In these times of general prosperity in which the productive forces of bourgeois society develop [...], there can be no question of a real revolution.
1850
Source: The Class Struggles in France (1848-1850)
Karl Marx
Karl Marx (5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist and socialist revolutionary.
Such an upheaval is only possible in periods when [...] modern productive forces and bourgeois forms of production come into conflict.
1850
Source: The Class Struggles in France (1848-1850)
A new revolution is possible only in the wake of a new crisis, but the one is as certain as the other.
1850
Source: The Class Struggles in France (1848-1850)
Despite the commercial and industrial prosperity [...], the mass of the population [...] suffers from a great depression. [...] the situation of the peasants, indebted, [...] can be anything but brilliant.
1850
Source: The Class Struggles in France (1848-1850)
The history of the last three years has shown to satiety that this class of the population [the peasants] is completely incapable of any revolutionary initiative whatsoever.
1850
Source: The Class Struggles in France (1848-1850)
If crises first bring forth revolutions on the Continent, the cause of these is always to be found in England.
1850
Source: The Class Struggles in France (1848-1850)
It is natural that these convulsions should break out at the extremities of the bourgeois organism before making their way to its heart...
1850
Source: The Class Struggles in France (1848-1850)
Reactionary attempts to halt bourgeois development will fail just as surely as the moral enthusiasm and the inflamed proclamations of the democrats.
1850
Source: The Class Struggles in France (1848-1850)
Universal suffrage had fulfilled its mission. [...] It had to be abolished, either by a revolution or by the reaction.
1850
Source: The Class Struggles in France (1848-1850)
The entire social-democratic press rose as one man to recommend to the people [...] a 'majestic calm,' passivity, and confidence in their representatives.
1850
Source: The Class Struggles in France (1848-1850)
The so-called revolutionary press thus revealed its secret. It signed its own death warrant.
1850
Source: The Class Struggles in France (1848-1850)
As long as the daily press was anonymous, it appeared as the organ of nameless, innumerable public opinion. It was the third power in the state.
1850
Source: The Class Struggles in France (1848-1850)
In its struggle against the people, the 'party of order' is constantly forced to increase the power of the Executive. Each of these increases enhances the power of the one who wields executive power...
1850
Source: The Class Struggles in France (1848-1850)
The only possible solution, in the sense of the bourgeoisie, is the postponement of the solution. [The bourgeoisie] can save the constitutional Republic only by violating the constitution.
1850
Source: The Class Struggles in France (1848-1850)
Behind the jeopardized status quo, the bourgeois perceived chaos, anarchy, civil war.
1850
Source: The Class Struggles in France (1848-1850)
The high aristocracy and the financial bourgeoisie [...] were able to maintain their predominant influence on the Government, [...] thanks to the horror of 'anarchy' which spread rapidly among the middle classes.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
What was called the constitutional ministry [...] was composed of half-liberal, timid, and incapable bureaucrats.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
This act only provoked the insurrection [...] [which] forced the Government to recognize the Committee, to abolish the Constitution and the electoral law, and to grant a Constituent Diet [...] the right to draft a new fundamental law.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
The policy of leaving the movement in the capital to itself for some time [...] turns out to be [...] one of the surest means of reorganizing the forces of reaction.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
In Vienna, the middle classes, convinced that after three successive defeats [...] the court was no longer an enemy to be feared, fell more and more into weariness and apathy, and cried out for order and tranquility.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
The demand [for order and tranquility] is the one which, everywhere and always, predominates in this class after violent upheavals and the resulting commercial disturbances.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
The unity and power of the revolutionary force were thus broken; [...] the class struggle between the bourgeois and the proletarians had led to a bloody conflict.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
Everyone in Vienna felt that the war against Hungary was directed against the principle of constitutional Government.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
In their eyes, this expedition was to be a campaign of Slavic restoration and a war of extermination against the two invaders of what they considered Slavic soil: the Germans and the Magyars.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
As soon as victory was won, the middle classes were again seized by their old mistrust of the 'anarchic' working classes.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
The workers [...] recalling the treatment inflicted upon them by the armed manufacturers and the vacillating and fluctuating policy of the middle classes in general, would not entrust the defense of the city to them.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
Confusion reigned in the public mind as well as in the ruling circles.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
[The deputies] wasted their time in idle discussions on the possibility of resisting the imperial army without breaking the bonds of constitutional conventions.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
The working classes, [...] barely awakening, not to a knowledge, but to a mere instinct of their social position and their own line of political conduct, could only make themselves heard by means of noisy demonstrations.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
A proletarian mass, powerful in numbers, but without leaders, without any political education, subject to panic as well as to fits of fury almost without cause, an easy prey to every false rumor that was spread.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
[The Assembly] had long since lost public esteem, for having lent itself to all the intrigues of the court, out of fear of the most energetic elements of the population.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany (trans. Lafargue)
The Assembly, in fact, was more of a school of parliamentary etiquette for its members than a body in which the people could take an interest.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany (trans. Lafargue)
While the liberals, here as everywhere else, thus let the opportunity slip, the court reorganized the elements of its power [...]
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany (trans. Lafargue)
the Assembly, adopting the convenient principle: 'Measures, not men,' allowed itself to be duped [...] without having eyes to see the concentration and organization of counter-revolutionary forces.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany (trans. Lafargue)
[...] began that great comedy of 'passive and legal resistance,' which in their minds was to be a glorious imitation of the example [...] of the Americans in the War of Independence.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany (trans. Lafargue)
They had been deplorably mistaken in their choice of means.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany (trans. Lafargue)
Everyone abandoned the idea of refusing taxes to please a defunct assembly that had not even had the courage to defend itself.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany (trans. Lafargue)
In revolution as in war, one must always attack head-on: whoever attacks gains the advantage.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany (trans. Lafargue)
In revolution as in war, it is of the utmost necessity to risk everything at the decisive moment, whatever the risks may be.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany (trans. Lafargue)
A defeat after a stubborn struggle is worth more, for its revolutionary importance, than an easily won victory.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany (trans. Lafargue)
The defeats [...] had certainly done more to revolutionize the spirit of the people [...] than the victories.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany (trans. Lafargue)
[They] would have left behind in the souls of the survivors a thirst for revenge which, in times of revolution, is the most energetic and powerful spur to action.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany (trans. Lafargue)
It goes without saying that whoever takes up the gauntlet risks being beaten; is that a reason to admit defeat and surrender without a fight?
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany (trans. Lafargue)
He who in time of revolution commands a decisive position and surrenders it, instead of forcing the enemy to storm it, deserves, without exception, to be treated as a traitor.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany (trans. Lafargue)
The fact that in Vienna, as in Berlin, the fate of the revolution was decided [...] is sufficient to demonstrate that this body was merely a debating club [...].
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany (trans. Lafargue)
Philosophy fell either into abstract spiritualism or into abstract materialism, which is only an 'abstract spiritualism of matter'.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
The concrete is not simple but dialectical.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
[...] matter can play the same role as God, and materialism can be as metaphysical as mysticism.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
The study of modes of production constitutes [...] the materialist suppression of philosophy.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
It is not [...] science that suppresses philosophy: it is already suppressed in the real development of which it was only the distorted reflection.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
[...] science as a reflection reproducing real development, in opposition to ideology as a distorting reflection of that same development.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
Representation, as a product of the conscious element, is the space of all philosophical illusions [...].
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
All materialism [...] therefore always runs the risk of being led astray into a philosophy of the given, that is, into empiricism.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
[The] real development, the object of science, must be known through the construction of its concept, [...] against the false evidences of representation, the kingdom of ideology.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
[All] philosophical consciousness [...] is contradictory: it has only internalized the opposition between man and nature.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
God is only the fictitious projection of man.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
The opposition between man and nature is the object of philosophy because it defines the world of alienated production.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
Man and nature are not entities opposed for all eternity. The recognition of the historical character of this opposition is the first step towards its suppression.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
To mask the opposition is the same thing as to eternalize it.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
The satisfaction of consciousness [...] is illusory because it is immediate, imaginary, and hallucinatory; [...] because the subjects these philosophies stage are [...] themselves abstract, imaginary.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
The [...] people, if they had not carried out their revolution, were nonetheless launched into the thick of the revolutionary fray.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
[The middle classes] had never seen the workers act as a class or defend their own distinct class interests.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
Their past experience gave them no idea of the possibility of disputes between the classes which [...] had so cordially united to overthrow a government hated by all.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
it is the destiny of all revolutions, this union of the different classes [...] cannot last long.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
No sooner is the victory over the common enemy won than the victors find themselves divided among themselves and turn their weapons against each other.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
It is this rapid and passionate development of class antagonism which [...] makes revolution such a powerful agent of social and political progress.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
[...] this rapid and ceaseless emergence of new parties succeeding one another in power [...] makes a nation cover more ground in five years than it would in a century under ordinary circumstances.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
The revolution [...] made the middle class a theoretically predominant class; [...] but, in practice, the supremacy of this class was far from being established.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
[The revolutionary force] was by no means willing to act as a mere tool in the hands of the [government].
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
[The revolutionaries] held an intermediate position between the bourgeoisie and the working classes, preventing, by their constant agitation, things from relapsing into the old, everyday tranquility.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
[...] the continual agitation and excitement [...] was certainly not the means to 'restore confidence', as the saying went.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
[The government] constantly justified the suspicions [...] of the more revolutionary parties and constantly conjured up [...] the spectre of the old despotism.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
[...] each time the alliance between the armed bourgeoisie, the students, and the workers was cemented anew for some time.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
if [...] a country is again relatively quiet and even strong, it is mainly because the Revolution has really profited the great majority of the people [...].
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
As soon as a party has pushed the revolution far enough that it can no longer follow it, [...] it is set aside by its more audacious allies [...]. The revolution thus follows an ascending line.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Each party strikes from behind at the one driving it forward and leans upon the one bearing it back. No wonder that in this ridiculous position it loses its balance [...].
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Constitutionalists openly conspire against the constitution; revolutionaries confess that they are constitutional.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
There are only passions without truth, truth without passion, heroes without heroic deeds, history without events.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
The revolution itself paralyzes its own proponents and endows its adversaries with passionate vehemence.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Men and events appear to be [...] shadows that have lost their bodies.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Upon the different forms of property, upon the social conditions of existence, rises an entire superstructure of distinct and peculiarly formed sentiments, illusions, modes of thought, and views of life.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
The single individual, who derives them through tradition and education, may imagine that they form the real motives and the starting-point of his activity.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
In historical struggles one must [...] distinguish the phrases and fancies of parties from their real organism and their real interests.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
It was a feeling of weakness that caused them to recoil from the pure conditions of their own class rule and to yearn for the former, less complete [...] forms of this rule.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Democratic institutions are demanded not to do away with two extremes, capital and wage labor, but to weaken their antagonism and transform it into harmony.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
What makes them representatives of the petty bourgeoisie is that in their minds they do not get beyond the limits which the latter do not get beyond in life.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
The revolutionary threats of the petty bourgeois [...] are merely attempts to intimidate the antagonist. [...] When they have sufficiently compromised themselves [...], they avoid nothing so much as the means to the end, and look for excuses for defeat.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
The democrat, because he represents an intermediate class, in which the interests of two classes are blunted, imagines himself elevated above class antagonism altogether.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
The democrat comes out of the most disgraceful defeats just as immaculate as he was innocent when he went into them, [...] with the new-found conviction that he must win, not that he and his party have to give up the old standpoint, but, on the contrary, that conditions have to ripen.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Profit is realized by selling a commodity at its value.
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
It would not be by selling the commodity at a price higher than its value, but by selling it at its real value that the capitalist would realize [...] profit.
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
What determines the value of a commodity is the total quantity of labor it contains.
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
One part of this quantity of labor is embodied in a value for which an equivalent has been paid in the form of wages; another part, in a value for which no equivalent has been given.
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
Part of the labor contained in the commodity is paid labor, the other is unpaid labor.
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
By selling the commodity at its value, [...] the capitalist must necessarily derive a profit from the sale.
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
[The capitalist] sells not only what has cost him an equivalent, but also what has cost him nothing at all, although it has cost his worker's labor.
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
The cost of the commodity to the capitalist and its real cost are two different things.
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
Normal and average profits are realized by selling commodities not above their real value, but at their real value.
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
In Prussia, the bourgeoisie was already engaged in the struggle against the Government; [...] a bourgeois revolution was imminent.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
The Revolution [...] presented itself as the revolution of the working classes against the middle classes; it proclaimed the fall of the latter's government and the emancipation of the worker.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
[The bourgeoisie] always retained a wholesome horror of revolutionary socialism and communism.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
when it [the bourgeoisie] saw at the head of the Government [...] the most dangerous enemies of property, order, religion, family [...], it immediately felt its revolutionary ardor cool down considerably.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
[The bourgeoisie] knew that the moment had to be seized and that, without the help of the working masses, it would be defeated; but it lacked the courage.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
...the very working classes that the bourgeoisie tended to keep in the background were pushed to the forefront; they fought and [...] suddenly became conscious of their own strength.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
The danger of a repeat of the scenes of 'anarchy' [...] was imminent, and in the face of it, all differences vanished. Friends and enemies of many years united against the victorious worker.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
...an alliance between the bourgeoisie and the supporters of the just-overthrown system was concluded on the very barricades of Berlin.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
The fear shown by the new ministers in the face of the rebellious masses was such that any means seemed good to them, as long as it served to consolidate the shaken foundations of authority!
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
These misguided wretches believed all danger of the old system's restoration was averted; they used the entire machinery of the old State to re-establish 'order'.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
The king [...] very quickly saw that he was just as necessary to these 'liberal' ministers as they were indispensable to him.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
The independent movement of the working classes was, for a time, interrupted by the Revolution itself.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
...what could the proletarian party do but [...] fight alongside the [middle classes] to win the rights that would later allow it to wage its own struggle?
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
...wherever the working class [...] is concentrated in any considerable numbers, it is entirely freed from the democratic influence which [...] led it into a whole series of blunders and misfortunes.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
Never in history has a party been guilty of such a betrayal of its best allies, and of itself; and whatever humiliation and punishment may be in store for that party [...], it has deserved it all by this one act.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
The Assembly [...] with its majority of representatives of the middle-class interest, had long since forfeited all public esteem by lending itself to all the intrigues of the Court, from fear of the more energetic elements of the population.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
Its members sanctioned, or rather restored, the obnoxious privileges of feudalism, thereby betraying the liberty and the interests of the peasantry.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
They were unable either to frame a constitution or to amend in any way the general legislation. They occupied themselves almost exclusively with nice theoretical distinctions, mere formalities...
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
The Assembly was, in fact, more of a school of parliamentary etiquette for its members than an institution in which the people could take any interest.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
While the Liberals, here as everywhere, let the opportunity slip out of their hands, the court reorganised its forces...
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
The Assembly, acting upon the convenient principle of judging 'measures, not men,' was foolish enough to applaud this ministry, while it was [...] blind to the concentration [...] of counter-revolutionary forces...
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
...after the Assembly and the Liberal bourgeoisie [...] had allowed the combined reactionary party to occupy every important position [...], then began the grand comedy of 'legal and passive resistance'...
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
But in revolution, as in war, it is always necessary to face the enemy, and the attack is always advantageous.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
...in revolution as in war, it is of the highest necessity to risk everything at the decisive moment, whatever the odds may be.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
A well-contested defeat is a fact of as much revolutionary importance as a victory easily won.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
[A defeat] would have left behind it, in the minds of the survivors, a desire for revenge which, in revolutionary times, is one of the strongest incentives for energetic and passionate action.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
In every struggle, he who takes up the gauntlet risks being beaten; but is that a sufficient reason to declare oneself defeated and submit to the yoke without drawing the sword?
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
In a revolution, whoever commands a decisive position and surrenders it, instead of forcing the enemy to test his strength by attacking, always deserves to be treated as a traitor.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
...this body was merely a club, composed of dupes who had allowed the Governments to use them as parliamentary puppets to be exhibited for the amusement of shopkeepers and small tradesmen...
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
The purpose of the world is thus the subjective spirit's own purpose; teaching this purpose is its mission.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
Health, as the identical state, forgets itself, for in it one is not concerned with the body; the difference from the body only begins in sickness.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
For Epicurus, there is no good for man outside of himself; the only good he possesses in relation to the world is the negative movement of being free from this world.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
What then is the core of empirical evil? It is that the singular individual locks himself in his empirical nature against his eternal nature [...].
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
If a philosopher does not consider it the most injurious thing to regard man as an animal, one can absolutely make him understand nothing more.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
[...] every qualitative difference is a leap; without this leap, there is no ideality.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
The first principle of a philosophical inquiry is a free and bold spirit.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
Just as Prometheus, having stolen fire from heaven, begins to build houses [...], so philosophy, having expanded to the dimensions of the world, turns toward the world of phenomena.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
The split of the world is not causal, if it is true that its sides are totalities. The world is therefore a torn world facing a philosophy that is in itself total.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
Ordinary harps make their sounds under any hand, but Aeolian harps only play when the storm strikes them.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
The moth, when the universal sun has set, seeks the glimmer of the private lamp.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
Common thought always has ready-made abstract predicates, which it separates from the subject. All philosophers have made predicates into subjects themselves.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
Where the absolute stands on one side and limited positive reality on the other [...] the entire world has become a world of myths. Every figure is an enigma.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
Dialectic is death; but it is at the same time the vehicle of gushing life, of blossoming in the gardens of the spirit [...].
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
The Greeks will forever remain our masters because of that grandiose and objective naivety which makes everything shine in its nakedness, in the pure light of its nature [...].
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
Economists express the relations of bourgeois production [...] as fixed, immutable, eternal categories.
1847
Source: The Poverty of Philosophy
Economists explain to us how production takes place in these given relations, but what they do not explain is how these relations themselves are produced, that is, the historical movement which gives them birth.
1847
Source: The Poverty of Philosophy
Economic categories are only the theoretical expressions, the abstractions of the social relations of production.
1847
Source: The Poverty of Philosophy
Social relations are closely tied to productive forces. In acquiring new productive forces, men change their mode of production [...] they change all their social relations.
1847
Source: The Poverty of Philosophy
The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist.
1847
Source: The Poverty of Philosophy
These ideas, these categories, are as little eternal as the relations they express. They are historical and transitory products.
1847
Source: The Poverty of Philosophy
There is a continual movement of growth in productive forces, of destruction in social relations, of formation in ideas; the only immutable thing is the abstraction of movement.
1847
Source: The Poverty of Philosophy
Direct slavery is the pivot of bourgeois industry [...]. Without slavery you have no cotton; without cotton you have no modern industry.
1847
Source: The Poverty of Philosophy
What constitutes dialectical movement is the coexistence of two contradictory sides, their conflict and their fusion into a new category.
1847
Source: The Poverty of Philosophy
By saying that the present-day relations [...] are natural, the economists imply that these are eternal laws [...]. Thus, there has been history, but there is no longer any.
1847
Source: The Poverty of Philosophy
It is the bad side that produces the movement which makes history, by constituting the struggle.
1847
Source: The Poverty of Philosophy
In the same relations in which wealth is produced, poverty is produced also; that in the same relations in which there is a development of the productive forces, there is also a force producing repression.
1847
Source: The Poverty of Philosophy
Just as the economists are the scientific representatives of the bourgeois class, so the Socialists and Communists are the theoreticians of the proletarian class.
1847
Source: The Poverty of Philosophy
So long as they seek science and create systems, [...] they see in poverty only poverty, without seeing in it the revolutionary, subversive side, which will overthrow the old society.
1847
Source: The Poverty of Philosophy
Science, produced by the historical movement and associating itself with it in full knowledge of the facts, has ceased to be doctrinaire and has become revolutionary.
1847
Source: The Poverty of Philosophy
In the secondary States, where things had taken a comparatively quiet turn, the bourgeoisie had long since thrown themselves back into that noisy, but fruitless, parliamentary agitation which was most congenial to them.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany (trans. Lafargue)
The Imperial Constitution [...] was at the same time, full of contradiction as it was, the most liberal constitution in all Germany. Its greatest fault was that it was a mere sheet of paper, with no power to back up its provisions.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany (trans. Lafargue)
This class [the petty bourgeoisie] had always been more forward in its demands than the bourgeoisie [...]; it had shown a bolder front, [...] but it had already given countless proofs that it was nowhere to be found on the day of danger.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany (trans. Lafargue)
[The petty bourgeoisie] never felt more at ease than the day after a decisive defeat, when, everything being lost, it at least had the consolation of knowing that, in one way or another, things were settled.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany (trans. Lafargue)
Everywhere the public mind was heated to the highest pitch, and the aggressive policy of the governments was daily becoming more clearly defined, a violent collision became inevitable, and only cowardly imbecility could persuade itself that the struggle would end peacefully.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany (trans. Lafargue)
Insurrection is an art quite as much as war or any other, and subject to certain rules of proceeding, which, when neglected, will produce the ruin of the party neglecting them.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany (trans. Lafargue)
Once the revolutionary career is entered upon, act with the greatest determination and take the offensive. The defensive is the death of every armed uprising; it is lost before it has measured itself with its enemies.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany (trans. Lafargue)
In the words of Danton, the greatest master of revolutionary tactics yet known: de l’audace, de l’audace, encore de l’audace! (daring, daring, and again daring!)
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany (trans. Lafargue)
In taking up arms, the working class was fully aware that this was not its own direct struggle, but it followed the tactic [...] of not allowing any class that had risen on its shoulders [...] to consolidate its class rule, without at least opening up a wide field for the working class to fight for its own interests.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany (trans. Lafargue)
The petty bourgeoisie, great in boasting, is powerless for action and fearful of any hazardous undertaking.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany (trans. Lafargue)
Placed thus between opposing dangers which surrounded it on all sides, the petty bourgeoisie knew no other use for its power than to let things take their chance, thereby [...] destroying what little chance there might have been and ruining the insurrection.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany (trans. Lafargue)
[...] such plain language, going directly to the point, was bound to revolt a mass of sentimentalists who were resolved only upon indecision and who, too cowardly to act, had told themselves once and for all that in doing nothing they were doing exactly what they ought to do.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany (trans. Lafargue)
No political party can exist without an organization, and if the bourgeoisie [...] could [...] make up for the want of this organization, the proletarian class [...] was necessarily compelled to seek it in secret association.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany (trans. Lafargue)
[These societies] knew that the overthrow of an established government was but a passing stage in the great impending struggle, and their purpose was to prepare [...] the party [...] for the final, decisive battle which must one day or another put an end to the domination [...] of capital over labor.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany (trans. Lafargue)
Having recognized that the social antagonism of classes was at the bottom of all political struggles, it applied itself to studying the conditions under which one class of society can and must be called upon to represent the whole of the interests of a nation [...].
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany (trans. Lafargue)
The state enmeshes, controls, regulates, supervises, and tutors civil society from its most comprehensive manifestations of life down to its most insignificant stirrings [...].
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
The material interest of the bourgeoisie [...] is intimately interwoven with the maintenance of this extensive and intricate [state] machinery. It is here that it finds posts for its surplus population [...].
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Thus the bourgeoisie [...] was compelled by its class position to annihilate [...] the conditions of all parliamentary power [...] and on the other hand to render the executive power, its antagonist, irresistible.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
He acted like a misunderstood genius whom all the world takes for a simpleton.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
In the countryside, reaction becomes vile, base, petty, tiresome, and vexatious: in a word, a gendarme.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
[...] the invariable answer is Socialism. Even bourgeois liberalism is declared socialistic, bourgeois enlightenment socialistic, bourgeois financial reform socialistic.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
The bourgeoisie had a true insight into the fact that all the weapons it had forged against feudalism turned their points against itself [...].
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
The parliamentary regime lives by discussion; how, then, can it forbid discussion?
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
When you play the fiddle at the top of the state, you must expect dancing down below.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
In order to save its social power, its political power must be broken.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
To save its purse, it must forfeit the crown, and the sword that is to safeguard it must at the same time be hung over its own head as a sword of Damocles.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Gifts and loans, that is the financial science of the lumpenproletariat, high and low.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
The history of the elections proves irrefutably that in proportion as the actual power of the bourgeoisie developed, its moral power over the masses of the people was lost.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Universal suffrage had declared itself [...] directly opposed to the domination of the bourgeoisie; the bourgeoisie answered by outlawing universal suffrage.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
By letting themselves be led by the democrats [...], by forgetting the revolutionary interests of their class for the sake of momentary well-being, the workers declined the honor of being a conquering class [...].
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Germany on the eve of the Revolution.
1848
Source: Germany in 1848
Revelations on the Communist trial.
1848
Source: Germany in 1848
Karl Marx before the Cologne Jury.
1848
Source: Germany in 1848
The Vienna Insurrection.
1848
Source: Germany in 1848
The Berlin Insurrection.
1848
Source: Germany in 1848
The Paris Insurrection.
1848
Source: Germany in 1848
Poles, Czechs and Germans.
1848
Source: Germany in 1848
A general rise in wages would lead to a general fall in profits, and the current price of commodities would not undergo any alteration.
1847
Source: The Poverty of Philosophy
The rise and fall of profit and wages express only the proportion in which capitalists and workers share in the product of a day's work [...].
1847
Source: The Poverty of Philosophy
Machines were [...] the weapon employed by the capitalists to put down specialized labor in revolt.
1847
Source: The Poverty of Philosophy
[...] the degree which combination has reached in a country clearly marks the rank it occupies in the hierarchy of the world market.
1847
Source: The Poverty of Philosophy
Competition divides the interests of [the workers]. But the maintenance of wages, this common interest which they have against their master, unites them in a common thought of resistance — combination.
1847
Source: The Poverty of Philosophy
[...] in the face of ever-united capital, the maintenance of the association becomes more necessary for [the workers] than that of wages.
1847
Source: The Poverty of Philosophy
In this struggle — a veritable civil war — all the elements necessary for a coming battle unite and develop. Once it has reached this point, association takes on a political character.
1847
Source: The Poverty of Philosophy
The domination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself.
1847
Source: The Poverty of Philosophy
The interests it defends become class interests. But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
1847
Source: The Poverty of Philosophy
An oppressed class is the vital condition of every society founded on the antagonism of classes.
1847
Source: The Poverty of Philosophy
The emancipation of the oppressed class thus necessarily implies the creation of a new society.
1847
Source: The Poverty of Philosophy
Of all the instruments of production, the greatest productive power is the revolutionary class itself.
1847
Source: The Poverty of Philosophy
[...] political power is precisely the official summary of antagonism in civil society.
1847
Source: The Poverty of Philosophy
There is never a political movement which is not at the same time social.
1847
Source: The Poverty of Philosophy
Combat or death; bloody struggle or extinction. It is thus that the question is inexorably put.
1847
Source: The Poverty of Philosophy
Thanks to the extent and concentration of your banking system, much less currency is needed to circulate the same amount of value and to conduct an equal or greater volume of business.
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
By this process an annual wage [...] can be paid with a single sovereign coin, turning every week in the same circle.
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
Low money wages may require a much larger quantity of currency for their circulation than high money wages [...].
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
A very large part of the worker's daily expenses is paid in [...] mere representative tokens whose value [...] is arbitrarily fixed by law [...].
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
The currency in circulation [...] is divided into two great divisions. One [...] serves for transactions between merchants [...]; the other, metallic currency, circulates in retail trade.
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
If a general rise in the rate of wages [...] were to produce a sharp rise in prices [...], a general fall in wages must produce the same effect [...] in the opposite direction.
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
The American crisis came and [...] wages, taken as a whole, were suddenly reduced to about a quarter of their previous amount. Did the price of wheat fall? No, it rose.
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
Generally one finds a tendency for the amount of currency to decrease in the face of an enormous increase in value, not only in commodities but in monetary transactions in general.
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
The value and mass of commodities to be circulated and [...] the amount of monetary transactions to be settled, varies every day.
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
The amount of payments made without the intervention of any money, by means of bills of exchange, checks, current accounts, clearing houses, varies every day.
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
To the extent that metallic currency is needed, the proportion between the circulating coins and the coins or bullion held in reserve [...] varies every day.
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
The amount of metal absorbed by the national circulation and the amount sent abroad for international circulation varies every day.
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
This dogma of a fixed quantity of circulating currency was a monstrous error, contradicted by the facts of every day.
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
One should have investigated the laws that allow currency to adapt to such constantly changing circumstances, instead of seeking [...] an argument against the raising of wages.
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
It required all the loquacious self-conceit [...] to imagine that anything could result from the humble opposition, mixed with degrading flattery, which they were allowed to show in the impotent Chambers.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
The most energetic portion of the middle class [...] abandoned [...] all the hopes it had previously conceived for the development of Parliamentary Government.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
It is well known that [the peasantry] never defends its interests and never sets itself up as an independent class in quiet times [...], except in countries where universal suffrage exists.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
The shopkeepers were getting more and more discontented with their Governments [...], but their opposition contained no definite purpose which might have served as a label for an independent party.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
The working classes in the towns were beginning to be infected with the "poisons" of Socialism and Communism.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
History shows us [...] that in countries where political discussion is restricted, opposition [...] is hidden behind a more holy and apparently more disinterested struggle.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
Many Governments that would not tolerate any discussion of their actions will hesitate to make martyrs and excite the religious fanaticism of the masses.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
To attack orthodoxy [...] or to attack the intrigues of the clergy meant, under these conditions, to attack the Government itself.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
The lack of precision was their very essence; they claimed to be building a great temple under whose vault all [citizens] could unite.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
This idea of unity [...] was, in fact, very widespread, especially in the smaller states.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
[The idea of] unity was itself a question liable to bring about disunion, discord, and even, in certain eventualities, civil war.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
The middle class felt its power and was resolved no longer to tolerate the fetters with which feudal and bureaucratic despotism enchained its common action as a class.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
A portion of the landed nobility had become so transformed into producers of mere commodities that it had the same interests and made common cause with the middle class.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
The opposition formed a heterogeneous mass, acting under the influence of varied interests, but was more or less led by the bourgeoisie.
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
Has the middle class of any country ever occupied a better position to challenge the power of the established Government?
1851-1852
Source: Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
Philosophical historiography [...] must differentiate between the mole of true philosophical knowledge that never ceases its work and the chattering phenomenological consciousness [...] of the subject who is the receptacle and energy of these developments.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
In the presence of a philosophy, one has above all no right to accept its claim to be a philosophy on the basis of authority and good faith, even if the authority is a people and the faith that of several centuries.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
It is certainly a kind of injury to philosophy to constrain it [...] to plead its case on every occasion regarding the consequences it entails, and to justify itself to every art and science it happens to offend.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
Philosophy does not hide it. It makes Prometheus's profession of faith its own: ἁπλῷ λόγῳ τοὺς πάντας ἐχθαίρω θεούς [In a word, I hate all the gods].
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
[...] this profession of faith is its own motto, which it sets against all gods of heaven and earth who do not recognize human self-consciousness as the supreme divinity. This self-consciousness tolerates no rival.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
The death of heroes resembles a sunset and not the bursting of a frog that has puffed itself up.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
It is philosophy that you must serve, so that true freedom may be yours. He who has submitted and given himself to it does not have to wait; he is emancipated at once. For serving philosophy is itself freedom.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
Let the young man not hesitate to philosophize, and let the old man not give up philosophizing. For no one is too green, no one too ripe, to have a healthy soul.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
It would be better to follow the myth about the gods than to be a slave to the ειμαρμένη (destiny) of the physicists. For the former leaves us the hope of mercy [...], while the latter leaves only inflexible necessity.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
It is a misfortune to live in necessity, but to live in necessity is not a necessity. The paths to freedom are open everywhere, numerous, short, and easy.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
I prefer to discover a single new etiology than to obtain the crown of the king of Persia!
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
The world's becoming-philosophical is at the same time philosophy's becoming-worldly, that the actual realization of philosophy is at the same time its loss, that what it fights externally is its own internal defect [...].
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
But the practice of philosophy is itself theoretical. It is critique that measures singular existence against essence, particular actuality against the idea.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
Lucretius affirms [...] that the declination breaks the fati foedera (determinations of fate) and [...] one can say of the atom that the declination is that something in its heart which can fight and resist.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
Thus man ceases to be a natural product only when the Other to whom he relates is not a different existence, but himself a singular man [...]. Repulsion is the first form of self-consciousness [...].
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
The value of labor power [...] is determined by the value of the necessaries of life, that is, by the quantity of labor required to produce them.
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
If the wage did not rise [...] to compensate for the increased value of the necessaries of life, the price of labor would fall below the value of labor.
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
Although the worker's standard of living had remained the same, his relative wage and his relative social position, compared to that of the capitalist, would have been lowered.
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
If the worker resisted this reduction of his relative wage, he would only be trying to get a share in the increased productivity of his own labor.
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
To say that in such a case the worker should not claim a wage increase [...] is to say that he should be content to be paid in names instead of things.
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
All past history shows that whenever such a depreciation of money occurs, the capitalists are eager to seize the opportunity to defraud the worker.
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
It is the constant tendency of capital to [...] prolong the working day as much as possible, because surplus labor, and [...] the profit derived from it, will increase.
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
The more capital succeeds in prolonging the working day, the more it appropriates the labor of others.
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
By selling his labor power, [...] the worker transfers the right [...] to consume it to the capitalist, but the right to consume it within reasonable limits.
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
[Workers] are only setting limits to the tyrannical usurpations of capital. Time is the field of human development.
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
The one who has no free time [...], whose whole life [...] is absorbed by the capitalist, is less than a beast of burden. He is a mere machine for producing wealth to which he remains a stranger.
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
The whole history of modern industry shows that Capital, if not checked, will work without remorse or pity to press down the whole working class to this state of extreme degradation.
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
In our economic system, labor is only a commodity like any other. It must therefore go through the same fluctuations as other commodities.
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
If he [the wage-earner] were to resign himself to accept the will [...] of the capitalist as a permanent economic law, he would share in the miserable fate of the slave, without the security of the slave.
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
The struggle for higher wages [...] is merely a reaction of labor against the previous action of capital.
1865
Source: Wages, Price and Profit
Idealism and materialism, as abstract and one-sided moments, share the same ground, although they are in direct opposition.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
Any one-sided resolution of a contradiction [...] is inadequate and falls to criticism.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
The Hegelian synthesis [...] is a pure production of thought, thus an imaginary and illusory production.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
Abstract materialism [...] is but an abstract spiritualism of matter.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
In the case [of an abstract materialism], matter is the analogue of God, for it is conceived within the same framework and merely takes the place of God.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
The study of modes of production constitutes [...] the materialist supersession of philosophy. [...] [Philosophy] is already superseded in the real development of which it was only the distorted reflection.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
Representation, as a product of the conscious element, is the space of all philosophical illusions.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
In its rational aspect, the dialectic is a scandal [...] to the ruling classes... because it is essentially critical and revolutionary.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
The concrete is concrete because it is the synthesis of many determinations, hence a unity of the diverse. It appears in thought, therefore, as a [...] result, not as a starting point, even though it is the real starting point.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
The method of rising from the abstract to the concrete is for thought nothing but the way of appropriating the concrete, of reproducing it as a concrete concept.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
The real subject remains, after as before, autonomous and outside the mind; at least, so long as the mind's conduct is merely speculative, theoretical.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism [...] is that the thing, reality, [...] is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as concrete human activity, not as practice.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
Communism [...] is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature, between man and man, [...] between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
There can be no authentic consumption without production. The representation of communism as a consumer's paradise must be banished.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
Science must avoid two pitfalls: clinging to the immediate given of representation [and] severing the ideal development [...] from the object of representation, which is the concrete.
1841
Source: Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
Karl Marx, the founder of the International, died yesterday in London [...]
March 17, 1883
Source: Journal des débats/1883/03/17/Obituary
In [the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher] his idea of modern socialism is already found.
March 17, 1883
Source: Journal des débats/1883/03/17/Obituary
However, Karl Marx did not linger in philosophical speculations, and turned entirely towards the socialist clubs.
March 17, 1883
Source: Journal des débats/1883/03/17/Obituary
Expelled from France at the request of the Prussian government, he took refuge in Brussels.
March 17, 1883
Source: Journal des débats/1883/03/17/Obituary
[The Communist Manifesto] has become the profession of faith for the majority of European socialists.
March 17, 1883
Source: Journal des débats/1883/03/17/Obituary
After the revolution of February 24, Marx made a short stay in Paris and left for Cologne, where he revived the Rheinische Zeitung [...].
March 17, 1883
Source: Journal des débats/1883/03/17/Obituary
Outlawed again, Marx took refuge in London, where he settled.
March 17, 1883
Source: Journal des débats/1883/03/17/Obituary
The years that followed were spent by Marx founding the International Workingmen's Association and formulating the theories of historical-scientific socialism [...].
March 17, 1883
Source: Journal des débats/1883/03/17/Obituary
[Das Kapital] (1867), which is his main work as a writer.
March 17, 1883
Source: Journal des débats/1883/03/17/Obituary
Until its dissolution, Karl Marx took a very active part in the direction of the International [...].
March 17, 1883
Source: Journal des débats/1883/03/17/Obituary
[...] he has been actively involved in the founding of some of the current workers' parties.
March 17, 1883
Source: Journal des débats/1883/03/17/Obituary
Das Kapital was only the first volume of a study that was intended to have three.
March 17, 1883
Source: Journal des débats/1883/03/17/Obituary
He leaves the second volume [...] advanced enough to be published.
March 17, 1883
Source: Journal des débats/1883/03/17/Obituary
He published, in 1847, The Poverty of Philosophy, in response to Proudhon's Economic Contradictions or The Philosophy of Poverty.
March 17, 1883
Source: Journal des débats/1883/03/17/Obituary
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.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
The social revolution of the nineteenth century cannot draw its poetry from the past, but only from the future. It cannot begin with itself before it has stripped off all superstition in regard to the past.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Formerly, the phrase went beyond the content; here, the content goes beyond the phrase.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Proletarian revolutions [...] criticize themselves constantly, interrupt themselves continually in their own course, come back to the apparently accomplished in order to begin it afresh.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Bourgeois revolutions [...] storm swiftly from success to success [...] but they are short-lived; soon they have reached their zenith, and a long depression lays hold of society.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
A nation [...] is not forgiven the unguarded hour in which the first adventurer that came along could violate it.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
The bourgeois republic signifies the unlimited despotism of one class over other classes.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Society is saved every time that the circle of its rulers contracts, that a more exclusive interest is maintained against a wider one.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
[...] passions without truth, truths without passion; heroes without heroic deeds, history without events.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Upon the different forms of property, upon the social conditions of existence, rises an entire superstructure of distinct and peculiarly formed sentiments, illusions, modes of thought, and views of life.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
In private life, one distinguishes between what a man thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does. In historical struggles one must make a still sharper distinction.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
The democrat [...] imagines himself elevated above class antagonism. The democrats concede that a privileged class confronts them, but they, along with all the rest of the nation, constitute the people.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Each party kicks from behind at the one driving forward and leans over the one driving back. No wonder that in this ridiculous posture it loses its balance.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Better an end with horror than a horror without end.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
It [The bourgeoisie] made an apotheosis of the sword; the sword now governs it.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
France thus seems [...] to have escaped the despotism of a class only to fall under the despotism of an individual, and what is more, under the authority of an individual without authority.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
The revolution is thorough. [...] when it has accomplished its preliminary work, Europe [...] will exclaim in ecstasy: 'Well grubbed, old mole!'
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
All revolutions perfected this machine instead of smashing it.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
The parties that contended in turn for mastery regarded the possession of this immense state edifice as the principal spoils of the victor.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
They [The peasants] cannot represent themselves, they must be represented. Their representative must appear [...] as their master, as an authority, as an unlimited power [...].
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
The Bonaparte dynasty represents not the peasant's progress, but his superstition; not his judgment, but his prejudice; not his future, but his past [...].
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
The bourgeoisie is bound to fear the stupidity of the masses so long as they remain conservative, and the intelligence of the masses as soon as they become revolutionary.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Only theft can still save property; only perjury, religion; bastardy, the family; disorder, order!
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
A ruler cannot give to one class without taking from another.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
He puts the entire bourgeois economy into confusion, touches everything that seemed intangible [...] and creates anarchy in the very name of order.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
The interests of the peasants are no longer [...] in accord, but in opposition to the interests of the bourgeoisie, of capital. They find their natural allies and leaders in the urban proletariat.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
The parody of imperialism was necessary to free the mass of the nation [...] from the weight of tradition and to work out in pure form the opposition between the state power and society.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Every common interest was immediately detached from society, opposed to it as a superior, general interest, stolen from the personal activity of the members of society.
1851/1852
Source: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
In the course of its development, wages undergo a double fall: relatively, in comparison to the development of general wealth, and absolutely, as the quantity of goods the worker receives in exchange becomes smaller.
1849
Source: Wage Labour and Capital
In the course of the development of large-scale industry, [working] time increasingly becomes the measure of the value of commodities, which is to say, also the measure of wages.
1849
Source: Wage Labour and Capital
Every moment of the worker's life, of his existence, is thus more and more integrated into the hideous traffic.
1849
Source: Wage Labour and Capital
The savings bank system is a triple machine of despotism: [...] the savings bank is the golden chain by which the government holds a large part of the workers.
1849
Source: Wage Labour and Capital
Modern industry increasingly replaces complex labor with simpler labor for which no instruction is necessary.
1849
Source: Wage Labour and Capital
Intellectual culture, if the worker possessed it, would have no influence on his wages; [...] education generally depends on the conditions of existence.
1849
Source: Wage Labour and Capital
[The worker] can only be in a tolerable situation on the condition of creating and strengthening the power that is hostile to him, his antagonist—Capital.
1849
Source: Wage Labour and Capital
Growth of capital is equivalent to accumulation and concentration of capital.
1849
Source: Wage Labour and Capital
As productive capital grows, competition among workers increases because the division of labor is simplified and every branch of work becomes accessible to all.
1849
Source: Wage Labour and Capital
Entire layers of the bourgeois class are thrown into the working class. Competition among workers therefore increases [...].
1849
Source: Wage Labour and Capital
The growth of productive forces thus leads to a strengthened domination of big capital, an increased stultification, and a greater simplification of the machine called the worker.
1849
Source: Wage Labour and Capital
Relative to the total productive capital, the workers have an ever smaller part to share among themselves, and their competition consequently becomes more and more violent.
1849
Source: Wage Labour and Capital
Overpopulation is therefore in the interest of the bourgeoisie, and it gives good advice to the workers because it knows it is impossible to follow.
1849
Source: Wage Labour and Capital
Barbarism reappears, but engendered within civilization itself and as an integral part of it; hence, leprous barbarism, barbarism as the leprosy of civilization.
1849
Source: Wage Labour and Capital
[The associations] serve for the unification of the working class, for the preparation of the overthrow of the entire old society with its class antagonisms.
1849
Source: Wage Labour and Capital