DRAFT OF A SPEECH AT THE GRAVESIDE OF KARL MARX

DRAFT OF A
SPEECH AT THE
GRAVESIDE OF
KARL MARX



Published in the newspaper La Justice
No. 27, March 20, 1883

Scarcely 15 months ago most of us assembled
round this grave, then about to become the last
resting place of a grand and noble-hearted
woman. Today we have it reopened, to receive
what remains of her husband.
Karl Marx was one of those pre-eminent men
of whom a century produces not many. Charles
Darwin discovered the law of development of
organic nature upon our planet. Marx is the
discoverer of the fundamental law according to
which human history moves and develops itself,
a law so simple and self-evident that its simple
enunciation is almost sufficient to secure assent.
Not enough with that, Marx had also discovered
the law [which] has created our actual state of
society with its great class-division of capitalists
and wages-labourers; the law according to
which that society has become organised, has grown until it [has] almost outgrown itself, and according
to which it must ultimately perish like all previous historical phases of society. Such results render it all
the more painful that he should have been taken from us in the midst of his work, and that, much as he
did, still more he left uncompleted.

But science, though dear to him, was far from absorbing him entirely. No man could feel a purer joy
than he when a new scientific progress was secured anywhere, no matter whether practically applicable
or not. But he looked upon science above all things as a grand historical lever, as a revolutionary power
in the most eminent sense of the word. And as such he used, to such purpose he wielded that immense
knowledge, especially of history in all its branches of which he disposed.
For he was indeed, what he called himself, a Revolutionist. The struggle for the emancipation of the
class of wages-labourers from the fetters of the present capitalistic system of economic production, was
his real element. And no more active combatant than he ever existed. The crowning effort of this part of

his work was the creation of the International Working Men's Association of which he was the
acknowledged leader from 1864-72. The Association has disappeared, as far as outward show goes; but
the fraternal bond of union of the working men of all civilised countries of Europe and America is
established once for ever, and continues to live even without any outward, formal bond of union.
No man can fight for any cause without creating enemies. And he has had plenty of them. For the greater
part of his political life he was the best hated and best slandered man in Europe. But he scarcely ever
noticed calumny. If ever man lived calumny down, he did, and at the time of his death he could look with
pride upon the millions of his followers, in the mines of Siberia as well as in the workshops of Europe
and America; he saw his economical theories adopted as the undisputed creed of universal socialism, and
if he still had many opponents, there was scarcely one personal enemy left.

La Justice adds its own editorial note:
"What Marx was in his private life, for his family and his friends -- I have no force to express it at
the moment. And there is no need to do so, because all of you who have come here to tell him your
last farewell know this.
"Farewell, Marx! Your work and your name will endure through the ages."