OUTDATED MARXISM?

An oft repeated criticism of the ideas of world socialism is that it is based on a 19th Century critic of capitalism - Karl Marx. What could he know of the developments of 21st Century society ask our ultra-modern opponents.
If they had switched on their super duper plasma TV screens (or do they view on ipod now?) on Friday 9 October they would have seen a Channel 4 programme entitled Unreported World, Peru: Blood and Oil. It depicted the bloodshed and military violence that has accompanied the Peruvian government’s decision to auction off large parts of the Amazon countryside that has been used for thousands of years by the indigenous people.
"For the first time isolated indigenous groups are uniting to fight the government's plans to auction off 75% of the Amazon - which accounts for nearly two thirds of the country's territory - to oil, gas and mining companies. ... These would allow companies to bypass indigenous communities to obtain permits for exploration and extraction of natural resources, logging and the building of hydroelectric dams." (Times, 9 October)
What we have here is the modern enactment of what Marx described in Capital in 1867 as the "so-called primitive accumulation" in Europe from the 16th century onwards. As he so aptly put it when commenting on the Enclosure Acts and the Highland Clearances - "The expropriation of the agricultural producer, of the peasant, from the soil, is the basis of the whole process." Far from being out of date Marxism is bang up to date with the current developments of the capitalist system. RD