THESE issues arise from the various applications of the 'method' of Marxism. But Marxism, first and foremost, makes men and women conscious of an infinite cosmos-universe-world, independent of the will of God or Man, as the mode of their existence. This is the universe of infinite material, physical reality — something which encompasses everything living, moving, dead, good, bad, black, white and grey. A universe where great structures, ideas, subjects — even the known frames of time, space and history, rise only to peter away. And yet, often they come back with renewed vigour and on a new basis.

It is a universe where hope is balanced by despair, need by fulfilment, necessity by freedom and the old by the new, where categories like society & individual, body & soul etc form binary opposites and yet are always interchangeable. There is a relationship between events by which victory is accompanied by the possibilities of defeat and defeat by the anticipation of victory.

Marxism introduces us to the laws of this cosmos-universe. It makes us see and experience the principle governing our outer and inner 'Universes', as residing in the 'power' of material motion and 'energy'.

From this principle emerges a new view of family, property, state, religion, society and intimate human relations. They all become products of physical, material and spiritual needs and interests, and an arena where these needs collide and explode frontiers. Thus these institutions represent the struggle of one power against another, of the weak against the strong, the oppressed against the oppressor, equal against equal and vice versa. It is through this collision of interests that great events are born, history is made, revolutions take shape, beauty is created and great ideas and spiritual quests evolve in time.

Marxism emerges from this process with two sides, albeit of the same coin. On the one hand it takes the form of a social, political and cultural movement in the 'physical' sense. And in that capacity, gets related to the history of 'praxis' of economy, of production, distribution and consumption and the attendant conflicts and struggles which shape society, politics and culture.

On the other hand, it shapes up as a method of thought and a discipline of knowledge, related to the history of 'ideas' — the development and interpenetration of the successive 'notions' of science, art, philosophy, economy, politics, religion, society, law, morality, linguistics, environment, nature, in short all conceivable branches of thought and knowledge.