Red Salute to Karl Marx in Highgate

Ismara Vargas Walter and Dr Dhawali at the tomb

By Theo Russell

London communists joined other comrades and friends, including the ambassadors of People’s China, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos and Sri Lanka, to mark the death of Karl Marx at his graveside last Sunday. Marx died in London on 14th March 1883 and was buried in Highgate Cemetery three days later. 
And by his tomb speeches in Marx’s honour were delivered by the Cuban ambassador Ismara Vargas Walter and Dr Ashok Dhawali, an Indian peasant leader and a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of India (M). 
Ismara Vargas Walter said the event was “not only to honour Karl Marx’s memory but to reaffirm our commitment to the ideas that ignited the Cuban Revolution and continue to guide our struggle for justice, sovereignty and socialism”.
In Cuba “our youth learn Marxism not as dogma but as a tool for critical thinking” and that the answers to the problems of globalised technology, climate change and a US-dominated world order “lie in Marx’s emphasis on collective action and socialist planning.
“The digital age has brought new forms of exploitation, platform capitalism, algorithmic oppression, and the commodification of human attention, but it has also created new avenues for resistance, for mobilising, for spreading revolutionary consciousness. Our task is to harness these tools for the people, not for profit“. Cuba stands with Palestine, Venezuela and Nicaragua against genocide and US “criminal unilateral coercive measures”, and “all nations resisting imperialism”.
Dr Ashok Dhawali, the president of the All-India Farmers Union, said that Marx’s thinking is still relevant today in a world which  “since 2020, the richest one per cent have grabbed
nearly 67 per cent of all new wealth... billionaire fortunes rise by $2.7 billion a
day...and 46 per cent of the world’s population live under the global poverty line.”
The Indian communist said the entire imperialist camp backed the “Zionist genocide by Israel against the courageous people of Gaza”  while “the socialist countries like Cuba, China, Vietnam, Laos, DPRK, and the left-led countries of Latin America and Sri Lanka… are boldly opposing imperialism and Zionism”.
Dr Dhawali also recalled the historic year-long struggle by millions of farmers which led to the repeal of three anti-farmer laws in 2020-21, and said that a massive general strike was planned in April against four proposed new pro-corporate labour codes in India.
The gathering ended with the laying of flowers by the ambassadors and representatives of political parties, including a delegation from the New Communist Party, and the singing of The Internationale.