A Paris prayer.

(Photo taken, 10 years ago, by my son John, at the Père-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.)

"There are no depths of irony, or bad taste, to which capitalists won’t sink if they think they can make money out of it."

A young political activist finds it "disgusting" that he should have to pay £4 (≈ $6) to visit the popular tourist attraction in London's Highgate Cemetery, the grave of Karl Marx. But Highgate Cemetery is private property, it's not making money burying new bodies (it's full), and the place had gone into decline. It was "a favorite hangout of occultists" and there was vandalism, "including two attempts to blow.. up" the giant bronze head of Marx that tops his tomb.

Not even all Marxists are against the fee. That includes Alex Gordon, chair of the trustees of the Marx Memorial Library & Workers’ School, a charity that helps look after the grave.

“Marx believed that labor should be rewarded, he didn’t believe that you could achieve a classless society simply by refusing to pay for things,” he said. “He wasn’t a hippie, let’s put it like that.”