London, the Marxist roots
25 images Created 2 Nov 2012
A forgotten history, the roots of the Marxism have a long history in a financial hub like London. Beginning with Karl Mark that wrote here the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital. In 1849 Marx moved to London, to begin the "long, sleepless night of exile" that was to last for the rest of his life until his death on 1883, when was buried at Highgate Cemetery. Marx spent most of the first years in London in Soho, and during the 1850 his family lived in poverty in the Soho quarter of London, with the economic help of Engels but gradually Marx emerged from his political and spiritual isolation, producing his most important work, 'Das Kapital'. While living in Dean Street, Marx and Engels gave lectures in a room above the Red Lion pub on Great Windmill Street. Here they wrote an action programme for The Communist League published in 1848 as the Communist Manifesto, which 70 years later was the basis for the Russian Revolution. His leader, Vladimir Ilic Ulianov, Lenin, came to London six times spending a lot of time at the British Library, where for the first time he got access to Karl Marx's works. Lenin first arrived in London in 1902, living on Percy Circus not far from Clerkenwell Green, a neigborough historically associated with radicalism. Lenin published the revolutionary newspaper Iskra at the British Social Democratic Federation seat in Clerkenwell Green, where in 1933 was founded the Marx Memorial Library. The library contains a room that was Lenin's office, several busts of Lenin brought by delegations from the Soviet Union, and a mural showing a worker breaking shaking the whole world surrounded by Lenin, Marx and Engels.