Karl Marx's Labubus

There’s something for everyone at Highgate Cemetery. For the goths, the obelisk-flanked Egyptian avenue of mausoleums with its ceiling of ivy, or the dank catacombs where time has eroded the stone plaques to expose recesses filled with lead-lined coffins. For the gays and the girls, there is George Michael’s pristine headstone (just two down from Lucien Freud — for the art lovers). And for socialists and cynics alike, not one, but two graves of Karl Marx — political philosopher, historical materialist, revolutionary writer, and grand high daddy of the left. 

In 1954, under the cover of darkness, the remains of Marx, his wife Jenny, and their housekeeper Helene Demuth were exhumed from a modest plot along a secondary path on the cemetery’s east side, following complaints from Marx’s disciples that it was too difficult to find. They were placed, alongside those of three of their seven children, in a new spot, just 100 yards away from the original. Nobody would have trouble finding this one. 

The grave is marked by a huge marble pedestal topped with a prodigious bronze bust designed by Laurence Bradshaw, and is engraved with the inscription: “Workers of all lands unite”. It attracts more than 100,000 visitors a year, and lately, even more views online: its image recycled, remixed, and memeified across social media. But how, and why, has a serene North London pilgrimage site for lefties become a bona fide internet sensation?

Typically, all roads lead to TikTok. Earlier this year, a (since deleted) video seen by hundreds of thousands of viewers, showed someone complaining about the entry charge before sneaking through, a digital echo of the question most commonly asked of Highgate’s volunteers (of which I am one): “Surely Marx wouldn’t have approved of an entry fee?” It’s a line that’s been delivered with startling regularity since 1990, when the charge was introduced to support the charity-run upkeep of the 37-acre cemetery, where more than 170,000 people are interred. (In fact, when Marx chose Highgate as the resting place for his wife in 1881, the cemetery was run for profit by a private company; as the volunteers’ FAQ notes, there was a public cemetery just 2.5 miles away, had he preferred.) 

But the grave has become the backdrop for more comic viral moments too. In a much-shared interview with the Guardian, Diane Abbott reminisced about the demise of her romantic attachment to Jeremy Corbyn: “Once, after I lamented our lack of social activity as a couple, he pondered it for a few days and told me we were going out … I had no idea where we were going — perhaps a nice wine bar? It turned out Jeremy’s idea of a social outing was to drive me to Highgate cemetery and proudly show me the tomb of Karl Marx.” Longtime tour guide Stephen Sowerby tells me he once interrupted a couple mid-blow job at the tomb. Evidently, Corbyn is not the only one who deems it a romantic destination.

Then, this summer, posts circulating on TikTok, X and Instagram captured the various tributes left at the grave side, from the sentimental to the absurd. Flowers, still wrapped in Marks (haha) & Spencer branded cellophane; a letter from a student whose “long-cherished wish [is] to cook potatoes for [Marx] in the after-life”; Cuban cigars; cash — once fashioned into a hammer and sickle pattern, as remembered by volunteer tour guide Charo Rovira. And, most incongruously of all, a Labubu, the headline-making, inexplicably popular Chinese soft toy which grown adults are prepared to queue for — and the final boss of consumerism.