From the Manifesto of the Communist Party to the Banker to the Poor -II

(Second and concluding part .. )

Marxism is about freedom and constraints, about the circumstances and conditions that prevent working men and women, the actual producers of all wealth, from controlling the conditions of their own lives and work. And it is about how these circumstances can be changed and how working men and women can create a truly free society in which all contribute according to their ability and receive according to their needs - a society free from exploitation, free from oppression, free from racism, from unemployment, from war, from poverty and inequality. "A man must eat before he can think," Marx wrote. That is the basic idea.

The class struggle is the motor of social change. Reduction of poverty in a sense empowers the depressed for this struggle. Microcredit is one such potent tool - a brainchild of Muhammud Yunus. Spoken roughly, microcredit is small loans extended to poor and those who really need it. Commercial banks will lend you only if they are convinced you can repay (i.e. credit-worthy), and often you may not need it. In his recent speech at Satyagraha centenary celebrations in New Delhi, Yunus claimed that for most banks, 2/3rd of humanity is not credit worthy and he prefers to see it as most banks are not people worthy. That explains the importance of micro-credit. It has successfully enabled extremely impoverished people (mostly women) to engage in self-employment projects that allow them to generate an income and, in many cases, begin to build wealth and exit poverty. Due to the success of microcredit, many in the traditional banking industry have begun to realize that these microcredit borrowers should more correctly be categorized as pre-bankable; thus, microcredit is increasingly gaining credibility in the mainstream finance industry and many traditional large finance organizations are contemplating microcredit projects as a source of future growth.

Yunus' approach was revolutionary for another reason. In a society in which women are seen as " no good" and regularly told by their families that they should have been " killed at birth, aborted, or starved, Yunus insisted on lending almost exclusively to women, He found that women , when given loans, tended to think about providing for their children and house themselves. With this important gesture, yunus injected credit into a segment of the Bangladesh economy that had never known it. Loans to women as a percentage of all bank loans had been less than one percent prior to Grameen’s establishment. Tody, Grameen bank– type projects have sprung up in places as diverse as Vietnam, china, the Philippines and parts of Latin America.

What more Yunus has done is, he tried to further Marxian priciples using some of the acknowledged capitalist tools. His embrace of the market system has helped make micro–lending a favorite among policy makers and business leaders –from Hillary Clintion to Ted Turner- because it demands minimal resources, the loans get repaid, and supports the reigning ideology of free enterprise and self reliance. Contrast this to annual pledges made by G8 countries for aid or their not fulfilling the assurances they gave for implementing the MDGs. Of late, he has been advocating for an exclusive stock exchange for corporates with social responsibility. (based on an editorial in The Hindu). Marx and Engels said, "Workers of the world unite", and that is why real socialists must be internationalists. Marx believed that capitalism itself had created the force that could overthrow it and establish a classless society. Yunus may not be close to it, but is closer than any one I can think of.

I have given the barest outline of some of Marx’s ideas. The incredible richness of his thought nowadays supports a whole industry of commentaries on commentaries on Marx and so on, ad infinitum. The people who make a living out of this, and not a bad living either, are not Marxists although most of them think they are. Why not? Because as Marx wrote,
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it."

To be a Marxist, you have to be a fighter in the cause of the working class, nationally and internationally, as Marx himself was. Over a hundred years ago, Frederick Engels, Marx’s lifelong friend and co-worker, spoke these words at the old man’s funeral. They cannot be bettered:
"For Marx was before all else a revolutionist. His real mission in life was to contribute, in one way or another, to the overthrow of capitalist society. Fighting was his element. And he fought with a passion, a tenacity and a success that few could rival."