The desecration of Marx’s grave: A warning
19 February 2019
There have now been two attacks on the grave of Karl Marx in Highgate Cemetery in the space of just two weeks. The first and most damaging was an attempt to obliterate with a hammer Marx’s name from the original headstone marking the burial place of Karl and his wife Jenny, which was incorporated into the monument erected in his memory in 1956. The second was this weekend’s daubing of anti-communist slogans on the plinth supporting the monument’s bronze bust of Marx.
Marx’s burial place is a site of world historic significance, visited by thousands every year who come to honour the man whose writings did more than any other to shape the course of the 20th century and who holds a special place in the hearts of millions of workers and the oppressed masses. He was a titanic theoretical and political figure, whose entire life was dedicated to the cause of emancipating the working class and all of suffering humanity from class oppression through world socialist revolution. The October Revolution, led by Lenin and Trotsky, was the supreme vindication of this struggle.
The attack on Marx’s grave is, therefore, a significant warning of the growing danger to the working class across Europe and internationally from far-right forces that have been deliberately cultivated by the bourgeoisie and given succour by the mass media.
Just as the Nazis did when they were in power in Germany, fascist attacks on left-wing monuments and graves are taking place across Europe. In Spain alone during recent weeks, the tomb of Dolores Ibárruri, the Stalinist leader of the Communist Party during the civil war, Pablo Iglesias, founder of the Socialist Party, and a plaque to honour the International Brigades have all been…