After securing funding for some expert grave-scaping, Highgate cemetery in north London is preparing some new plots, which means you could be buried next to Karl Marx. It will cost you, though: while a cremation plot is £5,000, a full grave will set you back “upwards of” £25,000.
It would be neat if Marx had some kind of theory of land value to which we could refer here, but his critique of David Ricardo’s theory of rent could apply to cemeteries only if they had potential to grow more Marxes. Suffice to say, it will probably end up costing a good deal more than £25,000. For comparison, plots in Gap Road cemetery in Merton, south-west London, start at £1,545 for a cremation and £4,525 for a burial.
Marx’s grave is tourist attraction and provocation. Those visiting are not necessarily communists, since they could be on their way to see the graves of either of the Georges (Michael and Eliot), but those defacing or seeking to blow up the tomb are consistently anti-communists. The most recent graffiti, in 2019, read “ideology of starving” and “architect of genocide”. I suppose it’s too much to ask that graffiti writer to listen to the lectures of the radical geographer David Harvey before they undertake any more grave-based proselytising.
While you don’t have to be a communist to visit Marx’s grave, you would want to make a statement about your politics in being buried next to him. It is functionally impossible to be buried next to Marx as his disciple, though. Whatever kind of communist you are, even the modern kind – the fully automated luxury communist – couldn’t justify such a status purchase. If you were a very determined anti-communist with a ton of money, you could get buried next to Marx just to besmirch the dignity of his resting place. Now that I say it, that is the kind of thing I can imagine Elon Musk doing.
Ian Dungavell, the chief executive of the Friends of Highgate Cemetery Trust, says it is important to accommodate new burials, as they help keep Highgate a “living” attraction. This presents us with a conundrum about death: is it a binary state, in which you are either dead or you aren’t? Or is it a sliding scale on which a person who died yesterday is less dead than Marx, say, who died in 1883? The extent of your death is probably determined by how many people still think about you, which makes Marx as undead as it’s possible to be.
