The above headline was in a front page article in The Australian, a major Aussie newspaper. It is read more by the middle class, business the educated etc., this is my guess. The article explains that thousands of people are visiting Marx's birthplace in Triers, Germany and copies of Das Kapital are "flying off the shelves.: the article says.
It goes even further, explaining a fundemental of Marxism that we Marxists are all too familiar with, "An overexpansion of credit can enable the capitalist system to sell temporarily more goods than the sum of real incomes created in current production, plus past savings, could buy" says the article. It quotes the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury praising Marx's "analytical skills".
This is not new to marxists, but to read this in a major national newspaper reflects not only the severity of the crisis as the capitalist class themselves are looking at Marx with fresh eyes, but how this crisis is effecting the consciousness of the working class.
As has been written on the blog already, the layoffs, cuts in social services, wages and benefits that are to come will increase the interest in socialist ideas and the ideas of Marx in particular; this is inevtiable.
I was just sitting in a little cafe in a mall here in Townsville Australia and as I read this article I showed it to the young woman serving me, the one with bungy jumper on her tee shirt. I told her how Marx's ideas had kept me afloat and that this crisis was not a suprise to me but that I also have an alternative.
I said that Marx explained how the world worked. I said that some say, like Farrakhan did in an article on the same page, that the economic crisis is the result of god being angry; people can explain reality with all sorts of ridiculous ideas. Marx simply explained reality, his ideas correspond to objective existence.
He explained how we are exploited, how she is exploited by the person that employs her. We talked about the slogan " a fair days work for a fair days pay" which is impossible and how the boss makes more off her than he pays her. We had a real good discussion.
I gave her a copy of the Facts For Working People.
But the main thing is that we are in a new historical period. Capitalism is discussed all the time in the papers. We are only on the edge in a way, have just entered the fray as there will be more "pain" as the capitalists put it, to come.
We cannot sit idly by during this perioid, or any period for that matter but things have changed. In historical terms there is a complete absence of a lead for working people so we have to step to the plate. We have to build the movement that can send this rotten system to its grave and open the door to real freedom and to a secure future for humans and the planet we live on.
I saw a picture in the paper the other day of Pakistani's scrounging in a garbage dump for thiongs to eat and sell; this is not a "Pakistani" problem, this is a capitalist problem.
Help build Facts For Working People. Subscribe to it, distribute it. We will hope to organize a Facts For Working People Conference in the not so distant future. Explore the real Marx. Marxism is not a dogma, not a creed, it is simply peeling back the cover and seeing the world as it really is; Marx himself said that philosophers have only interpreted the world---the point is to change it. Once we understand something, we can act on it to change it.
Contact us and help us build the alternative to this rotten social system. After further misery, including for millions in the former colonial world, capitalism will emerge from this crisis if we do not act. It will emerge and prepare the ground for further and more destructive crisis in the future.
We have a world to win.
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