Marx is dead and so is dead his political Marxism, which event symbolically coincided with the demise of USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). But cultural Marxism is not dead. Entire “Left”, “Liberal” forces and so-called “Secular” elements world over swear by the bewitching power of this cultural Marxism.
In India cultural Marxism is very powerful. Here, it is deep rooted in educational institutions, beaurocratic circles and all other State organs. One cannot wish it away – it has a philosophy that is founded on practical reality.
If India wants to uproot this bewildering thing, it has to defeat its philosophy at its own turf and on its own terms. Western world cannot do this – their rationalistic intellectualism does not go beyond Hegel or Kant etc. and their religion does not go beyond converting all humanity to a single door of Jesus Christ.
Western world is afraid of Communism – afraid of losing the institution of private property. But they have no way to confront it rationally – except spewing hate against Communism. It has come to the lot of India to defeat it – defeat it on its own turf and at its own terms.
India has persons – like Sri Aurobindo – whose towering rational height dwarfs Western thinkers like Marx, Hegel, Kant etc. all put together. Of course, to defeat cultural or political Marxism one would require to get intellectual mastery over both Marx and Sri Aurobindo – though it is not easy work.
If India is ever capable to adorn the seat of spiritual guide of humanity, it would first need to expose the intellectual superficiality of Marx’s philosophy. The fact is the Western world is mortally afraid of Communism and intellectually spell-bound by Marx’s ideas. West is frantically searching everywhere the means to ward off this deadful future looming large over their heads.
Things like offering universal munimum income to citizens or providing them guaranteed social security etc. are the signs of this frantic search. Moreover, now robotics – running on artificial intelligence – has added an extra urgency to this search to save them from the danger of losing their loving social institution of private property.
India has a way out of this danger. But it requires honesty of intention and justice at heart. Spiritual India does not lack both of them. Let us talk about Marx, Marxism and its insight into future.
- Marx and Engels were friends not only in social relation but in ideas too. In ideas, they not only supported each other, they also perfected each other – perfect in logic of the body of their philosophical theory and perfect to make that body complimentary and lucid. Marxism, as it has been understood by the world, has been crafted and polished by them togather and equally. Though, in a show of humility and comradely sentiment, Engels is on record to have said, “What I wrote, Marx could have also written but what Marx wrote, I could not have written.” Thus, while considering their political philosophy, any. reference made to one equally applies to the other.
- To half of the world, for obvious reasons the name of Marx and Marxism are anathema, and for the remaining half of this world it evokes hope of their emancipation from their present miseries. To be honest, on the greatness of his name and philosophy the world is not unanimous – it is bitterly divided. No matter what the percentage of this division might be, a due credit for this division goes to Marx. Liking or disliking of Marx depends on one’s outlook of things of this world and station in life. Liking or disliking a person is a subjective and biased approach and the correct one in this matter is to keep one’s mind open to all ideas and neutral in attitude.
- Marx was a human being – neither devil nor God. He was a keen observer of things around him and open to change his opinion if he found any truth there. He might be right or wrong in his opinion and conclusions but nevertheless he was a social scientist par excellence. He deserves the credit for making an unbiased search to find out how things change in human society.
- Marx came to a conclusion that was atheism – absence of the existence of God and a universal materialism – in essence. But he was not a materialist – an atheist – from his childhood. He came to form this opinion and conclusion only after making an earnest inquiry into this subject matter. It is revealed by their books that both Marx and Engles made unbiased study of this subject; one may refer in this respect to “Anti-Duhring” and “Dialectics of Nature” (chapter on “Spiritualism”) by Engles; and “Holy Family or Critique of Critical Critique” (chapter on “Mass and Spirit”) by Marx. Engels even went to the so-called “Plainchit study groups” in London to find out the truth, if any, of the alleged “calling of the “dead” persons’ souls or spirits and making those souls or spirits talk to the “living” humans in the language of indications through moving things” and that he found that it all was nothing but a hoax. All discredit of Marx being an atheist drops at the door of such hoax and fraud. He made his search in things like spirit, soul and God in the direction of Bible-rooted Christian Theosophists and after investigating them was convinced of their unscientific attitude and false claim, and of the vested interests of the priestly class of religion. In view of such hoax and duping of ordinary people, he famously said, “religion is the opium of people.” Unfortunately he never visited India and met an accomplished Yogi here who could have performed without end paranormal events, which would have astounded his mind beyond comprehension and put him on a different trajectory of his search. Had he met a genuine Yogi and found the secrets of such paranormal events, which events have been a normal routine for countless Hindu Yogis – like Neem Karoli Baba (of the Apple’s Steeve Job’s fame), Sai Baba of Shirdi (of the fame of Indian house-holds), Ramakrishna Paramhans (of the Vivekansda’s fame) etc. – he would not have been an atheist, this much can be said of him confidently. Marx was in search of truth – the secret of how Nature works – whatever might have been its conclusion: theism or atheism.
- Marx borrowed (from Fredrik Hegel) dialectics – a philosophical construct – and refined it by elaborately and precisely defining its working principles. These principles relate to the working of Nature – and Nature includes in it everything that we know.
- All branches of science study the working principles of Nature. Many of these principles have been discovered by different scientists and have been named after their names. All such discoveries keep on continuously being refined, changed, fine tuned or replaced by newer discoveries. In this way, all scientific principles – theories and laws – become more and more coherent to human mind and penetrating in depth. This is the way of working of science.
- Dialectics, as formulated by Marx, may be summed up thus: a) Everything in Nature is in constant change; b) Everything has two opposite elements inherent in it; c) These opposite elements clash with each other, which process brings changes in that thing; d) This change first happens in quantity and at a certain critical point, the change turns from quantity to quality; e) This process of change from one thing in its quality to another thing of its quality takes the shape of spiral evolution. In this spiral evolution, things are repeated in the same quality but at a higher level from the earlier one.
- On the basis of the working of dialectical principles Marx had explained the past – history – of human beings but we are concerned not with the past but with the future of human race. Therefore, we will confine ourselves to the future of our race as indicated by these dialectical principles.
- Marx had wedded himself to the philosophical concept of Dialectics, which he said he had borrowed from Hegel and had simply turned it upside down – making it standing on Matter or materialism. Once he adopted Dialectics, he was bound by its working, like thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis and spiral evolution of repeating things on ever higher level. He was also bound by the conclusions that this working of Dialectics thrown out.
- It was apparant that according to this Marxian Dialectics human race and their society would complete one full spiral circle starting from tribal communist society of tool making animals (that is, first humans) and ending at the so-called “modern” communist society of highly accomplished humans. If this makes a “full circle” of spiral evolution of humans and their society, how would those accomplished humans and their society further progress in terms of Dialects? Would progress stop at this end point? Marx was pointedly asked this question. But Marx simply evaded this question by famously saying, “the people of that communist society would answer this question”.
- In fact, Marx was clueless about the strange consequences that the working of his Dialectics was throwing. If humans complete one cycle of their evolution, what is next? He could not visualise any way out of this strange situation. It is the dead-end of Marxian philosophy. Here comes Sri Aurobindo to solve this puzzle.
- Sri Aurobindo’s philosophy, Yoga and his whole life was devoted to explain to the world the emergence of a race of Supramental Beings – a race next to human race. What he said is not a philosophy (that is, based on human reasoning) but a practical program of integral Yoga for human race to accomplish that unparalleled feat.
- Of course, it is not easy to accomplish that next stage of life’s evolution. In evolution nothing is easy. In the past too, it was not easy for groups of cave-dwelling animals – who did not know how to make tools – to use their mind’s reason and make tools in their ferocious struggle for survival against the odds of hostile Nature.
- It is now for India to spread this evolutionary message and teach the required technique of Yoga for acquiring new capabilities – much more potent than tool making. Let us continue with the Marxian Dialectics.
- From the tribal society – the point where humans just emerged out of their animal life – to the modern society – the point where we are able to change genetic code of humans and yoke in artificial intelligence to replace human work and intelligence, is one complete cycle in the spiral evolution. Though artificial intelligence and human genetic engineering is yet to become routine thing and a part of our day to day life. And therefore we are just a little short of that point of the completion of one full cycle of this spiral evolution of human race.
- The moment we touch that point of the completion, we – the humans as a race – will have completed our one full cycle. Then the history of our race from its very origin (when it just emerged out of the animal state and started making tools) to that completed point will have run its full course. And, from then on a new course of the new race – the race of those who are not humans in quality but a race of beings who are of a different and higher quality – would commence on this spiral evolution. Of course, it is an evolutionary process that must take long period of time. Even the process of social evolution takes long time for passing from stage to another stage – say, feudalism to capitalism. By the very nature of things, the process of human evolution – say, for passing from animal stage to human stage or from human stage to super-human stage – must take even longer time. Nature does not work in hurried manner. But we must be ready for this long-drawn change. Fortunately, with the advent of artificial intelligence and genetic engineering, we are already on the path of this change taking place before our very own eyes and we may see it complete in our own life time.
- The point of that new course of spiral evolution, whenever it is touched by humans, would be the dead end of not only humans as we know them today, but also of capitalism too.
- Capitalism belongs to humans – who are beings with many weaknesses – and to their history. Obviously, it is not compatible with beings who would have no weaknesses of humans on account of conquering those weaknesses through self-control by Yoga or through getting those weaknesses removed by genetic transformation. Of course, that society would be served by artificial intelligence and there would be no workers; in that society there would be no scope for “exploitation of man by man”.
- Now these are the predictions about our future thrown out by Dialectics. How can one test their trustworthiness? Do we find some early indications of unfolding of those fearsome uncertain events? Yes, we are already witnessing the signs of approaching death of capitalism before our own eyes. These signs are apparant in the syndromes of prevelent open source intellectual property, automation of production, free social welfare measures, mental health requirements,
and spiritual upsurge around the world.