IN 1964, the Japanese Communist Party declared it was severing all ties with the Soviet Communist Party. Three years later, the Central Committee agreed in the course of its annual meeting to delete from the Party's charter the provision ruling that the objective of the Party was to achieve the Soviet model of dictatorship of the proletariat. The term “Marxism-Leninism” was replaced by “Scientific Socialism” and the idea of Proletarian Internationalism abandoned. In Spain, the Secretary-General of the Spanish Communist Party, Santiago Carillo, publicly called for a brand of independent democratic socialism in Europe. The legendary President of the Party, Dolores Ibarruri, better known as La Passionaria, who had spent more than 30 years in the Soviet Union, declared openly that she did not want to see a repetition in her country of the Soviet experience she had come to know so well. In India, large sections of the Communist Party call for adherence to a socialist policy independent of Moscow, one that would not follow in the footsteps of the Soviet experience. In France, we are once again witnessing signs of a break in the coalition of the Left between the communists, the socialists and the radicals, which occurred before power became accessible. In Portugal, the Left is losing power and popularity daily, and the possibility of their participation in a government coalition has become a dream. In Britain, the Communist Party declared on November 14, 1977 that it had definitely abandoned the idea of “dictatorship of the proletariat”. The conclusion to be drawn from all this is that, for the developed countries, Marxist ideology has been stripped of its mystique. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Third World countries, where poor economic prospects coupled with low standards of general education provide an ideal breeding ground for ideas that have been discredited in the rest of the world. Those who succumb to the siren song of seasoned Marxist propagandists are usually students and young people and not the workers, who are supposed to form the backbone of communist organisations. Because of their lack of experience, their poor cultural and scientific formation and their youth, these converts become mindless mouthpieces for a theory which, as far as the developed world is concerned, is merely a set of ideas put forward in the nineteenth century, no different from the scores of theories and ideas which that century produced, the only difference being that Marxism found a state where it was applied. The key word here is youth. The generation gap separating the young from their parents and grandparents is a phenomenon that dates back to the dawn of time. However, until recently, the gap took the form of aspirations by the rising generations to liberate themselves from the constraints placed on them by the older generation. In other words, the young rebelled against the way of life of their elders without a definite view of what was to replace it. And, before too long, they came to discover that the rebellion was no more than an expression of the physical and psychological malaise of puberty and adolescence. That does not mean to say that everything old should be consecrated, but it is a fact that the refusal of the old by the young throughout the ages was a purely emotional refusal, lacking experience and understanding. Never in the history of mankind had the old been changed under the pressure of and in response to the wishes of the young. Change always occurs under the pressure of generations with more knowledge and experience. Such was the situation before the appearance of Marxist ideology. Since that ideology was essentially a revolution against existing conditions, it became, for large numbers of young people, a philosophical framework for the perennial anxiety of the young and their age-old revolt against all that is established. Thus the balance tipped in favour of Marxism ��" as a framework for the revolt and rejection of the young ��" because its call for radical change responded to aspirations held by the young since time immemorial. Moreover, Marxism's undisguised call for sexual freedom and for the abolition of the bourgeois family structure and its promise of sexual communism when the highest stage of communist society would be attained made it even more attractive to young people in all parts of the world. In fact, the main response to Marxism, which set itself up as the theoretical expression of the fundamental interests of the working class, came not from that class but from educated youth. Clearly, this phenomenon is not a point in its favour. Quite the reverse, for the response was without substance as most of these young people had no real scientific knowledge of Marxism. Both as a student and, later, as a university lecturer, I had the opportunity to meet many communist youth in several countries and to ascertain at first hand that, for the most part, their knowledge of the scientific bases of Marxism was woefully inadequate and that very few had read the basic literature that is vital to an understanding of this theory. For them, Marxism was no more than an intellectual and philosophical framework for their deep-rooted anti-Establishmentfeelings, not to mention the fact that it justified much of what it pleased them to see justified. Thus, most of those who respond to the Marxist call are young people with little knowledge and less experience, whose ideas rapidly change as they mature and learn the realities of life through personal experience. If, for the sake of argument, we apply a Marxist approach, we could say that Marxism in the world spread among groups, mainly student groups, whose future class loyalties would inevitably and gradually draw them away from Marxist ideas. The spread of Marxist ideas within student circles is thus not to the credit of Marxism. For an ideology whose recruits are usually too young to know any better and who will, inevitably, turn away when they have gained some experience from life, cannot claim to be a successful, let alone a universal, ideology. There are, of course, exceptions, but exceptions, as we all know, prove the rule. Heggy is the 2008 winner of Italy's top prize for literature “Grinzane Cavour.” http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarek_Heggy http://www.tarek-heggy.com
