Highgate Cemetery and Plaque - Karl Marx

Karl Marx – one of the most renowned thinkers who’s changed our perception of society.

Poster reads: "Social progress can be measured by the social position of the femal sex" - Karl Marx

Born in May 5^th 1818, Germany into a middle class family, Marx was considered to be the most influential philosopher though most of his thinking was rejected; some of what he proposed had some hard truth. For instance, his proposal that those who were from lower classes were prone to exploitation and were exploited by those who were far richer and powerful. However, rejection was not a surprise as people didn’t want to open their eyes to how awful society was treating them.

Being the son of a successful lawyer, Marx also studied law in Bonn and Berlin at the age of seventeen and in 1841 he received his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Jena. However, due to his radical political beliefs, Marx was unable to become a teacher at the University which resulted a change in career paths for him.

After his short career in being a journalist for the Cologne newspaper, Marx thought that it was time for him to move and start something new, so he moved to France with his wife Jenny, whom he secretly had gotten engaged with, and there he became a revolutionary communist and made ally with Freidrich Engels. After the pair was abolished from France, their relationship together became more intense as they shared common ideas and values. They co-authored the pamphlet 'The Communist Manifesto' which was published in 1848 and vocalised the class struggle in society but this struggle would soon come to an end by the triumph of the proletariat.

Marx's plaque placed in Soho

Later settling in London, Marx was more optimistic about the revolution breaking out in Europe and thought it would soon come to England and continued to write pamphlets on the revolution that took place in France: The Class Struggles in France and The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Marx became increasingly focused on capitalism and economic theory, and in 1867, he published the first volume of Das Kapital. The rest of his life was spent writing and revising manuscripts for additional volumes, but these were left incomplete.

Those who supported Marx said that his beliefs gave the working class hope of a better life. They said that the workers would be inspired by an intellectual who was on their side and who was fighting their cause. In 1898, the Russian Social Democratic Party was formed to expand Marx’s beliefs in Russia because exerting the Marxist beliefs was difficult in Prussia as it was all agricultural based.

Marx sadly died in March 1883 due to pleurisy, which was the inflammation of his lungs. We had visited his grave in Highgate Cemetery which was very simple but we later learned that the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPoGB) had given him a larger tombstone with quotes from The Communist Manifesto - “Workers of all lands unite”.

Marx's original grave which was very simple

Later CPoGB made a a tomb with a sculpted statue of Marx

Marx has done so much for us as citizens living in a capitalist state and helped really broaden our ideas and understanding how the state tends to mistreat us. From doing our research on Marx, we understand that the state portrays this image of happiness through a free healthcare system and welfare benefits to help us forget how unfair they treat us so we don’t pose a threat and start a revolution. But there is still much more to understand through Marx’s work.