No face always looks the same...

Communism as a philosophy, as a way of life and as a solution to the existing problems enthralled a lot of the intellectuals during the latter half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Most of the works pertaining to this theory were formulated and documented during this time too. We must remember that in the 1870s when Das Capital was being drafted, the age of electricity was yet to commence. Communism was proposed as a solution that would address the shortcomings of the contemporary socio-economic structure in the 19th century. The inhuman working conditions (20-30 people accommodated in 850 square feet area in the cities) and working hours (14-16 hours of working for the entire family) that the proletariats were subjected to in the 19th century were the primary problems that communism intended to address.

What one needs to remember is, that the intellectuals who contributed to this theory were predominantly from today's bastions of free markets. When we look back and analyse the rise and fall of communism over the past century, we tend to ignore that the effectiveness of the guard sitting outsided a bank with a gun in his hand cannot be determined by the number of rounds of bullets he has fired during his career.

The very fear of there being a revolution, the very thought of communism as an idea becoming the favorite child of the masses, the very idea of communists taking over, and taking away the liberties and the luxuries enjoyed by the capitalists has forced the bourgeoisie to relent and extend an unperceivable standard of living to a large section of the working class. A standard of living, which probably would have been considered insane by their predecessors and detrimental to the profit margins about a century ago.

The standard of living has been extended to a large part of the proletariat to ensure that there would not be discontented, discontented enough for the proletariat (what we now term as the working class, which has become so stratified over the past century, that the upper half cannot even be termed as proletariat in the real sense of the term) to unite, unite enough to topple the existing structure

Sometimes the mere presence of a competitor can make one perform better and attain the targets that one envisages to attain. In the case of capitalism, the antagonist was communism. And true it is, that communism failed wherever the existing system was taken over by the communists. But one needs to remember one thing. Communism was the budding graduate, who secured the top rank in all disciplines, but when he actually did graduate and enter the big bad world; he was nothing more than a fresher; a cricketer who has trained all his life in net practices and is pitted against one of the most lethal pace bowling attacks on a green pitch. And whatsoever one may say, the fact, the knowledge that communism does exist, the fear that the community (the proletariat) at any point of time can go on and resort to the measures that communism preaches actually caused capitalism to mellow down. The mission statement of a capitalist firm HCL Technologies – EMPLOYEE FIRST, will probably make Hegel, Engel and Marx sit up in their graves and argue that this isn't the same capitalism that they were out to fight. Or maybe not, maybe they'd just smile in their beards (I am assuming that all of them had one), and consider this to be one of the many victories of the proletariat in recent times. But they know, we know, that the battle is far from over.

The battle of the society, for the society that communism envisaged, the striking disparity in the standard of living that it intended to do away with, is far from over. This time the protagonists definitely are not the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

For the good, for the bad, the society has evolved. The issues that we are faced with today, are very different from those that troubled us about a century ago. Today, the greatest challenge that lies ahead of us is to ensure that we include everyone, and not just the working class as we grow. The challenge is to extend at least a minimum standard of living to everyone in every city, to everyone beyond every city.

We need to extend the basic social and economic infrastructure to every single human being on this earth. We need to attain inclusive growth. This maybe our aim for the next century.

As we try to sustain a scorching pace of growth, we need to sit back and assess our growth. Do we really want a growth driven by consumption. A growth wherein more is being consumed by the same few, a growth wherein the same few actually consume more than they need to, in a few cases even more more than they can afford to. Or are we envisaging a growth which brings into the fold many more. If we opt for the latter, it is possible that we may slow down a bit, but we may find it to be worth it.

Maybe the name of the struggle needs to be changed. The left and right are not so left and so right anymore. Communism no longer is pitted against capitalism. Maybe, humanism is. Against something called consumerism.

- Chirantan