KARL MARX'S
On Saturday, March 17, Marx was laid to rest
in Highgate Cemetery, in the same grave in
which his wife had been buried fifteen months
earlier.
At the graveside Gottlieb Lemke laid two
wreaths with red ribbons on the coffin in the
name of the editorial board and dispatching
service of the Sozialdemokrat and in the name
of the London Communist Workers' Educational
Society.
Frederick Engels then made the following
speech in English:
"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!"
Then Marx's son-in-law Longuet read the following addresses which had been received in French.
On Saturday, March 17, Marx was laid to rest
in Highgate Cemetery, in the same grave in
which his wife had been buried fifteen months
earlier.
At the graveside Gottlieb Lemke laid two
wreaths with red ribbons on the coffin in the
name of the editorial board and dispatching
service of the Sozialdemokrat and in the name
of the London Communist Workers' Educational
Society.
Frederick Engels then made the following
speech in English:
"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!"
Then Marx's son-in-law Longuet read the following addresses which had been received in French.
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