In search of correctness

Book Review – The World beyond Marx and Market

September 24, 2009 at 6:35 pm (Uncategorized)

This post has remained in my draft for quite sometime now and today i decided to give it life…

The World beyond Marx and Market – by S. Gurumurthy – my favorite columnist is a very small but informative book where he takes a dig at both communism and capitalism and explains the pros and cons of the both philosophies.

Gurumurthy starts the book explaining the evolution of Communism and says that Communists made Marx their prophet, and his book their bible and had so much unflinching faith in it that they never bothered to even think twice before applying it. Then he goes on to explain the similarities between communism and capitalism and says that both evolved from the same belief system of replacing traditional relations and bonds between the people by new relationships based on contracts – free contracts in capitalism and enforced contracts in communism. But according to Gurumurthy the more efficient capitalism won over the less efficient communism.

He explains the evolution of marxian ideology from Hegelian philosophy of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. He goes on to explain that both communism and capitalism are hostile but equally potent and materialistic cousins. Both promote consumption based development of a materialistic society the difference between them basically lying in the ownership of property – with state owning the property in communism and individuals owing it in capitalism. He then explains that capitalism has evolved much much beyond what it started to be when Marx ridiculed it. Today’s capitalism is not owned and operated by capitalists but by educated professionals playing with money which is entirely virtual. This mode of capitalism was never known to and thought of by Marx.

Gurumurthy further adds that the virtual economy of new age is moving wealth from individuals and enriching corporates. through a vicious circle of credit – consumption – debt which ultimately leads to individuals to be on credit and debt throughut their life.

In the later part of the book he explains how  the  world can look post market and post marx. He quotes certain examples from the Indian model of development based on community oriented development and social equity based growth. He quotes certain unique features of this model from historical facts.

In sum this book is a wonderful read for the weekend and guarantees to be a very informative one too… And for lovers of Gurumurthy posts in Express… This is a one that should not be missed….