3月14日下午兩點三刻，當代最偉大的思想家停止思想了。讓他一個人留在房里還不到兩分鐘，當我們進去的時候，便發現他在安樂椅上安靜地睡著了——但已經永遠地睡著了。

　　這個人的逝世，對于歐美戰斗的無產階級，對于歷史科學，都是不可估量的損失。這位巨人逝世以后所形成的空白，不久就會使人感覺到。
　　正像達爾文發現有機界的發展規律一樣，馬克思發現了人類歷史的發展規律，即歷來為繁蕪叢雜的意識形態所掩蓋著的一個簡單事實：人們首先必須吃、喝、住、穿，然后才能從事政治、科學、藝術、宗教等等；所以，直接的物質的生活資料的生產，從而一個民族或一個時代的一定的經濟發展階段，便構成基礎，人們的國家設施、法的觀點、藝術以至宗教觀念，就是從這個基礎上發展起來的，因而，也必須由這個基礎來解釋，而不是像過去那樣做得相反。
　　不僅如此。馬克思還發現了現代資本主義生產方式和它所產生的資產階級社會的特殊的運動規律。由于剩余價值的發現，這里就豁然開朗了，而先前無論資產階級經濟學家或者社會主義批評家所做的一切研究都只是在黑暗中摸索。
　　一生中能有這樣兩個發現，該是很夠了。即使只能作出一個這樣的發現，也已經是幸福的了。但是馬克思在他所研究的每一個領域，甚至在數學領域，都有獨到的發現，這樣的領域是很多的，而且其中任何一個領域他都不是淺嘗輒止。
　　他作為科學家就是這樣。但是這在他身上遠不是主要的。在馬克思看來，科學是一種在歷史上起推動作用的、革命的力量。任何一門理論科學中的每一個新發現——它的實際應用也許還根本無法預見——都使馬克思感到衷心喜悅，而當他看到那種對工業、對一般歷史發展立即產生革命性影響的發現的時候，他的喜悅就非同尋常了。例如，他曾經密切注視電學方面各種發現的進展情況，不久以前，他還密切注視馬賽爾·德普勒的發現。
　　因為馬克思首先是一個革命家。他畢生的真正使命，就是以這種或那種方式參加推翻資本主義社會及其所建立的國家設施的事業，參加現代無產階級的解放事業，正是他第一次使現代無產階級意識到自身的地位和需要，意識到自身解放的條件。斗爭是他的生命要素。很少有人像他那樣滿腔熱情、堅韌不拔和卓有成效地進行斗爭。最早的《萊茵報》（1842年），巴黎的《前進報》（1844年），《德意志—布魯塞爾報》（1847年），《新萊茵報》（1848—1849年），《紐約每日論壇報》（1852—1861年），以及許多富有戰斗性的小冊子，在巴黎、布魯塞爾和倫敦各組織中的工作，最后，作為全部活動的頂峰，創立偉大的國際工人協會，——老實說，協會的這位創始人即使沒有別的什么建樹，單憑這一成果也可以自豪。
　　正因為這樣，所以馬克思是當代最遭忌恨和最受誣蔑的人。各國政府——無論專制政府或共和政府，都驅逐他；資產者——無論保守派或極端民主派，都競相誹謗他，詛咒他。他對這一切毫不在意，把它們當作蛛絲一樣輕輕拂去，只是在萬不得已時才給以回敬。現在他逝世了，在整個歐洲和美洲，從西伯利亞礦井到加利福尼亞，千百萬革命戰友無不對他表示尊敬、愛戴和悼念，而我敢大膽地說：他可能有過許多敵人，但未必有一個私敵。
　　他的英名和事業將永垂不朽！

"On the 14th of March, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, the greatest living thinker ceased to think. He had been left alone for scarcely two minutes, and when we came back we found him in his armchair, peacefully gone to sleep-but forever.

　　"An immeasurable loss has been sustained both by the militant proletariat of Europe and America, and by historical science, in the death of this man. The gap that has been left by the departure of this mighty spirit will soon enough make itself felt.

　　"Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.; that therefore the production of the immediate material means of subsistence and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion, of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which they must, therefore, be explained, instead of vice versa, as had hitherto been the case.

　　"But that is not all. Marx also discovered the special law of motion governing the present-day capitalist mode of production and the bourgeois society that this mode of production has created. The discovery of surplus value suddenly threw light on the problem, in trying to solve which all previous investigations, of both bourgeois economists and socialist critics, had been groping in the dark.

　　"Two such discoveries would be enough for one lifetime. Happy the man to whom it is granted to make even one such discovery. But in every single field which Marx investigated -- and he investigated very many fields, none of them superficially -- in every field, even in that of mathematics, he made independent discoveries.

　　"Such was the man of science. But this was not even half the man. Science was for Marx a historically dynamic, revolutionary force. However great the joy with which he welcomed a new discovery in some theoretical science whose practical application perhaps it was as yet quite impossible to envisage, he experienced quite another kind of joy when the discovery involved immediate revolutionary changes in industry and in historical development in general. For example, he followed closely the development of the discoveries made in the field of electricity and recently those of Marcel Deprez.

　　"For Marx was before all else a revolutionist. His real mission in life was to contribute, in one way or another, to the overthrow of capitalist society and of the state institutions which it had brought into being, to contribute to the liberation of the modern proletariat, which he was the first to make conscious of its own position and its needs, conscious of the conditions of its emancipation. Fighting was his element. And he fought with a passion, a tenacity and a success such as few could rival. His work on the first Rheinische Zeitung (1842), the Paris Vorw?rts! (1844), Br?sseler Deutsche Zeitung (1847), the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (1848-49), the New York Tribune (1852-61), and in addition to these a host of militant pamphlets, work in organisations in Paris, Brussels and London, and finally, crowning all, the formation of the great International Working Men's Association -- this was indeed an achievement of which its founder might well have been proud even if he had done nothing else.

　　"And, consequently, Marx was the best-hated and most calumniated man of his time. Governments, both absolutist and republican, deported him from their territories. Bourgeois, whether conservative or ultra-democratic, vied with one another in heaping slanders upon him. All this he brushed aside as though it were cobweb, ignoring it, answering only when extreme necessity compelled him. And he died beloved, revered and mourned by millions of revolutionary fellow-workers -- from the mines of Siberia to California, in all parts of Europe and America -- and I make bold to say that though he may have had many opponents he had hardly one personal enemy.

　　"His name will endure through the ages, and so also will his work!"

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