200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx

Karl Marx

• German philosopher and revolutionary socialist Karl Marx
• 5 March 2018 – 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx

Important works –

• He published The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital
• Anti-capitalist works that form the basis of ‘Marxism’
• Author of Das Kapital and the leading spirit of the International Workingmen’s Association (known as the First International).

Key takeaways from the editorial –

• Karl Marx’s writings had and still have tremendous influence on most important thinkers of the twentieth century.
• He is regarded as revolutionary prophet.
• Importance of reading Marx and his theories closely, with precision and patience – The writer of the editorial believes that Karl Marx and his writing still matters. His ideas may help us to understand the economic and political inequality of our time.

Is Marx evil?

• Even today, three decades after the fall of the Soviet empire, many still blame Marx for the cruel atrocities that happened around the world in the name of Marxism.
• For those who suffered the communist regimes or simply believed in an anti-communist crusade, Marx continues to be a dangerous mind who should be banned from our schools and universities.
• Recently there were instances of statues of Marx being torn down bitterly and indistinctively.

But despite what happened in the past hundred years in the communist countries, Marx remains an important thinker and a central figure of the modern canon around the world. In other words, he should be read closely, with precision and patience.

His writings were so complex and so antithetical. Any loosely philosophical approach or iconic view of Marx would turn the critical edge of his analysis of modernity and capitalism into wrong principles of a wrong struggle.

Aspirants with following optional subject should therefore read about Marx and his theories –

• History – Rise of socialist ideas (up to Marx); spread of Marxian Socialism.
• Sociology – Karl Marx- Historical materialism, mode of production, alienation, class struggle; Marxist sociology.
• Philosophy – Political Ideologies: Anarchism; Marxism and Socialism
• PSIR – Theories of the Marxist and Marxism (Political ideologies)

Marxism–Leninism

Marxism believes that ‘capitalism can only thrive on the exploitation of the working class’. Marxism believes that there was a real contradiction between human nature and the way that we must work in a capitalist society.

Marxist theories believed – “class struggle is the basic agency of historical change, and that capitalism will ultimately be superseded by communism”.

Leninism comprises socialist political and economic theories, developed from Marxism and Lenin’s interpretations of Marxist theories, for practical application to the socio-political conditions of the Russian Empire of the early 20th century.

Marx remains an important thinker

On the one hand, Marx is a philosopher who believes in the autonomy of human beings, since he affirms that human beings make their own history, that the emancipation of the workers will be the work of the workers themselves.

On the other hand, he is obsessed by the Hegelian idea of making a total system, dominated by the universal law of social transformations in history.

It was precisely this second Marx, the theorist of historical materialism, who was elevated by Engels, Lenin, Stalin and many others as a prophet of a secular religion called socialism. But, the great mistake of several generations of Marxists was to consider Marx’s philosophy of history as a readymade revolutionary recipe for action.

In other words, writer believes that – Marxist revolutionaries such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, etc. adapted those ideas of Marx which suited best the needs of their revolutions and bureaucratic powers.

They were responsible (in the form of Marxism-Leninism ideology) to turn the materialist and historicist philosophy of Marx into a revolutionary eschatology and in many cases into thermodynamics of terror.

Marx should be viewed as a critical mind with the great intellectual courage of a Socratic gadfly (“a person who persistently annoys or provokes others with criticism, schemes, ideas, demands, requests, etc.”) who continues to defy our way of thinking and living in a market-driven world.

Writer believes that we should celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of a major thinker of human history who has found his place in the pantheon of great philosophers next to Kant, Schelling, Fichte and Hegel.

Connecting the dots:

• 150 years of ‘Das Kapital’: How relevant is Marx today?
• Is Karl Marx still relevant today? What are his major contributions?