Stop reading now if you think this article is going to attack the Deputy Secretary General and Chairman of the South African Communist Party personally or go on about how Marxism killed millions of people and what a terrible or necessary thing that was. It is not about that.
Karl Marx was an extraordinary and original thinker. He wove many of the radical intellectual ideas of his day into what he and his friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels held was a scientific explanation of history and socialism. In the nineteenth century, very many clever people thought that science could explain, even solve, every problem eventually.
Speaking at Marx's graveside in March 1883, Engels made clear that both men saw their ideas as proven beyond argument. He called Marx ‘the man of science' and declared: ‘Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history.'
The law of development of human history? Discovered it?
Among Marxism's many contentions, two are foundational. One is that capitalism is destined to destroy itself through its own contradictions; the other is that history is not just random events randomly following one another; but a process. History is something going on.
If these claims are true, if history is a predestined process, there is no reason why ‘capitalism' - whatever we understand by the term - is not destined to destroy itself along Marxist lines or for some other reasons we cannot foresee. It could be - and there would be nothing anyone could do about it. On the other hand, if history is not predetermined, then there is no reason why the fate of capitalism is sealed. People in that event are not puppets and there are things they can do about it.