And then there are those who, wishfully thinking,
imagine that Marxism had disappeared with the end of the Soviet Union.
That only reminds me of Mark Twain, who wrote that famous letter
to the editor of the newspaper in Connecticut in Hartford,
when he read in the morning paper an obituary for himself.
And he wrote a very simple letter to the editor.
And it went like this.
Reports of my demise are greatly exaggerated - Mark Twain.
Well, the reports of the demise of Marxism
are likewise greatly exaggerated.
Let me explain briefly.
There are now two reasons why Marxism is being more
and more returned to, revived,
redeveloped, celebrated.
Two big reasons.
There are many, but two big ones. One:
the most successful economic
growth of the last 35 years
has happened in the People's Republic of China.
They have grown their economy
2 to 3 times faster than the
United States for 30 to 40 years.
That has been the goal of most countries in the world-
that is, to become un-poor,
to become economically developed countries, to be in short,
as successful in economic growth as the People's Republic of China.
And the folks who lead the People's Republic
of China are members of the Communist Party.
And their inspiration, they tell us, is from Marx.
And they refer to their society as socialism
with Chinese characteristics.
Anyone in the world who wants to stop being in a poor country,
which is where most of the people in the world live, looks to China
and says, Wow, there's a model and that should support surprise no one.
Let me remind you of the great economist
who started the discipline of economics, Adam Smith,
a British professor of religion as it happened.
Adam Smith entitled his breaking book,
the great book of his career, The Wealth of Nations.
And the basic argument in that book was that capitalism
is what made England richer than other countries at that time.
That's exactly the argument why Marxism is of interest to people,
because the People's Republic of China has a better growth record
in the last 30 years than any other country in the world.
Just as Adam Smith built on what happened in England,
Marxists are building on what happened in China.
And the second reason is that capitalism around
the world is everywhere in trouble.
Different kinds of trouble, different degrees of trouble.
The British economy is a disaster story.
The American economy very mixed in many, many ways.
Some people are getting very wealthy.
Huge numbers of people are not.
And that's a big problem of capitalism among many others.
And as people try to figure out why is capitalism exhibiting
so many unattractive qualities,
they are led back to the critical tradition.
Who has been critical of capitalism?
And the most developed, the most global, the most
geniuses in
many ways contributing to any theoretical tradition
have been those who have built the Marxian tradition.
So the criticism of capitalism takes people back to Marxism.