I wonder what Lenin and Mao would say and do if they witnessed the actual realities of the present Russian and Chinese economies that could not have avoided global capitalism. I wonder their response when they saw the Berlin wall being torn down and demolished so that East and West Berlin, which used to be the opposite, was no different.
Not only that. In China, we can now find several restaurants that deliberately design the interior, including the floor, with a picture of Mao, which is quite crowded with people to relax. In this restaurant, visitors, including Chinese people themselves, mingle, joking without any burden, that his feet are stepping on (picture) Mao’s head. While in Russia, Lenin has now become small sculptures from keychains to table decorations designed very cute. In every souvenir stall in major cities of Russia, we can easily buy the statues of Lenin, usually lined with Stalin’s statues.
Mao Zedong wrote a message to his wife, Jiang Qing. “This little word might be my last message for you. Human life is limited, but revolution knows no edges. In the struggle for the past ten years, I have tried the pinnacle of revolution, but I was unsuccessful. You might be able to reach the highest. If you fail, you will plunge into an immeasurable canyon. Your body will be crushed. Your bones will crumble”. And it turns out that the failure of the Chinese revolution crushed the body and bones of Communism to the bottom of the canyon.
Lenin and Mao have long been gone. The doctrine of Communism also accompanied their departure slowly but surely, and China has changed, so has Russia and Eastern Europe in general. Lenin and Mao are nothing more than accessories that only benefit craftsmen, traders, and restaurant entrepreneurs. No different from the Swastika emblem and Hitler’s photo complete with his moustache that made the interior of a restaurant in Seoul, South Korea, or Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park accessories.
Still afraid of Communism? Lest the Communism’s haunting in our beloved country is precisely the work of craftsmen-traders in Russia, restaurant entrepreneurs in China and South Korea. Both are just chasing profit. The difference is, maybe, if Russia, South Korea and China are pure (economic) trade with concrete and invisible commodities, while in Indonesia, it is more in the form of political trade with ghost commodities that are invisible and unknown.
During a dialogue program on Television Pendidikan Indonesia (TPI) in early 2000, I, a panel with HM Sumargono (UN), HM Nazri Adlani (MUI), and Munir (Kontras) – was asked by the presenter: were you not upset, angry, and protested with the strong thesis of Marxism that God is dead (atheist)? I answered: NO, absolutely not, Because the God that was attacked, bribed, denied, or killed by Karl Marx is not my God. The God whom Marxism addresses is a god who oppresses the workers, the small people (the conspiracy of the church and the bourgeois-capitalists). My Lord, Al-Rohman, Al-Rohim, very fair, loves the poor, the fuqara, the oppressed, and the marginalized. And I believe this is up to haq al-yaqin.