Viewpoint by Peter Singer*
MELBOURNE (IDN) – It is not far-fetched to suggest that the predictions of Karl Marx – whose 200th anniversary fell on May 5, 1818 – have been falsified, his theories discredited, and his ideas rendered obsolete. So why should we care about his legacy in the twenty-first century?
From 1949, when Mao Zedong’s communists triumphed in China’s civil war, until the collapse of the Berlin Wall 40 years later, the historical significance of Marx was unsurpassed. Nearly four out of every ten people on earth lived under governments that claimed to be Marxist, and in many other countries Marxism was the dominant ideology of the left, while the policies of the right were often based on how to counter Marxism.