May 15, 1998

In this issue:

• Manifesto unlikely to spark revolution this time around
• Preserving the splash

This month, three new editions of The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels have been issued to commemorate its 150th anniversary. Reportedly its reappearance has been met with great enthusiasm in Paris, London, and Toronto. Is this work relevant to our society as we approach the end of the 20th century? British historian Eric Hobsbawm, who wrote the introduction to the Verso edition, comments that as political rhetoric, the Manifesto has "almost biblical force." What has been the legacy of this violent pamphlet and is there a possibility that it can once again have an impact in industrialized societies?

When Marx and Engels wrote the Manifesto in late 1847 (Engels contributed the original version, but Marx revised it), the European stability that had been maintained since the 1815 Congress of Vienna was clearly crumbling. The writers were hardly prophetic in anticipating revolution, which occurred throughout Europe like a tidal wave in 1848. But they were premature, as the monarchies, bolstered by the irresolution of a tentative middle class, were able to recover, and the Russian army swept into Budapest to crush the Hungarians. The "bourgeoisie" had reacted with horror to the prospect of workers taking power into their own hands.

In the latter part of the 19th century, Marxism found a new following in France, Germany, and eventually Russia, where industrialization occurred later than in central and western Europe. Germany, Marx's homeland, seemed the likeliest venue for class conflict. However, the largest socialist party in Europe, the SPD, had managed to secure many benefits for German workers without a revolution, such as an eight-hour day, social insurance, and trade unions. Economism, a gradualist form of Marxism, had begun to take root.

The Russian Marxists, led first by Grigorii Plekhanov, but later by Vladimir Ilich Lenin (1870-1924), angrily rejected such compromises. They inherited a tradition of Populism (a movement to bring about revolution through a "naturally communistic" peasant society, but ultimately rejected by the peasants themselves) and terrorism that had seen the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, and the attempted assassination of Alexander III just six years later. The failure of such methods to overthrow autocratic Tsarism spurred the growth of Marxism, but the party was tiny when it formed in 1898, and most of its members met in exile. In 1903 at the second congress of the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party, which met in Stuttgart and London, Lenin was largely responsible for the division into two branches: the Bolsheviks ("Majority"), who favored an armed uprising through a tightly knit and centralized party, and the Mensheviks ("Minority"), who were more orthodox Marxists.

Lenin's role was critical. Marx and Engels' original concept that the working class would form a class and win a battle for democratic rights was replaced with a more cynical version: that left to themselves, the workers would achieve nothing. They needed to be led by the nose. Lenin's pamphlet "What Is To Be Done" (1902) was surely more influential over the long term than The Communist Manifesto. It provided a blueprint for what was to be carried out in Russia. A democratic revolution did occur in Russia in March 1917 after the ending of the monarchy. But by November, the Bolsheviks had overthrown the feeble government with promises to take Russia out of a losing war, and provide land to its multitude of peasants.

Russia's long experiment as the first and leading Marxist power is well known. It is regarded today widely as a great failure, other than the victory over the Germans in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45. Even that victory was attained in part through a revival of Russian patriotism rather than fervor for a Marxist cause. Stalin's dictatorship poisoned socialism, though many were blinded initially by triumphal propaganda that proclaimed the successes of the Soviet state. In 1949, when the Communists attained power in China, the USSR developed an atomic bomb, and Eastern Europe had been largely Sovietized, the future of Communism seemed unlimited. Forty years later the Soviet and Soviet-supported regimes collapsed. The great experiment was over.

The New World Order, with a single military Super Power that has endorsed the victory of capitalism, has failed to gain critical acceptance everywhere. In recent elections in Ukraine, for example, the Communist Party received four times more votes than its nearest rival. Six years of transition to a market economy in Russia have left over 40 per cent of the population below the official poverty line. A vibrant economy falls ever more completely into the clutches of organized crime. The May-Day marches in Russia in 1998 attracted over 300,000 people, many bearing Soviet flags and portraits of Stalin. However, the majority of marchers appeared to be over the age of 60. Today's protesters are not advocating a return to the past; they are lamenting the failure of the present system.

In the industrialized West, on the other hand, the electorate generally opts for moderate governments. The Labour government of Britain, for example, seems more an offshoot of Thatcherism than one with links to the Wilson and Callaghan regimes of the 1960s and 1970s. Yet capitalism has failed to bring about an egalitarian society. Even the most optimistic observers note that there is an ever widening gap between the rich and the poor. Capitalism has not eliminated poverty in the developing world, and it has elicited a veneration for the almighty dollar and for the practice of making money as fast and as ruthlessly as possible. Many question the sheer lack of humanity in the capitalist system; but few have found anything with which to replace it.

After 150 years, the dream of Marx and Engels has been warped by the legacy of Soviet-style Communism, its millions of victims and its pathetic emulators such as North Korea. The original insights -- and most of all the reasons for them -- have been largely lost. The world is indifferent. Students, the perennial participants in revolutions, have more interest in Bill Gates's new Windows 98 than in a new edition of The Communist Manifesto. That it should be reissued today demonstrates the dearth of alternative strategies in a world increasingly dominated by monopoly capitalism.

Dr. Christopher Levan

As an adult, I often sing in the shower, but no more. Saturday mornings this May find me splashing in a pool with a circle of one-year-olds and their parents. And we're singing!

Do you recall the campfire chestnut, "The Grand Old Duke of York?" Every time you sing "he marches up the hill with his men," you stand. And when he marches his "ten thousand back down again," you sit. Great fun in water. Showers of delight accompany every verse.

Once done with the Duke, we move on to "The Wheels on the Bus go Round and Round." Hardly able to recall this childhood ditty, it took me just a few stanzas to bring the words and harmonies back.

Actually, we're in the water to learn how to swim. (To use popular managerial jargon, that's the desired outcome.) And there's no need for creative, interactive techniques to hold the class' attention. No electronic wizardry necessary. We're fully engaged.

As I look at our enchantment, I am struck by how my educational impulse has been hard-boiled of late. After two semesters of teaching, a rigid, ho-hum cynicism colors my walk to work. Somewhere in-between an infant's swimming lesson and an adult's university seminar, I realize how easily the pleasures of the educational enterprise can be lost.

I have also recently been reminded of the beauty of this in-between time on campus, which grows in spite of any killjoy attitudes. With the persistence of spring dandelions, students get turned on by both convocations and admissions. Here are two examples.

Jane met me last week with a grin permanently fixed to her face. She had just left the dean's office, having been assured that her master's thesis was accepted. The outside reader had given the green light to her graduation. There was an echo of "the wheels on the bus..." in her voice as her excitement spilled over into the group at the coffee machine. This is a big-time shining moment that will return to her again and again.

At the other end of the pageant of learning is Rebecca. She spoke with hushed and holy reverence of her interview for acceptance into a BA program. It took several minutes for her to describe every twist and contortion of her nervousness. Then she went on to describe the leather-tough questions.

"They know so much," she exclaimed. She will recall that moment for decades. Universities have these candidates in the thousands, but it is her first chance at the big leagues, and she's apprehensive, awed and excited.

Having done our work well, I know that many members of the university community are tired and ready for a few months of reflection and research. So, I don't want to pile another moral imperative upon our weary souls: "Thou shalt treat students' high spirits with respect."

Nevertheless, it is precisely when I feel tired and wanting to throw in the towel for a while on higher learning that I encounter a Jane or a Rebecca and discover again the reason for our endeavors.

Opening my spirit to this once-in-a-lifetime excitement is the road back to a flourishing mind and a sturdy heart. If you've lost the pathway to that exuberance, why not join with me and my son in our water songs? If you don't have access to a pool, a regular bathtub will do. Fill it high, get a good soak, and begin: "The wheels on the bus go round and round...." Smack the water, let it overflow the rim, cover the walls!

Call this a baptism of enthusiasm -- the key signature in the melody of education.

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