Karl Marx; 200 years later

May 07, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

The past weekend (Saturday to be precise) marked 200 years since the birth of the German philosopher, Karl Marx. If I were asked to choose a quote that is on the top of my list, it will be from Marx. There are plenty from Shakespeare, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mandela, Nietzsche, Freud, Fanon that I truly love and that which move me and will always stir me emotionally.
It is almost (I stress almost) impossible to pull a famous quote quickly out of your head and say; “this is most memorable for me since the birth of civilization”.
But the one that is on top of my list and has been there since I read and have been influenced by the works of Karl Marx is this – “The philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways. The point however, is to change it.”
Though I would choose Martin Heidegger’s 20th century book, “Being and Time” as the most plausible explanation on the nature of human existence, and though I believe Marx was not as profound as Kant and Hegel, I believe Marx put his finger on a social process that, like Freud’s discovery of the ID and EGO, guides us, human beings, into understanding the world we live in.
It is only a naïve, or maybe an underdeveloped mind that would dismiss Marx’s dissection of capitalism. It is an unbelievable irony, too unbelievable to contemplate, that Marx has become more relevant today than he ever was.
To understand how brilliant Marx was, you have to live in the 21st century and see the deformities and monstrous contortions of capitalism.
Today in the United States, a candidate, Bernie Sanders, became a top contender for the presidency through his endorsement of a socialist agenda. That was unthinkable in the United States 20 years ago. If President Obama was given a third term, the United States would have seen state action in economic spheres that would have resembled socialist European and Third World governments after the Second World War.
Why did Marx fail? Well Marx did not fail. What went wrong is that governments implemented Leninism under the rubric of Marx’s philosophy and that is where socialism went horribly wrong. Marx never wrote about how to shape political power when a Marxist party wins a revolution. It was Lenin who did that and came up with certain types of power approaches, one of which was the “Vanguard Party.”
The 1917 Russian Revolution implemented the Leninist invention of the Vanguard Party so did Cuba. If one wants to see how attempts to supplant capitalism with socialism went tragically wrong then Cuba is a good case study. Hundreds of millions of decent humans, including brilliant minds, around the world in every country applauded Fidel Castro’s efforts to bring socialism into being but he was fighting capitalism from a position of philosophical weakness. Castro loved power. He ruled his country months short 50 years. He did not have all the answers but he think he did and he wasn’t prepared to give up. He only gave up when sickness physically prevented him.
If Marx were alive, he probably would have been a critic of Fidel Castro. Capitalist countries were proving to the people of the world that citizens in capitalist countries were enjoying more freedoms and liberties than those whose rulers proclaim that they are guided by the philosophy of Karl Marx.
I think one of the most tragic ironies in the history of civilization is the communist party in China. China has the most exploitative labour system that perhaps is second to none from the 19th century onwards. That kind of sadism is done under the aegis of socialism.
Space would not allow for a reappraisal of Marx’s teaching on the pitfalls of capitalism. But what we are seeing today in the world is a kind of capitalism whose cruelties and insanities could only be understood by an in depth look at Marx’s critique. It is virtually impossible to guarantee a world free of turmoil and instability when you look at the ownership of the world’s resources.
Perhaps five percent owns ninety percent of the wealth of the world. And there is trouble brewing over this. The trouble takes very violent forms as we are seeing as I write in France where an elite president from a very aristocratic background wants to sell off state-owned railways.
I should end with a reference to my own country. Where I live, just opposite my home, I see an expensive state-funded street being constructed to serve the only inhabitant on that roadway – a rich Caribbean company. Marx was right. Start reading him.

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