Was Karl Marx history's greatest optimist?

There were only 11 people huddled together in Highgate Cemetery for the burial of Karl Marx in March, 1883. At the end of a short speech his friend and collaborator Frederick Engels described Marx as 'the best hated and most calumniated man of his times.' That hate and calumny had a specially persistent quality. For most rebels, socialists and even revolutionaries, death brings relief from high-born abuse. Hated though they were by top people in their …

…hundred and fifty years after the Communist Manifesto, after all, capitalism is still alive and well. Francis Wheen concedes that 'Marx's optimism was misplaced' - he was always absurdly sanguine, as revolutionaries have to be - but 'his vision of the global market was uncannily prescient.' The fact that his predictions of the downfall of capitalism have not been vindicated in no way detracts from the originality or contemporary relevance of his historic analysis.