The Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels 170 years ago, still is a powerful tool to decipher the phenomenon of Western countries as well as development in China, according to scholars and experts interviewed by Xinhua.
ENORMOUS VALUE
"Try to analyze the thing that happens today, these papers are still of use," said Marien van der Heijden, head of collection development of the International Institute of Social History (IISH) in the Netherlands.
The institute has stored a large amount of manuscripts of writings by Marx and Engels, including the only existing draft page of the manifesto, the first formal version of which was published in London in late February 1848.
"At sometime in the 1990s, people were saying that Marx was not relevant anymore. Then came in Europe and the United States, big financial international crises, the speculation, bubble burst ... and people suddenly thought: 'This happened once before and it was researched. What happens if we read this again? Is it still relevant?' And yes, it appears to be relevant," he noted.
For Robert Griffiths, general secretary of the Communist Party of Britain, the manifesto "is still of enormous value".
"One of the great values of the Communist manifesto is of course that it provides an overarching sweeping analysis of human history, and how and why societies have changed fundamentally over time. It contains an outline of history and lessons for us today," said Griffiths.
"Although much has changed since the 1840s, not least here in Britain, the fundamentals (of the capitalist society) are still the same. We are still in a class-divided society, a society of great inequality, not just in terms of wealth but in terms of power. That means that the manifesto is still relevant today and what it proposes is still relevant," said Griffiths.
Raoul Peck, a Haitian filmmaker who directed "The Young Karl Marx", observed that Marx's thoughts remain the perfect instrument to understand today's world.
"Marx, what he did with Engels, is to describe and analyze capitalist society from the beginning ... all elements of capitalism are still there today," said Peck.
REDISCOVERING MARXISM AMID CRISES
With the largest collection of books on communism in Britain, London's Marx Memorial Library has witnessed a surge of membership application from young people in recent years, especially college students.
"We have many people at the library. So we know there is a desperate hunger among students here in Britain to find out about these ideas," said Alex Gordon, chair of the Trustee Committee of Marx Memorial Library and Workers' School.
