Why Marx continues to live on 141 years after his death

On Karl Marx's death anniversary yesterday (14 March), a young friend made a joke on her Facebook account. She wrote, "the greatest contribution Karl Marx made was by dying." 

Her followers found it funny, and someone commented, "I wonder how much fuss they'd make over him if he was alive today."

If this sounds too low brow, take this one which goes like: those who read Karl Marx attentively and understood him correctly became capitalists, and communists are those who didn't!

One way or the other, the philosopher-sociologist-historian-economist, who died 141 years back, continues to live on through such quips, ideas, economics, politics and in just about every facet of life.

Marx is still best known for his critique of capitalism. In his eyes, the biggest ill of capitalism is the wealth inequality it creates through the 'exploitation of labour,' which he described as the driving force of capital.

As a result, while capitalism promotes innovation and technological advancement, the prospects of automation triggers the fear of unemployment, instead of ensuring greater comfort and welfare of people, aka the workers.

The latest surge of such insecurity pervading many industries is the advent of AI. In Bangladesh, many are fearing that AI-assisted robots might eventually replace RMG workers, consequently leading to us losing the industry to western manufacturers.

The accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few causes crises, and gives birth to popular movements even in the fortresses of capitalism. 

For example, the 2011 Occupy movement in the US, emboldened by a widely used slogan – We are the 99% – underlined the inherent wealth distribution problem of capitalism.

"Marx proposes that growth and crisis dialectically reside in capitalism. The crises that emerge within capitalism doesn't mean it will not flourish. But so far as it develops, the crises become more inhumane, more anty-environment and ecology," said Anu Muhammad, public intellectual, writer, and former professor at the department of Economics at Jahangirnagar University.

"But the crises that arise will not automatically lead to the fall of capitalism. It is up to people to organise and continue to fight to establish a humane civilisation. And according to Marx, this fight is global in nature, " he continued. 

"Although capitalism was based in Western Europe during his time, he analysed its trend and showed that it will become internationalised. Now we see that capitalism has established itself as a global system. Capitalist class is global, the working class is global, and the exploitation and discrimination is also global," the professor said, adding, Karl Marx envisaged a free society of free men.

As the capitalist system time to time succumbs to its own challenges, it manages to survive by making 'compromises,' the professor said. Examples of such compromises are social security in North America or the welfare states in Europe.

No matter how powerful a nation or a class is, it does not own nature and ecology, Marx said, and capitalism exploits nature just as it does humans.

"To be free of such exploitation, a 'beyond-capitalism' view is necessary, which Karl Marx provided," Anu Muhammad said.

For Marx, capitalist crises are the crises of "overproduction" – too many commodities are produced than can be profitably sold, and too much capital invested in industry, in an attempt to claim a share of the available profits.

The environmental, ecological and climatic catastrophe facing the world today is clearly visible.

In his groundbreaking work 'Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction,' Paul Robbins began with an anecdote from a slum in Accra, Ghana, where waste from around the world - from baby chairs, truck engines to radios and computers - end up.

He wrote: "But one more thing is drawn to my attention: the radios are totally unused. As one worker pulls square angles of Styrofoam from their boxes … it becomes clear that these hundreds of music players have arrived on site encased in the very packaging in which they left their factory in China."

The professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison observed, "the ingenious workers of Agbogbloshie appear as part of a bizarre engine that maintains a self-replicating worldwide system of over-production. Oceans of organic and inorganic material are drawn from the earth and flow into an enormous feeding machine that re-forms them into myriad configurations (refrigerators, televisions, printers), devours energy in their transportation across the globe, and then summarily dumps them here, unused, in this deadly metabolic intestine of labour."

Sounds inspired by Marx's works? Very much so. In fact, the philosopher has influenced a myriad of scholars across the world.

Even young climate activists are of the opinion that the ongoing climate crisis can no longer be solved within today's political and economic systems. For example, Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg said, "We cannot live sustainably within today's economic system."

A centralised planning and people's cooperation seeking everyone's welfare instead of profiteering for a few, seems to be indispensable to save the planet from total catastrophe. This is how Marx's view beyond capitalism resonates in today's world.  

However, no matter how much Karl Marx influenced scholars and activists, his solution for humanity, communism, is not on the winning side at the moment, which some see as a failure of his political theory. 

Zahid Hussain, former lead economist, World Bank's Dhaka office said, Marx was not just an economist, he was also a philosopher. His philosophy is still quite relevant. 

"However, his forecast about capitalism is that due to its internal contradictions, capitalism is an intermediate stage in social development. After that it will turn into socialism, and in any social system ultimately a communist society will emerge, where everyone is equal. However, such predictions have been proven wrong historically," he said.

"Historically we see countries which adopted socialism, including Russia, did not adopt it organically. Inspired by Marx's philosophy, Lenin, Stalin and the Bolsheviks established a socialist system there. There they sort of leapfrogged capitalism," Zahid Hussain added.

According to the economist, Marx's most important contribution to economics in his opinion is distribution. Even before Adam Smith there was a concern about distribution among economists, but the way Marx brought it front and centre, no one else has been able to do that. 

"His concern about labourers and who is benefiting from all these technological benefits has remained a concern generation after generation. So the questions Marx raised remain as relevant as ever," Zahid Hussain concluded.

Marx's predictions of a communist utopia haven't materialised, and the communist regimes have often resulted in authoritarian governments and economic stagnation.  

Despite these limitations, Marx's legacy continues to shape our understanding of the world. His critique of capitalism provides a valuable lens for analysing issues of inequality, alienation, and the concentration of power.