By Franz J. T. Lee

(Traducción en Castellano vendrá pronto.)

Marxism, like the Bolivarian Revolution itself, did not fall like imported manna from the blue royal heavens, it is simply historical, is a historical product of the current mode of production and destruction, of capitalism.

Marxism is its real dialectical negation, is an intrinsic part of natural and human history itself, of workers' revolutionary self-defense. Anything historical, in dialectical process, which is contradictory, alive, can never become obsolete, can never land in the rubbish heap of history. Hence, a brainless, myopic condemnation of Marxism to ideological obsolescence, at first, is calling for barbarism, for the blind destruction of capitalism, then of living history and finally for the global extirpation of mankind itself.

Is it not strange that Stalinism, Fascism, Nazism, Apartheid, Zionism, Capitalism, Imperialism, Neo-Liberalism, Bourgeois Democracy and the Church hierarchy are all anti-communist, anti-Marxist. Should we really follow their anti-workers hatred too? Thus, for all these reasons, as liberators, we have to be very careful, very precise in what we say, in what we do and in what we disseminate on a global scale.

Within the current theoretical discussion of the future socialist 'militantes' in Venezuela with reference to the foundation of a new 'United Socialist Party of Venezuela' (PSUV), also to a necessary constitutional reform and especially to what should be the political essence of Bolivarian Socialism, progressively it is becoming pertinent to formulate our governmental projects, policies and operational concepts very carefully; that is, with the necessary scientific incision and philosophic precision. A lackadaisical repetitive practice accompanied by a corresponding ossified ideology, learned by rote, which generally uses obsolete, absolute and absolutist fixed ideas based on ancient oppressive beliefs, inherited from the Pleistocene epoch of master-slave relations, certainly will jeopardize Bolivarian socialism in its life and death struggle against metropolitan global fascism. In the current apocalyptic world of globalization, in which metropolitan corporate imperialism has already developed and planned the use of mortal occult technology and deadly arms of mass destruction against obsolete labor forces, very few of us are really cognizant of the great danger in which humanity currently finds itself. Billions of the 'the wretched of the earth' do not have the foggiest idea about past war-mongering projects like 'Manhattan', 'Paper-Clip', 'Philadelphia I and II', 'Phoenix I, II & III', 'Mkultra', the 'Manchurian Candidate', 'Yellowcake' or 'Rainbow'. Even less we know about the corresponding logical sophisticated successor projects.

Ignorance is really bliss.

Concerning HAARP, the Roswell incident, the 'Crop Circles' of England, the 'Pentagon Aliens', Scramjets and the UFOs that pass Pico Bolivar nearly monthly, Murdoch and Co., Cisneros and consorts leave us in total obscurantism.

Really, in the third millennium here on planet earth, the real level of 'information' and the true degree of 'education' about anything past, present or future that concerns the emancipation of the toiling masses is scanty, is woeful. About socialism, Marxism and the history of the class struggles of all working classes, in schools and universities, such themes have been expelled from modern socialization processes.

In the major global mass media, the eternal global avalanche of deliberately fabricated dis-information campaigns and of blatant big lies about Venezuela has already reached pathetic and criminal levels.

The war of ideas is fierce, and we are not armed for the current ferocious battle, that precedes violent invasions.

Hence it is important to refresh our transhistoric memory again or at least for the very first time to think, to grasp, to study for ourselves the revolutionary praxis and theory of past liberators like Simon Bolivar, Jose Marti, Patrice Lumumba, Walter Rodney or Ho Chi Minh.

If we are interested in realizing socialism and emancipation on a world scale, a conditio sine qua non is to study the anti-capitalist acts and ideas of the living fathers of scientific and philosophic socialism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, especially their 'Communist Manifesto', the first scientific and philosophic proletarian theory of globalization, its inherent dialectical contradiction, its bourgeois affirmation and its proletarian negation.

Of course, unlike Plato or Jesus Christ, who lived millennia ago, many of us think that Marx and Engels, who were still alive in 1883 and 1897, are 'obsolete' and that they do not merit the current headlines of global breaking news. This ideological phraseology is very far from the burning truth. Marxist scientific and philosophic socialism was never so up to date as today.

In fact, in his speech of August 25, 2007, concerning constitutional reform, twice President Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias scientifically used a central Marxist concept 'praxis' (the original German concept that Marx used). We know that in his social class analysis Aristotle used it to differentiate the 'speaking tool' from the 'zoon politikon', from the polis citizen. However, more and more, instead of ideological "practice", Marxist theoretical 'praxis' is gaining ground in Venezuela.

Erudite socialist scholars know that the 'Communist Manifesto', written nearly 160 years ago by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (at the eve of the 1848 revolutions in Europe) is the most powerful political document ever written and it still remains one of the most popular pamphlets. In fact, "according to the Guinness Book of Records it remains second only to the Bible as the highest selling book ever. Last year when a new pocket sized edition was produced in Britain the publishers were amazed that over 60,000 copies were sold."
http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/sr215/morgan.htm

Nowadays Karl Marx still makes global headlines.

For example, two years ago, according to the British 'Sunday Times' of June 19, 2005, in an article "Karl Marx takes lead in BBC poll of philosophers", reporting about a philosophic poll, we learn that :even "Melvyn Bragg, presenter of 'In Our Time', is puzzled by Marx’s lead. He said he would vote for Kant, an 18th-century German who is championed in the poll by A C Grayling, reader in philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article533688.ece

Yes, Karl Marx won BBC Radio 4’s poll of 2005 as the “greatest philosopher