Frederick Engels, the lifelong friend and collaborator or Karl Marx said: “As long as there have been capitalists and workers on earth no book has appeared which is of as much importance for the workers as Das Kapital”.
In this book, Robert Griffiths takes us back to the foundations of Marx’s critique of capitalism and demonstrates its relevance to the present day.
This complete work first published in 2018 by Manifesto Press and revised from a version previously serialised in 2017 in Communist Review.
Robert Griffiths is a Welsh political activist and was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Britain.
Griffiths was born in Cardiff and grew up in the suburb of Llanrumney, where he attended Bryn Hafod primary school. Afterwards he attended Cardiff High School, and later went to the University of Bath to study economics.
He joined Plaid Cymru in 1973, after being impressed by Emrys Roberts' campaign in the Merthyr Tydfil by-election. The following year in 1974, he began to work for Plaid Cymru as a parliamentary research officer. He stayed in the post until December 1979; it was a difficult year for the party, which had faced defeat in the Welsh devolution referendum and the loss of Gwynfor Evans' seat in the general election. With a reduced presence in Westminster the party had no need of a large parliamentary staff and Griffiths was made redundant.
In July 1979 he collaborated with Gareth Miles to publish Socialism for the Welsh People, a pamphlet which was critical of Plaid Cymru for its "opportunism" and alleged subservience to the British state. The pamphlet called for the creation of a Welsh Socialist Republican Movement, which was founded by Griffiths, Miles and others in January 1980. Griffiths served as the organisation's secretary and wrote for its magazine, Y Saeth. When the Welsh Socialist Republican Movement dissolved. Griffiths joined the Communist Party of Great Britain.