Africa: Two Hundred Candles for Karl Marx

analysis

Marx and his followers had always argued that workers only had their labour to offer in that unequal contest that was the battleground of an economy and that they must seize control of the whole if they were to improve their lot in any meaningful way. It was easy enough to believe such an evolution in history and an economy. So easy, in fact, that most of the greatest, and most fearsome, political entities of the 20th century claimed Karl Marx as their leading light. Perhaps the most influential man of the last century never even lived to see it.

Karl Marx's birthday on 5 May, his 200th, has been the subject of many efforts to explore his continuing relevance and impact on the world. Perhaps the oddest commemoration, though, has been the gift from China of a five metre-tall bust of the great man to the city of Marx's birth, Trier, Germany, along with the inevitable tchotchkes of contemporary consumerism such as a rubber ducky-style bathtub ornament bearing the likeness of the founder of communism.

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