TENPostscript: Marx Today
Marx did just rate a small obituary in The Times but the starding inaccur-
acies it contained showed how little he was known at the time of his
death. In a speech delivered at his funeral to a handful of faithful friends,
Engels declared that 'his name will live on through the centuries and so
will his work'. This prediction has indeed proved correct. In the century
after his death Karl Marx has attained a world fame and influence such
as few men have achieved.
Marx claimed not only that he had discovered and explained the laws
of motion of society, he also asserted that these laws showed that society
could and would be changed by the very people without power - the
working class. They were to create a new society, through a revolution.
Marx argued that this revolutionary change was not only desirable: it was
inevitable. To him, this was a science, like biology.
On his massive tombstone in Highgate Cemetery is carved Marx's
saying that 'Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways;
the point is to change it'. While Karl Marx lived, the world did indeed
change - and some of the changes were ones that he had not predicted.
But capitalism was not overthrown. The revolution did not succeed any-
where in his lifetime. Yet in one generation, just thirty-four years after his
death, the whole world was profoundly changed as a direct consequence of
his life and work. From his grave, Marx inspired the Russian Revolution
of November 1917 , one of the truly cataclysmic events in world history,
and the world has not been the same since.
For one third of the world, the ideas of Marx served to justify the
established order, and to give it authority. Here, Marxism served as
the cement of society. Here, Marxism stood for the opposite of revolution.
Here, Marxism meant order, although one of which Marx himself would
never have approved. Indeed, some of the things done in the name of
Marxism would make Marx himself turn in his grave - if only he were
not kept immobile by the immense weight of marble and bronze pressing
down upon him.
Marx himself was no prophet and gave very little indication of what a
Marxist society ought to look like. All Marx's own comments on the