Original to:
http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/red-revival-the-fall-and-rise-of-karl-marx-10-16-2015
Red Revival: The Fall and Rise of Karl Marx
Meet the academics whose devotion to Marxism cost them their jobs in the
1990s — and the thinkers driving Marx back up the political agenda
across Europe today.
By Damir Pilic in Split, Zagreb, Athens and London
"The gap that has been left by the departure of this mighty spirit will
soon enough make itself felt." (Friedrich Engels at Marx's funeral,
Highgate Cemetery, London, March 17, 1883)
Zvonko Sundov, a doctor of philosophy, got his last pay cheque 24 years
ago. Still, the 63-year-old insists on paying for both coffees. The
years he spent as probably the most educated homeless person in Croatia
have not broken him.
"Reality is a trap for every thinker," he says.
In 1991, Sundov was fired from the Zagreb School of Electrical
Engineering. He won court cases against his dismissal in both Zagreb and
Strasbourg but he has never returned to the classroom — because his job
no longer exists. He taught Marxism.
In socialist Yugoslavia, Marxism was a compulsory subject in all
secondary schools and colleges. Then came the fall of the Berlin Wall in
1989 and the collapse of communism, when, in his famous essay The End of
History, American political scientist Francis Fukuyama proclaimed the
eternal victory of liberal democracy and capitalism.
Hundreds of Marxism teachers and professors were left without jobs.
During the great changeover, they were despised as couriers of
totalitarianism who had no place in a democratic society.
But now Europe’s political landscape is changing: leftist movements are
gaining strength due to the international economic crisis. At the
beginning of 2015, Europe got its first government of radical leftists
since The End of History, with the victory of Greece's Syriza, a
political movement that grew out of the Communist Party. In Spain,
Podemos, a movement close to Syriza, has come from nowhere to establish
itself as a third force in national politics.
Germany’s Die Linke party last year took power in the state of Thuringia
on a democratic socialist platform, with a lead candidate who campaigned
with a big red bust of Karl Marx. In Britain, the new Labour party
leader Jeremy Corbyn has said Marx is a "fascinating figure... from whom
we can learn a great deal".
It seems the Marxist values which cost Sundov and others their jobs are
returning to the European stage. Even Fukuyama has been talking about
the problems of inequality and the dominance of finance in the
capitalist system.
Against this backdrop, I wanted to explore what happened to those
professors of Marxism who lost their jobs — and how they and today's
European Marxists view the apparent revival of socialism. Is Syriza a
continuation of their interrupted dreams? Is Greek Prime Minister and
Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras their democratic Lenin for the 21st
century? What might now be plucked from Marx’s beard to build Europe's
future?
"Marxism's time is yet to come," claims Sundov, as we sip coffee in a
Zagreb cafe in May this year. He then goes on to quote another socialist
icon: "Rosa Luxemburg said 'socialism or barbarism', and today we have
barbarism. Syriza and Podemos are a human act of rebellion. Besides
Marxism, capitalism doesn't have a serious enemy.
Capitalists know: if anyone can destroy them, it’s the Marxists. This is
why Syriza is facing so many problems in negotiations [with the European
Union]."
After he was fired, Sundov admits, he struggled to find his feet. His
students greeted him in the street, but the teachers from the staffroom,
now former friends, avoided him. The professor also got divorced. His
ex-wife threw him out of their apartment in his shorts and slippers.
"I slept on a bench at the railway station and, in the winter, in
abandoned train carriages alongside tramps. I had lived a normal life
and now I was suddenly out in the street. And the books were back at the
apartment. And I was left without any friends."
But Sundov was not without philosophical companions. He cites
Heraclitus's phrase that one man is worth ten thousand if he is
great."And I had two," he explains. "Hegel and Marx."
Finally, in 1996 the gods of good fate smiled on the exhausted Marxist.
He met his future wife at a lawyer’s office. He was suing his old
employer and she had probate proceedings. The crucial factor: the lawyer
was late.
“She invited me to a café for some tea - and I didn’t have a penny in my
pocket. She also had some sandwiches and she offered me one. I hadn’t
eaten anything for three, four days, but I was embarrassed to take it
since I couldn’t even pay for the tea. She talked me into taking the
sandwich anyway. And we've been living together for 20 years now. She
saved me."
Sundov will soon publish a book about Hegel. It will be the fourth book
he has written since he started living wit
