By IANS,
New Delhi : Karl Marx is again much-sought after in bookstores, courtesy the global economic meltdown, and the Indian Marxists are eagerly circulating handbooks with their economic ideology, including one titled ‘The Politics of Privatisation and Its Impact’.
Enthused by reports of a hike in the sale of books by Karl Marx following the economic recession in the West, the Indian Marxist leaders said they are chalking out strategies to propagate their ideology, based on economics.
The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) has already started distributing handbooks on the global financial crisis, titled ‘Global Financial Crisis and Implications for India’ and ‘the Politics of Privatisation and Its Impact’.
“The citadel of capitalism, the United States of America, which has been dictating its neo-liberal economic blueprint to the world is itself caught in a crisis of profound magnitude. The financial crisis that has now spread across the world is being widely compared to that of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Even the most optimistic bourgeois economists also agree that the crisis will be deep and protracted,” says one handbook.
Asserting that socialism is the only future in the era of deep economic crisis, the CPI-M handbook quoting Karl Marx’s Das Kapital says: “With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 percent will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 percent certainly will produce eagerness; 50 percent….positive audacity; 100 percent will make it ready to trample on all laws; 300 percent and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged.”
“Marx’s words resound through history”, says the book.
According to Amazon, an online bookseller, sales of The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital written by Karl Marx have increased manifold since the collapse of the banking system in the West.
CPI-M politburo member, Sitaram Yechury, last week re-launched the party’s campaign based on the economic policies. The party had first started the campaign when the liberalization policies started in the country in the beginning of the ’90s. They then shifted their focus against ‘fascist forces’ after the emergence of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992. They declared the BJP as their No.1 enemy.
Now their economic ideology is back on top of their agenda.
Yechury said: “It is clear by now that the global financial crisis has graduated into a global economic crisis of serious proportions. The advanced economies are set to experience a protracted recession and the developing countries across the world, including the Indian economy, will also be adversely affected.”
“The UPA (United Progressive Alliance) government’s responses to this evolving situation, however, has been extremely disappointing,” Yechury said while presenting the CPI-M’s ‘Suggestions on Protecting Indian People from the Global Economic Crisis’ early this month here.
“The neo-capitalist policies of both the BJP and the Congress have proved to be wrong,” M.K. Pandhe, another politburo member told IANS. “They are still pursuing the ideology of neo-liberalism that caused the global economic meltdown.”
“The neo-liberalised economic policies of the BJP and Congress would be our main poll issue in the coming parliamentary elections,” said CPI-M central secretariat member A. Vijayaraghavan.
The party has begun holding seminars and discussions to create awareness among the masses on the economic crisis, he added.