After the French revolution, (1789) Europe was buzzing with all sorts of ideas (not concrete projects) on the attainment of a free and fair society based on human reasoning. Later on in the 19th century, most of these ideas crystallized around the project of establishing societies in which democracy and equity were envisioned to play prominent roles. Industrial rationalism that was in the ascendance because of its repudiation of dogmas, (religious or otherwise) was endorsed without much interrogation, to the dismay of environmentally conscious latter day humanity! Many of the utopias entertained, however, remained just fantasies of the philosophically inclined until Marxism burst to the scene. In the middle of the 19thcentury it boldly proclaimed; ‘…hitherto, philosophers only tried to interpret the world, but the task is to change it!’
In 1848, the ‘Communist Manifesto’ was published and spelled out its version of an ideal society. Unlike the others, however, it literally prescribed a scheme for building the new utopia from the ground up. Most importantly, it managed to point out the ‘agents’ for the proposed social transformation. Soon after, it took over the labor movements all over the world. Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) was established in 1869, under the influence of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels and until recently, (1959) SPD’s charter was based on classical Marxism. Read the rest of this entry »
