Karl Marx
Without the presence of class warfare, trade unions would be hard put to justfy their existence.Collection: Class
In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.Collection: Morning
Private property has made us so stupid and one-sided that an object is only ours when we have itCollection: Stupid
May the devil take these peoples movements, especially when they are 'peaceful'.Collection: Peaceful
The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They open declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!Collection: Country
Money degrades all the gods of man and converts them into commodities.Collection: Men
It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.Collection: Men
In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property. - Manifesto of the Communist PartyCollection: Party
The method of production of the material things of life generally determines the social, political and spiritual currents of life.Collection: Spiritual
You will have to go through 15, 20, 50 years of civil wars and national struggles not only to bring about a change in society but also to change yourselves, and prepare yourselves for the exercise of political power.Collection: War
Private property has made us so stupid and partial that an object is only ours when we have it, when it exists for us as capital ... Thus all the physical and intellectual senses have been replaced by ... the sense of having.Collection: Stupid
The wealthy man is the man whois much, not the one who has muchCollection: Inspiration
As in private life one differentiates between what a man thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does, so in historical struggles one must still more distinguish the language and the imaginary aspirations of parties from their real organism and their real interests, their conception of themselves from their reality.Collection: Life
Darwin has interested us in the history of nature's technology.Collection: Science
The state is based on this contradiction. It is based on the contradiction between public and private life, between universal and particular interests. For this reason, the state must confine itself to formal, negative activities.Collection: Life
So far no chemist has ever discovered exchange-value either in a pearl or a diamond.Collection: Pearls
Civil servants and priests, soldiers and ballet-dancers, schoolmasters and police constables, Greek museums and Gothic steeples, civil list and services list -- the common seed within which all these fabulous beings slumber in embryo is taxation.Collection: Museums
He who before was the money owner, now strides in front as capitalist; the possessor of labor-power follows as his laborer. The one with an air of importance, smirking, intent on business; the other hesitant, like one who is bringing his own hide to market and has nothing to expect but a hiding.Collection: Air
England has to fulfill a double mission in India: one destructive, the other regenerating - the annihilation of old Asiatic society, and the laying the material foundations of Western society in Asia... When a great social revolution shall have mastered the results of the bourgeois epoch... and subjected them to the common control of the most advanced peoples, then only will human progress cease to resemble that hideous, pagan idol, who would not drink the nectar but from the skulls of the slain.Collection: Idols
Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeosis epoch from all earlier ones.Collection: Agitation
Perseus wore a magic cap that the monsters he hunted down might not see him. We draw the magic cap down over eyes and ears as a make-believe that there are no monsters.Collection: Believe
A great deal of capital, which appears to-day in the United States without any certificate of birth, was yesterday, in England, the capitalised blood of children.Collection: Children
...the realm of freedom does not commence until the point is passed where labor under the compulsion of necessity and of external utility is required.Collection: Doe
Every beginning is difficult, holds in all sciences.Collection: Difficult
A circuit performed by a capital and meant to be a periodical process, not an individual act, is called its turnover. The duration of this turnover is determined by the sum of its time of production and its time of circulation.Collection: Duration
The labour-power is a commodity , not capital, in the hands of the labourer, and it constitutes for him a revenue so long as he can continuously repeat its sale; it functions as capital after its sale, in the hands of the capitalist, during the process of production itself.Collection: Hands
I pre-suppose, of course, a reader who is willing to learn something new and therefore to think for himself.Collection: Thinking
The burgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all nations into civilization.Collection: Communication
If production be capitalistic in form, so, too, will be reproduction.Collection: Form
Society is a sort of organism on the growth of which conscious efforts can exercise little effect.Collection: Exercise
There is a physical relation between physical things. But it is different with commodities.Collection: Different
An organised system of machines, to which motion is communicated by the transmitting mechanism from a central automation, is the most developed form of production by machinery.Collection: Automation
Money appears as measure (in Homer, e.g. oxen) earlier than as medium of exchange, because in barter each commodity is still its own medium of exchange. But it cannot be its own or its own standard of comparison.Collection: Oxen
Very well then; emancipation from usury and money, that is, from practical, real Judaism, would constitute the emancipation of our time.Collection: Real
But there is a devil of a difference between barbarians who are fit by nature to be used for anything, and civilized people who apply them selves to everything.Collection: Self
The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. Thus the first fact to be established is the physical organisation of these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature.Collection: Firsts
The French need a thrashing. If the Prussians win, the centralization of state power will be useful for the centralization of the German working class. German predominance would also transfer the center of gravity of the workers' movement in Western Europe from France to Germany, and one has only to compare the movement in the two countries from 1866 until now to see that the German working class is superior to the French both theoretically and organizationally.Collection: Country
Moments are the elements of profitCollection: Elements
The redeeming feature of war is that it puts a nation to the test. As exposure to the atmosphere reduces all mummies to instant dissolution, so war passes supreme judgment upon social systems that have outlived their vitality.Collection: War
The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.Collection: Ideas
Capital brings forth living offspring, or at the least, lays the golden eggs.Collection: Eggs
I am nothing and should be everything.Collection: Fear
The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere. The bourgeoisie has, through its exploitation of the world market, given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of reactionaries, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood.Collection: Country
There are no bigger donkeys than these workers.... Look at our 'craftsmen'; Sad that world history should be be made with such people.Collection: People
A man cannot become a child again, or he becomes childish.Collection: Children
Go on, get out - last words are for fools who haven't said enough. To his housekeeper, who urged him to tell her his last words so she could write them down for posterity.Collection: Writing
It might otherwise appear paradoxical that money can be replaced by worthless paper; but that the slightest alloying of its metallic content depreciates it.Collection: Might
Gold is now money with reference to all other commodities only because it was previously, with reference to them, a simple commodity.Collection: Simple
Both for the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is necessary, an alteration which can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution; this revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.Collection: Men