Opinion Editorials, October 2003, www.aljazeerah.info
Human Price of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine
Israeli daily aggression on the Palestinian people
Mission and meaning of Al-Jazeerah
Cities, localities, and tourist attractions
Karl Marx, Groucho Marx and Marks and Spencer
Sigmund Siignatuur
Jordan Times, Saturday, October 25, 2003
THE OBJECT of this article is to see how each is faring. The more serious rationale behind the article is to see whether we should place a “rest in peace” sign above the ideas that were and are prevalent in Marxism-Leninism.
Karl Marx may rightly be regarded as one of the foremost thinkers of the 19th century. His thoughts strayed onto analysing capitalism and socialism and the evolutionary nature of history. Wittingly or unwittingly, his perceptions gave birth to governmental communism; although within the system there were and are differing schisms and strands of thought, to best understand and deliver the ideology.
Groucho Marx is the doyen of Hollywood comics from the 30s. His handful of films with his brothers still create great interest (70 years later) and are regularly screened. His one liners are great. Take, for example, the movie where he was playing Otis J. Flywheel and the police were looking for some criminals that they thought Marx was hiding in his apartment. They burst into his flat and implied that the criminals were present. They told Groucho that the evidence was that the table was set for eight and he retorted by saying that “his alarm clock was set for nine”.
Marks and Spencer represent the acceptable face of capitalism. They are renowned for taking a Romanian textile designer with a sewing machine and making him a billionaire. They are also renowned for taking the Romanian textile designer and making him forfeit his modern Bucharest factory and return to his sewing machine.
One reason that communism issued an incorrect idea of the struggle between capitalism and communism is that the man who described the evolutionary process did not have success in this venture. Marx, accompanied by Engels, gleaned the fetid environment of the cotton mills of England and were persuaded in thinking that capitalists were so unconcerned by this putrid environment that alienation would take place amongst the workers, which would eventually lead to a revolution that would cast these creatures into a fiery inferno.
Such ideas were strengthened in Stalin's view by the depression in the West, in the 1930s, that, he thought, would certainly maim and herald the demise of capitalism.
Unfortunately, the ideological path that Stalin set himself created very little stimulus for the proletariat of the West. The intellectuals were somewhat titillated, but that was all.
Stalin brutalised Russia in a variety of ways. First, the agricultural base was decimated. Famine was created by Stalin's ideas of killing and maiming the wealthier peasants. The industrial base was better, but here there were rich pickings for Beria (head of the secret service). The purges that killed the other influential Russians contributed even more to discrediting the Russian leadership. Important party officials such as Kamenev, Rykov, Tomsky, Bukharin and Trotsky were killed in the star trial purges. Some say that had Stalin not been draconian, the USSR would have found it more difficult to defeat Nazism.
The next stage was to defeat Nazism, and so, the ideological battle between capitalism and communism had to be put on the back burner.
With the onset of the cold war, the ideological antagonism grew worse. Stalin's expansion into East Europe created many problems, not least being the lack of pluralism that now reigned in East Europe; there was no chance to change the political hue of the monolithic communist regime that dominated East Europe.
West Europe had ventured into social democracy, and while there was still a bigger underclass in West Europe than in East Europe, the upwards mobility of the population was clear to see and the standard of living for most Westerners outstripped that of the East. A clear case study can be made between East Berlin and West Berlin. The growing haemorrhage from the East caused the Soviets to inspire the East Germans to perestroika and glasnost, symbolising the new political and economic freedoms in the USSR which, in turn, led to the break up and dismantling of the communist regimes in East Europe, coupled with the break up of communism throughout the USSR.
Now capitalism was to have its field-day. Unabashed, socially mobile, mobile-phone inspired, the champagne swilling stock exchange aficionados had their day. At last, the Messiah of capitalism had arrived.
As we can see, communism gave way to capitalism in Europe, but what of elsewhere.
China, Vietnam, Cuba and North Korea are still communist. I find it difficult to understand China's brand of communism. It encourages capitalism and has Chinese millionaires. Its act of revisionism would have led Mao Tse Tung to openly weep, but then Mao proclaimed ideology above economic growth.
It is obvious that capitalism has failed many societies and, therefore, the appeal of communism must be strong in these societies; that is why we should be careful when we scoff at communism and say it had its day. It stands in the wings as capitalism fails to remedy some vast tracts of land with anything like a decent standard of living. Ethiopia can hardly be compared to Switzerland.
Someone once said to Karl Marx: “I doubt you would like to live under the regimes that you would prefer” (e.g., communism). He said: “I hope I'll never have to.” He never had to. His thoughts are still valued, but his regime has tottered — though never underestimate its ability to revive itself.
Groucho Marx is loved but is incapable of making a comeback.
Marks and Spencer are reliant on the stock exchange. Their food is highly thought of while their clothing seems to have lost the panache, but all is possible in the designer world of swim suits and lasagne.
I think it was Gandhi who said that man has enough food but has far too much greed.
 |
| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
 |
| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
 |
| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
 |