Editing Karl Marx (section)

=== Death ===
[[File:Grave of Karl Marx Highgate Cemetery in London 2016 (10).jpg|thumb|[[Tomb of Karl Marx]], East [[Highgate Cemetery]], London]]

Following the death of his wife Jenny in December 1881, Marx developed a [[catarrh]] that kept him in ill health for the last 15 months of his life. It eventually brought on the [[bronchitis]] and [[pleurisy]] that killed him in London on 14 March 1883, when he died a [[Statelessness|stateless person]] at age 64.<ref name="stateless"/> Family and friends in London buried his body in [[Highgate Cemetery]] (East), London, on 17 March 1883 in an area reserved for agnostics and atheists. According to [[Francis Wheen]], there were between nine and eleven mourners at his funeral.{{sfn|Wheen|2001|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=3KOyuSakn80C&pg=PA382 382]}}<ref name="GouldMcGarr2007"/> Research from contemporary sources identifies thirteen named individuals attending the funeral: [[Friedrich Engels]], [[Eleanor Marx]], [[Edward Aveling]], [[Paul Lafargue]], [[Charles Longuet]], [[Helene Demuth]], [[Wilhelm Liebknecht]], Gottlieb Lemke, [[Frederick Lessner]], G Lochner, Sir [[Ray Lankester]], [[Carl Schorlemmer]] and [[Ernest Radford]].<ref>John Shepperd, 'Who was really at Marx's funeral?', in "Friends of Highgate Cemetery Newsletter ", April (2018), pp. 10–11. https://highgatecemetery.org/uploads/2018-04_Newsletter_final_web.pdf {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200204074940/https://highgatecemetery.org/uploads/2018-04_Newsletter_final_web.pdf |date=4 February 2020 }}</ref> A contemporary newspaper account claims that twenty-five to thirty relatives and friends attended the funeral.<ref>'Dr Karl Marx', in ''[[The Sunday People|The People]]'', 25 March 1883, p.3.</ref> 

A writer in ''[[The Graphic]]'' noted: <blockquote>By a strange blunder ... his death was not announced for two days, and then as having taken place at Paris. The next day the correction came from Paris; and when his friends and followers hastened to his house in [[Haverstock Hill]], to learn the time and place of burial, they learned that he was already in the cold ground. But for this secresy [sic] and haste, a great popular demonstration would undoubtedly have been held over his grave.<ref>'Dr Karl Marx' in ''The Graphic'', 31 March 1883, pp. 319, 322</ref></blockquote>

Several of his closest friends spoke at his funeral, including [[Wilhelm Liebknecht]] and Friedrich Engels. Engels' speech included the passage: {{blockquote|On the 14th&nbsp;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&nbsp;– but forever.<ref name="1883: The death of Karl Marx"/>}}

Marx's surviving daughters [[Eleanor Marx|Eleanor]] and [[Laura Marx|Laura]], as well as [[Charles Longuet]] and [[Paul Lafargue]], Marx's two French socialist sons-in-law, were also in attendance.<ref name="GouldMcGarr2007"/> He had been predeceased by his wife and his eldest daughter, the latter dying a few months earlier in January 1883. Liebknecht, a founder and leader of the German Social Democratic Party, gave a speech in German, and Longuet, a prominent figure in the French working-class movement, made a short statement in French.<ref name="GouldMcGarr2007"/> Two [[telegram]]s from workers' parties in France and Spain{{Which|date=April 2021}} were also read out.<ref name="GouldMcGarr2007"/> Together with Engels's speech, this constituted the entire programme of the funeral.<ref name="GouldMcGarr2007"/> Non-relatives attending the funeral included three communist associates of Marx: Friedrich Lessner, imprisoned for three years after the [[Cologne Communist Trial]] of 1852; G. Lochner, whom Engels described as "an old member of the Communist League"; and [[Carl Schorlemmer]], a professor of chemistry in Manchester, a member of the [[Royal Society]], and a communist activist involved in the 1848 [[Revolution in Baden|Baden revolution]].<ref name="GouldMcGarr2007"/> Another attendee of the funeral was [[Ray Lankester]], a British zoologist who would later become a prominent academic.<ref name="GouldMcGarr2007"/>

Marx left a personal estate valued for probate at £250,<ref name="probate">{{cite web |url=https://probatesearch.service.gov.uk |title=Marx, Karl |author=<!--Not stated--> |date=1883 |website=probatesearchservice.gov |publisher=UK Government |access-date=14 June 2020 |archive-date=7 August 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150807135123/https://probatesearch.service.gov.uk/ |url-status=dead}}</ref> equivalent to £38,095 in 2024.<ref>{{Cite web |title=£250 in 1883 → 2024 {{!}} UK Inflation Calculator |url=https://www.in2013dollars.com/uk/inflation/1883 |access-date=11 April 2024 |website=www.in2013dollars.com |language=en |archive-date=28 November 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231128173620/https://www.in2013dollars.com/uk/inflation/1883 |url-status=live }}</ref> Upon his own death in 1895, Engels left Marx's two surviving daughters a "significant portion" of his considerable estate, valued in 2024 at US$6.8&nbsp;million.<ref name="Montefiore"/>

Marx and his family were reburied on a new site nearby in November 1954. The [[Tomb of Karl Marx|tomb]] at the new site, unveiled on 14 March 1956,<ref name="auto">{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/15/karl-marx-monument-highgate-cemetery-archive-1956|title=Marx monument unveiled in Highgate cemetery – archive, 15 March 1956|date=15 March 2016|access-date=7 January 2018|work=The Guardian|archive-date=27 December 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221227094820/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/15/karl-marx-monument-highgate-cemetery-archive-1956|url-status=live}}</ref> bears the carved message: "[[Workers of the world, unite!|Workers of All Lands Unite]]", the final line of ''The Communist Manifesto''; and, from the 11th "[[Theses on Feuerbach|Thesis on Feuerbach]]" (as edited by Engels), "The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways{{mdash}}the point however is to change it".<ref name="wh1" /> The [[Communist Party of Great Britain|Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB)]] had the monument with a portrait bust by [[Laurence Bradshaw]] erected and Marx's original tomb had only humble adornment.<ref name="wh1"/>

The Marxist historian [[Eric Hobsbawm]] remarked: "One cannot say Marx died a failure." Although he had not achieved a large following of disciples in Britain, his writings had already begun to make an impact on the left-wing movements in Germany and Russia. Within twenty-five years of his death, the continental European socialist parties that acknowledged Marx's influence on their politics had contributed to significant gains in their [[representative democracy|representative democratic]] elections.<ref>[[#Hob11|Hobsbawm 2011]]. pp. 3–4.</ref>