On the 200th birthday of Karl Marx, one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century, CGTN’s Dialogue traveled all the way to his hometown to once again look at the path of this German philosophical giant and re-evaluate his ideology and its impact on this world. 

Standing in the city center of this small, historic town is a Karl Marx statue made and given by China as a gift, which caused great controversy. After a two-year debate, the statue was eventually put in Trier.

Warfram Leibe, Trier's mayor, told us the discussion they went through to bring this statue there.

“We have three discussions: Is it possible to make a statue for Karl Marx? Is it possible to get it as a gift from China? How high and long is it?”

“For the first question, the city assembly decided yes. Karl Marx is born in Trier. It’s a good idea to have his statue.”

In Karl Marx’s home, which is now a museum that attracts tourists from all over the world, Professor Zhang Xudong, a well-known Marxist scholar teaching at New York University, joined the discussion on reviewing Marx’s thoughts and the changes it brought to the world.

“Even if you look at the Western world, they went through this kind of confrontation between classes, eventually they reached a certain point of reconciliation under the blueprint of social democracy, welfare state.”

"If you overthrow the state, say 'let's switch the horses and adopt free market economy' in the style of Russian shock therapy, you will have to find a very very different scenario."

Marx and his life can hardly be talked without mentioning Friedrich Engels, his life-long friend and co-writer of the "Das Kapital". Dialogue talked to Dr. Beatrix Bouvier, a scientific advisor, in the Rheinisches Landesmuseum about the great friendship between these two famous men.

And Dr. Bouvier pointed out the very essence of why the combination of Marx and Engels has created a work that has influenced the world for more than a century.

"He (Marx) read all he could get, but he didn't see the reality of life at that time."

"That was Friedrich Engels who saw in Manchester what reality of life was within his own factory and within his life."

As Marxism is still playing a role in the world today, especially after the 2008 economic crisis which brought great reconsiderations about the fate of capitalism, one ultimate question has to be faced: capitalism or communism, which should prevail?

"As long as Capitalism remains alive, in a productive, creative, good or bad way, marxism's relevance is not going to fade away."

"As long as there are internal structural contradictions of capitalism as a system, we, as Marxists, have a lot to do," Professor Zhang said.

About the roots of any political system, Mr. Zhang added, "it's not really about which ideology or which intellectual discourse, philosophical system and the political institution will prevail or prove to be most appealing. But rather, which system allows a continuous development of social and human productivity, which system is the most suitable in releasing human potential and social productivity, rather than muffling it."

“The success of the Chinese system lives and dies with whether or not this continued social productivity from industrialization and post-industrialization to new-found social freedom and human creativity.”

At the end of this trip, a visit to the local vineyard which was owned by Marx’s father revealed the two sides of the intellectual.

The editor-in-chief of the Norddeutscher Rundfunk, Andreas Cichowicz, explained how being the heir of a rich family and fighting for the proletariat happened to one person at the same time.

"They (intellectuals) don't have to live in the life style they describe."

"If he had seen how his ideas transferred into revolutions, maybe the revolution would have him and the creation of his theory blasted away with it."

The discoveries of Marx’s thoughts is yet far from the end, with the rise of populism and nationalism, Marxism will once again become an option on the table for this world.