Laura Marx - Life and Death With Paul Lafargue

Life and Death With Paul Lafargue

Laura Marx was born in Brussels. Paul Lafargue was a young French socialist who came to London in 1866 to work for the First International. There he became a friend of Karl Marx and got to know Marx's family, especially Laura Marx, who fell in love with him.

Paul and Laura married in 1868, and the Lafargues began several decades of political work together, translating Marx's work into French, and spreading Marxism in France and Spain. During most of their lives Laura and Paul Lafargue were financially supported by Friedrich Engels. They also inherited a lot of Engels' money when he died in 1895.

On 26 November 1911, the couple committed suicide together, having decided they had nothing left to give to the movement to which they had devoted their lives. Laura Marx was 66 and Paul Lafargue was 69. Paul Lafargue left a suicide note saying:

Healthy in body and mind, I end my life before pitiless old age which has taken from me my pleasures and joys one after another; and which has been stripping me of my physical and mental powers, can paralyse my energy and break my will, making me a burden to myself and to others. For some years I had promised myself not to live beyond 70; and I fixed the exact year for my departure from life. I prepared the method for the execution of our resolution, it was a hypodermic of cyanide acid. I die with the supreme joy of knowing that at some future time, the cause triumph to which I have been devoted for forty-five years will triumph. Long live Communism! Long Live the Second International.

Lenin spoke at their funeral in Paris. Krupskaya said that Lenin told her, "If one cannot work for the Party any longer, one must be able to look truth in the face and die like the Lafargues."