Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has confessed for the first time that he is a follower of the ideas of Karl Marx, as well as saying that Jesus Christ was a "radical" leftist.

"I am a Marxist to the same degree as the followers of the ideas of Jesus Christ and the liberator of America, Simon Bolivar," he said in a televised speech on the government's work in 2009 to the national assembly.

"Who can imagine Christ as a capitalist?" he went on. "Christ was more radical than any of us. It was He who said - 'it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven.'"

Chavez said that humanity would only find salvation after "finishing with capitalism." He also revealed that he had begun studying Mark's Das Kapital again, and that the 19th century social philosopher's work gave him "the answers to many questions."

The Venezuelan leader recently hit out against the commercialism of Christmas and "consumption insanity."

"For the love of God, let's halt this, let's put the brakes on this consumerist, capitalist insanity, that leads us to lose our spiritual values," he said in December.

MOSCOW, January 16 (RIA Novosti)