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It's a sunny day in North West London. But few people are paying their respects at the grave of Karl Marx.

A couple of expensively dressed Italians saunter by before moving on to find the other celebrities buried in Highgate Cemetery.

Marx is just another name to tick off in a burial ground that includes the resting places of George Michael, Malcolm McLaren, Douglas Adams, Jeremy Beadle and Great Train Robber Bruce Reynolds.

The man who inspired revolutions, transformed countries, sparked wars and turned history on its head has become another attraction in the age of mass tourism, cheap air travel and rampant consumerism.

Many might think that on today’s 200th anniversary of his birth, Marx’s Communist legacy is dead and buried.

An ideology that transformed history for 90 years and, at its zenith had half the world under its often-crushing rule, was deemed well past its sell-by date by the time the Berlin Wall finally fell in 1989.

(Image: Daily Mirror)

But Marx’s dreams of a more equal distribution of wealth are starting to enjoy a fresh hearing – and have particular resonance for the millions trapped in zero-hours con­­tracts or toiling in Amazon warehouses or high street coffee chains.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn says there is a lot to admire in his work.

And Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell believes there is a lot to learn from reading Marx’s seminal work Das Kapital.

(Image: Daily Mirror)

Others say his thinking speaks directly to Millennials and is as relevant now as it was when he published the Communist Manifesto with Friedrich Engels in 1848.

Marx was born in the Roman city of Trier, then part of Prussia, now in western Germany, into a middle-class – you might say bourgeois – family.

At Bonn University he enjoyed his new-found freedom, perhaps too much, and was jailed for drunkenness and injured in a duel.

(Image: Michael Ochs Archives)

He failed to get an academic post and, like many before and after him, decided to try to make a living from journalism.

Newly wed to childhood sweet­­­heart Jenny, he moved to Belgium then to Paris.

It was there he began to mix with the radical thinkers who shaped his views on the failings of capitalism. It was also in the French capital that he met Engels, wealthy son of a German-born Manchester cotton manufacturer.

Three years his junior, Engels would become his long-term collaborator, friend, financial helpline and, eventually, co-author of the Communist Manifesto – one of the most explosive documents ever written.

Thrown out of France for his radical views, Marx and Jenny moved to London in 1849 with their four young children and lived in poverty in a Soho flat.

(Image: Daily Mirror)

Marx spent most of his time in the reading room of the British Museum in Central London writing Das Kapital.

While he laboured over his violent attack on the flaws of capitalism, his family was forced to make regular visits to the pawnbroker to put food on the table.

Marx died in 1883. His tomb, em­­­blazoned with the phrase “Workers of all Lands Unite”, also in­cludes the words: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways – the point, however, is to change it.”

And change it he did. His ideas inspired the Russian Revolution, the rise of Chairman Mao, Fidel Castro and Pol Pot.

Great terror, mass murder and injustice were carried out in his name.

(Image: Getty Images)

But journalist and Labour activist Paul Mason says Marx’s reputation has been “terribly blackened by what happened in the Soviet Union”.

He explains: “The Marx I will be celebrating is one who celebrated freedom and joined revolutions in his own time.”

Read the Communist Manifesto today and there is much that resonates. The language may be antiquated – it talks of “workmen” and the “bourgeoisie”.

But Marx’s words will sound familiar to anyone condemned to an uncertain, poorly paid job in a world where the gap between haves and have-nots grows ever wider.

He predicted a future in which there would be a few rich capitalists and a mass of poor workers.

(Image: Bloomberg)

And he warned that the pay gap between the two would increase and wages would remain at subsistence level.

Some of his ideas, such as the abolition of child labour, a progressive income tax and free education, were ahead of their time.

Others, such as centralised state transport and a national bank, could be described as work in progress.

Mason says much of Marx’s thinking chimes with today. “Many things he proposes are relevant to our kind of capitalism because we have an ultra-free market that increases inequality.

(Image: ullstein bild)

“Marx said that anybody who leaves the country should have their property seized. I’m not in favour of that but the modern version is that we close offshore tax havens.”

Manuel Cortes, leader of the TSSA union and a close ally of the Labour leadership, says Marx’s ideas are still relevant but he steers away from the suggestion they are central to Labour’s thinking.

He says: “A lot has changed since Marx’s insightful analysis of how capitalism works.

(Image: AFP)

“But the one thing that hasn’t changed is that we live in a very unequal world and that many families in work rely on foodbanks to feed their children.

“This is a global issue, as Marx quite recognised. To tackle the ills of capitalism we need a global response.

“We have never had so many billionaires in the world. But side by side we have untold poverty, not just in poor countries but also in so-called first-class economies.”

On Marx’s lonely tomb yesterday there was only small bunch of dead flowers and a wilted wreath.

But, many would feel, now is the time to look out for fresh green shoots.