Revisting Marxism

Then and now, I have never been convinced of the Marxist prescriptions of what ails our society.  Then and now, Karl Marx diagnosis of the capitalism has always been right.

    In the 90′ after the Berlin wall was pulled down, the collapse of the Eastern European nations exposed the inherent weaknesses of communism.  The communist ideology stifled the basic motivation for any human enterprise: reaping the fruits of your own endeavour.  The profit motivation in the capitalist system is absent in Marxism where production and the market forces are state-controlled. 

 What we saw in the 20^th century was the inevitable collapse of the communism.  Suppression of the basic freedoms of speech, assembly, and travel may be tolerated by the people. But where extreme poverty is shared by the people in then communist regimes, the ideology that brought them a shared misery has to be torn asunder.

 Besides, Karl Marx prescription was short of a prophecy, more of a religious leap of faith rather than realism.  His utopia of a society where everybody is equal is a dream detached from reality.  Amongst men, there are always who rise above the rest.  There are always men who are born leaders and charismatic who are destined to lead the proletariat – the politburo, a class of men who become the new elite instead of the bourgeois in the capitalist system.

But Marx critique of the capitalist system that he saw in the 19^th century rings true, then and now.  Germany, London, and France saw the birth of the industrial revolution.  There, feudalism which was agriculture-based gave way to capitalist system where industrial moguls built factories.  In these factories, men, women, children and adult had to literally swim in the dirt to propel the engine of growth: the industries. 

 The market forces though were owned by the capitalist.  Labor, and farm products were cheap.  On the other hand, processed goods, and services were expensive.  In the scheme of things, the poor get poorer and the rich, richer.

 Society then is propelled by one motivation: greed.  The need for more profit saw the dehumanization of man, and the estrangement of his labour.  Men are made slaves.  They work and are paid so they can eat, and survive for them to work in the factories.  Clint Eastwood in a movie puts this perfectly:  “I work in the gutter to give me money.  I need money to buy me food. I need food to give me energy.  I need energy for me to work in the gutter”.

Marx and the bible have one thing in common.  Both foresaw the destructive force of greed that is the prime motivation in the capitalist system.  Accordingly, for the Marx, greed which urges the capitalist to exploit labor is at the same time the reason for its growth and the seed of its destruction. 

Marx and the bible already predicted the collapse of capitalism.

 The present global financial crisis is rooted in greed.  Capital has been amassed and concentrated in the hands of the businessmen. This they achieved at the expense of the exploited labour.  This you saw in outsourced labor in China, Indonesia, India, and the poor countries in Asia, including the Philippines. In these countries, labor comes too cheap.

 Multi-nationals companies that amassed wealth through this scheme have to invest their wealth in the financial markets like the Wall street.  These investment houses in turn has to flood the market with excess cash by way of loans and mortgages. The financial schemes are designed in such a way as to rake more profits on the part of the capitalist, and squeeze the last drop of blood from the poor, and even the middle class.

 Overtime, the bubble collapses.

  In the scheme of things, this must be noted, the working class is never paid the true value of his labor.  Somehow, business takes away the large chunk of the fruits of his labor.  Business drinks the large volume of the workers’ blood, so to speak.  At end of the day, the working class is short-changed.

 In the exploitative relations of labor and capital, the working class wakes – up one day that he has no money to pay his gasoline, buy nutritious food, pay the medical bills, and pay the mortgages. 

 Without money, the working class defaults on obligations. At this stage in history, the capitalist class rattles and is shaken, terribly shaken, that among them they argue, and quarrel.  All that the capitalists have invested cannot be repaid. 

   Karl Marx, born two centuries ago, saw this collapse of the financial market coming. 

   The tension between labor and capital is only a part of the spectrum.  Labor produced the profits which capital enjoyed.  But when labor is pushed to penury, capital has to sink with the ship too.  Labor and capital must not be seen as opposing forces.  They compliment each other.

 Society must be organized based on the precept that labor and capital are only two sides of one reality, that the two are complimentary to each other, that too much exploitation of the working class would lead to the demise of capital.

  Karl Mar, two centuries ago, made a sound critique of capitalism.  Two centuries after, we saw the demise of communism which Karl Marx prescribed.

Two centuries hence, we need another intellectual giant to rescue us from the present collapse of the capitalist system.