Dear Comrades,
On behalf of the Workers Party of Bangladesh, we like to present a few words in front of our revolutionary comrades from different countries in commemoration to the great Philosopher, Economist, Social and political revolutionary and outstanding genius of thousand years, Karl Marx. He is the unprecedented teacher and leader of International Working Class. Revolutionary people acknowledging social justice, democracy, humanity and struggle for human emancipation all over the world will continue to commemorate this great thinker and revolutiory leader for years to come not only to pay tribute to him, but 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.
Comrades,
New advancements initiate new challenges. Marxism in 21st century is intrinsically related with the challenges of building 21st century socialism.
It is frequently spoken in all levels that we are to face challenges of 21st century. But it is relevant to ask, ‘what are the concrete forms of theses 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; Physical Science has achieved its golden peak, no doubt, but still having so many things to be explained excusively 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 etc.
Challenges in socio-economic arena is 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 Soviet Union and 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 capitalism 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 only alternative to Neo-liberal capitalism and Imperialism, relevant all over the World, the word acquired some negative connotations and attack from the 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 arose 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. We are to critically analyse the setbacks and mistakes that floated those criticism. 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 after the demise of soviet union and East European socialist model, the world was turned in a unipolar entity led 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 with some new experiments and initiatives but accepting classic Marxist idea of Socialism. Different other new phenomena occurred in some Latin American countries, where Peoples’ force are acquiring state power through election. Very special experience in forming Government in Nepal through election is a huge success of Nepalese people led by Communist party of Nepal. No doubt it is a new experience of the Communists and socialists in South Asia in the race of achieving socialism. 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. There is always the possibility of retreats and failures.
In certain respects, the situation of Maxism in the early 21st century was similar to 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).
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 we look at the 20th century we see a quite different set of questions being addressed. How were communist ideas to be propagated (What is to be done,1902)? How was the communist movement to actually take power (The State and Revolution)? Once the revolution had taken place how was the economy to be re-organized (The New Economics, 1926)? 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 the 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 theoretical preparations for the turn to the free market that occurred in the 1980s had laid down much earlier by right wing economic theorists like Hayek and Friedman. Their ideas, seen as extreme during the 1950s and 60s gained influence through the proselytizing activities of the organizations like the Institute for Economic Affairs and the Adam Smith Institute. This groups produced a series of books and reports advocating free market solutions to contemporary economic problems. They won the ear of prominent politicians like Margaret Thatcher, and from the 1980s were put into practice. She was given liberty to do this by a combination of long term demographic changes and short term conjectural events. Within Britain, labour was in short supply, but across Asia it had become super abundant. Were capital free to move abroad to this plentiful supply of labour would no longer hold the stronger bargaining position. The conjectural factor making this possible was the surplus in freign trade generated by North Sea oil. Hitherto, the workers who produced manufactured exports had been essential to national economic survival. With the money from the North Sea, the manufacturing sector could be allowed to collapse without the fear of a balance of payment crisis. The deliberate run-down of manufacturing industry shrank the social basis of social democracy and weakened the voice of labour both economically and politically.
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. The 21st century Marxism can no longer push to one side the details of how the non-market economy of the future is to be organised. We can not pretend and ignore that the 20th century never happened, or that it taught us nothing about socialism. Instead we must recover and celebrate the advances in Marxist political economy that arose from the Russian experience: the method of material balances used in preparing the 5 year plans and systematized as Input Output analysis by Leontief; the method of linear programming pioneered by Kantorovich; the time diaries of Strumlin. 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: Boehm- Bawerk, Mises, Hayek, whose ideas now constitute the keystone of reaction. If we are to reconstitute socialism as the common-sense of the 21st century – as it was the common-sense of the mid 20th , then these are the ideas that must be confronted. In attacking them we should not hesitate to use the advances in other sciences – statistical mechanics, information theory, computability theory, game theory etc. We have to treat political economy and the theory of social revolution like any other science. We must formulate testable hypotheses, which we then asses against empirical data. Where the empirical results differ from what we expected, we must modify and retest our theories.
To understand this new form of Marxist science consider the debate on the so-called ‘transformation problem’. There was, in the 20th century, a huge and pointless literature attempting to rebut Boehm Bawerk’s criticism of Marx’s theory of prices of production. The net result of this debate was only to detract attention from the labour theory of value and Marx’s analysis of exploitation. The eventual breakthrough, in the 1980s, against this Austrian critique of Marxism came from two mathematical logicians Farjoun and Machover. Their work ‘The Laws of Chaos’, was a original contribution to Marxist theory of the late 20th century. Vladimir Lenin said: “Without a revolutionary theory there cannot be a revolutionary movement.” This is as true today as in 1902. In the late 20th century we came to lack such a theory. Thatcher’s idea that ‘There is no alternative’, only seemed credible because we lacked a revolutionary political economy, one which not only interpreted the world but explained how to change it, how to construct a different world. 21st century Marxism is starting out along the path to build that revolutionary political economy. Let us hasten its achievement so that when the next major restructuring crisis hits the capitalist world economy we are in a position to equip progressive movements with the ideas that they need if they are to prevail.
Dear Comrades,
The global situation has changed no doubt, we need concrete analysis of concrete situation. We are to face the challenges has already arisen in the course of building socialism in the 21st century, analyzing all the mistakes that has been done in 20th century. We are to shake the chains by one hand against neo-liberal atrocities and to build up a new world that is socialism of 21st century by another hand incorporating all the advancements of science and technology, new ideas, aspirations and expectations.
Comrades,
We are to take Marxism as World Outlook. 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.”
The debate on 21st century socialism is ongoing and has not reached a finality.This is so, because the socialism in the 21st century will arise not just from theory but also from practice. But we have now some broad contours of what a renovated socialism of the 21st century will look like. Here we can only set out some of them in an outline form
Conclusion:
Marxism is based on creative and scientific philosophical ideas. Fundamental aspect of Marxist philosophy is creative scientific thinking. It was never a religious relic, not now even. The revolutionary philosophers and political personalities like Marx, Engels and Lenin laid down the definite and general directives of scientific social development. Experiences of the socio-economic dynamics of the global society throughout the centuries supports exclusively the correctness of the general aspect of their views. But that doesn’t mean that the ideas are static, rigid and dogmatic. Rather it is ever-developing along with time and concreteness of the situation. Marxism is always opposite to dogmatism. Marx-Engels-Lenin and other revolutionaries of different part of the world played their historic role. Now, it is the time for the present generation to uphold their own historic responsibility for changing the world towards invincible Socialism.
Long Live Revolution
Long Live Socialism
Workers of all countries of the World, Unite