On a recent trip to England, I made pilgrimage to Karl Marx's grave. Two things struck me as incredibly ironic about the gravesite. The first is that Marx is buried in Highgate Cemetery. Highgate Village is a very posh, to use the British term, area in the London Metropolitan district. The great and good have been buried there for about a century and a half. In fact, they provide a guide to all of the famous graves there. Of course, for the man whose epitaph shouts, Workers of all land unite, to be buried in such upper class surroundings in ironic.The second irony, is as you can see, there are flowers and notes strewn about Marx grave. I used the term pilgrimage above in a very loose sense. However, his grave is literally a pilgrimage site. For someone who was a militant atheist to be accorded such posthumous devotion is odd.
A final irony, this is the grave directly across the pathway from Marx:
Herbert Spencer was about as distant from Marx philosophically as it is possible to imagine. Death truly is the only equal opportunity institution.
