Karl Marx

1. The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society. 2. Nothing can have value without being an object of utility. 3. Democracy 4. The only is antidote to the mental road suffering to is socialism. physical pain.

5. The workers have nothing to lose in this revolution but their chains. They have a world to gain. Workers of the world, unite. 6. The burgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all nations into civilization. Art is always and everywhere the secret confession, and at the same time the immortal movement of its time. 7. Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains. 8. Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks. 9. The bureaucracy is a circle from which one cannot escape. Its hierarchy is a hierarchy of knowledge. The top entrusts the understanding of detail to the lower levels, whilst the lower levels credit the top with understanding of the general, and so all are mutually deceived. 10. It is absolutely impossible to transcend the laws of nature. What can change in historically different circumstances is only the form in which these laws expose themselves. 11. We should not say that one man's hour is worth another man's hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing: he is at the most time's carcass. 12. 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. 13. The worker of the world has nothing to lose, but their chains, workers of the world unite. 14. In a higher phase of communist society... only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be fully left behind and society inscribe on its banners: from each according to his ability, to each according to his

needs. 15. In the domain of Political Economy, free scientific inquiry meets not merely the same enemies as in all other domains. The peculiar nature of the material it deals with, summons as foes into the field of battle the most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private interest. 16. The point is not merely to understand the world, but to change it.

17. The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them. 18. Landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed.

19. The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. 20. From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

21. The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence Abolition of private property. 22. Capital is money, capital is commodities. By virtue of it being value, it has acquired the occult ability to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs. 23. The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it. 24. History always repeats itself twice first time as tragedy, second time as farce. 25. Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand. 26. All social rules and all relations between individuals are eroded by a cash economy, avarice drags Pluto himself out of the bowels of the earth. 27. Natural science will in time incorporate into itself the science of man, just as the science of man will incorporate into itself natural science: there will be one science. 28. From the outset, the Christian was the theorizing Jew, the Jew is therefore the practical Christian, and the practical Christian has become a Jew again.

29. Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity. 30. The policy of Russia is changeless... Its methods, its tactics, its maneuvers may change, but the polar star of its policy - world domination is a fixed star. 31. All I know is I'm not a Marxist.

32. Workers of all lands unite. The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways the point is to change it. 33. The more the division of labor and the application of machinery extend, the more does competition extend among the workers, the more do their wages shrink together. 34. The English have all the material requisites for the revolution. What they lack is the spirit of generalization and revolutionary ardour. 35. A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties. 36. Experience praises the most happy the one who made the most people happy. 37. Mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve since, looking at the matter more closely, we will always find that the task itself arises only when the material conditions necessary for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation. 38. While the miser is merely a capitalist gone mad, the capitalist is a rational miser. 39. I am not a Marxist.

40. The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles. 41. There is a specter haunting Europe, the specter of Communism.

42. In every revolution there intrude, at the side of its true agents, men of a different stamp some of them survivors of and devotees to past revolutions, without insight into the present movement, but preserving popular influence by their known honesty and courage, or by the sheer force of tradition others mere brawlers, who, by dint of repeating year after year the same set of stereotyped declamations against the government of the day, have sneaked into the reputation of revolutionists of the first water They are an unavoidable evil with time

they

are

shaken

off.

43. Machines were, it may be said, the weapon employed by the capitalists to quell the revolt of specialized labor. 44. Medicine heals doubts as well as diseases.

45. Without doubt, machinery has greatly increased the number of wellto-do idlers. 46. Men's ideas are the most direct emanations of their material state.

47. In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality. 48. Colonial system, public debts, heavy taxes, protection, commercial wars, etc., these offshoots of the period of manufacture swell to gigantic proportions during the period of infancy of large-scale industry. The birth of the latter is celebrated by a vast, Hero-like slaughter of the innocents. 49. Sell a man a fish, he eats for a day, teach a man how to fish, you ruin a wonderful business opportunity. 50. Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth - the soil and the labourer. 51. The writer must earn money in order to be able to live and to write, but he must by no means live and write for the purpose of making money. 52. The dictatorship of the proletariet.

53. Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. 54. On a level plain, simple mounds look like hills; and the insipid flatness of our present bourgeoisie is to be measured by the altitude of its great intellects. 55. I am greatly pleased with the public, authentic isolation in which we two, you and I, now find ourselves. It is wholly in accord with our attitude and our principles. 56. The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs.

57. But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade 58. The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion. 59. Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society. 60. The product of mental labor - science - always stands far below its value, because the labor-time necessary to reproduce it has no relation at all to the labor-time required for its original production. 61. For the bureaucrat, the world is a mere object to be manipulated by him. 62. Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand. 63. All our inventions have endowed material forces with intellectual life, and degraded human life into a material force. 64. 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. 65. 66. Religion... is the opium of the people.

Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form.

67. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite! 68. History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this. 69. The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people. 70. The Tories in England had long imagined that they were enthusiastic about the monarchy, the church and beauties of the old English Constitution, until the day of danger wrung from them the confession

that

they

are

enthusiastic

only

about

rent.

71. Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex, the ugly ones included. 72. Religion is the sign of the oppressed... It is the opium of the people.

73. The development of civilization and industry in general has always shown itself so active in the destruction of forests that everything that has been done for their conservation and production is completely insignificant in comparison. 74. The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property. 75. 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. 76. The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future. 77. 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. 78. The philosophers have only interpreted the world the thing, however, is to change it. 79. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. 80. Greek philosophy seems to have met with something with which a good tragedy is not supposed to meet, namely, a dull ending. 81. Religion is the opium of the masses.

82. Social progress can be measured by the social position of the female sex.

83. The social principles of Christianity preach cowardice, self-contempt, abasement, submission, humility, in a word all the qualities of the canaille 84. Philosophy stands in the same relation to the study of the actual world as masturbation to sexual love. 85. The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.

86. The class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat. 87. History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

88. The democratic concept of man is false, because it is Christian. The democratic concept holds that ... each man is a sovereign being. This is the illusion, dream, and postulate of Christianity. 89. 90. Philosophy is to the real world as masturbation is to sex Revolutions are the locomotives of history.

91. It is not history which uses men as a means of achieving - as if it were an individual person - its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends. 92. Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given, and transmitted from the past. 93. The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class. 94. When we bought this house, we designated this room the library,

95. The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. 96. Catch a man a fish, and you can sell it to him. Teach a man to fish, and you ruin a wonderful business opportunity.