{"id":238971,"date":"2024-09-24T23:25:18","date_gmt":"2024-09-24T17:55:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=238971"},"modified":"2024-09-25T10:09:52","modified_gmt":"2024-09-25T04:39:52","slug":"bogey-of-karl-marx","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/bogey-of-karl-marx\/","title":{"rendered":"Bogey Of Karl Marx \u00a0 \u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Sarath de Alwis<\/a>\u00a0\u2013<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

Sarath de Alwis<\/p><\/div>\n

The collapse of the Soviet Union, China jetsoning Maoist collectivism and the failure of<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>totalitarian regimes that claimed to be \u201cMarxist\u201d have contributed to the erroneous notion that Karl Marx was an authoritarian thinker.<\/span><\/p>\n

Karl Marx<\/a> <\/span>greatly influenced politics of the 20th<\/sup><\/span> Century. The British Labour Party that dismantled the \u2018Raj , Socialist Party of France, Germany\u2019s Social Democratic party that lived to see their betrayal come home to roost with Adolf Hitler, Spain\u2019s socialist party that survived the tyranny of Franco owe their origins to Marxist thought.<\/p>\n

The red flag with its hammer and sickle emblem serenely fluttering opposite JVP \u2018s heads quarters seem to cause anxiety amongst some. It shouldn\u2019t. If you ignore Karl Marx, you ignore a pivotal part of history in comprehending the chaotic world we live in. <\/span><\/p>\n

Some of my granddaughters have asked me who this Karl Marx was. I told them that Karl Marx was an Enlightenment age humanist and a philosopher who perceived the possibility of a utopian post capitalist society in which people could lead rich, full filling lives.<\/p>\n

I also explained that Karl Marx said some very positive stuff about \u2018Capitalism\u2019 and that distinguished economists such as Kenneth Arrow regard his work as a revolutionary historical project.<\/p>\n

Hence this brief essay. If its order and reasoning is a little convoluted, I request the indulgence of the reader for some allowance towards the muddled memory of a weary pilgrim.<\/p>\n

How Capitalism evolved <\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

After a visit to Manchester in 1835, French Philosopher and sociologist Alexis de Tocqueville recorded his impressions of 19<\/span>th<\/sup><\/span> Century Manchester, then the embryonic hub of capitalism\u2019s system of free enterprise and free trade. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFrom this foul drain, the greatest stream of human industry flows out to fertilize the whole world. From this filthy sewer pure gold flows. Here, humanity attains its most complete development and its most brutish, here civilization works its miracles, and civilized man is turned almost in to a savage \u201c\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This passage epitomizes the dual faces of Capitalism and Industrialization. It exposes the positive and negative aspects of capitalism, the kind of debate that keeps us ensnared even today. \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Capitalism created wealth. It also turned profit seekers into brutes and savages\u2014moving them forward economically and technologically but compelling them to abandon moral ethical values.<\/p>\n

Sociologist philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville was a French aristocrat. He was reconciled to this new phenomenon of Manchester\u2019s filthy sewers spewing \u2018pure gold\u2019.\u00a0 <\/span>Savagery of capitalism he saw as an improvement over the wickedness of Feudal overlords horsewhipping toiling serfs in bondage.<\/p>\n

A Counter thesis <\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Karl Marx found the \u2018savagery of the emerging economic order- \u2018capitalism\u2019 a problem that could be resolved by reengineering the way people \u2018homo economicus \u2018create, accumulate and reinvest wealth.<\/p>\n

He wrote \u201cThe<\/span> philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a letter to Pavel Annenkov – Historian and Literary Critic of Czarist Russia, Marx explained his search for a remedy of Capitalism\u2019s inborn savagery.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the most difficult tasks confronting philosophers is to descend from the world of thought to the actual world.\u00a0Language\u00a0<\/i>is the immediate actuality of thought. Just as philosophers have given thought an independent existence, so they were bound to make language into an independent realm.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marx was mistaken about his conviction that he could change human nature. But far ahead of many others of his time he accurately predicted the global economy of the 21st<\/sup><\/span> Century.<\/p>\n

In his letter to Annenkov he elaborated \u201cThe productive forces are the result of man\u2019s practical energy, but that energy is in turn circumscribed by the conditions in which man is placed by the productive forces already acquired, by the form of society which exists before him, which he does not create, which is the product of the preceding generation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Karl Marx made some prophetic and positive observations about capitalism.<\/p>\n

Our Social Upheavals <\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

I am 82 years old. I was 14years of age in 1956. The year when a transformational general election saw a betel chewing barefoot Sinhala Street poet enter parliament.<\/p>\n

It has been my privilege to see the debonair grandson of the same barefoot betel chewing street poet in a Georgio Armani outfit waxing eloquent on the need for surveillance mechanisms of the deep state in a debate on anti-terrorism legislation.<\/p>\n

The 1956 social transformation made Sinhala the official language. I have lived long enough to listen to the oldest offspring of the \u2018Expedient Utopian\u2019 to confess that perhaps the \u2018Sinhala Only\u2019 policy wasn\u2019t prudent.<\/p>\n

Both instances prove Marx hit a bullseye when he expanded on the commodification of culture, language and faith. Marx was attempting to locate a heart in a heartless world.<\/p>\n

Emergence of Maoist China and Nehruvian India as new champions of globalized capitalism has prompted detractors and denigrators to declare Marxism dead.<\/p>\n

They miss the irony of how accurate Karl Marx was in his prediction that there would emerge a world market in which every aspect of social life becomes commodified.<\/p>\n

I expected President Ranil Wickremesinghe to forfeit his deposit. I thought people would punish hm for the arbitrary denial of local government elections.\u00a0 <\/span>It did not happen, demonstrating that perceived \u2018Misery \u2018and \u2018Deprivation\u2019 could be commodified by a determined crony capitalist oligarchy. \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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