In the article I posted earlier today on the demise of the ANC, I said the ANC’s loss of connection with its constituency, its indifference to the fate of the poor, could not be explained by the analytical tools of Marxism, though I said that Marx himself demonstrated great passion for the plight of the poor and the cause of workers in some of his writings. I had in mind, at this point in time, the final words of his Civil War in France, paying tribute to the Paris Commune:
“Working men’s Paris, with its Commune, will be for ever celebrated as the glorious harbinger of a new society. Its martyrs are enshrined in the great heart of the working class. Its exterminators history has already nailed to that eternal pillory from which all the prayers of their priests will not avail to redeem them.”