When Karl Marx - credited with having given the world the idea of communism - wrote his famous Das Kapital, in 1867, little would he have imagined that the execesses of capitalism would turn his book into a bestseller 130 years later. 

Das Kapital, which till now could only to found largely in libraries and old second-hand bookstores, is suddenly seeing robust sales most notably in Germany where people are seeking solace in the words of their countryman amid the financial crisis in which banks are crashing and the capitalist world order sems to be disintegrating.

A small academic publisher, however, is delighted with the surging sales of the book, which till last year never sold over 200 copies a year.

Publishers in Germany are witnessing resurgent sales of the book and reporting a quadrupling of orders.

One particular publisher the Berlin-based publisher Karl-Dietz Verlag has sold 1,500 copies of Marx's Das Kapital this year and 200 copies in one month, as many as it used to sell in a year.

In fact there has been a steady upward trend in sales of the book since 2005, when 400 copies were sold, to 2007 that saw total sales of 1,300.

Indeed Dietz is not the only publisher witnessing resurgent sales of the book. German media has reported that bookstores across Germany have seen a 300 per cent increase in sales of the book in recent months as the newly disenfranchised business class tries to work out the root of the present crisis.

Visitors to Karl Marx's birthplace in Trier have also gone up with 40,000 tourists so far this year from countries as diverse as China, eastern Germany, Cuba and Bolivia.
And that's not all. Film director Alexander Kluge, is said to be planning a blockbuster film out of Das Kapital while president Sarkozy of France has been seen reading the book. 

Karl Marx is famous for having predicted the ultimate demise of capitalism as it created an exploitative system that ends up destroying itself.

In the words of Mandel who, quoting his teacher Marx, said, ''An over-expansion of credit can enable the capitalist system to sell temporarily more goods than the sum of real incomes created in current production, plus past savings, could buy.''

However in Marx' words, ''in the long run, debts must be paid.'' Since these debts cannot be automatically paid through expanded output and income, capitalism is destined for a ''Krach''.

Marx penned his ideas not only in Das Kapital but in articles such as ''The Financial Crisis in Europe'' written for the New York Daily Tribune in 1857, and in the Communist Manifesto, which was written with Engels.