KARL MARX IS BACK

Mark Steel, Independent, UK - Sales of Marx's Capital are at an all-time high. . . Most papers have had articles about him in their business sections, commending his analysis of booms and slumps, and he was on the front page of The Times. Soon a Times editorial will begin: "As the global downturn gathers pace, perhaps one economic remedy to be considered by our esteemed guardians is a violent workers' revolution as envisaged by Mister Karl Marx. . . "

A passage from Marx about the insatiable greed of bankers was quoted on Radio 2 one morning by Terry Wogan. For all I know he's doing it every day now, muttering: "Now here's a jolly old lesson from the old boy Karl - about those rascals of the bourgeoisie, it seems they've been robbing us blind all along and no mistake, so let's overthrow the nitwits for a bit of mischief. In the meantime this is 'Surrey with the Fringe on Top'.". . .

But Marx might be surprised at the way he usually appears in these articles, as if he was mostly an analyst. . . As a professional analyst, Marx would have been a disaster. For example, one year after Capital was due, his publishers asked him when it would arrive and he wrote back: "You'll be pleased to know I have begun the actual writing."