The defacing of Karl Marx’s grave in Highgate cemetery is truly shocking. Red paint can be removed, but the hammer attack can’t be reversed. I love his grave because of the inscription: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways: the point is to change it.” That feels as alive and challenging as ever. Marx lived in London. His family is buried alongside him. We can argue all we like about his legacy, but this new act of vandalism is not an argument. It’s incoherent thuggery.

Marx is often read these days, even by those who disagree with him, as a brilliant analyst of capitalism and even globalism. The idiots have written: “Architect of genocide.” Marx never held any political power. The graffiti also talks of Bolsheviks, although Marx was long dead before their rise. Members of his family would go on to be killed in the Holocaust. I guess whoever did this is protesting more about Stalin than Marx – and it is not the first time. Paint has been thrown at his grave before. In 1970, someone actually tried to bomb it. Someone also splashed paint on Churchill’s statue. These new “sites of struggle” are easy targets for cowards, I suppose.

Yet these incoherent, fascist morons have sprayed “Ideology of Sterving” on part of Marx’s grave. Misspelt desecration sums up this act. You cannot vandalise an idea, but you can look stupid trying.

So I hope to go and pay my respects very soon. I will also go to see my favourite grave in Highgate cemetery, that of the artist Patrick Caulfield. It’s a fabulous minimalist effort, with the letters DEAD carved out of the stone.

Do go and see Marx’s grave when it is cleaned up, but don’t miss Caulfield’s either. It’s wonderful.