various rambling thoughts: Is Marx laughing?

Came across this highly entertaining news article yesterday in the newspapers…

Marx gets Vatican thumbs up or here

So, Marx is under ‘review’ by the Church. As to whether he is an approved human being, I guess!!! approved to be given access by St Peter, no less. Well, well…i guess poor Karl has been waiting outside the pearly gates for too long…

The funny thing about the whole incident is the absurdity of it all. It would have been smashing to hear Marx’s comment on this. I am sure he would have had a sly comment up his sleeve.

So, the centre of manufacture of the ‘opium of the masses’ is getting soft towards its deviant child?

Here’s my take…Dangerous but dead men start to become more acceptable with years passing by, as their snarl and their bite become a blurry memory and lose their context for danger. Che Guevara T-shirts are tolerated on the streets of US forty years after his death, Stalin is being rehabilitated and who remembers Napoleon? Add to the fact that communism is ‘officially’ dead for the last decade and a half and Marx is becoming less of a danger for our minds (read the minds of the faithful). His sayings (like the one of religion being a opium for the masses) have slowly become mere dialogues, repeated as a matter of rote and as a sign of erudition rather than as an existential threat for religion.

Religion faces more of an existential threat from other quarters – quarters that Marx would have disapproved but which have equal efficacy in blunting the power of religion. It is that of unfettered technology and capitalism. People would rather grab for an i-pod or get moved by Xbox games than reach for a crucifix or a taabiz or be moved by chants. The holy see has more of a problem with abortions than with communal land holdings for now.

So, when Marx has ceased to be an ‘anathema’ to civilized world (as seen by the Church) and since paradoxically his popularity (Marx reinvented as Robin Hood) has soared in those very worlds with the disillusionment with the kind of materialistic capitalism let loose in the world, the Church finds wisdom in ‘rehabilitating’ him. Maybe the attempt is at positioning the church on the side of the common man.

But even so, it is a hilarious situation. Its funny how the world operates. Nothing ever remains constant. Not ideas, ideology nor words. Marx reinvented as the messiah. He would have laughed at the irony, I think. History being recycled as farce.

I think right now, Lenin must be squirming in Red Square. He fears he would be next!!!