The Relevance of Marx More Urgent Than Ever, Say Socialist Equality Party Leaders
Joseph Kishore, Tom Scripps
Joseph Kishore, the Socialist Equality Party candidate for president in the United States, and Tom Scripps, the Socialist Equality Party candidate for Holborn and St Pancras in Britain’s general election, delivered a joint speech emphasizing the contemporary relevance of Karl Marx's ideas.
Standing at the grave of the great socialist and working-class leader Karl Marx in Highgate Cemetery, London, Kishore and Scripps reflected on the enduring significance of Marx’s life and work. Although Marx died 141 years ago on March 14, 1883, his theories remain profoundly relevant today.
Marx’s lifelong collaborator, Friedrich Engels, highlighted in his speech at Marx’s grave on March 17, 1883, that Marx uncovered the basic laws of human development and the specific laws of capitalist society. These included the theory of surplus value, explaining the origins of profit in the exploitation of the working class.
While Marx was a scientist and a materialist philosopher, Engels emphasized that Marx was “before all else a revolutionist.” His mission was to overthrow capitalist society and state institutions and to contribute to the liberation of the modern proletariat, making them conscious of their position and needs.
Marxism has evolved since Marx's death, continuing through the international working class's struggle to develop the program, perspective, and practice of world socialist revolution. The continuity of Marxism is evident in the history of the Trotskyist movement and the Fourth International, established by Leon Trotsky in 1938. Trotskyism represents the Marxism of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Marx wrote during capitalism’s early stages, while today, capitalism faces its decline. He lived in a time when he could send greetings to Abraham Lincoln, representing rising bourgeois democracy. Today, the United States is at the center of global imperialist war and a descent into barbarism. Global war threatens nuclear annihilation, and genocide has re-entered political discourse. The ruling class is turning to fascism and dictatorship, and social inequality and capitalist exploitation have reached unprecedented levels.
However, as Marx understood, capitalism produces its own gravediggers. The international working class, united and conscious of its interests, is the most powerful force on the planet.
The central task is to make the working class “conscious of its own position and its needs, conscious of the conditions of its emancipation,” as Engels explained. This requires building a socialist and revolutionary leadership grounded in Marxism and the experiences of the international working class since Marx's death. Rebuilding a worldwide socialist movement can only happen under the Fourth International’s leadership.
The Socialist Equality Party in the US and the UK, along with the International Committee of the Fourth International globally, believes that workers will successfully overthrow capitalist oppression and establish a society based on equality.
In the coming years, the words of the Communist Manifesto will once again resonate in global struggles: “Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.”
