ease will cause lively regret to those heedless of the pain of others. The lovers of absolute power, the henchmen of arbitrary authority, will with difficulty bow their superb heads before the level of real equality. Their shortsightedness will penetrate with difficulty the imminent future of common happiness; but what can a few thousand malcontents do against a mass of happy men, surprised to have sought so long a happiness that they had right at hand."
So was Marx himself, in his letter to J. Weydemeyer in New York, affirmed that long before him (like Babeuf) there were those who recognise the unjustness of a stratified society based on wealth and power, its antagonisms between the haves and the have-nots, and the drivel of the oppressed class to overturn the ruling and to set the foundations of the new order:
"...And now as to myself, no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists, the economic anatomy of classes. What I did that was new was to prove:
(1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with the particular, historical phases in the development of production,
(2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat,
(3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.
Ignorant louts like Heinzen, who deny not merely the class struggle but even the existence of classes, only prove that, despite all their blood-curdling yelps and the humanitarian airs they give themselves, they regard the social conditions under which the bourgeoisie rules as the final product, the non plus ultra [highest point attainable] of history, and that they are only the servants of the bourgeoisie. And the less these louts realize the greatness and transient necessity of the bourgeois regime itself the more disgusting is their servitude."
From this, no wonder why Marx, Engels, and his successors desired that ideal- and from their works lies the most compelling framework for analyzing how the conflicting tendencies in today's society contain the seeds of a just, humane future.