POLITICAL SCIENCE
TIM COHEN: Marxism is not the magic bullet some politicians hope it is
Marxism has made a comeback — the promise of a revolution that solves all social ills is too tantalising to pass up
When I was at university in Durban in the early 1980s, almost all of the most interesting lecturers were Marxists. This wasn’t just in the sociology department either — though that was, of course, Marxist central. My favourite English lecturer was a Marxist, my African studies lecturers were Marxists (obviously), and even the economics department was kind of Marxist. My wonderful music professor was, you guessed it, Marxist. The very real fight against apartheid needed an intellectual foundation that could elucidate the fractious social predicament in which we found ourselves, and hold out a promise for the future. Rather like now. All of this old history came rushing back to me on the 200th anniversary of Karl Marx’s death last weekend. By the 1990s the superiority of free-market countries, not just for the rich but for the poor, was becoming undeniable. By a fluke the global argument had turned into a social experiment: two countries, one in the East, one in the West, had been div...
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