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MARX, THE GREATEST THINKER of the 20th and 21st Century.
A penniless asylum seeker in London was vilified across two pages of the Daily
Mail last week. No surprises there, perhaps - except that the villain in
question has been dead since 1883. “Marx the Monster” was the
Mail’s furious reaction to the news that thousands of Radio 4-BBC listeners
had chosen Karl Marx as their favourite thinker. His disciples include Stalin,
Mao, Pol Pot - and even Mugabe. So why has Karl Marx just been voted the
greatest philosopher ever?
The puzzlement is understandable. Fifteen years ago, after the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, there appeared to be the general assumption that Marx was now an ex-parrot. He had kicked the bucket, shuffled off his mortal coil and been buried forever under the rubble of the Berlin Wall. No one needs to think about him - still less read him - ever again.
“What we are witnessing”, Francis Fukuyama proclaimed at the end of the Cold War, “is not just the …. Passing of a particular period of the post war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution”.
But history soon returned with a vengeance. By August 1998, economic meltdown in Russia, currency collapse in Asia and market panic around the world prompted the Financial Times to wonder if we had moved “from the triumph of global capitalism to its crisis in barely a decade”. The articles was headlined “Das Kapital Revisited”.
The billionaire George Soros now warns that the herd instinct of capital-owners such as himself must be controlled before they trample everyone else underfoot. “Marx and Engels gave a very good analysis of the capitalist system 150 years ago, better in some ways, I must say then the “equilibrium theory of classical economics” he writes. “ The main reason why their dire predictions did not come true was because of countervailing political interventions in democratic countries. Unfortunately we are once again in danger of drawing the wrong conclusions from the lessons from history. This time the danger comes not from communism but from market fundamentalism”
In October 1997, the business correspondent of the New Yorker, John Cassidy,
reported a conversation with an investment banker. “The longer I spend
in Wall Street, the more convinced I am that Marx was right”, the financier
said “I am absolutely convinced that Marx’s approach is the best
way to look at Capitalism”. His curiosity aroused Cassidy to read Marx
for the first time. He found “riveting passages about globalization,
inequality, political corruption, monopolisation, technical progress, the
decline of the high culture, and the enervating nature of modern existence
- issues that economists are now confronting anew, sometimes without realising
that they are walking in Marx’s foot - steps”.
Like Moliere’s bourgeois gentleman who discovered to his amazement that for more then 40 years he had been speaking prose without knowing it, much of the Western bourgeoisie absorbed Marx’s ideas without ever noticing. It was belated reading of Marx in the 1990s that inspired the financial journalist James Buchan to write his brilliant study Frozen Desire: An Inquiry into the Meaning of Money” 1997.
“Everybody I know now believes that their attitudes are to an extent a creation of their material circumstances” he wrote “and that changes in the ways things are produced profoundly affect the affairs of humanity even outside the workshop of the factory. It is largely through Marx, rather than political economy, that those notions have come down to us”
Even the Economist journalist John Mick-lethawit and Adrian Wooldridge, eager cheer leaders for turbo-capitalism, acknowledge the debt. “ As a prophet of socialism Marx may be kaput” they wrote in a Future Perfect : the Challenge and Hidden Promise of Globalization - 2000. “but as a prophet of the universal interdependence of nations as he called globalisation, he can be startlingly relevant. “Their greatest fear was that the more successful globalisation becomes the more it seems to whip up its own backlash” - or, as Marx himself said, - The modern industry produces its own gravediggers.
The bourgeoisie has not died. But nor has Marx: his errors or unfulfilled prophecies about Capitalism are eclipsed and transcend by the piercing accuracy with which he revealed the nature of the beast. “ Constant revolutionising of production , uninterrupted disturbances of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones;” he wrote in the Communist Manifesto.
In his other great masterpiece, Das Kapital he showed how all that is truly human becomes congealed into inanimate objects - commodities - which then acquire tremendous power and vigour, tyrannising the people who produced them.
The result of this week’s BBC poll suggest that Marx’s portrayal of the forces that govern our lives - and of instability, alienation and exploitation they produce - still resonates, and can still bring the world into focus. Far from being buried under the rubble of the Berlin Wall, he may only now be emerging in his true significance. For all the anguished, uncomprehending howls from the right-wing press, Karl Marx could yet become the most influential thinker of the 21st century.
These are extracts from the article published on the Observer: 15/07/05 by Francis Wheen
Click here to see and buy 50s and 60s communist propaganda posters.
Did Leonardo Da Vinci, Picasso, Chopin, Homer, Shakespeare, Socrates, Lao Zi among others needed Copyright to generate their monumental artistic legacy to our civilization?
Isn’t the copyright just another “fetter” in the artistic universe that creates further limits and barriers between the creation, the creator and ultimately the ones that are the subject and objective of the artistic endeavour?
What is clear is that this “illegitimate artifice” is just another way to exploit and expropriate from individuals - consumers. More importantly is that Copyright exerts a “creative control” on the artistic subject matter whereby more and more, the means and forms to create are concentrated in the corporate world. The independent artist, free thinker that rejects the tutelage of Big Business is almost restricted to the marginal access of the artistic spectrum. At the present all the print, electronic media and high tech channels are concentrated in a few hands that select their “artistic interest” to corroborate to their “moral political standards” and financial interests. Copyright does precisely that as it increases the “Elitist Media” power control over the art, artist and the people ability to express.
Funds to the Arts should be part of an Educational Artistic endowment, appropriated
from taxes on the billions made by the corporate world. It is a minor social
and cultural contribution that it should be mandatory without the any interference
from the commercial market.
Art, culture and science are indeed a vital inherent continuous universal legacy that belongs to no one. It is the essence of our existence which is bequeathed on all of us “freely” the day we are all born. Why should some egotistical individual, rule or corporation limit what it is in the inner most vital constituent of our being as individuals and society; the right to think freely, to create, to share ideas without any restrictions with all man, woman in child across the planet with no copyright.
We are proud to launch our new page:
IN BLACK AND WITH: NO COPYRIGHT.
We invite everyone to share it freely.
China Now
Artsrepublik is pleased to announce a partnership with Berlin based Art store, yourART. This joint project has the aim of promoting young artists from artistically and politically restricted areas of the world; and will see highly controversial yet beautiful works of art on display. The collection, named CHINA NOW! consists of artworks, forbidden now in China which have been selected for show in the German Capital -a place not unfamiliar with artistic restriction in it’s own recent past. This politically charged art is the creation of two young Chinese artists living and working in provincial Beijing, providing a stark visual contrast between the spiritual East and rapidly gaining capitalism in China.
Since the opening of the Exhibition , the Artsrepublik site www.artsrepublik.com has been closed in China. Dong Mei’s style depicts religion in the New China – with his Buddhist imagery on a large scale showing that this ancient religion is still very much alive. Using vibrant colour and thick oils his Buddhist figures command the viewer in their worship. In comparison, Wang Run Chun controversially challenges the traditional, picturing global companies such as McDonalds, Nestle ,Coca Cola and KFC that are now ever so present in the Chinese landscape, and illustrating their disillusion at their aggressive entry into Chinese life. These works offer Berlin residents and visitors alike, a visual glimpse into the current state of the Chinese nation still struggling with the ideals of communism and it’s ancient past, whilst questioning the rapidly expanding western cultural values. Artsrepublik is a non- profit London based gallery that support, finance and promote Education and Arts to children in developing nations. You can see some of the artists' works at the website: www.artsrepublik.com . All the profit raised goes to funding art, culture and education in the developing world.
www.artsrepublik.com
info@artsrepublik.com
yourART Store contact details:
Oranienburger Str. Berlin 10178 - Germany
Tel: +49 (0)30 2759 4492
www.your-art.de/about.php
Email: press@your-art.de http
The New Great Wall
On May the 20th 2005 our site www.artsrepublik.com was closed in China by
the New Great Wall, also known as the Chinese fire wall; fact that is totally
alien to most Chinese people and Westerners alike.
The reality is that in the XXIst century the Chinese once again built a Great
Wall in Cyberspace to extend their control and flow of information inside
China. This is by no means a popular or a Marxist endeavour since the builders
of such a wall were major US companies namely: Cisco Systems and IBM. This
is totally in line with the post 1979 regime that embraced Capitalism, using
Western partners to keep the Chinese people “sealed off” from
outside unfriendly influences, to include the BBC, The New York Times and
Google among others.
This time created, built and operated by the right wing segment of the Chinese
government with strict and often secret collaboration of Western Capital.
This time not carried out by the Chinese Revolutionary Leaders, but by the
post Deng Xiao Ping followers that took over China after the death of Mao Zedong.
This time the difference is that the people are not aware that the regime has
changed or that the Wall has been built.
This time the Great Wall was not built to defend China from the “Foreign
Invasion” but to do precisely the opposite …. To give them free
access to the Chinese market without the Chinese people knowing it exactly
how, when, and what for.
This time the Wall exists not to protect the Chinese people but the Leadership
and the Foreign Investment from being exposed to the millions that fought
and died to create a socialist society being now depleted and raided by corrupt
Chinese officials and unscrupulous deals.
The new US built censorship Wall does reach major sites such as the BBC as
well as small ones such as ours. Since our latest Exhibit, China Now in partnership
with the Berlin based Gallery YourArt the site was closed. A few paintings
are now being displayed at the Gallery from Chinese artists who deplored
the commercial visual onslaught of Beijing and all major cities by the thousands
of outdoors displays of McDonalds, Coke, KFC and the other usual suspects
all
across the Chinese landscape; an advertising orgy with no respect to the
local culture and ancient traditions. This New China, is precisely the China
that
the present “Powers” do not wish the Chinese people to be aware
of its dire consequences … Although still portraying themselves as representative
of the people, as members of the original Maoist Chinese Communist Party, this
new Leadership has absolutely nothing to do with any Chinese Socialist ideals
or politics, on the very contrary. This time they do not want to close China,
from foreign invasion but to open China to foreign “Capital Invasion”,
highly leveraged on “slave labour” practices, corruption, the destruction
of the agricultural land and the environment with little or no effect on the
majority of the population.
Mixing with the modern world
James Fenton on artistic exchanges between Europe and China Saturday March 26, 2005, The Guardian The dilemma was the same for artists and writers all over the imperial world. Chinese artists of the early 20th century expressed it in a classic form. On the one hand, they loved their country, and wanted it rid of any foreign yoke. For China to progress it had to modernise, and this applied to the arts as much as to society as a whole. But, in order to modernise ... (follow this link to read the whole article)
See you again, soon ...
"ARTISTS OF THE WORLD UNITE"
