Global Issues
THE RESCUE OF KARL MARX
The current economic crisis, which was the swan song of neoliberalism, seems to be bringing about a rescue of Karl Marx from purgatory, writes Mario Soares, ex-president and ex-prime minister of Portugal.
In this article, Soares writes that the French magazine Le Point recently came out with an issue dedicated to Karl Marx focussing on what he really wrote, on how his thought has been manipulated, and on his life and his influence, past and present. The issue runs a full 120 pages and was written by major economists, political scientists, sociologists, and historians, from a range of political and ideological points of view and with extreme rigour and clarity, which were not always characteristics of Marx the economist or the neo-Hegelian philosopher. The weekly Nouvel Observateur, another major French magazine, also dedicated an issue to the German titled "The Great Return of Marx" in August.
The new interest in Marx is evidenced by various works on his life and thought that have been published recently and by a revival of interest in him at various European and American universities. Why? Because, though there is no doubt that the present world crisis does not mean the end of capitalism -though it does mean the end of financial capitalism without ethical values- the same can be said of democratic socialism. There is still validity to "socialism with a human face", which was posited as an alternative to totalitarian socialism after the fall of the Berlin Wall, with the democratic, humanistic, and ethical values that Marx never rejected in his work.
(*) Mario Soares, ex-president and ex-prime minister of Portugal.
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© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service