COMMENT The Malaysian police force seems to be more interested in stopping seminars rather than investigating and apprehending those responsible for major crimes, murders and embezzlement of public funds in Malaysia.

Thanks to the inspector-general of police Khalid Abu Bakar, an otherwise unknown Kursus Kilat Marxisme (Crash course on Marxism) to be organised by Parti Solialis Malaysia (PSM) together with an outfit called Gabungan Kiri (Coalition of the Malaysian Left) next month, has received national attention.

Attention that is not necessary at the moment as there other major issues that the police should focus on.

Khalid apparently shared the advertisement of the seminar on his official Twitter account and warned if the seminar were held, the police would not hesitate in taking action against the organisers.

According to S Arutchelvan, a member of PSM, the course is organised to ascertain the relevance of Marxism in today's fast-changing world and how certain tyrannical regimes have defended themselves using the ideology of Marxism.

Arutchelvan then went to criticise the police and the Malaysian government for being intolerant in not allowing the seminar to be held.

Fathoming an ideology

This simple and harmless course, I understand, is not an ecumenical one about preaching Marxism to those who still believe in the virtues of capitalism or liberal political thought.

It is about trying to fathom an ideology or thinking that allowed Marx in the 19th century to make certain global prognoses of what is to come.

What Karl Marx wrote was more applicable to the Europe then and had no relevance to lesser-developed countries.

However, it took the genius of Lenin to turn Marx upside down to make it relevant to Russia under the theory of the "weakest link".

Following the success of the Russian revolution, this experiment provided an impetus for the success of agrarian revolutions in China, Vietnam, North Vietnam and many other places.

Thus, what Marx predicted and what actually happened were two different things.

In fact, the major thrust of the writings of Marx and Friedrich Engels (his partner) was on analysing the capitalist system.

With the exception of the 'Communist Manifesto' and other less significant writings, Marx never really spelt in out detail as to the nature of the communist or socialist system that would replace the predatory capitalism system.

Course disallowed

When I was a lecturer in UKM, I wanted to introduce a course on Marxism and Leninism, but was disallowed by the university authorities, simply on the grounds they were under the impression that I was going to preach Marxism to my students.

However, later I changed the course title to Radical Political Thought and the authorities allowed this.

The course critically examined the writings of Marx, Lenin, Mao, Gramsci and many other thinkers.

Many students enrolled in the programme including those sent by the police and armed forces personnel.

Those days I used to be invited by the police and the armed forces to deliver lectures that invariably touched not only on Marxism and Leninism but also on the problems faced by countries that labelled themselves as communist or socialist.

Police academic training required officers to understand the various political ideologies so that they could become effective officers in terms of safeguarding national security.

The course on radical political thought became useful for these officers in order to understand the various changes that affected the communist world and their impact on the liberal or capitalist world.

After I left UKM in 2005, I met many police and army officers (many of them are retired) who have said that the lectures on left-wing political thought proved to be beneficial to them in their work.

I am surprised that Khalid, being the top cop, should have such myopic view on the course that is being offered by PSM and its partner.

PSM or the Gabungan Kiri is not a threat to Malaysian security.

The real threat comes from other forces and those in the government who continue to mislead and plunder the country of its riches.

Perhaps Khalid should spend some time revamping courses in the police academy to see whether these are relevant to his men.

P RAMASAMY is Deputy Chief Minister II of Penang and the state assemblyperson for Perai.