[OPE-L] Marx's funeral / the 2nd volume of _Capital_ as "absolutely complete" (!)

[glevy@xxxxxxxxx]

A slide presentation before the New York performance of "Marx in Soho"
indicated that only eleven (11) people attended Marx's funeral.  Is this
correct?  Philip S. Foner (in _When Karl Marx Died_) wrote that Marx's
funeral "was attended by a small group of mourners: among them Engels,
Eleanor Marx, Charles Longuet, Paul Lafargue, Wilhem Liebknecht,
Friedrich Lessner, Carl Schorlemmer, and Edwin Ray Lankaster" (p. 35) but
he didn't say how many people in total were at the funeral.   G. Lemke was
there as well (Ibid, p. 38).

How was it that so few people attended his funneral?  Was his circle of
friends, relatives, and comrades in London really that small?  Could it
really be that Engels gave his famous graveside speech to only 10 other
mourners?

On another issue:  in his report on Marx's death to _Der Sozialdemokrat_,
Engels wrote:

"And now, in conclusion, some good news:

The manuscript of the second volume of _Capital_ is absolutely
complete.  How much of it will be possible to publish as it stands
I cannot say: there are over 1,000 folio pages.  But, 'The Circulation
Process of Capital' and 'The Shaping of the Total Process' are finished in
one work, organized in the years 1867-70." (Ibid, p. 31)

How could Engels have possibly believed in 1883 that the "second volume"
(the drafts for what was later published as Volumes 2 _and_ 3) were
"absolutely complete"?  Was he so ignorant of the content of the folios at
that time?  Did Marx lead him to believe that they were "absolutely"
complete?  I find that hard to believe.

In solidarity, Jerry