Communist bible revered by dictators and despots
DAS Kapital is the communist bible that has inspired revolutionary movements worldwide since its publication in 1867.
In the three-volume work, Karl Marx laid out his critique of capitalism and his view that it would end in collapse and revolution by the workers.
Along with his other works, such as the Manifesto of the Communist Party, it helped inspire a string of bloody revolutions and gave the intellectual underpinning to grisly regimes such as Stalin’s Soviet Union, Maoist China and North Korea.
In Das Kapital, Marx described businesses as ‘vampire-like’ creatures that live only ‘by sucking living labour’.
The German likened workers in a capitalist system to ‘slaves’.
In the Manifesto of the Communist Party he said communist theory could be summed up in one sentence: ‘Abolition of private property.’
He also said revolution was the only way to produce ‘communist consciousness’ on a mass scale, writing: ‘This revolution is necessary not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.’
Mainstream Labour politicians have distanced themselves from Marx for decades because of his association with the brutal communist regimes that took inspiration from his work.
New Labour figures were reluctant even to call themselves ‘socialists’.
But John McDonnell has long gloried in his hard-Left reputation and previously had no qualms about calling himself a Marxist. Yesterday he claimed he wanted to ‘transform’ capitalism rather than destroy it.