Photography by Aleks Ka / Shutterstock. Far from seeing wine as a luxury commodity for the elite, Karl Marx was a lifelong lover of the grape, a passion he shared with his comrade and collaborator Friedrich Engels. In this vintage article first published in WFW55 in March, 2017, Elin McCoy explains how their thinking on capital, labor, and alienation still exerts a powerful hold on many wine consumers and producers today.