During almost every one of the periodic crises that affect mercantile economies, voices are raised saying “Marx was right after all”. A few years ago Nicolas Sarkozy was seen ostentatiously clasping a copy of Das Kapital, while in recent weeks financial gurus, including Nouriel Roubini and George Magnus, have written articles referencing the communist thinker. When recovery occurs, the cry vanishes only to reappear next time there is an economic bust. The first thing wrong with the slogan is that it has little to do with Karl Marx. I remember the otherwise highly intelligent professional lady who, when asked why she was a Marxist, replied: “I got bored with my father’s friends.”

Marx has suffered not only from sycophants, but from critics who identify him with the Stalin dictatorship or even the regime of Mao Zedong. It is, of course, absurd to blame Marx, who lived from 1818 to 1883, for the crimes committed decades after his death. Indeed the great man himself once said: “Whatever else I am, I am not a Marxist.” Many serious analysts have written on what Marx meant or should have meant. I am not one of their number and my main excuse for giving my own highly selective take is that I have neither demonised nor worshipped the man.

The aspect of Marx that originally intrigued me was his division of history after the end of the Dark Ages – feudalism, capitalism, socialism and communism. By socialism Marx meant something like an extreme version of the British Labour party’s former clause four which envisaged public ownership of all the means of production, distribution and exchange. But communism did not have anything like its later meaning. It was a utopia in which a short working day would provide all society’s needs and people would be free to “hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon and discuss philosophy in the evening”. The vision of such a society kept in the Marxist fold some idealists who might otherwise have bolted.