2009年7月2日 星期四

A visit to Highgate Cemetery, London

..... entry fee £3, quite bourgeois.


Karl Heinrich Marx (May 5, 1818–March 14, 1883) was a German philosopher, political economist, historian, political theorist, sociologist, communist and revolutionary credited as the founder of communism.

Marx summarized his approach to history and politics in the opening line of the first chapter of The Communist Manifesto (1848): “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” Marx argued that capitalism, like previous socioeconomic systems, will produce internal tensions which will lead to its destruction. Just as capitalism replaced feudalism, socialism will in its turn replace capitalism and lead to a stateless, classless society called pure communism which will emerge after a transitional period, the "dictatorship of the proletariat", a period sometimes referred to as the "workers state" or "workers' democracy"

Of course, the world did not go as he day-dreamed (though the world did paid huge cost of this social-experiment).

Despite Marx's failed approach to history and politics, he did have acute observation on living condition of people in modern age.

"In emerging industrial production under capitalism, workers inevitably lose control of their lives and selves, in not having any control of their work. Workers never become autonomous, self-realized human beings in any significant sense, except the way the bourgeois want the worker to be realized " -- Marx's observation of alienation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_alienation)

Surprisingly, the world has not changed a lot, feeling of "alienation" still very valid nowaday in air-conditioned office.

“ The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways—the point however is to change it "---- Engels's version of the 11th Thesis on Feuerbach

If Engels visit China coal mine today and update his book "The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844" ---- "The Condition of the Working Class in China in 2009". Ironically, he will be surprised how little has been changed.


We do not have the so-called "solution" to "cure" the world. Indeed, we may not able to change the world. But the point is if we interprete the world in insightful ways, we can always make our own life better, happlier and more meaningful.

I found this two-hour philosophical documentary film (written & presented by Alain de Botton) very relevent to current modern society. Wish it inspire you somehow too.


Part 1


Part 2

Part 3

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