Authorities in the western German town of Trier, where Marx was born in 1818, unveiled a 4.4-metre-long Chinese-made statue of the philosopher.
It drew both cheering supporters from Germany's fringe Communist Party and a motley group of protesters.
Authorities in China, the last major nation run by a government that lays claim to Marx's ideological legacy, eulogised the co-author of the “Communist Manifesto" and “Capital."
President Xi Jinping described Marx as “the greatest thinker of modern times," while state media rolled out a slick TV campaign declaring “Marx was Correct."
The European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in his speech seemed to be alluding to the standard counterargument: that communist atrocities throughout the twentieth century were due to some sort of distortion of Marx’s thought, for which the man himself can scarcely be held responsible.
Is there anything to this argument?
Political analysis by Plamen Asenov
