Karl Marx

Karl Marx is back in fashion again! That's the view, at least, of one of Germany's biggest left-wing publishing houses, Dietz, which says that copies of Marx's best-known works have been selling very well since the start of the current global economic crisis.

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That's how today's London Times newspaper puts it, parodying the workers' rallying call that opens Marx's 'Communist Manifesto'.

And there may be something in it, because according to German booksellers, Marx's seminal works are suddenly in demand again after a lull of many decades.

Visitors to Marx's German birthplace of Trier have soared this year to forty thousand; the curator of the town's museum of Marxism is quoted as saying he's lost count how many visitors he's heard mutter that Marx was right all along.

Free market critics of Marxism, of course, have long argued that socialism leads to poor quality goods, authoritarianism, the gulags and the rest; but for now, certainly as long as the credit crunch lasts, the pro-lending expansionists are likely to stay under as dark a cloud as their Marxist rivals.

David Bamford, BBC World Affairs Reporter

Listen to the words

dire
very serious

parodying
imitating in a funny way

workers’ rallying call
words which made workers unite against capitalism

seminal
original and influential

lull
period of quiet or lack of activity

curator
person who looks after a museum or exhibition

authoritarianism
a system in which people must obey the government

gulags
prison camps, especially for people who disagree with the government

pro-lending expansionists
people who think that you can develop the economy by lending money

to stay under as dark a cloud as
be as unpopular as

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