Der Sozialdemokrat March 22 1883

Karl Marx's Funeral

Der Sozialdemokrat, March 22, 1883

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 Vorwärts!
(1844), Brüsseler 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.

I.

On the Grave of Karl Marx

from the Russian Socialists

"In the name of all Russian socialists I send a last farewell greeting
to the outstanding Master among all the socialists of our times. One of
the greatest minds has passed away, one of the most energetic fighters
against the exploiters of the proletariat has died.

"The Russian socialists bow before the grave of the man who sympathised
with their strivings in all the fluctuations of their terrible struggle,
a struggle which they shall continue until the final victory of the principles
of the social revolution. The Russian language was the first to have a
translation of Capital that gospel of contemporary socialism. The students
of the Russian universities were the first to whose lot it fell to hear
a sympathetic exposition of the theories of the mighty thinker whom we
have now lost. Even those who were opposed to the founder of the International
Working Men's Association in respect of practical questions of organisation
were obliged always to bow before his comprehensive knowledge and lofty
power of thought which penetrated the substance of modern capital, the
development of the economic forms of society and the dependence of the
whole history of mankind on those forms of development. Even the most vehement
opponents that he found in the ranks of the revolutionary socialists could
not but obey the call that he and his lifelong friend sent into the world
35 years ago:

"'Proletarians of All Countries, Unite!'

"The death of Karl Marx is mourned by all who have been able to grasp his
thought and appreciate his influence upon our time.

"I allow myself to add that it will be still more deeply mourned
by those who associated closely with Marx, especially by those who loved
him as a friend.

"P. Lavrov."

Paris, March 15, 1883.

II.

TELEGRAM

"The Paris branch of the French Workers' Party expresses its grief
at the loss of the thinker whose materialist conception of history and
analysis of capitalist production founded scientific socialism and the
present revolutionary communist movement. It also expresses its respect
for Marx as a man and its complete agreement with his doctrines.

"The Secretary, Lipine."

Paris, March 16, 1883.

III.

TELEGRAM

"In my own name and as a delegate of the Spanish Workers' Party (Madrid
Branch), I share the immense grief of the friends and daughters of Marx
at the cruel loss of the great Socialist who was the master of us all.

José Mesa y Leompart.

Paris, March 16, 1883.

Then Liebknecht made the following speech in German:

"I have come from the heart of Germany to express my love and gratitude
to my unforgettable teacher and faithful friend. To my faithful friend!
Karl Marx's greatest friend and colleague has just called him the best-hated
man of this century. That is true. He was the best-hated but he was also
the best-loved. The best-hated by the oppressors and exploiters
of the people, the best-loved by the oppressed and exploited, as
far as they are conscious of their position. The oppressed and exploited
people love him because he loved them. For the deceased whose loss we are
mourning was great in his love as in his hatred. His hatred had love as
its source. He was a great heart as he was a great mind.
All who knew him know that.

"But I am here not only as a pupil and a friend, I am here as
the representative of the German Social-Democrats who have charged
me with expressing their feelings for their teacher, for the
man who created our party, as much as one can speak of creating
in this connection.

"It would be out of place here to indulge in fine speeches. For
nobody was a more vehement enemy of phrase-mongering than Karl Marx.
It is precisely his immortal merit that he freed the proletariat,
the working people's party, from phrases and gave it the solid foundation
of science that nothing can shake. A revolutionary in science and
a revolutionary through science, he scaled the highest peak of science
in order to come down to the people and to make science the common good
of the people.

"Science is the liberator of humanity.

"The natural sciences free us from God. But God
in heaven still lives on although science has killed him.

"The science of society that Marx revealed to the people
kills capitalism, and with it the idols and masters of the earth
who will not let God die as long as they live.

"Science is not German. It knows no barriers, and least
of all the barriers of nationality It was therefore natural that the creator
of Capital should also become the creator of the International
Working Men's Association.

"The basis of science, which we owe to Marx, puts us in a position
to resist all attacks of the enemy and to continue with ever-increasing
strength the fight which we have undertaken.

"Marx changed the Social-Democracy from a sect, a school,
into a party, the party which is now fighting undaunted and which
will be victorious.

"And that is true not only of us Germans. Marx belongs
to the proletariat. It was to the proletariat of all countries that
his life was dedicated. Proletarians who can think and do think in all
countries have grateful reverence for him.

"It is a heavy blow that has fallen on us. But we do not mourn.
The deceased is not dead. He lives in the heart, he lives in the
head of the proletariat. His memory will not perish, his doctrine
will be effective in ever broader circles.

"Instead of mourning, let us act in the spirit of the great man
who has died and strive with all our strength so that the doctrine which
he taught and for which he fought will be put into practice as soon
as possible. That is the best way to honour his memory!

"Deceased, living friend, we shall follow to the final aim
you showed us. We swear it on your grave!"

Besides those mentioned there were also present at the grave, among others,
Karl Marx's other son-in-law, Paul Lafargue, Friedrich Lessner,
who was sentenced at the Cologne Communist Trial in 1852 to five years'
imprisonment in a fortress, and G. Lochner, also an old member of
the Communist League. The natural sciences were represented by two celebrities
of the first magnitude, the zoologist Professor Ray Lankester and
the chemist Professor Schorlemmer, both members of the London Academy
of Sciences (Royal Society).

Signed: Fr. Engels