Frederick Engels’ Speech at the Grave of Karl Marx

Speech delivered by Engels at Marx’s funeral on March 17, 1883. First appeared in Der Sozialdemokrat, No. 13 of March 22, 1883. The Chinese translation was first published in the Shanghai journal The Bud, Vol. 1, No. 3, in March 1930.

In his speech, Engels recounted the scene of Marx’s death and spoke highly of Marx’s great life as a scientist and revolutionist. He pointed out that the death of Marx was a great loss to the proletarians of all countries and historical science. As a scientist, Marx has two great discoveries in his life: the materialist conception of history and the theory of surplus-value. The former revealed the laws of development of human history, while the latter revealed the essence of capitalist mode of production and the secret of exploitation. These two discoveries of Marx had turned socialism from utopia into science. Not only that, Marx made unique discoveries in every field of his study, none of them superficially. As a revolutionist, Marx fought for the cause of the emancipation of the proletariat with a passion, a tenacity and a success such as few could rival throughout his life. Outlining Marx’s practical revolutionary activities, from his early days of running newspapers and writing many militant pamphlets, to his work in various organizations in Paris, Brussels and London, and up to the founding of the great International Workingmen’s Association, Engels fully acknowledged and extolled Marx’s great achievements in revolutionary practice as well as his tenacious spirit of struggle. At the end of the speech, Engels expressed his deep sorrow and admiration for Marx’s death on behalf of his revolutionary comrades around the world.

Engels’ Speech at the Grave of Karl Marx highly summed up the scientific contributions and noble character of Marx’s great life and fully affirmed his historical position. After the speech was published, it was translated into diverse languages and widely circulated, became an important document for people to study Marx’s life and historical contribution, and inspired the proletariat of all countries to struggle tirelessly for the ideal of communism.