On March 14, 1883, Karl Marx died in London. So how did mainstream, capitalist newspapers report the death of the father of communism? Well, very differently is the answer. Trying to make sense of his legacy, they dragged in his German and Jewish background while either respecting or demeaning his political legacy. One thing is clear from the obituaries – Marx was already dividing opinion during his lifetime.
By his death – Marx had written the “Bible” of socialism
For The Guardian, he was a German who turned on Prussia and its military ambitions and a defender of the democratic cause in Europe at a time when absolutist monarchs still held sway. The newspaper acknowledged his key role in founding the Communist International and establishing the principle that “workmen were to combine together to secure their rights, and to prevent capitalists from playing them of nation against nation, in the industrial war” (sic).
A very clumsy way of saying that Marx didn’t want to see workers divided along national lines, instead realising their common interest. This was a reference to the recent Franco-Prussian where Germany had unexpectedly defeated France and Paris had very briefly been taken over by French socialists and other revolutionaries. The setting up and subsequent crushing of the Paris Commune was of huge interest to Marx.
By his death, The Guardian recognised that Capital, his vast but not completed economic treatise, had become “the Bible of the modern Socialistic movement” replacing in importance the less rigorous views of Ferdinand Lassalle and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.
Obituaries obsessed by his Judaism
Some obituaries, echoed by many commentaries ever since his death, harped on about his judaism as an overriding influence in his analysis. Again in England, The Morning Post declared that Marx had proven “the jesting remark that the Jews supply the greatest capitalists and the greatest Communists of Europe”. The newspaper thought it was highly significant that both Marx and Lassalle were Jewish.
If Marx hadn’t “cast himself into the vortex of the Democratic Revolution”, The Morning Post opined that he could have enjoyed “a distinguished position in honourable politics”. But it was not to be. Instead, he developed the theory of Communism which the paper found cold and empty.
“His book Das Kapital, which constitutes his main title to eminence as an advocate of Socialist doctrine, is almost repellent in its cold formalism, and his own temperament and manner, at least in public life, appeared to be designedly destitute of everything which might arouse emotion or excite enthusiasm.”
While others resorted to passionate prose, Marx seemed to effect a very “arid” turn of phrase resorting to complex mathematical formulae. The newspaper made the damning judgement that Marx was affecting a scientific approach but in reality there was very little by way of real science underpinning his analysis. Nevertheless, the journalist conceded that not only did his views have considerable appeal in socialist circles, most current thinkers and activists had derived the majority of their ideas from Marx.
The funeral of Karl Marx
The Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser noted that at Marx’s funeral in Highgate cemetery, in north London, his close collaborator “Herr Engels” spoke with deep emotion describing the deceased as the Darwin of social and political thought. Messages were read from working-men in France, Russia, and Spain.
But the Leicester Chronicle combined dismissiveness with grudging respect observing that Marx “had lived to see the portion of his theories which once terrified Emperors and Chancellors die out” while others developed his original work in new directions without bothering to credit him. It was notable that while Capital had been translated into French and Italian, there wasn’t even a “summary” in English because the “English working men would not care to be identified with these principles in their bald form”.
Categories: History
Marxism Explained 
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