I could write quite a bit about Marx. To fend off any NSA observers or those that are quick to judge, I’m not a communist (nor have I ever been a communist).
However, I do not believe that we have ever witnessed, in the known history of the world, a truly socialist state --- as Marx defined socialism.
I also do not believe Marx advocated for the overthrow of any government (despite popular belief that he did, thanks to Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917). Instead, I believe Marx’s theory was descriptive – he described what he believed was the natural evolution of social systems, beginning with feudalism and its evolution into capitalism, and the evolution of capitalism to socialism. In other words, Marx believed socialism was inevitable. As the contradictions of capitalism become more apparent to the proletariat, or the workers, inevitably, according to Marx, the proletariat would rise up and take back the means of production.
Today, Marx and his theories are quickly dismissed for a few reasons. First, people understandably but mistakenly attribute the failed Soviet Union as an example of Marx’s theories in practice. The other reason is, well, we live in a capitalist society. Marx himself realized that the ruling ideas of any epoch are the ideas of the ruling class. The ruling class, in capitalist society, are the owners of the means of production, the bourgeois.
In any event, one of the redeeming features of Marxist political theory is it can provide a useful framework to understand many of today’s perceived social crisis and problems. It provides a prism, so to speak, by which we can analyze the basis and causes of modern social phenomena.
Why, you ask, am I writing about this on a blog that ostensibly deals with Buddhism? Well, I actually believe there is a relationship between Buddhism and socialism. More on this in blogs to come. It will also help explain my way of thinking about the world in which we find ourselves...
