Marx at 200
Rashed Rahman
Karl Marx’s 200th
birth anniversary was marked on May 5, 2018. In Europe, the commemoration of
the milestone evoked mixed responses, both for and against. Not surprisingly in
the time of Trump, not much was heard from the US. In Pakistan, relatively
small gatherings of Leftists remembered and paid homage to the great thinker.
It is the fate
of those who challenge the existing order to be reviled and repressed during their
lifetime by the defenders of the status quo. In Marx’s case, the swirl of pro-
and anti- views continues unabated to this day. Of late, and particularly since
the 2007-08 global economic crisis, there has been a revival of interest in
Marx’s ideas even in previously hostile circles.
What, briefly,
were those ideas? Marx critiqued capitalism, not only in economic terms, but as
a system that exploited, alienated and marginalised the vast majority for the
benefit of the elite few. His critique aimed at examining the ideas put forward
by the emerging science of political economy in his day (19th
century). The gist of his critique (and this does not do justice to the
profundity of his thought) was that the source of value is living labour and
the source of profit is surplus labour, defined as the extra labour expended
(and therefore value created) by the worker over and above the bare necessities
of life required to reproduce him and the working class for the continuation of
the system. The expropriation of this surplus labour (value) constitutes the
profit of the capitalist class and the source of social inequality, which rises
incrementally as capitalism grows and develops. Describing the scenario as
poverty in the midst of plenty (for the few), he dealt with the alienation of
the worker in particular from the product of his labour, and humanity at large
from its essence. The product of labour now presents itself as an alien force
for the subjugation of its maker and this alienated product, in the form of
commodities, is now fetishised to the level of irresistible want or need.
Marx saw the
trend of capitalism expanding to become a global system, in the process
battering down the gates of all societies in a relatively less developed stage
of history (colonialism). He advocated the workers of the world to unite in a
common struggle to overthrow capitalism, in the process extending their
solidarity to the peoples of the world subjugated by colonialism and
imperialism. Marx therefore stands out as the leading revolutionary thinker of
his time, and arguably all time.
Marx’s critics pounce
on the failure of the socialist revolutions of the 20th century
inspired by his ideas as proof of the failure of those ideas. The two
formulations that best encapsulated this line of argument were The End of
History (Francis Fukuyama) and There is no Alternative (Margaret Thatcher).
However, as transpired in his own lifetime, Marx’s ideas have a stubborn habit
of returning to haunt his enemies. This is because Marx’s philosophy
(Dialectical and Historical Materialism), method, analysis/critique of capitalism
have never seemed more valid than today, despite the fact that socialism as a
system in some one-third of the world has seized to exist, except for some
smaller countries’ efforts to keep it going in an unrecognisably changed world.
Marx analysed
the recurrent crises of capitalism as not accidental by-products of its
development, but as inescapable inherent traits of the process of capitalist
production. While not shy of describing, sometimes in admiring terms, the unprecedented
scientific, technological and quantitative constant revolutionisation of the
system of production under capitalism, Marx exposed the inherent contradiction
between these dynamic productive forces and the relations of production
(ownership of means of production and therefore wealth, etc), a contradiction
that, when it begins to act as a brake or fetter on the further development of
the productive forces, ushers in a period of crises and revolution.
As a body of
thought and a critical expose of capitalism and its results and outcomes, few
can match the depth and profundity of Marx’s work. Those who reject Marxism
because of its failure in practice in the 20th century have jumped
the gun. Mainstream western thought is returning as we speak to (admittedly in
a critical manner) Marx’s ideas. This has happened because today’s crises of
capitalism and imperialism can be profoundly illuminated by Marx’s thought. His
relevance therefore is firmly established two centuries after his birth, in an
extraordinary validation of a revolutionary thinker written off by the
defenders and apologists of capitalism.
Do in fact the
outcomes of 20th century revolutions provide justification for the
dismissal of Marx as an utopian 19th century thinker proved wrong in
practice? That is a question beyond the scope of this space. Suffice it to say
that revolutions do not always follow the path desired by those who aspire to bring
them about. The received wisdom in Marx and his followers was that revolutions
in at least the leading capitalist countries were the sine qua non for
socialism to succeed. Instead, through the bloody repressions of the European
1848 revolutions (that led to Marx’s expulsion from the Continent to live out
the rest of his life in struggle in exile in Britain), the drowning in blood of
the Paris Commune of 1870 (which helped Marx formulate the argument that the
defeat meant the revolution could not wield the readymade state machinery for
its purposes but would have to smash it and create a new one), and the
subsequent years of waiting for the Red Mole (revolution) to reappear while continuing
his theoretical work and organisation of the workers’ International, Marx’s
followers in the shape of the Bolshevik Party in Czarist Russia found
themselves having to build socialism in one (albeit large) country.
The
vicissitudes, victories and defeats of that whole 74-year era that the Soviet
Union existed needs detailed treatment to learn from both the strengths and
weaknesses thrown up by that experience, in order to recreate the socialist
project from the ashes of that defeat and retreat. The best ‘recruiter’ for
this project remains capitalism and its current financialised imperialist
stage, as the struggles of the 21st century for social justice,
equity and the development of the full potential of every human being as the
necessary condition for achieving the full potential of all human beings are
demonstrating. These struggles may appear to the casual observer marginal to
world history today. But deeper reflection will indicate they may well hold the
future in their hands.
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