Over the years, a number of challenging questions have been asked of Karl Marx and his followers. Here are 10 reasons why the government should allow Chin Peng to return home.

1) Marx is a millennialist. The dream of communism was a millenialist theory, just a utopian salvation.

2) Communism has failed. We have witnessed the fall of the Eastern Bloc and the Soviet Empire, Communism has been tried, it didn't work, so Marx was wrong.

3) Doesn't dialectical change happen automatically? If the revolution occurs through a process of dialectical determinism - that is, if it happens automatically - why then fight for a revolution?

4) How can we criticise our own system if the people's state of mind is determined by whatever economic system they live in? Isn't Marx's critique of capitalism in itself a product of capitalism?

5) Why should the communist stage be the final stage? If reality is changed, and history moves dialectically, why should the communist stage necessarily be the final one? Why shouldn't the process continue?

6) Who will do the dirty work? If the Marxist society gives everybody meaningful work according to their own wishes, then who will do the dirty work?

7) Why work harder if you don't get more? If you get only what you need, what is the incentive to get better education and work harder?

8) Aren't we selfish by nature? Marx failed to take human biology and psychology into consideration. Self-preservation is present in everybody but Marx does not consider the biological factor.

9) Why would all aspects of human nature change? Why would they change when the economic base changes? Logic is always logic, and math is always math, regardless of what kind of economy you have.

10) Times have changed, and we don't need a revolution. Marx's version was meaningful, and perhaps even necessary, for his troubled century. But thanks to the awareness of exploitation that he created, we are doing much better now in terms of working conditions.

Marx would probably not have imagined that the working class, to a great extent, the middle-class property owners would have cars, TVs and conservative interests. If Marx could have looked into the future, would he have changed his mind?

That is hard to say. For one thing, many people (including Third World leaders such as Dr Mahathir) feel that deep exploitation is still going on - the Western world is exploiting the less industrialised countries.

Why should we be afraid of a 79-year-old man returning to his homeland? Times have changed, people have changed, but our mindset hasn't.