It’s the 200 birthday of Karl Marx and Xi is celebrating in China

By សតិវ ​អតុ

China's President Xi Jinping (习近平) is not much of a revolutionary. He has not helped the international Maoist groups at all. He promotes the “free market” internationally. But at least he is honoring Karl Marx, a major communist philosopher.

According to The New York Times, he's leading a campaign to promote the works of communist philosopher Karl Marx;

"Today, we commemorate Marx in order to pay tribute to the greatest thinker in the history of mankind and also to declare our firm belief in the scientific truth of Marxism," Xi said in a speech Friday prominently displayed across state media platforms.

Even though Marx has influenced many Western thinkers, the mainstream capitalist news media continues to hammer away at the significance of Marx, as just being a tool of authoritarianism. Communism in the eyes of the Western news media is all about political power for the sake of power and nothing else.

“It's all about cementing the power of Xi and the ruling Communist Party and combating liberal Western democratic concepts thought to threaten its rule.” (The West is getting less liberal and less democratic all the time).

And…..

“The madness for Marx dovetails with a drive to "Sinicize" culture, religion and ideology by instilling social control through the teachings of the ancient philosopher Confucius,’ said Perry Link, an American expert on Chinese literature and politics.

Neither embrace has anything to do with intellectual content and everything to do with bolstering political power today," Link wrote in an email.

And that is typical of what we see and hear in the Western news media. When they are not simplifying Marx as a power tool, they describe him as totally useless to today’s “Chinese youth” who supposedly are too “irreverent” and frivolous for Marx. After all, they want us to believe all young people in China are just like American youth who spend most of their time on cell phones and on TV shows like American Idle.  

“The Marxism mantra faces an uphill battle, though, given the widening gulf between the communist leadership and Chinese youth who tend to be enamored with celebrity gossip and irreverent social satire that goes viral across social media before it is censored.”

This year is the bicentennial of Marx's birth and the 170th anniversary of the publication of the "Communist Manifesto." We should point out that Marx collaborated with Friedrich Engels. Together those two laid out the blue prints for modern communists everywhere. There are very few communists who are unaffected by and supporters of Marx. Those of us who follow Marx realize that class struggle against the capitalist tyrants of the world and the freedom of the working class is the real aim of Marxism and not just political power for the sake of power. We can all celebrate the anniversary of Marx and I am glad there is still one major country where Marx is getting the respect he deserves. And that country is China.