By Matthew Trinder
February 12 2020, 17.00
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Walkers of the world unite on a Karl Marx tour of central London every Sunday.
The walk includes a stop at the former Red Lion pub in Soho where Marx and Friedrich Engels, the founders of modern communism, were asked to write the first Communist Manifesto in 1847.
Along with two other guides, radio producer and Marx historian Heiko Khoo has been educating the masses on the London life of the exiled German philosopher since 2012.
He said: “I became interested in the ideas of Marx when I was 17 and I’ve been actively involved in Marxist politics.
“I do the tour because I was often unhappy about the way Marxism was taught, on the one side in academia because it tends to be non-Marxists explaining it, and on the other side within the Marxist movement I found it was too instrumental and sectarian,” he explained.
“The tours offer a sort of go-between for me with a bit of theatrics and a bit of politics.”
The walk also takes in sites frequented by both Marx and Engels in Chinatown, before ending at the Reading Room of the British Library where Marx worked on his seminal book Das Kapital.
With an international crowd of up to 50 people attending each week, it seems Marx’s appeal is still strong and wide-reaching.
Chao-Hsuin Tang, 55, from Taiwan, said: “I think his works covers a very full range of human ideas. He is a great thinker.”
Brazilian Pedro Rocha, 34, said: “Although all his concepts might not apply directly today, we do have to go back to his ideas because we have key points to discuss for our society today.”
The tour leaves from Piccadilly Circus at 11am every Sunday. Tickets are available at www.marxwalks.com.
