Thursday, January 2, 2014

Party News: Marx supports the Socialist Party - it's official (1987)

From the March 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Karl Marx was responsible for a recent donation of £500 to the Socialist Party. The explanation for this posthumous and politically sound generosity is as follows.

The great-grandfather of one of our Branch members was a personal friend of Marx, and the family has had in its possession for some time a letter which Marx wrote to him. It was recently auctioned, and fetched a staggering £13,000 (yes, thirteen thousand pounds), which was shared amongst the family. This enabled our member to make the donation.

Keen students of the law of value will wish to know that the family did not have to pay capital gains tax on this sale. This is because the letter had always been in their possession, and in any case the "value" of the letter had reduced since its contents had already been published. Had they not been, the original letter would have fetched much more.

So if you hear noises coming from the direction of Highgate Cemetery, it won't be another group of émigrés trying to blow up Marx's gravestone. It will be the author of the labour theory of value guffawing at the thought of the delayed productivity of his own labour and the good use to which it is now being put.
K. Graham


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