Recently, a young man who teaches English at Abia
State University phoned to inform me of an impending conference on the
bicentenary of the birth of Karl Marx. But what the call provoked in me was not
the remembrance of Marx and his enduring legacy but anger over the fact that
some people still regularly irritate me with chants of “death of communism” and
“disappearance of socialism”.
However, my voiced response was to play the
“teacher on teacher” by calmly asking my telephone friend whether he meant the
birth of Karl Marx or his death. He also calmly replied that Marx was born on
May 5,1818. “Hence, May 5, 2018 makes it 200 years”, he said. I played on by
pleading that I thought that May 5 was the date of Marx’s death. He again
calmly responded that Marx died on March 14, 1883. I thanked him and pledged to
assist in the bicentenary in whatever manner I could.
For a considerable length of time after my
telephone chat with the university teacher, my mind remained with the subject:
Karl Marx and his legacy, or more specifically, Marx’s political legacy. From
political legacy—which is a very large subject—my mind zeroed on Marxist
politics. And in Marxist politics, my mind selected and focused on Marxist political
strategy and vanguardism. Hence, if I were to contribute to ideas informing the
planning of Marx’s bicentenary conference I would advise the organizers to
begin from Marx in historical context.
From there, move on to Marx’s total legacy; then
proceed to Marx political legacy, Marxist politics and Marx’s political
strategy and vanguardism. Finally, it is necessary to place a theme like “The
relevance of Karl Marx today” in the agenda of the conference. This is not
because it is logically expected but because the current calamities,
monstrosities and historical retreats in Nigeria—of which we are all living
witnesses—clearly appear to summon Leftists of Marxist persuasion as well as
patriots of popular-democratic credentials.
Karl Marx was born in Germany. He had his primary
and secondary education in his home town, Trier. For his university education
he went to Bonn and Berlin, both in Germany. He studied law, history and
philosophy, obtaining his doctorate in philosophy at the age of 23. His
doctoral dissertation is usually taken by academics as the beginning of his
work. But I find his letters to his parents, before this, as very indicative.
Marx died a poor man on March 14, 1883, at the age
of 65. He died in London where he had settled 35 years earlier. So much was the
official prejudice against this man that, according to Isaiah Berlin, one of
his biographers, his death was treated almost as a non-event by the European
press. Although Marx died in London, The
Times of London reported the event as a short obituary notice, quoting its
Paris correspondent.
At his graveside Engels, Marx’s life-long friend
and collaborator, said: “Karl Marx’s mission in life was to contribute in one
way or another to the overthrow of capitalist society. Fighting was his
element. And he fought with a passion, a tenacity and a success which few could
rival. His name will endure for ages, so will his work”.
On Sunday, October 10, 1999, my essay, Marx as thinker of the millennium, was
published by The Guardian newspaper. A week earlier, according to the
newspaper, he had been voted the greatest thinker of the millennium in a BBC
news on-line poll.
Marx was reported to have beaten several great
thinkers, including Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Thomas Aquinas,
Stephen Hawking, Emmanuel Kant, Rene Descartes, James Clark Maxwell and
Friedrich Nietzsche.
In the second paragraph of that essay, I proposed:
“I would say humbly but responsibly that Karl Marx deserves to be named not
only the greatest thinker of the millennium but also the greatest thinker
humanity has so far produced among mortals. Even if he had been killed in 1848,
at the age of 30, after the publication of his and Engels’ Communist Manifesto, he
would still have emerged the greatest thinker since antiquity”. Today, I re-endorse
this 19-year-old assessment.
Activist Leftists who are inspired by ideas whose
origins are attributed to Karl Marx conceive politics in two senses: the broad
and the narrow, or the general and the restricted. In the broad or general
sense politics refers to the “totality of all guiding principles, methods,
systems that determine collective activities in all domains of public life”.
But in the narrow or restricted sense politics is used to designate a “definite
part of public activity directly concerned with the struggle for power”.
From this understanding follows the definition of
Leftist politics and Conservative politics. Leftist politics is broad while
Conservative politics is narrow. You may see this difference clearly in the
character, programmes and methods of non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
organized and led by Leftists and in the careers of Leftist teachers, lawyers,
writers, journalists and priests, for example. Whereas, Leftists actively
recognize the relationship between the broad and narrow dimensions of politics
as that between water and fish, conservatives recognize only the narrow
dimension and play politics like fish trying to swim on dry land.
Leftist politics is broad because it is aimed at
the total transformation of society and not just the capture of political
power. Its ultimate objective is the liberation of society—the oppressed as
well as the oppressor. Leftist politics is broad because liberation—from
exploitation, oppression and humiliation—which is its mission is essentially
self-liberation. And this demands popular education for critical consciousness.
Leftist politics is conscious of itself as the movement of victims of
injustice: “not a particular injustice or a set of injustices, but injustice in
general”, as Marx put it as a young man. All these attributes inform the
methods of Leftist politics.
In Leftist politics, vanguards may be recognised
and described by three main attributes.
One:
In the struggles of the working, toiling and oppressed masses of all
nationalities and all regional, ethnic and religious groups, vanguards point
out and bring out the common interest. Two:
In the various stages of development which the struggle of the masses has to
pass through vanguards always and everywhere represent the historical
continuity. Three: Vanguards are
very resolute segments that seek to defend, unite, invigorate and push forward
all other segments. They care passionately for the present; but in caring for
the present, they do not forget the future of the struggle.
The following eight components of the strategy of
Nigeria’s Leftist vanguard can be distilled from Leftist politics as a whole: One: Strengthening the vanguard and its
capacity to ensure minimum continuity of popular-democratic struggles across
the country at all times and in all conditions. Two: Expanding alliances, collaboration and networking in the
national movement for popular democracy.
Three:
Expanding popular-democratic and socialist education among the toiling and
working masses and all strata and segments that suffer specific or general
oppression under the present social order. Four:
Engaging in systematic research, information and documentation and building
institutions and centres for this engagement.
Five: Expanding fronts of popular-democratic struggle across the
country and in all strategic segments of the working, toiling and oppressed masses:
women, workers, peasants, students and youths, the intelligentsia and intellectuals
and strata of middle classes. Six:
Uniting organisations of popular-democratic struggle across the country. Seven: Supporting and learning from
popular-democratic struggles in Nigeria, in Africa, in black diaspora and in
the world. Eight: Struggling for
political power—alone or in alliance—as a realizable political objective.
*Edwin Madunagu,
mathematician and journalist, writes from Calabar, Cross River State, Nigeria.
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