The German revolutionary socialist, philosopher, economist, political theorist and author Karl Marx, was born on May 5, 1818, in Trier, Germany, whose ideas and writings have had a profound impact on political thought and social movements around the world. As one of the most influential figures in human history, Marx's ideas on communism and class struggle continue to resonate today, shaping modern political and economic systems.
Karl Marx was born into a middle-class family, the son of a lawyer. He attended the University of Bonn and later the University of Berlin, where he studied law, history, and philosophy. It was during his time at the University of Berlin that Marx became involved in radical politics and was exposed to the works of the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who greatly influenced his thinking.
After completing his education, Marx worked as a journalist for several radical publications, including the Rheinische Zeitung and the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher. His political writings attracted the attention of the Prussian authorities, which led to his expulsion from Germany. He then moved to Paris, where he met Friedrich Engels, who would become his lifelong collaborator. Together with Engels, Marx wrote "The Communist Manifesto" in 1848, a foundational text for the communist movement that called for the overthrow of the capitalist system and the establishment of a classless society. In 1867, Marx published the first volume of "Das Kapital," a critical analysis of capitalism and its effects on society, labor, and the economy. Two more volumes were published posthumously by Engels, based on Marx's notes.
Marx's ideas on class struggle, historical materialism, and the inherent flaws of capitalism have left an indelible mark on modern society. His works have inspired countless social and political movements, most notably the Russian Revolution of 1917, which led to the formation of the Soviet Union. Additionally, his theories have shaped the economic policies of numerous countries, as well as the academic fields of sociology, political science, and economics.
While Marx's ideas have also been the subject of much criticism, with detractors arguing that his theories are outdated or have been responsible for the suffering and oppression of millions under communist regimes, There is absolutely no evidence that Marx himself would have supported such crimes. and there is no denying his significant impact on the course of human history.
Marx’s influence, which has extended beyond communist societies, can be compared to that of major religious figures like Jesus or Muhammad. The lives of hundreds of millions of people were transformed, for better or for worse, by Marx’s legacy and his ideas have transformed the study of history and sociology, and profoundly affected philosophy, literature, and the arts, while his critique of capitalism and vision of proletarian revolution articulated in The Communist Manifesto and Capital continues to help us not only understand capitalism, but fight for a world free of exploitation and domination.
Karl Marx although was German born, had to flee Germany and settle in London, living there from 1849. Marx never got the reputation that he deserved in his life, and led a poverty and grief-stricken life. His wife and his eldest daughter died before him, creating a devastating impact on him and his health; he died stateless on the afternoon of 14 March 1883 aged 64.from a combination of bronchitis and pleurisy, exacerbated by an abscess on his lung.
On Saturday, March 17, 1883 Marx was laid to rest in Highgate Cemetery, North London arranged for by Friedrich Engels Marx to be buried in Highgate Cemetery. in the family plot in which his wife Jenny had been buried fifteen months earlier. They weren’t alone for long as within a week of his death Marx was joined by his five year old grandson. The family’s life long friend and companion (who had started out as a servant) Helene Demuth joined them in 1890 – after helping Frederick Engels put together Marx’s notes that became the second volume of Capital – and then the last of the group to use the plot was Marx’s daughter, Eleanor, who died young in 1898.
The funeral was poorly attended. Estimates vary, but it’s unlikely more than two-dozen mourners were present. The world had yet to be exposed to the work of the man laid to rest in that small ceremony. Besides Marx’s two surviving daughters Laura and Eleanor, others in attendance were the French socialist leaders Paul Lafargue (Laura’s husband) and Charles Longuet (husband to Marx’s eldest daughter Jenny), Prof Roy Lankaster and Prof Schorlemmer (both revered men of science and members of the Royal Society), the German Socialist leader Wilhelm Liebknecht, G. Lochner (a veteran of the Communist League), another German socialist F. Lessner (sentenced in the 1852 Cologne Communists’ Trial to five years’ hard labour), and writer-editor Gottlieb Lemke. It is possible that Helene Demuth, long the Marx family’s devoted housekeeper and friend, who would be buried alongside the family a few years later, was also in attendance.
The ceremony was simple, with brief words in German, French and English, from the leader of the German Social-Democratic party, Charles Longuet (a son-in-law) and Marx's lifelong friend and comrade Friedrich Engels delivered the following eulogy predicting Marx's work would endure through the ages. :
"On the 14th of March, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, the greatest living thinker ceased to think. He had been left alone for scarcely two minutes, and when we came back we found him in his armchair, peacefully gone to sleep-but forever.
"An immeasurable loss has been sustained both by the militant proletariat of Europe and America, and by historical science, in the death of this man. The gap that has been left by the departure of this mighty spirit will soon enough make itself felt.
"Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.; that therefore the production of the immediate material means of subsistence and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion, of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which they must, therefore, be explained, instead of vice versa, as had hitherto been the case.
"But that is not all. Marx also discovered the special law of motion governing the present-day capitalist mode of production and the bourgeois society that this mode of production has created. The discovery of surplus value suddenly threw light on the problem, in trying to solve which all previous investigations, of both bourgeois economists and socialist critics, had been groping in the dark.
"Two such discoveries would be enough for one lifetime. Happy the man to whom it is granted to make even one such discovery. But in every single field which Marx investigated -- and he investigated very many fields, none of them superficially -- in every field, even in that of mathematics, he made independent discoveries.
"Such was the man of science. But this was not even half the man. Science was for Marx a historically dynamic, revolutionary force. However great the joy with which he welcomed a new discovery in some theoretical science whose practical application perhaps it was as yet quite impossible to envisage, he experienced quite another kind of joy when the discovery involved immediate revolutionary changes in industry and in historical development in general. For example, he followed closely the development of the discoveries made in the field of electricity and recently those of Marcel Deprez.
"For Marx was before all else a revolutionist. His real mission in life was to contribute, in one way or another, to the overthrow of capitalist society and of the state institutions which it had brought into being, to contribute to the liberation of the modern proletariat, which he was the first to make conscious of its own position and its needs, conscious of the conditions of its emancipation. Fighting was his element. And he fought with a passion, a tenacity and a success such as few could rival. His work on the first Rheinische Zeitung (1842), the Paris Vorw?rts! (1844), Br?sseler Deutsche Zeitung (1847), the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (1848-49), the New York Tribune (1852-61), and in addition to these a host of militant pamphlets, work in organisations in Paris, Brussels and London, and finally, crowning all, the formation of the great International Working Men's Association -- this was indeed an achievement of which its founder might well have been proud even if he had done nothing else.
"And, consequently, Marx was the best-hated and most calumniated man of his time. Governments, both absolutist and republican, deported him from their territories. Bourgeois, whether conservative or ultra-democratic, vied with one another in heaping slanders upon him. All this he brushed aside as though it were cobweb, ignoring it, answering only when extreme necessity compelled him. And he died beloved, revered and mourned by millions of revolutionary fellow-workers -- from the mines of Siberia to California, in all parts of Europe and America -- and I make bold to say that though he may have had many opponents he had hardly one personal enemy.
"His name will endure through the ages, and so also will his work!"
Once it was all over, the cortege wended its way back to Marx’s Maitland Park home. A few days later, Karl’s name was etched into the simple stone tablet that stood over his wife’s grave. Just five days later, some of these same mourners would be back again in Highgate, this time to bury five-year-old Harry Longuet, the youngest child of Marx’s eldest daughter Jenny who had pre-deceased her father. The grave was as unremarkable as the burial. Hidden away in a little-known part of the cemetery,
The following year after his death over 5,000 people gathered, organised by the Communistic Working Men’s Club in London to commemorate the proclamation of the Paris Commune in 1871.. Far more than a quiet show of respect, this was a full demonstration, with the plan to march, to the beat of a band, to the cemetery and give rousing speeches in German, French and English. But the cemetery directors were nervous, so the police forced the demonstration to stop in some vacant land near the cemetery. The event was peaceful enough, with people listening to the speeches, cheering and heading home.
In the years that followed, the old grave became a site of pilgrimage. Lenin visited with a group of Bolsheviks in 1903, when they were in London for an early congress. It was known to have baffled visitors who wanted to pay their respects at the grave but found it hard to locate. At a British Socialists’ conference in 1923, a delegate Charles McLean described his effort to find the grave: ‘only after an hour’s search’ was he ‘able to stand at the foot of the grave’. He spoke of the sad state of the grave, fnce he managed to reach it, how “an old withered wreath, which appeared to have been lying there for years, and an old flower-pot with a scarlet geranium in bloom, were all that commemorated that great leader”.and that someday ‘there would be international pilgrimages to Highgate Cemetery – just as there were pilgrimages to Mecca by the Moslems’.
Surely a better memorial was needed. The first response came from the Soviet Union. Feeling that the UK government was derelict in its duty, they proposed in the late 1920s to exhume Marx and bring him to Moscow where he would be remembered with due respect. 115 descendants of Marx signed a petition to add weight to the request. It was refused.
Due to the popularity of this site and high number of visitors, Marx’s remains were later moved to a public site in the same cemetery where they continue to stay today. The tomb site and the Marx Grave Trust were established with the active support of Karl Marx's great grandsons. The Grave Trust owns and maintains the now famous and iconic memorial at the grave of Karl Marx which was unveiled on March 15, 1956, to a large crowd the day after the anniversary of his death on March 14, 1883.
The monument was designed by Laurence Bradshaw and was funded by the Communist Party of Great Britain. The party's General Secretary, Harry Pollitt, led the ceremony. Bradshaw, an artist and sculptor, was himself a Party member, had been since the early 1930s. His most famous work was designed “to be a monument not only of a man,” Bradshaw said, “but to a great mind and great philosopher.” He wanted the site to convey “the dynamic force of Marx’s intellect.” Which is probably why he made it so big.
Since 1974, the bust and headstone have been designated a listed monument, reaching the highest Grade-1 status in 1999 of “exceptional interest.” The Marx Grave Trust wishes to ask all members of the public to respect the tomb of Karl Marx at Highgate Cemetery, London as a place of commemoration and family grave. His grave remains a pilgrimage site for followers from around the world attracting thousands of people each year and his ideas still play an important role in shaping political and cultural discourses in the UK and abroad. A ceremony is still held here annually on the anniversary of his death, to the minute, at 2.30 pm. The Marx Oration started in 1933 and is sponsored by the the Marx Memorial Libraryhttps://www.marx-memorial-library.org.uk/ and respectfully remembers the passing of Karl Marx ,
The Marx Memorial Library has been in its big, classical 1738 building — originally a school for children of Welsh artisans living in poverty since 1933, the 50th anniversary of Karl Marx’s death. The library specialises in Marxism, the working-class movement, anti-fascism and the Spanish Civil War. It owns a full run of the Daily Worker and the Morning Star.t
Other revolutionaries have since been buried nearby to Karl Marx. After Claudia Jones founder of Notting Hill Carnival Black Trinidadian communist, feminist, journalist and Black activist died at the age of just 49 in 1964, her ashes were fittingly buried to the left of Karl Marx in North London's Highgate cemetery. And the cemetery also provides the final resting place for Dr Yusef Mohamed Dadoo, chairman of the South African Communist party, Saad Saadi Adi, the Iraqi communist leader, and poet and advocate of democracy and human rights in Iraq,
In an assault, reported to police on February 5 2019 Karl Marx's the grave’s marble plaque was repeatedly smashed with a hammer, damaging it beyond repair. A second attack on the night of February 15 saw the entire monument daubed in bright red paint with the words “Doctrine of Hate”, “Architect of Genocide” and “Memorial to Bolshevik Holocaust”. "It will never be the same again, and will wear battle scars for the future," said Ian Dugavell of the friends of Highgate Cemetary Trust of the damage to the plaque at the time ,“Senseless, stupid, Ignorant,” the cemetery said. “Whatever you think about Marx’s legacy, this is not the way to make the point.”
The graffiti covered inscriptions of Marx’s final words of The Communist Manifesto, “Workers of all lands unite,” and the most famous of Karl Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point however is to change it.” The contrast between Marx’s messages of hope and the violent smears that covered them could not be more jarring.
The graffiti covered inscriptions of Marx’s final words of The Communist Manifesto, “Workers of all lands unite,” and the most famous of Karl Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point however is to change it.” The contrast between Marx’s messages of hope and the violent smears that covered them could not be more jarring.
“It will never be the same again, and will bear those battle scars for the future,” said Ian Dungavell, chief executive of the Friends of Highgate Cemetery Trust, of the plaque.
Read more at: https://inews.co.uk/news/karl-marx-grave-london-highgate-cemetery-vandalised-hammer/
Read more at: https://inews.co.uk/news/karl-marx-grave-london-highgate-cemetery-vandalised-hammer/
“It will never be the same again, and will bear those battle scars for the future,” said Ian Dungavell, chief executive of the Friends of Highgate Cemetery Trust, of the plaque.
Read more at: https://inews.co.uk/news/karl-marx-grave-london-highgate-cemetery-vandalised-hammer/
The shameful attack on Marx’s grave in a far right targetted ideological assault coincided with fascist attacks on the graves of socialist leaders in Spain and on Holocaust memorials and Jewish cemeteries in France, Poland, Lithuania and Greece. Read more at: https://inews.co.uk/news/karl-marx-grave-london-highgate-cemetery-vandalised-hammer/
The monument has been attacked previously, most notably during the 1970s, when vandals damaged the face of the bust and attempted to put a bomb inside it to destroy it.
After his grave was vandalized tin 2019, the Marx Grave Trust, decided to monitor it with video cameras installed hoping to deter vandals from attacking this famous monument, Cameras remain rare in cemeteries, especially around specific graves. Marx’s is the first one to be monitored at Highgate, London’s most-visited burial ground, in a city where video surveillance is almost everywhere.
Grave desecration, is integral to fascist terrorism. According to Jewish law, “treating a corpse disrespectfully implies a belief that death is final and irreversible.” In other words, treating the dead disrespectfully gives no hope for their resurrection.
Fascists desecrated Jewish graves because it wasn’t enough that those interred were biologically dead; grave desecration meant that the fascists did not think they were dead enough. These attacks against Marx’s grave are meant to prevent Marx from coming back to life — not literally, of course, but in the figurative resurrection of a socialist movement. As Walter Benjamin once put it, not even the dead are safe from fascism; in this case, not even Marx’s grave is safe.
For fascists, Marx’s grave does not represent the site of someone dead, but of something threatening to re emerge. Marxism represents the eternal enemy of the fascist imagination; Marx is not dead, but undead. They fear that Marx is still influencing world history from beyond the grave. Worse, they fear that the socialist movement is resurrecting Marx from the oblivion of the past.
If capitalism is one day overthrown and humanity moves from its pre-history towards real history, then Marx will be more than a ghost; he will be immortalized.
Defacing a beautiful monument in this destructive manner will not change the power of his words. His overwhelming legacy refuses to die. Marx's intellectual influence still so strong, his ideas and thinking have become fundamentals of modern economics and sociology. Marx’s legacy is pervasive, complex, and often polarizing. But the epitaph carved in gold letters into his grey marble tombstone in the hearts and minds of many cannot simply be erased.
Grave desecration, is integral to fascist terrorism. According to Jewish law, “treating a corpse disrespectfully implies a belief that death is final and irreversible.” In other words, treating the dead disrespectfully gives no hope for their resurrection.
Fascists desecrated Jewish graves because it wasn’t enough that those interred were biologically dead; grave desecration meant that the fascists did not think they were dead enough. These attacks against Marx’s grave are meant to prevent Marx from coming back to life — not literally, of course, but in the figurative resurrection of a socialist movement. As Walter Benjamin once put it, not even the dead are safe from fascism; in this case, not even Marx’s grave is safe.
For fascists, Marx’s grave does not represent the site of someone dead, but of something threatening to re emerge. Marxism represents the eternal enemy of the fascist imagination; Marx is not dead, but undead. They fear that Marx is still influencing world history from beyond the grave. Worse, they fear that the socialist movement is resurrecting Marx from the oblivion of the past.
If capitalism is one day overthrown and humanity moves from its pre-history towards real history, then Marx will be more than a ghost; he will be immortalized.
Defacing a beautiful monument in this destructive manner will not change the power of his words. His overwhelming legacy refuses to die. Marx's intellectual influence still so strong, his ideas and thinking have become fundamentals of modern economics and sociology. Marx’s legacy is pervasive, complex, and often polarizing. But the epitaph carved in gold letters into his grey marble tombstone in the hearts and minds of many cannot simply be erased.
The good news the memorial has now been partially cleaned and after securing funding for some expert grave-scaping, Highgate cemetery in north London is preparing some new plots, which means you could be buried next to Karl Marx. It will cost you, though: while a cremation plot is £5,000, a full grave will set you back “upwards of” £25,000.
On the anniversary, of Karl Marx being laid to rest lets continue our struggle for a world free of injustice, discrimination and inequality.
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