The Imaginary Bus: Khalo Who Foresaw His Own Death in a Dream — Volume One
The woman turned the page and put her finger beneath the next heading.
— Now for history. How do you apply this materialist and dialectical view to society?
— Historical materialism applies that same view to society and history. It asks how people have produced the food, clothing, homes and other things they need to survive, and what relationships those ways of producing things have created between them.
— So all of history is just economics?
— No. Anyone who says that has turned history into a shopkeeper’s accounts. People do more than eat bread. They love, make art, dream, fear, believe and rebel. But even a poet who writes about the heavens lives on land somebody owns, needs food somebody has produced, and writes in a language shaped by a society.
— So economics is the foundation of everything?
— Material life provides the setting in which politics, culture, morality, law and ideas take shape. But the relationship doesn’t run in only one direction. Ideas and institutions affect material life too. A law deciding who owns the land can change millions of lives. A religion that declares obedience sacred can prolong domination. An idea of freedom and equality can bring people out into the streets.
— Then who makes history: economics or people?
— People make history, but not under conditions of their own free choosing. Nobody chooses where they are born, their family’s class, their mother tongue or the government they grow up under. We enter a world built before us, but we don’t have to hand it on to the next generation exactly as we found it.
— So people are both products and makers of history?
— Exactly. History is a house that was partly built before we arrived. Its walls, doors and even some of its locks are already there. But we aren’t merely its silent tenants. We can open a window, move a wall or, if need be, redesign the house.
The donkey brayed from the back seat.
— Of course, some occupants would prefer to knock down every wall and only then remember that the roof was resting on them.
— So changing society takes more than willpower?
— Willpower is necessary, but it isn’t enough. Without material conditions, organisation, understanding and social strength, even the finest hopes may remain slogans. History doesn’t move on wishes alone. But without human hopes and action, no new path opens up either.
The woman pointed outside.
A worker in a high-visibility vest stood beside the road, rain dripping from his cap. A little farther on, a man in an expensive coat talked on his phone beneath the awning of a glass building.
— Is that where political economy begins?
— More or less. Political economy isn’t only about the price of bread, interest rates or whether the market is up or down. It asks who produces things, who owns the means of production, how wealth is divided, and why the people who work hardest often receive the smallest share.
— But the factory owner has invested money and taken a risk too.
— True. A materialist analysis shouldn’t leave facts out. The capitalist provides money, equipment and the means to produce things. The question is where the profit comes from. A machine on its own creates no new value. Human labour turns materials into goods. During one part of the working day, the worker creates value equivalent to their wages. During the other part, they produce value that the owner takes as profit.
— What you call surplus value?
— Yes. Behind many gleaming buildings are hours of human life that have never been given back to the people who lived them.
— People sell more than the strength in their arms. They sell part of their lives. Wages are the price of hours that will never return to them.
The woman looked at the worker beyond the window.
— Is that what you mean by alienation?
— It’s part of it. Someone makes a thing, but the product doesn’t belong to them. They sell the hours of their lives, but have no say in the purpose or outcome of their work. Gradually, work that ought to express their human abilities becomes something they endure merely to stay alive.
— So people become strangers to their own work?
— To their work, its products, other people, and sometimes themselves. In the morning they enter a place where someone else controls their time, their movements and even their smiles. They come home at night feeling that they were there all day, but never really lived it.
— Does that only apply to factory workers?
— No. The forms have changed. Someone can work at a desk, in front of a computer or even at home and still feel their life is being run to a schedule they didn’t write. Technology can make work easier, but without a change in ownership and power it can simply make people wear out faster.
Coco yawned and put his head back on his paws.
— Coco, of course, has yet to become alienated. The moment he doesn’t like a job, he lies down on the spot. In that respect, the working class still has something to learn from him.
The woman laughed.
— But workers today are better off than they were in Marx’s time.
— In many countries, yes. But those improvements weren’t gifts from the owners of capital. They came from strikes, unions, political struggle, legislation and the sacrifices of generations who refused to accept a twelve-year-old child working fourteen hours a day down a mine. Holidays, insurance, pensions, limits on working hours and the right to form a union didn’t fall from the sky.
The donkey brayed again.
— He’s reminding us that the right to rest for beasts of burden isn’t fully respected yet either.
— What part has Marxism played in human development? Didn’t anyone talk about justice before Marx?
— Of course they did. The longing for justice is far older than Marx. Slaves rebelled, peasants rose up, and people imagined a fairer world for centuries before him. What mattered about Marx was that he didn’t treat justice as an ethical wish alone. He tried to understand how exploitation works in material terms and to show that inequality isn’t simply caused by a few rich people being nasty. It is reproduced by the way production and ownership are organised.
— So Marxism helped people understand themselves better?
— I think so. Just as other kinds of knowledge have shown us our place in nature, Marxism helped make our place in social relationships clearer. It told workers that their poverty wasn’t necessarily the result of laziness, a lack of talent or punishment from heaven. You might work your whole life and remain poor because the structure of society transfers the fruits of your labour into somebody else’s pocket.
— And what changed once people knew that?
— A person suffering alone may blame themselves. But when they realise millions of others are in the same position, private pain becomes social awareness. Then they ask why things are this way and whether they can be changed. Marxism gave part of humanity a language for talking about class, exploitation, alienation and liberation.
She paused.
— But governments have also imprisoned and oppressed people in the name of Marxism.
— You can’t hide the truth to defend a name. Wherever an idea becomes a holy book and those in power claim sole possession of the truth, danger begins. If Marxism can’t criticise itself, its history and the governments established in its name, it ceases to be dialectical. It becomes a new religion.
— Can you build justice without freedom?
— No. Justice that people cannot question soon becomes an order. A society that silences workers in the name of the worker may put a statue of Marx in the town square, but it has strayed from his method. You can’t bring about liberation by locking people up.
— And freedom without justice?
— That is incomplete too. The freedom of someone whose hunger forces them to accept any terms looks rather more like a choice between two forms of coercion. Real freedom is more than the right to speak. It includes the chance to live, learn, receive treatment, work and take part in decisions that shape people’s lives.
— So justice and freedom must hold each other up?
— Yes. Sacrifice one for the other and, in the end, you lose both.
— So Marx could have been wrong too?
— Certainly. He was a human being, not a prophet. The value of a way of thinking doesn’t depend on its founder never making a mistake. It depends on leaving room to learn, criticise and put things right. I don’t regard Marxism as a sacred staff that opens every door when you wave it. For me, it’s a tool for seeing relationships that those in power would prefer to keep invisible.
The woman in red looked at the small cross on a church across the street.
Its bell rang through the rain.
— Where does religion fit into all this?
— Religion has a history too. It didn’t descend from the sky into society from somewhere outside human life. It arose from fear, ignorance, hope, a need for comfort and people’s attempts to explain the world. And as society changed, it changed with it.
— Do you only see religion as a force holding people back?
— Not in the lives of individual people. Faith may comfort someone who is grieving or encourage them to help another person. Many believers have stood up against oppression as well. I have no right to mock people’s private pain and hope.
— So where is the problem?
— It begins when religion changes from a personal belief into an instrument of power: when it tells the poor their poverty is a test from God, tells women inequality is their natural lot, promises the oppressed that they will receive justice after death, and asks them to remain obedient in this life.
— Perhaps the promise of another world gives people hope.
— Hope is precious if it gives people strength to live and resist. But if it tells them to do nothing to change this world because another will make up for everything, it becomes a chain. A well-fed ruler promises a hungry person a banquet in heaven while keeping the key to this world’s granary in his own pocket.
The wind shook the wet branches of the trees.
— Throughout history, religion has often given the existing order a sacred covering. It has called kings God’s shadow on earth, declared social ranks to be God’s will and treated questions as sins. When every answer is supposedly written in a book already, the mind is assigned the task of obedience instead of inquiry.
— So science will displace religion?
— As science advances, it lights up parts of the unknown. Illness is no longer a punishment from spirits; it has material causes. Thunder and lightning aren’t the anger of gods; they’re natural phenomena. Human beings weren’t suddenly created apart from nature; we’re part of its evolution. Science doesn’t only increase what we know. It also takes away fears that were used to command obedience for centuries.
— But science doesn’t give life meaning.
— Science’s job isn’t to supply a ready-made meaning. It helps us understand reality better. We create meaning ourselves through our relationships with others, through love, creativity, struggle and the responsibilities we accept. I would rather make a human meaning, unfinished though it is, than accept a complete one simply because I am afraid of death.
— Perhaps my faith isn’t only a fear of death, she said quietly.
I looked at her.
— Perhaps it isn’t. I’m not passing judgement on what is inside you. Just as I wouldn’t want you to see my lack of faith as confusion or anger with God. A conversation begins when neither of us assumes the other is sick or a sinner.
She rested her hand on the book’s cover.
— So if one day I can’t give a reason for my faith, should I give it up?
— I can’t tell you what to do with your faith. All I can say is that no belief should be afraid of questions. If a truth collapses at a single question, perhaps it was more like a wall than a truth to begin with.
— And if your disbelief meets some new reality one day?
— I must have the courage to think again. If I’m afraid of changing my mind, all this talk of dialectics is just decoration painted on the bus.
The donkey gave a short bray.
— Yes, comrade. Bus decorations cost money too, but let’s leave the political economy of public transport for another day.
We fell silent for a few moments.
The bus passed the church. A homeless man slept beneath its steps. Above his head, a stone figure held out its hands to the sky.
The woman watched him through the window.
— If God is up there, why is that man sleeping down here?
— Perhaps the question isn’t only where God is. We should ask who owns this city’s empty homes, who controls the land, and why a human being has to sleep beneath the steps of a building where people speak of love every Sunday.
— You’ve gone back to economics again.
— Because a sermon won’t keep the man warm. Tonight he needs a roof, food and safety.
The lights turned red and the bus stopped.
Coco got up and pressed his nose against the window. The donkey stretched his neck to see the sleeping man too.
— Then where does human liberation begin, as you see it?
— When people realise their fate isn’t an unchangeable command. When, instead of kneeling before forces they themselves have created, they come to understand them. Money, the state, the market, religion, even tradition: these aren’t forces beyond humanity. They are products of human history. What people have made, people can change.
The light turned green, but I did not move.
— The light’s green, she said.
— I know.
— Then why aren’t you going?
I looked at the man asleep beneath the church steps.
— Because sometimes a green light doesn’t mean the road is open.
She said nothing.
My foot was still on the brake.
In the mirror, I looked at the street behind us.
The death officer stood there. This time he was carrying no file, only an empty bowl.
And for the first time I could not tell whether he had come to take someone away or was hungry himself.
To be continued…
Naser Kamali
Rainy London, in my little room among happy memories. Midnight, undated.
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