Relevance of Marxism in Today’s World

It is interesting to see how at every junction of history, especially after a period of economic instability and crisis, Marxism is declared dead and gone; and capitalism its “worthy” antecessor. The purpose so it seems, of our preachers is to doom the radical transformation of the society. If something indeed is dead and gone then why bother bringing it up at all, so the skeptics would argue. Goebbels’ theory on propaganda here rings as loud and clear as the bell. If you want to lie about something, he said, make a big lie, not a small one, a big one, and keep repeating it over and over again till people cannot tell the difference. We saw how successful Goebbels’ propaganda was, and how his traumatic legacy is still lingering in our world today. It is important though to journey through history to understand just this.

A criticism of socialism that comes up ever so often is that it was never able to thrive in a country like USA where capitalism continued to provide prosperity and mobility. Even a book was written by Sombart in 1906 titled “Why Is There No Socialism in the United States” in which socialistic utopia was attacked. However, with the Depression of the 1930s it forced theorists to rethink and “smarten up” their ideas a bit, and with the economic boom after WW2, another fist in support of the capitalist ideologies was pumped into the air. That coupled with the rise of Stalinism, led to the exhaustion of the nineteenth century ideologies such as Marxism.

This made even the writers on the left doubt their beliefs:

“Why should the overthrow of the existing order be of vital necessity for people who own, or can hope to own, good clothes, a well-stocked larder, a TV set, a car, a house and so on, all within the existing order?” (Marcuse).

His ideas were no different from the other left-wing thinkers of the time who now believed that class struggle was no longer the link between the society and the future. Workers were either bought off, or so intertwined into the system that they now became a problem rather than the solution. Then in the 60s and 70s we saw again the rise of the class struggle: working class and student rebellions. 10 million French workers, for example, went on a strike in 1968. In Pakistan, too, students protested, interestingly enough, for the same reasons: they felt that the disparity between the rich and the poor was growing, and that they were still not free, a situation alarmingly similar to that of today (Dawn, 2009).

Capitalism, however, once again reared its ugly head and this made the case for capitalist supporters to implement even greater atrocities on the working class: longer hours, lower wages and less jobs. They used the situation to make a keener case for the “free market” economy, as it has been ironically referred to since then. Yet again, in history, we saw how Russia and the Eastern states collapsed in 1989–1993 at which point capitalism was officially declared the victor. In Fukuyama’s thesis: “The End of History” (1989) he said, just like Marx did that the society has evolved, that it has moved from lower to higher levels of social organization, that man’s ideological evolution has ended and that liberal free market capitalism is the “final form of human government”.

Nonetheless Capitalism was glorified and a period of endless prosperity and peace was envisioned. In the coming decades, we saw how that prediction also went terribly wrong. Never before has there been a more destructive and bloody time in the period of history. The rise of nationalistic tendencies in many democracies resulted from the fact that the resources of the people today are in the hands of a few, creating a disparity between various nations. Alan Woods describes nation-states as a “museum for barbarism”.

All this perpetuated by two things: the rise of small enterprises and globalization, both of which were accurately predicted by Marx some 150 years ago. He saw how the emergence of small enterprises on the basis of competition and profit, could lead to the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few; that eventually leading to global interdependencies thus giving rise to world market and world trade. All this was amazingly predicted without empiricism, at a time when American Capitalism was still teething and France was in its early stages of development (Woods, 2009).

Capitalism profits only a few people and not the vast majority. Hence it would be foolish to hang on to it: foolish for not just the proletariat but also the bourgeoisie for failure to do so would lead to a plethora of problems that plague our world today: terrorism, civil wars, climate change, to name a few and the mere repetition of this lie is not going to work anymore, especially now that the truth is getting more and more evident.

A number of facts point out to this in confirmation, not to mention the glaring mistake in the form of the recession. It brings us back full circle to the 19th century, where robber barons and sweated underpaid labour existed. The robber barons in this case are the 200 corporations upon which the entire wealth of the world is concentrated upon and the sweated underpaid labour is not difficult to find in the world. The destinies of the entire human race are dependent on these 200 corporations.

1.2 billion men, women and children are living on less than $2 a day, and they are not even the poorest of the lot (UN figures). Every year 10 million men, women and children die simply because of the fact that they do not have the physical means to live. Less than 2% of the richest people of the world own more than half of all global wealth. In contrast to this the poorest half barely live on 1% of the global wealth. There are 2,668 billionaires in the world, upon whom rests a colossal concentration of wealth.

It is not difficult to draw a parallel to what we are experiencing today in Pakistan. The country is engulfed in crisis upon crisis as the means of production are concentrated in the hands of a few. 81 sugar mills decided to hoard sugar which led to the escalation of the prices, not because there was a shortage rather to make more profits for themselves. The sugar crisis is only one of the examples, if we look deep down we find such scams at every level in our society, carried upon the very people who complain about the bad political system. The growing crime rate is also an indicator how people in their own way are trying to change the system. Not by being productive or fighting the system but by going the other way and destroying the society further. The poor vulnerable people that constitute the majority of the population of our country do not know any other way to fight against the system as they are caught in the survival mode.

It is in essence a revolution, if revolution can be described as a fundamental change in the society. It has been coming on for a long time now. Agreed, that it is not a revolution leading to the right direction, but that is where the people of the society have to come in and educate the masses, galvanize them and make them change the system by uprooting first and foremost feudalism from the country, for that is a complete violation of everything that the country stands for: liberty, freedom and justice and is something that is limiting the progress of the people. The government essentially is feudalistic which is why it does not do anything to alleviate the concerns of the poor.

Therefore, try as they might, the wisdom that Marx acquired 150 years ago, is as relevant today as it was back then, and these ideas will keep on emerging until the glaring class distinctions are not bridged. However, that is not to say that there could be a classless society. There will always be classes, the rich and poor, except that they will no longer be abused the way they have been for so long. They will resist and there is every reason to hope for it.

Marx like many others exposed the ills of the society. He showed how capitalism developed and how it met its end. He “discovered the special law of motion governing the present-day capitalist mode of production,” as Engel said. Even his critics acknowledged the fact that he had great insights to the workings of capitalist production (Woods, 2009).

Of course the world has changed since 1867 but we can see how the essence of capitalism is much the same even today. Ironically it is the system that made us interdependent and led to the “export” of problems such as the environmental crisis, etc. But now that we have become globalised it is impossible to revert back to living independent lives, hence the solution will come from interdependencies or associations. If we are to look toward nature for answers and it cannot be argued that nature is the best source for solutions (it is when we ignore nature that we have problems e.g. global warming), we can safely say that we have to protect our dependents, and evolve into a more humane and a more natural system, for evolution is but natural.

Not only will this system be beneficial to a vast number of people but also it will help develop creative capacities. The biggest criticism of Marxism is that it failed to work in Russia but that was only because that was not true Marxism. Russia under Stalin was no better than a state capitalist. It was bureaucratic and there was no accountability. Just like anything else, socialism too can go terribly wrong with the abuse of power. Therefore, there should be a rotational mechanism to power, where accountability at each level should be ensured to overcome this problem.

Hence as far as the relevance of Marxism in today’s world is concerned, Marxism has always been relevant at every point in history. Rather the question really should be: Is capitalism relevant? Flogging the dead horse this time round is not going to bring it back, especially now that the truth has become ever clearer. This is quite an exciting time in the history of international relations, for a new super power seems to be emerging in the East. Hopefully, it will be able to offset the balance of power that is skewed like a see-saw completely in the favour of the West with the USA championing capitalism.

It would be interesting to see who eventually takes the title of the next superpower from Asia: Communist China or Democratic India? Of course, America would want India to rise, however with the speed with which China is catching up with America is astounding, and it is quite possible, much to America’s dismay, that it seizes the title. That would be interesting in itself: capitalism going head to head against communism. They will most definitely have to employ a middle path which would be like taking the best of democracy, such as liberty, and the best of socialism, that is distributing the benefits if global wealth to a vast majority of people. The world would definitely hope to gain from this.

References:

1. Sombart, W. 1906. Why Is There No Socialism in the United States <https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/bitstream/handle/1808/4891/MARSV6N2BR4.pdf>
2. D’amato, P. The Relevance of Marxism. <http://anselmocarranco.tripod.com/id59.html>
3. Fukuyama, F. The End of History? <https://www.embl.de/aboutus/science_society/discussion/discussion_2006/ref1-22june06.pdf
4. Woods, M. 2009. Rural geography: blurring boundaries and making connections. <https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0309132508105001>