A review by zanderrose
Buddha or Karl Marx by B.R. Ambedkar

3.0

I like this essay a lot. I can't say I agree with it entirely; a lot of Ambedkar's criticisms of the Soviet state, while valid, are extrapolated onto the whole of Marxist ideology, which I think is a mistake. However, I agree that the tendency of leftists to ignore spirituality is a detriment to the efficacy of leftist movements. Whether anything spiritual or supernatural is real is immaterial. The majority of people have spiritual beliefs and desire spiritual fulfillment, so a leftist movement must provide for that in some way. A leftist who reads Ambedkar may well decide that Buddhism might an ideal way to accomplish that. I wish Ambedkar had lived a few decades earlier and been able to have some influence on the communist movements in China or Mongolia.