1. Introduction:
‘Karl Marx was the greatest thinker of the past millennium’ is now an all accepted premise. Probably, it is not an exaggeration to say that he was one of the greatest thinkers of all time. He was a great Philosopher, Economist, Social and political revolutionary and outstanding genius, as his life long revolutionary friend Frederick Engels remarked. Marx was the unprecedented teacher and leader of International Working Class in his life time and after his death, the theory of history, social progress and revolution, he discovered was the source of scientific directives of all revolutionaries for the next centuries and will remain so for all time to come. All the revolutionary people acknowledging social justice, democracy, humanity and struggling for human emancipation all over the world will continue to commemorate this great thinker and revolutionary leader not only to pay tribute to him, but also for their own causes and to search, to articulate their strategy and tactics to break their chains to proceed on. The human civilization is now passing through a critical juncture with a question whether it will turn towards a new horizon of illuminated and enlightened humanity or it will remain merged into darkness of social injustice, exploitation and brutal inhuman holocaust of neo-liberal exploitation.
2. Challenges of 21st century and Marxism:
It is frequently spoken in all levels that humanity is facing the challenges of 21st century. But it is relevant to ask, ‘what are the concrete forms of these challenges?’ Answer is very wide and truly speaking all answers are not fully explored. So, it is very normal, there will be disagreement and exotic ideas. But even with all limitations, it is possible to indicate some concrete aspects of these challenges. There are challenges in the development of science and technology, challenges in the arena of socio-econimic situation; there are challenges of social justice and equity, challenges how to combat neoliberal exploitations, calamities of local and global threat of wars and annihilations, hunger, disease, poverty; challenges to maintain the restoration of global environmental balance for sustaining life system; there are challenges even in the possibilities of stepping to any other planets of different other solar system or galaxy. Physical Science has achieved its golden peak, no doubt, but still having so many things to be explained exclusively either in the phenomena of quantum fluxuation in Dirac distance level or more vivid and consistent level of knowledge of creation of Universe. To be more concrete, there are challenges in developing the consistent theory of unifying all fundamental forces, true scientific explanation of life process of living being from the standpoint of molecular Biology and Genetic Technolgy, the ultimate mystery of development of organic being from inorganic being, development of quantum computing technology in practical application, there are a lot of things to be addressed in the medical science in fighting the lethal diseases like cancer, AIDS, very recently virus pandemic COVID 19 etc.
The challenges in socio-economic arena are more complex and imminent. Economic Globalization has made it more complex. From the very starting of 20th century, the crises of capitalism in the First World War paved the way for the great Soviet Socialist Revolution in 1917 under the leadership of Bolshevik Party and Lenin. Marxism laid down the historic materialization of its theoretical strength. Marxism came as objective reality through Socialist revolution. Simultaneously, Soviet socialist revolution stood in front of some crucial tests to prove its strength in building a new type of social stage of human civilization. Its impact shook the world towards a new horizon. Socialism came into being instead of Capitalism and Imperialism as alternative. The victorius journey of socialism continued to advance through the victory of Soviet people against Nazism through the holocaust of second World War in the 3rd and 4th decade of this century, at the cost of a historic sacrifice of the lives of billions of Soviet people and destruction of uncountable wealth and resource. Human civilization escaped its total doom. The tide of struggle for national emancipation swept the old imperialist forces in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The world entered into a global condition of new form of contradictions between people of different countries and neo-imperialist exploitation. Not only in Soviet Union, the East European countries, the Peoples Republic of China, Cuba, Vietnam hoisted the red flag of revolution towards socialist path of social development. The British and French Imperialist forces lost their global hegemony to a significant level, but US imperialism came in the forefront as the new leader of Global Capitalism. Capitalism started a new initiative and a big stride to overcome its systemic crises and to fight the advancement of socialist waves all over the world. The world divided into Socialist bloc and national liberation movement against imperialist occupation in one side and the capitalist with new face and vigor in another side. The 20th Century is a long history of mixed experiences of victory and defeat, success and failure of socialism. Although Socialism, still remaining important and relevant all over the World, the word acquired some negative connotations and attack from capitalist media of propaganda, after the fall of Soviet Union. There was a huge hue and cry that socialism is dead and ‘there is no alternative of Capitalism’. There was some confusion in socialist circles also, some questions arisen like lack of democracy, dogmatism, totalitarianism, state capitalist bureaucratic methods, central planning, collectivism that did not respect differences, productivism that emphasized the expansion of productive forces without taking into consideration the need to preserve nature, intolerance towards legitimate opposition, attempts to impose atheism by persecuting believers and the belief that sole party was needed to lead the process of transition. These are the criticism against socialism to be addressed by the socialist forces of the 21st century. But one thing to be understood that acceptance of criticism of any faults like those mentioned above does not mean to accept capitalism, because history has shown all its final features, its systematic crises, its periodic ups and downs without final remedy and cure. Although due to demise of soviet union and East European socialist model, turned the world in a unipolar entity lead by the United States of America. The neoliberal policy of the capitalist world encompasses the global economy. Inspite of these backward backlash, China, Vietnam, Cuba are continuing their socialist path evidently with some experiment that seems to be incompatible to Marxism, but accepting classic Marxist idea of Socialism. Different other new phenomena occurred in some Latin American countries, where peoples’ force acquiring state power through election. Very special experience in forming Government in Nepal through election was a huge success of Nepalese people led by Communist party of Nepal. No doubt it was a new experience of the Communists and socialists in South Asia in the race of achieving socialism. But the success of Nepalese People was not sustained, the reason will be counted for. So in the 21st century, it is now our experience is that every society has its own unique characteristics that differentiate it from other countries and , therefore there may be shared goal, the measures that are taken in the trasition to socialism must be adapted to the specific conditions of each country. Implicit in all, this is the idea that there cannot be a general theory of transition; rather, each country must design its own particular strategy for the transition. The process of transformation, of advancing towards the new society is not only a long process but also a process full of challenges and difficulties. Question is whether Marxism can cope these challenges to pave the way for new path.
3. Retrospect and Contemporary issues: Marxism
In certain respects the situation of Marxism in the early 21st century is much in common with that in the late 19th century. In both cases, Marxism faced with a world in which the capitalist mode of production dominated. In each period Marxism had had to address itself to the theoretical and political challenges of the moment. The 19th century addressed two main problems: (1) The constitution of the proletariat as a class and thus as a political party- ( The Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848) (2) The critique of bourgeois political economy and the establishment of a political economy of labour. (Capital, 1867).
(3) Certain questions were only touched on the form of a future communist society (Critique of the Gotha Program) and the political form of the rule of the working class (The Civil War in France).
If it is looked back in the 20th century, a quite different set of questions were addressed. How were communist ideas to be propagated (What is to be done,1902, Lenin)? How was the communist movement to actually take power ( The State and Revolution, 1914, Lenin )? Once the revolution had taken place how was the economy to be re-organized (The New Economics, 1926, Lenin)? How were revolutions in societies that were not yet fully capitalist to take place (Why is it that Red Political Power can exist in China, 1928)? After the revolution how was the danger of counter revolution to be combated?
In retrospect one can see that the mid 1970s represented the high water marks of the socialist tide. Whilst the Vietnamese revolutionaries drove the US out of Saigon, and the last colonial empire in Africa, that of Potugal, was falling, the world was vibrant with the chanting of revolution and emancipation. But afterwards, in the 80s and 90s there were some historic setbacks such as fall of USSR and East Europe, the spike rise of neoliberal policy and the bargaining power of capital in its struggles with domestic working classes, in one country after another , immensely strengthened. So, today we are faced with a whole new set of questions. The general intellectual and ideological environment is much less favourable to socialism than it was in the 20th century. This is not merely a consequence of the counter-revolutions that occurred at the end of 20th century, but stems from a new and more vigorous assertion of the classic tenets of bourgeois political economy not only transformed economic policy in the west, but also prepared the ideological ground for counter revolution in the East.
The success of Thatcher in attacking the working class movement in Britain encouraged middle class aspiring politicians in the East like Klaus and presaged a situation in which Hayekian economic doctrines would become the orthodoxy. Thatcher’s doctrine TINA, There Is No Alternative, (to capitalism) was generally accepted. The theoretical dominance of free market economic ideas had by the start of the 21st century become so strong, that they were as much accepted by social democrats and self professed communists, as they had been by Thatcher. In policy making circles they remain unchallenged to this day. They owe dominance both to class interests and to their internal coherence. The capitalist historical project took as its founding documents the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Together these provided a coherent view of the future of Bourgeois or Civil Society, as a self regulating system of free agents operating in the furtherance of their private interests. Two centuries later when faced with the challenge of communism and social democracy, the more farsighted representatives of the bourgeoisie returned to their roots, restated the original Capitalist Manifesto, and applied it to current conditions. The labour movement by contrast had no such coherent social narrative. Keynes’s economics had addressed only technical issues of government monetary and tax policy, it did not aspire to the moral and philosophical coherence of Smith.
These circumstances set 21st century Marxism a new historical project: to counter and critique the theories of market liberalism as effectively as Marx critiqued the capitalist economists of his day. The historical project of the world’s working classes can only succeed if it promulgates its own political economy, its own theory of the future of society. This new political economy must be as morally coherent as that of Smith, and must lead to economically coherent policy proposals, which if enacted would open the way to a new post-capitalist civilization, just as those of Smith opened the way to the post feudal civilization. 21st century Marxism can no longer push to one side the details of how the non-market economy of the future is to be organized. In Marx’s day this was permissible, not now. It can not be pretended that the 20th century never happened, or that it taught us nothing about socialism. In the 19th century Marx’s Capital was a critique of the political economy that underlay British Liberalism. 21st century Marxists must perform a critique of neo-liberal political economy comparable in rigour and moral depth to Marx’s 19th century critique. In particular we must engage with and defeat the ideas of the Austrian school: Bohm- Bawerk, Mises, Hayek, whose ideas now constitute the keystone of reaction.
4. Marxism as World Outlook and compliance with natural laws:
The first important point is that through the collapse of Soviet Union what collapsed was neither socialism nor Marxism. The core of Marx’s idea of socialism is that in the economic sphere, producers are the genuine masters of production, society will develop to become a community of free human beings, and international relations will be governed by the supreme principles of peace, national self-determination, and “rules of morals and justice.” It’s also a challenge of Marxist conception of nature to cope with the development of modern natural science. . Its position in the world depends on whether Marxism can correctly view the world we live in: nature and society.
In the 1880s, Engels said that “natural science has now advanced so far that it can no longer escape dialectical generalization”. He also pointed out that the development of natural science is inextricably combined with materialism and dialectics, saying, “With each epochmaking discovery even in the sphere of natural science, it [materialism] has to change its form”. The development of natural science today outstrips that during the era of Marx and Engels, both in scale and speed. All fields of natural science, including elementary particle physics theory and the theory of the creation of the universe more than 10 billion years ago, have proved more than ever that the theoretical use of materialism and dialectics to be correct.
In the days of Marx and Engels, although the development of natural science in various fields proved the materialistic view to be correct, there was less scientific elucidation of life, consciousness and thinking. This field was the bastion of idealists in those days. Marx and Engels, however, aggressively presented materialist views on these questions to which natural science had not yet given clear answers. What is life? “Life is the mode of existence of albuminous bodies”. What is consciousness? “Consciousness and thinking are the product of a material, bodily organ, the brain, the mind itself is merely the highest product of matter”. Among natural scientists in those days, such a bold conception of life or human consciousness was a minority opinion. One and half century have passed since then. It can safely be said that developments of natural science have followed the line laid down by Marx and Engels. It has been found that, in all living things, proteins are built from nucleic acids. One of them is deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) which contains the genetic instructions specifying the biological development of all forms of life. The materialistic nature of life has been unraveled. It is said among scientists that there lies the fundamental principle of bioscience. How about human consciousness? Natural science has made it clear that the brain of humans is composed of a network of 14 billion neurons which support all mental activities. Today’s natural science has achieved many results through aggressive challenges to map out how human senses and thinking are corresponding to what parts of neurons. The phenomena of dual aspect of matter, probabilistic concepts of quantum mechanics, symmetry and symmetry breaking are all in compliance with materialistic dialectic processes. In these ways, the correctness of a Marxist materialistic view of nature has been proved to be true by developments in natural science. It can be said that the idealistic view of nature has been losing their last grounds in the area of life and consciousness.
5. Conclusion: Marxism is not a dogma, but a scientific process of praxis.
The 21st century is the time to question whether the capitalist system will continue or not. The 21st century will be an era when the question whether to allow the capitalist system to continue will come up on the agenda in many parts of the world.
Marx made a thorough analysis of the capitalist mode of production and revealed that this economic system is operated on capital’s quest for profit as “its leading motive and the goal that attracts it,” and that this profit-first principle is the source of all contradictions of capitalism. This criticism of capitalism made by Marx is applicable not only to the 19th century-world in which he lived but also to the contemporary capitalism in the 21st century. In Marx’s time, the periodic occurrences of depressions and recessions and the widening social gap between the rich and the poor received much attention. Today, these contradictions continue unabated. An additional point requiring attention in analyzing the contemporary capitalism is that these contradictions have appeared in new forms that can endanger the survival of the capitalist system itself.
The last point to mention that an important characteristic of the 21st century, an era of worldwide social system changes, is that the coexistence and competition between two social systems, that is, between capitalist countries and countries questing for socialism, is entering a new stage.
The capitalist system is not the only one to be tested for its capability to respond to such tasks. The emerging countries aiming at socialism will also be tested for how they respond to these tasks to determine whether a socialist system is an effective social system to replace capitalism or not. It is a new and important feature of the current century.
In comparing capitalist society with a communist society to come in the future, Marx in his “Capital” gave an analysis that in capitalist society “social reason” always asserts itself only post festum, that is, only after everything has failed, but in a communist society social reason operates in advance of a failure to prevent a catastrophe. This inherent philosophical approach of Marxism in the context of all the issues evolved presently and in future makes it scientifically consistent and capable of being ever relevant.
5 May, 2022.