China's huge celebrations of Karl Marx are not really about Marxism
What if Karl Marx lived long enough to see that one of his biggest fans in the world turned out to be the autocratic leader of a capitalist country where inequality and corruption prevail?
Driven by leader Xi Jinping, China is going all out to celebrate Marx’s 200th birthday on May 5 like no one else—and has even gifted a huge bronze statue of the German political theorist to his hometown, to be unveiled tomorrow. Last week, Xi ordered his colleagues to study Marx’s 1848 Communist Manifesto, written with German philosopher Friedrich Engels. Earlier this week, he paid a visit to the prestigious Peking University—which will hold a forum for Marxism researchers worldwide tomorrow—and thanked it for its role in promoting the left-wing theory. The state broadcaster has been carrying a five-part education show titled “Marx is Right.” And state papers have run dozens of articles remembering the German philosopher who predicted that workers’ struggle would lead to a classless society, with one saying (link in Chinese), “Let’s go back to Marx, and be people with ideals.”
On Friday (May 4), Xi delivered a big speech (link in Chinese) reviewing the revolutionary figure’s life, and hailed him as “the greatest thinker in human history.” Speaking in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, the Chinese president vowed that Marxism will always be the guiding theory of China and the Communist Party. It’s a “powerful ideological weapon for us to understand the world, grasp the law, seek the truth, and change the world,” he said.
On the surface, China identifies itself as a socialist country, with Marxism enshrined in both the party’s and the state’s constitutions. But the truth is that the nation has long abandoned Marx’s views of class struggle and the inevitability of the workers’ revolution, after it began carrying out a series of market-oriented reforms in the late 1970s that led it to become the world’s second-largest economy. Today’s China bears all of the hallmarks of a capitalist society ranging from private property to rampant consumption to exporting its overproduction.
https://qz.com/1270109/chinas-communist-party-and-xi-jinping-are-celebrating-the-200th-birthday-of-karl-marx-with-a-vengeance/
= new reply since forum marked as read
