When I woke up last Saturday morning, I was not aware of that
day being birthday of Karl Marx. Luckily, one of my friends in twitter tweeted
to greet Karl Marx his 194th birthday. I grew nostalgic and posted
some thought into Facebook to mark the occasion.
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I adored utopia of equality since beginning of my teenage. I
had to call myself a something, so that people could understand what I felt
like politically and socially. So, when people asked me of my ideology, I began
calling myself a person who adored Marx. I was in deep love with this man’s
thinking. His political rhetoric would attract my thoughts especially while
seeing poor laborers carrying loads heavier than them, but paid miserly to. I
have had hard time persuading peoples why Marx should be regarded as one of the
greatest thinkers of all time. The ruthless autocracy in North Korea, the
repression of Tibetans by the Chinese Communist Party, millions of deaths in
Stalin’s Russia were enough to deter my friends from wanting to know more of
Marx. I could not agree more to the intellectuals who rightfully point out flaw
in the way communist have ruled states in name of Communist Manifesto
co-authored by Marx.
However, Marx’s thinking has planted an irreplaceable dream
in human kind; the dream to create a just world. Though the dream was a utopian
one, it is the first of a kind to connect people in a revolution aiming for
justness in such a large scale, over vast lands. It is true that a social
theory possess loopholes. Most of our ancient astronomers were wrong to believe
in sun revolving around Earth; however this observation laid foundation to
modern day astronomy. So, it is no big deal if Marxism came with flaws in it. However,
he has made us dream if a society better than what current day democracy has
achieved. The same dream could be obtained by completely different means but
the credit of making humans think of its possibility goes to Marx. In an
upbringing where we are ready to praise Devkota for dreaming to reach the moon
even before the human did, it is inappropriate that we don’t pay respect to a
man who thought if every one of us would be free of hunger, prejudice and
injustice. Neglecting Marx and his theories as utopian would be betrayal to
humanity.
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Many people criticize
and sense authoritarian manners in Marx’s idea of legitimizing violence to
overthrow bourgeois rule to establish autocracy of proletariat. Let us deal
with the first part. In a totally different context, CK Lal points out in his
column Reflection (Republica Daily): “The Road to Martyrdom”, “Lord Krishna justifies wars, even
by means of deception if necessary for end of tyrannies and restoration of
righteousness.” It is similar to what Marx said. It is debatable if Nepal would
have been a Republic this soon without a ‘People’s War’, but the Tsar would not
have been removed from Russia; ruthless Batista would not have been ousted from
Cuba have the discontent of the working class be united by communist ideas. As
far as autocracy of proletariat is concerned, communist parties can achieve it
through democratic ways. Successful example of it is the three decade long rule
of communist party in West Bengal of India, which recently ended in a bitter
loss. The communist parties can establish the rule of the proletariats for a
long time, taking consent of regular terms from the people. This fact is more
underlined by Leon Trotsky when he famously said, “Democracy is oxygen to
socialism”.
Attempts to revitalize communism from its ugly track of
autocracy via bureaucracy of a single political party, as in Stalin’s Russia,
were even made in Nepal. The credit goes to a
foresighted Marxist-Leninist Madan Bhandari. As per the demand of time,
in his doctrine “People’s Multiparty Democracy” , Bhandari has tried to push
his communist party out of extreme leftist mode into a democratic socialist
force. In fact, many socialist parties in Europe are based on consolidation of
their communist ideals. The popularity of such parties in Nordic states and
recent polling trends in France, Portugal, and Greece support the popularity of socialists in Europe. However, many rigid communists, so called ‘hardliners’
view this as a betrayal to revolution and tag it as ‘revisionism’. This
dogmatic approach deprives pragmatic communist to innovate and adapt after the
overthrowing of a bourgeois autocratic leader. This approach has failed to yield
communism as a self evolving dynamic culture, rather it appears to be an
imposed ditto of some other unsuccessful regime of the past.
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The hardliners are wrong in their insistence to push Unified
Maoists, the biggest political force of Nepal into a fully fledged communist
revolution. Marx himself was aware that a successful communist state could not
be built upon an isolated agricultural economy. Alex Callicinos explains in his
book ‘The revolutionary ideas of Karl Marx’ the reasons for failure of USSR, “As
Marx had predicted, the confinement of the revolution to a single country meant
that the whole filthy business of exploitation and class struggle was
restored.” Nepal would suffer the same fate, a communist dictator would take
over and Stalinism would eventually dominate Marxism. The writer further
insists that ‘forced industrialization’ was flung into by the Stalin regime
during and after 1928-29. This goes against the very basics of Marxism. In
fact, the communist manifesto clearly states the beginning of united revolt of
the proletariat to take place in the economies where Capitalism has reached its
pinnacle. However, to the contrary communist revolution happened first in
Russia and is popular in poor country like ours. Marxist had hoped the Russian
Socialist Revolution to be a “a signal to western proletariat revolution. A self sustainable communist world is to happen only
when whole of the world resources are capitalized, a small economy like Nepal
would go by the North Korean way if we happen to embrace what the hardliners
are pushing for.
If we look at matters seriously, Nepal is
the last hope for modern communists. Unlike China, Cuba or North Korea communist
ideas are popular among the Nepalese without any forced propaganda or
repression by the state. We are probably the only country left, which could get
an elected communist executive in the near future. Hence, we don’t have the
luxury to experiment the same as orthodox communist regime did to fail just few
decades ago. The way forward for communists in Nepal is a tough and demanding
one. As written in the communist manifesto by Marx and Engels, “This organization of the proletarians
into a class, and, consequently into a political party, is continually being
upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever
rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier.” Hopefully, scattered communists of
Nepal would unite and run as a single force in upcoming elections. Further in
the communist manifesto it is clearly stated that, “The Communists do not form a separate party
opposed to the other working-class parties.” Unfortunately, we have clear factions
within the big two communist parties itself.
The recurring
crisis in capitalist system like the recent recession in US and Europe would
make Marx resurface despite rigorous attempt to nullify his criticism of the
current system. But, it would be great if Nepal could prove a point or two by
successfully pointing to the West, a democratic socialist state could sustain efficiently.
It would stand as a towering example; just like our peace process and removal
of monarchy did to bewilder the Western elites. Who knows, the pursuit of equality
would rejoice the world once again from the deeds of our communists?
