To know about the style of the Marxist first we should be able to identify him. Marxists are not so hard to identify. If you see anyone saying consumerism, capitalism ,poor-friendly, govt sucking the poor , wealth in few hands, class struggle, this wont happen in china, economic equality, bad-america, mighty-china etc etc we can say that he is inclined towards Marxism. Once we are done with the identification of the Marxists we can classify them into categories. For me the categories are are two i.e silly marxists and serious marxists.
Silly Marxist is the regular, over excited guy with oozing hatred about the social problems and shows a lot of enthusiasm in finding the ‘quick fix’ to the issues. And that quick fix is socialism. It might take some time to identify the silly marxist. He wont know the difference between socialism and communism. He does not even know that socialism means no fundamental rights. He is not familiar with the failure of USSR, cultural revolution, great leap forward, Tiananmen square incident. If you utter those words he will give you a blank face. If its your bad day , then you will meet a silly marxist who argues that all these incidents did not happen, it’s the bad propaganda by america. They have paranoia about America. In one of the silly marxist’s blog, he argues that America is appointing its supporters as chief justices and president of India and it messes up with the indian elections by hacking the EVM’s. Arundhati rai is one of these. According to her it’s the corporate hindutwa which is ruling this country. If hindutwa has that much power , then BJP would never lose an election.!!!
Now about serious marxists. They are usually great orators and know which topics should be avoided so that they can win over an argument. They would never talk about Stalin, Trotsky or about Mikhail Bakunin and none of the events that happened in china. They have knack to drive any topic to anti-americanism. They evade about atrocities of naxalites and will try to make us believe that there is nothing wrong in dictatorship. For them the understanding about the world can be achieved by sitting in a room and reading few books of marxism. Serious marxists usually distance themselves from stalin because of his atrocities. Where as silly marxist admires him.
The orthodox marxists who recite phrases like “hitherto all the history is nothing but class struggle” , “all human relations are economic relations” etc etc are devotees of Karl Marx. Karl Marx wrote “Das capital” in 1867. And these people who read it ,are still living in that 19th century. They are not aware of labor laws, critical theory, fabian socialism, minimum wage laws. So their arguments are too old that they sound funny. I put these people also in silly marxists.
In whatever category he is in, a marxist usually is a perfectionist , pessimist with paranoia towards America and tries to generalize everything . For them the glass is always half empty. Based on that half emptiness they propagate the idea that the glass is completely empty. If somebody tries to correct them, they will say that the water in the glass is not original its an illusion created by MNC’s. They shout that 27% of the people in india are poor, does not it mean 73% are above poverty line. Why cant they appreciate the fact that percentage of people below poverty line came down from 51.3% in 1977-78 to 27% in 2004-05. No govt can eradicate poverty with a magic wand in 2 seconds.
They love order in the society. They love the idea of society where everyone is equal to each other, even if people are against it. I guess they always put them selves into the position of observers of the society from the sky and giving suggestions to it. For the sake of economic equality they don’t mind giving up the fundamental rights of each individual in the society but would he support the same system where his own rights are taken away?
Anyway original Marxism is irrelevant now, because those self proclaimed marxists no longer know the basic ideologies of marxism like abolition of private property. The only thing they learn after reading the marxist literature is to spew venom on the present system. When govt takes away farmers land they fight for the farmers, not because marxism told them to protect the private property against govt , its only because they want to oppose govt. They make a fuss when india signs one more business deal with america, but they forget the fact that india has more trade partnership with china, and according to marxims the concept of trade itself is evil. They raised voices till the walls around them started cracking when India is signing nuclear deal with america, because the deal is affecting the sovereignty of india , but they are mum when china proclaims china as its own territory. There are lot of statements from marxists of india when almost every head of the developed nations came to India last year for improvement of business. But when the Chinese president came with 400 CEO’s, they buried their heads in sand. They talk about McDonald’s and KFC but avoid taking about “made in china” mark on most of the industrial goods.
I agree, when someone wants to start a new system, first they have to point of mistakes of the present one, make people believe that the present system is worse, so they have to show bad things about it. Its common, when a new political party starts or a new product gets launched. The communism which aims at ‘total change’ in the present system, stooped very low. Just read the statements below
Our bourgeois, not content with having the wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other's wives.
Bourgeois marriage is in reality a system of wives in common.
Now don’t start thinking that I quoted those statements from a not-so-famous book written by a capitalism-phobia patient. Those lines are from the famous communist manifesto written by Karl Marx and Engels.
Do you see Mukhesh ambani and Lakshmi mittal seducing each other wives or having wives and daughters of their employees?
And the madness did not stop there…again from the great communist manifesto.
But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians.
So the workers don’t know the concept of family? Prakash karat got married to brinda karat , shall we think he is capitalist now? How could a 30yr old guy write something like that. Does not it prove that he never went out and interacted with people.
One bad quality of true marxists is they can only think in black and white terms. If something is not communistic in nature then its capitalistic. And source of all bad is capitalistic in nature. They are so busy pointing out the bad in the present society they don’t have much to introspect their own system. If you ask them why USSR collapsed , they cant answer satisfactorily. Ask them about great leap forward , they will try to divert the topic.
To conclude, I find the present day so called marxists as shallow, paranoids who are critical about everything in life and dictatorship.. They mug up few books and turn their brains into rigid mode.
Usually people think who ever fights against the bad qualities of the system are Marxists. I disagree , there are few people who fight for workers for their dues , who fight with farmers to get the just compensation for the taken land and there are atheists who reveal magic tricks of baba’s. These are the people who try to repair where system is not working properly , unlike marxists they don’t believe in replacing it dictatorship.
3 comments:
Good Post. I appreciate the clarity in your thoughts. Keep going..
Very well said
The pity is even after all the failures of communist states in the world, Indian communists cling on to it, even after the dissolution of USSR and even after seeing China grow by leaps and bounds adopting capitalist practices.
Indian communists are stuck in 50s,not customizing their theories to suit the Indian conditions.
If leave all those ideologies aside, Indian communists steadfastly stood for the downtrodden. Of all the political parties, they are the ones sided with farmers.
As we have seen communism dead in the world, its opponent capitalism is not the answer, which is causing income inequalities with its trickle down principles.
For India, neither capitalism nor communism is the solution. A middle ground of taking the best out of both that honors the freedom for individuals and providing a decent living standards.
We are on target to provide that.
@weekend politician ... thankyou :)
@baatasari ... thankyou , and you are right...thats why we adapted welfare state and keynesian economics.
Post a Comment