by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Today even top financial experts and economists admit “Marx was right” but still all too many seem to believe that his ideas have no place in our world. No, the capitalists and the bourgeoisie do not like his ideas and ideals and would like to continue with things as they are or would like to turn the clock back to another age even, an age where workers had even fewer rights, if any.
The tragic thing is though that Marx's words have been, in later editions of the Communist Manifesto, or to give it it's proper title, “The Manifest of the Communist Party”, deliberately rewritten to instead of “the means of production in the hands of the workers” to read “the means of production in the hands of the state”. If he but knew he would turn in his grave, and that not only once.
Today, 133 years after his death, those ideas are as important as they were when they were written and especially the liberation of the workers through ownership of the means of production. However, the parties and the trade unions do not seem to be very much in favor of this idea at all even though they love to quote and misquote Marx and especially, if would seem, the misquoted part where the state is to own the means of production.
Only, and only, when the workers truly own the means of production and manage the various businesses as cooperatives are they truly the masters of their own destiny. As long as the means of production are owned by an owner, whether that is an individual, a capitalist entity or the state, the worker is and remains a slave.
In order to honor the man, his legacy and his ideals let us implement his Manifest properly and not the falsified version.
© 2016
