1.
Whenever Karl Marx talked of progressive development he actually referred to industrialization, rapid urbanization and agriculture gradually feeding into the requirements of an industrialized world although under the leadership of the proletariat post-revolution during the evolution of the socialist phase. He also envisioned socialism paving way for a communist world order eventually where nation-states would cease to exist and communes and cooperatives would abound. He could not visualize the gainful investments the capitalist and imperialist world would do to counter the threat of socialist revolutions and other related economic and cultural movements world-wide on a sustainable basis, which continues till this day. The problem is: Karl Marx overestimated the power of industrialization on human development (in fact, he failed to see industries as the single largest causative factor of human underdevelopment in the years to come); he was happy once the means of production changed hands from a few rich capitalists to the large masses of the poor proletariat. Karl Marx here made the same mistake regarding the power of numbers as the proponents of democracy do instead of challenging the basic concept. The twentieth century has experienced the power of industries: they almost converted themselves into empires and thereby controlling the millions of lives of people in every possible way through modern institutions and appropriating every shade and shadow of our lives in economic and financial terms and brought the ecological fabric to near ruin. The fact is the very nature of an industry is such that it has to be run by extremely individualistic ruthless creative and economic gaming. Industry cannot operate like a cooperative or a government department. In fact in an industrialized world everything exists to support industry and not otherwise. I do not think Karl Marx foresaw this (his diagnosis of capitalism bringing the world to an end was restricted to capitalists being in control of industries in place of the proletariat) and his principles of socialism melting into communism were unrealistic until and unless of course the concepts of industrialization and urbanization themselves were challenged.
Yet at about the same time (or, period) two litterateurs – Tolstoy and Rabindranath – were vehement in their concerns against the burgeoning of an industrial world order. Tolstoy very clearly denounced the laying of railway lines in Russia (in Anna Karenina) and predicted thereby the plundering of the farmlands and faster transportation (or, loot) of food and grains from villages to the growing cities and causing middlemen to rise in between impoverishing the farmers (the producers) and causing crisis of food-stock in the villages where the grains were cultivated in the first place.
Rabindranath conceptually had gone ahead: he had attacked the western idea of nation-state consistently.
2.
Whenever Karl Marx talked of progressive development he actually referred to industrialization, rapid urbanization and agriculture gradually feeding into the requirements of an industrialized world although under the leadership of the proletariat post-revolution during the evolution of the socialist phase. He also envisioned socialism paving way for a communist world order eventually where nation-states would cease to exist and communes and cooperatives would abound. He could not visualize the gainful investments the capitalist and imperialist world would do to counter the threat of socialist revolutions and other related economic and cultural movements world-wide on a sustainable basis, which continues till this day. The problem is: Karl Marx overestimated the power of industrialization on human development (in fact, he failed to see industries as the single largest causative factor of human underdevelopment in the years to come); he was happy once the means of production changed hands from a few rich capitalists to the large masses of the poor proletariat. Karl Marx here made the same mistake regarding the power of numbers as the proponents of democracy do instead of challenging the basic concept. The twentieth century has experienced the power of industries: they almost converted themselves into empires and thereby controlling the millions of lives of people in every possible way through modern institutions and appropriating every shade and shadow of our lives in economic and financial terms and brought the ecological fabric to near ruin. The fact is the very nature of an industry is such that it has to be run by extremely individualistic ruthless creative and economic gaming. Industry cannot operate like a cooperative or a government department. In fact in an industrialized world everything exists to support industry and not otherwise. I do not think Karl Marx foresaw this (his diagnosis of capitalism bringing the world to an end was restricted to capitalists being in control of industries in place of the proletariat) and his principles of socialism melting into communism were unrealistic until and unless of course the concepts of industrialization and urbanization themselves were challenged.
Yet at about the same time (or, period) two litterateurs – Tolstoy and Rabindranath – were vehement in their concerns against the burgeoning of an industrial world order. Tolstoy very clearly denounced the laying of railway lines in Russia (in Anna Karenina) and predicted thereby the plundering of the farmlands and faster transportation (or, loot) of food and grains from villages to the growing cities and causing middlemen to rise in between impoverishing the farmers (the producers) and causing crisis of food-stock in the villages where the grains were cultivated in the first place.
Rabindranath conceptually had gone ahead: he had attacked the western idea of nation-state consistently.
2.
I was in a bazaar a few nights back. It was raining. I was looking for a shop, which in my memory existed at the northern end of a labyrinth dotted on its flanks by millions of similar dimly lit shops selling all kinds of items. There were many such labyrinths in this bazaar. I had to move past wet bodies circuitously saving my head and eyes from umbrellas getting in the way. Sometimes I felt I was in a wrong labyrinth or entering the right labyrinth from the wrong end and forgetting the direction of my traverse midway. After two hours of trudging through slushy mud and filth and my head feeling heavy with the beatings of rain drops – thick columns – I doubted whether I was in the right bazaar or it existed in another city somewhere in another time and which did not exist anymore. And when I was speculating whether I should make an exit from this bazaar where I was in and if yes, from where so; this guy appeared before me – disheveled, worn out, drenched, emaciated and in tattered clothes. From his eyes I knew, I knew him. He looked at me intensely almost bafflingly puzzling with a strain of a fleeting smile on its greenish irises. When I was trying to pull myself out of his magnetic gaze he spoke out coolly: Sandy you seem to have made improvements to your life. Yes, I can see that. But man, I am contracted not to die as I have people to take care of.
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