Marxism Since Marx

One has only to know a little history to immediately connect the relevance of Marxist ideas to countries, such as ours, which are on their way to development. For the forces against which Marx tilted his spear in mid-19th-century Germany and England are today to be found in our own country. In the 1840s Germany was in the grip of acute class differences, and was under the hegemony of a hierarchical social structure with undertones that were nearly casteist. These made for formidable obstacle to be raised against the forces of modernization and industrialization. In this atmosphere, Materialism as a philosophy challenged the stability of the society; it denied any validity for the continuance of the status quo with its privileges- and positions. Similarly, in our own country, the communists are up in arms against the 'forces of reaction', such as 'feudalism, communalism, casteism, capitalism, etc.