By Dr. Sawraj Singh
We were in the Periyar National Park in Kerala taking the early morning boat trip. We met two young German girls. They told us that they were doing doctorate in philosophy in a German university. We invited them to join us for breakfast in our hotel. We started talking about Marxism. They told us that the biggest reason for the set back to Marxism in Europe was that for all practical purposes, Marxism was limited to economism and had lost its human aspect. They felt that only 50% of Marxism was economics and the other 50% was focused on alienation of people brought by capitalism. Once Marxism was reduced to only economism, it lost its revolutionary spirit and became ineffective. I was surprised to see these girls in their twenties understand Marxism better than many seasoned Marxists in Punjab. I was addressing a group of intellectuals in Ludhiana, the biggest city in Punjab. I was talking about fusing Marxism with Sikhism so that we can find some common ground between the two major intellectual groups in Punjab, the Marxists and the Sikh intellectuals. A university professor said that he has twenty five Marxist friends. All of these friends settled their children in America. He said that he had to conclude from this that American capitalist system works better than Marxism and Marxism has failed. I answered that it is not Marxism but the Marxists who have failed. They have not grasped the essence of Marxism which is revolutionary humanism. Marx and Engels were dedicated humanists who were very concerned about the degradation and the dehumanization brought about by capitalism. They presented their theory as a solution for the degeneration of the society as well as of the human relations and the human values as a result of the unbridled greed of capitalism. Some of our comrades have become great admirers of the western capitalism for keeping the western cities so clean and for maintaining law and order. However, Marx and Engels were living in the nineteenth century Europe. There are some written accounts about the filth in the European cities at that time. One could not walk through those cities without soiling one’s shoes with human excreta and urine. As far as the respect of the law and order shown by the capitalists at that time, again there are some accounts about the capitalists hiring goons and bullies who herded the people and forced them to work in their factories without any compensation and without providing any living accommodation to these people. These people lived on the street and used the roads as toilets. We can get some idea about this phenomenon by looking at the railway tracks in some of the Indian cities where people still use them as toilet facilities. The railway lines were not available in the earlier part of the nineteenth century in Europe as the railways came to Europe in the later part of the nineteenth century. Because of these unsanitary conditions in Europe, epidemics of infectious diseases were very common at that time. It was the result of the struggle by the working class that the capitalists agreed to provide basic amenities to the workers. This struggle was inspired by the ideas of thinkers like Marx and Engels. However, the capitalists cleaned the people only physically. Mentally, people have become more polluted. They are more selfish, greedier, more impatient, more intolerable and more arrogant. Their physical health might have improved? Their mental health has become much worse. Fear, insecurity and anxiety are hall marks of capitalism. All these push people to depression. Depression is so prevalent in capitalist system that it is hard to find a person who has no symptom of depression at all. We only call those people depressed whose depression is so severe that they are having difficulty to cope with it. There are many more who are somehow coping with their depression, with medications or with homemade remedies. Besides antidepressants, people are using sleeping medications and anti anxiety medications. Out of the home made remedies, alcohol is the most commonly mistakenly tried for depression. Actually, alcohol is a depressant and makes depression worse. Alcohol is becoming very popular in the Punjabi community and is widely abused to cope with stress. Many Punjabi women in the western have also started drinking alcohol. Even in Punjab it is no longer a rarity to see women drinking. I have personally witnessed many tragedies, both in North America and Punjab, when alcohol was consumed to fight depression. Some Marxists or pseudo Marxists have either mistakenly or deliberately distorted Marxism and reduced it to economism. However, the Sikh philosophy is very clear that material wealth alone cannot bring happiness. According to Sri Guru Granth Sahib, if you have too much material wealth then you live in the fear and anxiety of losing it and if you do not have enough then you wander around to get it. True happiness comes from a balanced state. True happiness cannot be obtained by collecting more wealth or by watching dances and plays (entertainment), or by increasing your land and property. True happiness comes by singing praises of God (spiritual enlightenment). In the present context we can include TV, movies, smart phones, computers and internet in the category of entertainment. However, the message of Sri Guru Granth Sahib will remain eternal that true happiness will come from a balance between the material and spiritual aspects of life.
Dr. Sawraj Singh, MD F.I.C.S. is the Chairman of the Washington State Network for Human Rights and Chairman of the Central Washington Coalition for Social Justice. He can be reached at [email protected].
