Spooky Encounters: Gossip and Banter with Marx

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Looking at the title of the book, critics will observe with a smirk, 'Welcome back to earth again! You may be a Marxist, but you are still a Bengali to the bone. Eventually you have to believe in spirits and poltergeists and accept the fact that a sneeze or a clucking lizard are inauspicious before travel.' The neoliberals will chirp with glee, 'Now do you understand? In these times of globalization, your Marxian theories are dead and gone to the spirit world. You can't revive them by verbally crossing swords with ghosts!'

But the ghost of time past refuses to get off my back. To add to it, Marx himself had used the spectre of socialism to terrify capitalists with. Especially in the current environment the ghosts are having a ball-all the old nuisances are staging a comeback. All that the pundits had dismissed as dead, are returning to life in the twenty first century. Famine, epidemics, recession, unemployment, natural calamities, destruction wrought by the combined forces of despotism and anarchism all the inhuman depravities we had assumed were behind us are haunting us once again today with greater ferocity And that is precisely why I keep remembering the words of that shaggy haired, bearded German gentleman. The skilfully constructed framework of capitalism's ruthless exploitation, ripped to pieces and exposed more than a hundred years ago by Mars, still exists unchanged, and to our great astonishment, it has increased in girth, spreading its exclusive domination over a wider area. Marx's essential criticism of capitalist society is still so relevant today that Marxists can smugly pronounce, See? The Guru spoke the ultimate truth after all! But Marx himself would not have been pleased with things as they are today. By now has analyses and arguments should have become obsolete. Because he firmly believed that capitalism would disappear in no time and the socialist state would establish itself, therefore, there would be no reason to decry capitalism in the future. And yet, having reached the twenty first century when discussing capitalism, many are still forced to use the words of Marx.

Why his dream did not succeed, or whether it ever belonged in the realms of possibility, has been the subject of much debate among academics. But the poor people of our country-who may not have even beard of Marx still share the common dream, and in their hearts hope that it will come true one day. Anybody with a modicum of good sense should want to establish a socialist state that will replace today's socio- economic system based on oppression, injustice and unequal distribution Of wealth. I find it tempting, therefore, to riffle through writings by Marx occasionally, to assess how far he is relevant today, and how much of him has become superfluous. The revolution he predicted-how feasible would it be in these times? The socialist society of the future he had imagined- was it merely an unattainable fantasy? This was what drove me-in my fantasy-to summon Marx to sit down to several rounds of face to face debates. I also invited a number of historical figures to join us-whose participation turned my spooky encounters into a long and fascinating journey.