[imagesource:gencraftai]

It feels like a lifetime ago that Andre De Ruyter was still at the helm of the Titanic, ag, we mean Eskom, but some of the thoughts he had in his book, Truth to Power: My Three Years Inside Eskom, have been obvious since before radical titles like an Electricity Minister crept into our lexicon.

One of his lamentations was that the “Ghosts of Marx and Lenin still haunt the halls of Luthuli House. People are still firmly committed to a 1980s-style ideology.”

De Ruyter wrote “They still address one another as comrades – which is, frankly, embarrassing. They use words like Lumpenproletariat [the underclass devoid of class consciousness], which is ridiculous.”

These words have been given more weight recently when billionaire Johann Rupert echoed the sentiment that “Investors do not like investing in places where people call each other comrades. These are not places where Western capital wants to invest.” The Remgro chairman said that the country is struggling to attract foreign investment because of a ‘hostile environment for businesses’, brought on by the ruling party’s outdated ideologies.

In his book, De Ruyter goes on to say that there was little value in debating with Marxists. “Debating with Marxists is like debating with members of the Flat Earth Society. You cannot win,” he said.

“Despite all evidence to the contrary, they strive for greater state intervention and greater state regulation. The ANC is a party stuck in the past. Guys, it’s the twenty-first century; Why are you still addressing each other as comrades?”

Now I never studied political sciences at UCT, so I don’t pretend to be as knowledgeable about Marxism as a first-year student in the SRC. I do however have Google and some common sense that I cobbled together over a period of a half-century, and it seems to me that both Rupert and De Ruyter’s words succinctly explained why we are where we are.

For those who don’t know or care about ideas such as Lumpenproletariat (try saying that three times after a few tequilas), the simple, college-level interpretation of Marxism is “a set of ideas and beliefs that are dominant in society and are used to justify the power and privilege of the ruling class”.

The philosophies of Karl Marx are obviously much more intricate and layered than a single-sentence explanation, but the mere fact that most of these ideas were penned 140 years ago should already give one pause. Perhaps outdated is the best way to describe these ideologies after all. No amount of late-night slam sessions in the rez could justify running a 21st-century economy based on ideas promulgated before oxygen was liquified for the first time.

Sam Altman did not use a Commodore 64 to write ChatGPT, and we are not going to build smart cities and electric vehicle production plants with an economy built around the brainfarts of someone who died a month before Krakatoa blew half of Indonesia to hell.

We need new ideas and new directions, otherwise, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are both going down with the Titanic – which, by the way, also sank three decades after the birth of Marxism. Political ideology seems to be the one belief that should remain open to updating. The church eventually embraced the LGBTQ community despite what the original manual says about their lifestyle.

Maybe it’s time the comrades hug it out with corporate South Africa instead of knee-capping it with pre-historic thinking. But like I said, I’ve only had a college education, so maybe I just don’t get it.

[source:dailyinvestor]