“If there is any virtue in the writing of this book, it springs from the sacrifices knowingly or unknowingly made by my two daughters, Kamala and Maya,” Donald J. Harris wrote in 1977 when he was an economics professor at Stanford University. “In return, it is dedicated to them.”

The book, “Capital Accumulation and Income Distribution,” is a 313-page critique of capitalism and its allegedly inherent flaws, including “income inequality,” “cyclical disturbances,” and “exploitation” of workers. “Drawing upon certain elements of Marxian theory,” the preface says, Harris approvingly cites the socialist nostrums of Karl Marx and his partner Friedrich Engels – as well as Vladimir Lenin, the founder of communist Russia – to make his case for an “alternative” economic model in America.

Kamala Harris was 13 at the time. Five years later, she majored in economics at Howard University in Washington, D.C., where she led an economics club founded in the name of black Marxist Abram Harris.

He joined a radical black Marxist group on campus known as the Afro-American Association, where he gave lectures on “social inequality.” He met his wife, a biomedical scientist named Shyamala Gopalan, who shared his leftwing views, at one of the group’s rap sessions.

The group – which Don Harris referred to as his “oasis” – refused admission to white students; included among its members were Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, who would establish a violent breakaway offshoot, the Black Panther Party. The Afro-American Association was also enamored with Fidel Castro and the communist takeover of Cuba and arranged trips to Havana in 1963 and 1964 in defiance of a State Department travel ban.