Guardian UK: Why Marxism is on the rise again

[marmar]

Why Marxism is on the rise again
Capitalism is in crisis across the globe – but what on earth is the alternative? Well, what about the musings of a certain 19th-century German philosopher? Yes, Karl Marx is going mainstream – and goodness knows where it will end

Stuart Jeffries
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 4 July 2012


Class conflict once seemed so straightforward. Marx and Engels wrote in the second best-selling book of all time, The Communist Manifesto: "What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable." (The best-selling book of all time, incidentally, is the Bible – it only feels like it's 50 Shades of Grey.)

Today, 164 years after Marx and Engels wrote about grave-diggers, the truth is almost the exact opposite. The proletariat, far from burying capitalism, are keeping it on life support. Overworked, underpaid workers ostensibly liberated by the largest socialist revolution in history (China's) are driven to the brink of suicide to keep those in the west playing with their iPads. Chinese money bankrolls an otherwise bankrupt America.

The irony is scarcely wasted on leading Marxist thinkers. "The domination of capitalism globally depends today on the existence of a Chinese Communist party that gives de-localised capitalist enterprises cheap labour to lower prices and deprive workers of the rights of self-organisation," says Jacques Rancière, the French marxist thinker and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris VIII. "Happily, it is possible to hope for a world less absurd and more just than today's."

That hope, perhaps, explains another improbable truth of our economically catastrophic times – the revival in interest in Marx and Marxist thought. Sales of Das Kapital, Marx's masterpiece of political economy, have soared ever since 2008, as have those of The Communist Manifesto and the Grundrisse (or, to give it its English title, Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy). Their sales rose as British workers bailed out the banks to keep the degraded system going and the snouts of the rich firmly in their troughs while the rest of us struggle in debt, job insecurity or worse. There's even a Chinese theatre director called He Nian who capitalised on Das Kapital's renaissance to create an all-singing, all-dancing musical. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/04/the-return-of-marxism

[white_wolf]

1. Mind if I crosspost this in GD? I promise to wear my flameshield. nt

[marmar]

2. Not at all.....Better wear a reinforced flameshield.

[Starry Messenger]

3. Did you post it ww?

I saw that xchrom did. http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002903578 It's going pretty much as they usually do.

[white_wolf]

4. I was just about too when you posted this link.

I guess I'll just jump into the fray of Xchrom's post. Should be interesting.

[Starry Messenger]

5. Good luck sir.

I'm getting tired of the red-baiting in GD. Some of the comments sound like they could be from FR.

[BOG PERSON]

6. so many awful, awful people

[Starry Messenger]

10. You keep going back!

Glutton for punishment!

In case you need cheering up...

[socialist_n_TN]

7. OOOOH! Sounds tailor made for me........

I LIVE in asbestos underwear.

[Starry Messenger]

8. Red asbestos, of course!

Have fun!

[socialist_n_TN]

9. Of COURSE Starry.......

Ah, it wasn't too bad there. I kicked in one post so far.

There's a lot of sentiment on DU for Marxism. MUCH more than when I first started posting two or three years ago. And this board is the kind of place that you need to start educating, agitating, and propagandizing. Left centrism and left populism have always been the hotbed for Marxist recruiting.

[jwirr]

11. Aside from the failure of capitalism after such a long run socialism has never been given the chance

to prove what it could accomplish. The closest it has is what we see in many European countries since the end of WWII. IMO it is time for the chance.

[BOG PERSON]

12. do you mean like the German Democratic Republic (RIP) and

the other Peoples Democracies (also RIP) ?

[jwirr]

13. No I was referring to Sweden, Norway, Finland, Great Britain, etc. By long run I am talking about

lasting as long as we did without the interference that we have given most of them since WWII. Also I think you are talking about nazism which is and never was socialism.

[BOG PERSON]

14. thanks for explaining what is and isn't socialism

i didn't know the nazis weren't socialists! my impression is that they saw themselves as socialists, in a perverse way.

[srjmsbnd]

16. You didn't Know What a Nazi Was?!

I agree entirely with you that you didn't know the most rudimental aspects of Nazism and fascism as they were based on purely national chauvinism, that opportunistically clothes itself in nationalist rhetoric much like American exceptionalism, in a mishmash convenient towards that and only that end where, the ends justifies the means, without a international character as does socialism.

The first Nazism being the artificial construct that was devised by a paid agent of the German military high commend, much like the political parties of Europe and Japan which financed and reestablished through the assistance of the US Army as a bulwark during what become the Cold War that they launched against the Soviet Union as otherwise they were defeated in Europe at the end of World War II.

There are several forms of fascists, Nazism, and Neo-Nazism being only three categories. But consistently throughout analysis they all exhibit extreme forms of national chauvinism which would be the forms described in what preceded the official use of the name "fascist" that arose with its introduction by the Mussolini fascists of Italy.

Though there is some argument relating to this matter as it regards socialists and even anarchists real socialist bases what they premise philosophically on nationalism rather than socialism.

As the main error of the Second International during World War I was that they sided as revisionists with their respective countries rather than the working class. As did many used their socialist labels so as to bind workers to reformist forms of capitalism (Great Society of Lyndon Johnson) and split the working class.

[srjmsbnd]

15. One Second Please

It is said

"Marx and Engels wrote in the second best-selling book of all time, The Communist Manifesto:
*** (The best-selling book of all time, incidentally, is the Bible –"

But who did the accounting of such a matter and what was counted as China has over a billion citizens and the bible as it was marketed in an American Book Distributor had over 250 different editions eg. the teen, womens, comic, book, with concordance, reference edition etc. which I do not think count the same.

[BOG PERSON]

17. what if they had the Communist Manifesto aimed at different demographic groups

e.g. the Extreme Teen's Communist Manifesto, the Busy Mom's Communist Manifesto, and so forth.