Well Red
During these difficult economic times, it appears that German readers are turning to Marx for answers. The Guardian reports the following:
Karl Marx is back. That, at least, is the verdict of publishers and bookshops in Germany who say that his works are flying off the shelves.
The rise in his popularity has of course, been put down to the current economic crisis. “Marx is in fashion again,” said Jörn Schütrumpf, manager of the Berlin publishing house Karl- Dietz which publishes the works of Marx and Engels in German. “We’re seeing a very distinct increase in demand for his books, a demand which we expect to rise even more steeply before the year’s end.”
(I rather like the idea of German bookstore patrons fighting over the last copy of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte). And even German politicians are willing to admit that we have something to learn these days from The Capital Crushin’ Prussian:
Increasing numbers of Germans appear ready to out themselves as Marx fans in a time when it is fashionable to repeat the philosopher’s belief that excessive capitalism with all its greed finally ends up destroying itself. When Oskar Lafontaine, the head of Germany’s rising left-wing party Die Linke, said he would include Marxist theory in the party’s manifesto, in the outline of his plans to partially nationalise the nation’s finance and energy sectors, he was labeled as a “mad leftie” who had “lost the plot” by the tabloid Bild. But even Germany’s finance minister, Peer Steinbrück, who must have had some sleepless nights over the past few weeks, has now declared himself something of a fan. “Generally one has to admit that certain parts of Marx’s theory are really not so bad,” he cautiously told Der Spiegel.
I must admit, too, that one of my favorite images from The Communist Manifesto has been occuring to me lately. In fact, almost every time I watch the news these days, I’m reminded of this passage:
Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange, and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.
And you know, come to think of it, I could have sworn that I saw Henry Paulson the other day, looking confused and wearing one of those pointy sorcerer’s hats.
