Reflection 2: Marx, Mars and More

For my independent study "Nationalism/ideology in 20th century Europe," I recently started reading about Marx and Lenin and their perspective on imperialism. Something struck me today about the War of the Worlds in relation to Marx.

H.G.Wells published his book War of the Worlds in 1898, thirty-eight years after Marx published Kapital. I think this was sufficient time for Kapital to be considered as a "best-seller" of the time. Though I have been reading about Marxism for a while, it was during my Visions of Post-Coldwar Europe class, that I managed to put everything together: Martians...could be the Marxists.

Marxists historically adopted the color red to identify themselves. And in fact, in sci-fi genre Mars (being the red-planet ) plays an important role from time to time to distinguish the Russians/Marxists etc. Historically Marxists have always been on the anti-imperialists and have defended a kind of "anti-imperialism war" against the imperialists. In this sense, Martian attack on the imperial England could be seen as an anti-imperialist attack which demolished the whole governance system of UK. Then again, another approach on this break-up in the system could be explained via anarchism. Specially when the narrator and the artillaryman decide to go underground and make plans for an overthrow at some future date. After all, many people who were not in favor of their governments usually follow the same strategy...and go underground. It almost resembled me V for Vendetta, and Guy Fawkes and the way the Gunpowder plot was planned. References to rats and ants make sense in this respect more than the references that were made in class about the Africans.

The comments made in class about revolt being a human arrogance makes no sense at all. Though revolt plans may seem naive, it is one thing that can keep humanity running...time after time hope for change has kept people dedicated in a cause and allowed people to work towards achieving that one specific goal. 

Unfortunately I still have not finished reading my "ideologies in Europe" book, so I cannot really execute a long argument at this point in time, but I'm sure I will have plenty of time to make case for various ideologies in class, and I'm excited about it.