150th Anniversary Of Karl Marx’s Birth

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31678, 14 May 1968, Page 13

150th Anniversary Of Karl Marx’s Birth

(»t. fre»» A,»n—Copyright; MOSCOW, May 12. The Soviet Union is leading the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx, writes Henry Shapiro, of United Preen International This might please the father ot communism if he could know it (he died in 1883), but he would find the world that honours him an astonishing one, Shapiro says. Thinas have not quite worked out the way he envisioned them. when, in the “Communist Manifesto” he wrote with Friedrich Entels In IMS, the call was issued to “workers of the world unite— ?ou have nothin* to lose but your chains.”

The manifesto remains the catechism of Communists today, just as Marx’s monumental and abstruse “Das Kepi, tai” may be said to be the bible of communism, says Shapiro. The manifesto has been described as perhaps the most explosive and influential pamphlet ever produced. Written by Marx and Engels as the platform for a group of only 100 practising revolutionaries, it set forces In motion that have resulted in Communist rule over 900 million people, or 40 'per eent of the world’s population. Prophesies Awry Yet even allowing this, it Is not the sort of world Marx foresaw—and his prophesies have gone somewhat awry. Marx wrote that with the development of capitalism, the rieh would get richer and the poor poorer, the middle class would gradually disappear, society would be polarised into exploiters and the exploited, and the proletariat would be increasingly pauperised. In the Marx creda, polarisation of classes and impoverishment of the workers, given the necessary organisation, made revolution inevi-

table. This revolution was to be international in character because, according to Marx, "the working men have no country.” Marx expected the revolution to come in a highly industrialised state, such as in the Germany or England he knew in bis lifetime. He probably never considered backward, semi-feudal Russia as the fountainhead of the new order. No Blueprint Prolific as he was, Marx | left no blueprint for revolu-, tion or for the ideal society ' be envisioned. It was left to 1 his apostles to develop, ex- 1 pand, and modify his teach- . ings, although they all claimed that they never 1 deviated from basic Marxist 1 theory. 1 It was the Russians who | were to be the first to expert- 1 ment practically with the 1 Man concept of socialism. “In no sense do we consider Marxist theory as something ( complete and unassailable,” , Lenin was reported to have said. 1 Lenin proved both more ! imaginative and more flexible than Man, and developed the ' doctrine that Russia could . have its revolution despite the , weakness of the industrial proletariat which, he said, would bo compensated by an alliance with the peasantry. ; Man baa talked much about the proletariat, but had minimised the role of the 1 individual boro and loader in , history. Ho foresaw no Lenin, and no Stalin. Developments No* Foreseen 1 There were other develop- < meats Man had not foreseen: i He bad underestimated the i intelligence of the capitalists t and their ability to adjust to 1 changing conditions, and to • Improve the living standards t of the workers, Shapiro says. 1 His predicted polarisation f of classes into monster ruling t

monopolists and exploited workers—with the gradual disappearance of the middle class—did not accur. In some countries, for example in the United States, many Of the workers—particularly the socalled aristocracy of labour—became integrated into the middle-class. Their tradeunions in some cases even acquired what in Marxist terms equated with a sociailydangerous monopoly of power. The workers "have no country,” Marx claimed, yet in soma Western countries the most virulent opponents of communism have been the conservative trade-unions. Technological and sclent!- , lie progress not foreseen by Marx have not only 1 pauperised the workers in a i capitalistic society, but have < given them an Increasingly largo slice of the economic < pie. I State Apparatus Man also did not foresee | the development of the bourgeois State apparatus as an ] Independent power entity, , sometimes opposed to the < interests of the property- : owning classes. “Employer-labour relations have reached unforeseen , dimensions, with the develop- , ment of the Welfare State so that a capitalist country such as Sweden ean provide one of the world’s highest living standards,” says Shapiro. “Marx’s apparent underesti- 1 mation of the power of < nationalism was demonstrated i perhaps most dramatically in . Hitlers Germany, where 1 eight million pre-Hitier Ger- I man Communists and social-1 ists fought with fury against i the Soviet Union which they i had looked upon as the 1 fatherland of the interna- 1 tional workingclass’. In < World War II they fought i for their own fuehrer and i their own fatherland." i

In further contradiction of Marx’s contention that workers “have no country,” Shapiro says, the world now has a second generation Communist leader such as Rumania’s Nicolao Ceausescu declaring that nationalism is here to stay. Jugoslavia has long taken such a stance and so, increasingly, are other Communist countries —currently, Czechoslovakia. Yet they all protest loyalty to “proletarian internationalism.” In Moscow, hardly a day passes without special articles in the press about Marx. Radio and television programmes are being devoted to him, and popular lectures. The base oTMarx’s only statue in Moscow is smothered with fresh flowers. The celebrations will be climaxed by a jubilee session tn the Kremlin's Palace of Congresses where, if not party chairman Leonid Brezhnev himself, or Ideologist Mikhail Suslov, an eminent Marxist philospher will address an elite audience of Soviet Government and party leaders. The leaders of the Communist Party are expected to voice their re-dedication to Marxist-Leninist teachings, as interpreted in 1988, Shapiro says. Practised What He Preached. —Dr Martin Luther King, who often said that money corrupts, practised what be preached—be left little of it, Associated Press reports. Most of the monetary legacy be could have left his widow and four young children he gave away in his lifetime—the royalties from his books, and his 8U550.000 Nobel Peace Prize money. He left no estate, and despite the constant threat of danger under which he lived, he left no will.—Atlanta, May 12.