Quotessence
Home / Authors / Karl Marx
Karl Marx

Karl Marx Quotes

Philosopher

Filter quotes by topic

AllMenCommunismProductionsCommunist ManifestoClassCapitalistProletariatWorldPeopleBourgeoisieSocialCapitalismDoeRevolutionHumansIfsMeanPhilosophicalValuesEconomics

Famous Karl Marx Quotes

“And here it becomes evident that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state that it has to feed him instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie; in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society. The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labor. Wage-labor rests exclusively on competition between the laborers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the laborers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of modern industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.”

ExistenceSocietyIndustryVictorySlaveryCompetitionInevitableIsolationIncompetenceCapitalProletariatBourgeoisieRuleWage LaborUnfitGrave Diggers
Book:The Communist Manifesto
Create image

“Finally, to say that "the most favourable condition for wage. labour is the fastest possible growth of productive capital," is the same as to say: the quicker the working class multiplies and augments the power inimical to it—the wealth of another which lords it over that class—the more favourable will be the conditions under which it will be permitted to toil anew at the multiplication of bourgeois wealth, at the enlargement of the power of capital, content thus to forge for itself the golden chains by which the bourgeoisie drags it in its train.”

CapitalismProfitBourgeoisProletariat
Book:Wage-Labour and Capital & Value, Price and Profit
Create image

“When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms, and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class. In place of the old bourgeois society with its classes and class antagonisms we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”

RevolutionSocialismOppressionCommunismRegulationPolitical PowerProletariatFree Development
Book:The Communist Manifesto
Create image

“When the proletariat declares the dissolution of the hitherto existing world order, it merely declares the secret of its own existence, since it is in fact the dissolution of this order. When it demands the negation of private property, it is only laying down as a principle for society what society has laid down as a principle for the proletariat, what has already been incorporated in itself without its consent as the negative result of society.”

ProletariatNegation Of NegationAufhebungAuflösung
Book:Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right
Create image

“What I did that was new was to prove that the existence of classes is only bound up with particular, historical phases in the development of production; that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; and that dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.”

ExistenceClassStruggleParticularDevelopmentProveHistoricalBoundsProductionsTransitionDictatorshipPhasesAbolitionProletariatClass StruggleClassless Society
Book:The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Create image

“In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed - a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.”

LongClassModernIncreaseSellsCompetitionProportionLabourArticlesExposedCommerceCommodityWorking ClassProletariatBourgeoisieFluctuationVicissitudesLabourers
Book:Karl Marx: Selected Writings
Create image

“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!”

MenWorldEndsCountryWinningSocialLosesViewsClassConditionsRevolutionAimChainsCommunistRulingDisdainProletariatNothing To LoseWorking ManSocial ConditionsCommunist Manifesto
Book:The Communist Manifesto in Plain and Simple English
Create image

“Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.”

StatesPoliticalLyingChangeCommunicationPeriodsTransformationRevolutionaryCommunistTransitionCapitalistDictatorshipProletariatCorresponding
Book:Marx: Selected Writings
Create image

“Political economy regards the proletarian like a horse, he must receive enough to enable him to work. It does not consider him, during the time when he is not working, as a human being. It leaves this to criminal law, doctors, religion, statistical tables, politics, and the beadle.”

HumansDoeEnoughLawPoliticalValuesHuman BeingsEconomyEconomicsDoctorsHorseRegardTablesCriminalsRevolutionaryWorking ItWorking ClassProletariatPolitical EconomyCriminal LawPolitics And Economics
Book:Early Writings
Create image

“As for slavery, there is no need for me to speak of its bad aspects. The only thing requiring explanation is the good side of slavery. I do not mean indirect slavery, the slavery of proletariat; I mean direct slavery, the slavery of the Blacks in Surinam, in Brazil, in the southern regions of North America. Direct slavery is as much the pivot upon which our present-day industrialism turns as are machinery, credit, etc. … Slavery is therefore an economic category of paramount importance.”

NeedsMeanAmericaTurnsSpeakSidesEconomicAspectDirectImportanceSlaveryCreditExplanationEtcRegionsCategoriesSouthernMachineryBrazilPresent DayNorth AmericaProletariatParamountIndirect
Book:German socialist philosophy
Create image

“In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”

ClassConditionsDevelopmentAssociationBourgeoisProletariatAntagonismCommunist Manifesto
Book:The Communist Manifesto: A Road Map to History's Most Important Political Document
Create image