By Mir Tajamul Islam | Aarif Rashid
Before defining Marxism, it’s theories, how can they quash uncertainty of capitalistic phobia, and how can the idea of Marxism be implemented over capitalism, let your logical and thinking products unite and try to validate capitalistic phobias by which state had been hijacked; that it is not a myth, but a reality. Before encountering capitalism, let we draw a translucent margin between Marxism and communism. Marxism is an idea, while as practical implementation of Marxism is Communism. Usually, capitalism manipulates a common man by conquering his mind and try to create a phobia that communism had waged a war against Religion, that is not true. Though belief system plays an important role in dominating logic and reality, we let this phobia to conquer our minds and let ourselves state blindly that “Communists are Atheists”. In an attempt to fool a modern man, capitalists cover-up their actual deserving title; “it is actually us(capitalists) against whom war is waged, not religion”.
Marxism is a political ideology, theory, framework, analysis that tries to transform society into socialism and on the same time communism could be considered as “practical implementation of Marxism”. In simple terms, the very existence and birth of communism depends on Marxism. A society where all the people are considered equal, treated equally and where all the myths; created by capitalists are quashed down, could be regarded as communism and socialist state.
HOW STATE IS HIJACKED BY CAPITALISTS?
Once a spectre was haunting Europe—- the Spectre of Communism and socialism , now, with passing time, while privatization is dominant over state and people, where government institutions have become slaves of privatization, a new spectre —– the Spectre of capitalism is haunting World. A reporter asked a leading capitalist how he made his fortune, to which the capitalist answered, “it was very simple ; I bought an apple for 5 cents, spent whole night polishing it and sold it the next day for 10 cents, with this I bought two apples, spent the evening polishing them, and sold them for 20 cents. And so it went until I amassed 80”. Now, after reading the above decoction, some of you might have smelled the real essence of capitalism very well. Right? Is it fair what does it all mean? So many questions might arise; For whom capitalists works better, for whom it works worse?
With the disintegration of USSR, liberals assumed that Marxism has crumbled completely but it was only hysteria and chimera for them. With the advent of globalization, ideas of Marxism has become emphatically powerful. It is because of the exploitation which is taking place against common people in the world especially poor. It is an incontrovertible fact that globalization had brought tremendous prosperity in the world. But the thing is , to whom it is productive and lucrative ? Ideally , it is for rich and poor people are hardly taking benefit from these so called neo – liberal policies. Neo liberal policies have made life of poor people flagrant and maladroit. It has spoiled human life entirely and led to the alienation of human life from every angle and even equanimity of human beings have been completed destroyed. It has reduced human life just to a commodity.
In the name of freedom, liberal policies have also espoused and cajoled rich to oppress poor masses in the world. Even the promise of a peaceful and prosperous world from the liberals after the end of the cold war proved Illusiory , which is evident from this fact that they have killed millions of people in Afghanistan and other parts of the world blatantly. Height of hypocrisy lies in the fact that they went a step ahead by justifying innocent killing for the sake of freedom and democracy. But the purpose was to fulfill their rapacious and insatiable interests , so that they can beglamour world in the name of freedom and democracy. It has brought wreckage, disastrous and agonies in human life and has always acted as a despotic system, in the form of extreme poverty hunger, and starvation. In spite of the fact that in market there is availability of food or other products in abundance but still who are living in abject poverty are hardly able to purchase these things because they have paltry amount or nothing at all to make their ends meet.
THEORY OF ALIENATION AND ITS RELEVANCE
Marxism philosophy is grounded on both dialectical and materialistic aspects, changes and interactions are brought into focus and it ensures capitalistic society is developed and still developing by which contradictions which evolve in the functioning of society are actually “dust and sand” prestricting our eyes. Furthermore Marx’s specific theories are best understood to answer some of the pointed questions about the nature and development of capitalism. In the theory of alienation, Marx gives his answer to this question.
With the continuous grinding and exploitation of workers by Bourgeois class, Marx take a stand of theories ; alienation, exploitation and class struggle to counter the said exploitation. Also conscience of workers boiled and they developed shield of insurgency against elite class. It is impossible in this short write up to moot the ideas of Marxism, so, elaborating theory of alienation and its relevance to the contemporary neoliberal world will be on basic margins.
From the last decades, abruptly, Karl Marx’s work have attracted the attention of anti capitalists , trade unionists and many others. Proletarians ; working class mainly got attracted and started a new war against capitalism. In this context, Eric Hobsbawm also argued “if one thinker left a major ineffaceable mark on 20th and 21st century, it was Karl Marx”. On the other hand, communist manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels made an intolerable gap between rich and poor, also argued that bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the production instruments.
The four dimensions of the alienation identified by Marx are alienation from; the product of labour, the process of labour, others and self. Capitalistic strategies result in feeling of powerlessness and helplessness, thus to get a sigh of relief from these negative feelings. Marx designed a theory by which Proletarians can distance themselves from emotional involvement.
A recent study confirmed that the factors contributing to alienation today are similar to those 150 years ago and linked to the commodification of workers by the capitalistic system. Overall the relationship between alienation and technology remains relevant in the 21st century. Marx developed the theory of alienation from Fellerbach’s philosophical critique of Christianity, who argued that the concept of all powerful God as a spiritual being to whom people must submit in order to reach salvation was a human construction. Marx applied this concept of alienation to work in industrial capitalist societies, arguing that emanicipation for workers lies in their own control away from small , dominating ruling class(bourgeois). Marx theory suggests capitalist production creates alienation in four main areas, as already pointed above.
WORKERS ARE ALIENATED FROM THEIR OWN LABOUR——- they have to work as and when required and to perform the tasks set by their employers.
THEY ARE ALIENATED FROM THE PRODUCTS OF THEIR LABOUR——- which are claimed by capitalists to be sold as products on the market place for profit, while workers only receive a fraction of this profit as wages.
WORKERS ARE ALIENATED FROM EACH OTHER—— they are encouraged to compete with each other for jobs.
THEY ARE ALIENATED FROM THEIR OWN SPECIES BEING——- according to Marx , satisfying work is an essential part of being human , and capitalism makes work a misery, so work under capitalism thus alienates men from himself. It is no longer a joy , it is simply a means to earn wages to survive.
Marx’s well known solution to the ills of alienation was communism– a way of organizing society in which workers would have more control over their working conditions, and thus would experience much less alienation.
The Relevance of Marxism can be highlighted from the below mentioned data as well; It was estimated by the World Bank, due to Covid-19, seventy to hundred million people would be forced into extreme poverty, which the bank defines as having to less than 1.90 dollars every day. The bank warned ” South Asia may see a large increase in the number of poor as a result of covid-19 , particularly in India.” As per World Bank ,” Two third of poor population will be from South Asia due to pandemic”. It is further expected by World Bank ” Poverty will hike more in the world and will force more than 150 million people to live in extreme poverty in 2021.”According to Oxfam ” Globally 2153 billionaire have garbed more wealth than 4.6 billion people who make up 60% of the world population ” As per the global survey , the 22 richest men in the world have more wealth than all women in Africa. The number of billionaires has doubled in the last decade, although their combined wealth has declined in the last year. In other report as per World Food Programmed Director David Beasley has warned that in addition to the threat posed by covid-19 the world faces ” Multiple famines of biblical proportions that could result in 300, 000 deaths per day, by hunger pandemic”. He further added ” Millions of civilians living in conflict- scarred nations including many women and children, face being pushed to the brink of starvation , with the spectre of famine a very real and dangerous possibility .
With the release of the Global report on food crisis – 2020,the report highlights 55 countries where 135 millions people are facing already food insecurity crisis.
Citing research from World Food Programme, Beasley Said that ” As the virus spreads , an additional 130 million people could be pushed to the brink of starvation by the end of 2020-21 , which would increase number of people up to 265 million people.”
While highlighting the above example regarding wealth , poverty and hunger etc. proves that Marxism, his theories has still strong relevance in the world and has not become redundant at any case. Marx theories are focusing on basic needs of human beings. Without having basic needs in human life, human beings can’t live a happy and prosperous life in the world. For the sake of political freedom, human being can compromise , but not for the sake of economic freedom. That is why Marks focus on ” Human liberation from economic point of view. It is because of that Marx said ” Human liberation is a historical act , not a mental act and is necessary for the development of human beings “. So we can say that Marx promulgates that there should not be any second thought on the basic need of human life. On the other hand ,Capitalism is constantly looting and exploiting poor countries in the world and is making them ‘economic slaves of developed countries.’ Instead of fulfilling the needs of every one, it is fulfilling greed of selfish and egoistic capitalists in the world. In short, liberalism has created false illusion in the minds of people regarding Marxism , in order to stash the failures and miserable performance of capitalism is concerned. Liberalism has also followed hawkish and overweening stance regarding poor people in order to fulfill the rapacious interest of rich people in the world.
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Reference;*REFERENCE* GIDDENS AND SUTTAN (2017) essential concepts in sociology.
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Views are personal.
Disastrous article published in a “Muslim” Website!! How shameful, embarrassing and how treacherous that a “Muslim” Website is promoting an idea, whose practical implementation led to massive calamities for Religious Masses in General and Muslims in particular. Just look
at the history of what happened in Central Asia when this satanic idea was applied in practise. Does these people who wrote the article want people who believe in God to suffer unspeakably? Does this website promotes an idea which will definitely lead to catastrophe for Muslims? Shameful…
nice one and wll calculated