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Karl Marx

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Famous Karl Marx Quotes

“The Constitution, the National Assembly, the dynastic parties, the blue and the red republicans, the heroes of Africa, the thunder from the platform, the sheet lightning of the daily press, the entire literature, the political names and the intellectual reputations, the civil law and penal code, the liberté, égalité, fraternité and the second of May 1852—all have vanished like a phantasmagoria before the spell of a man whom even his enemies do not make out to be a magician. Universal suffrage seems to have survived only for a moment, in order that with its own hand it may make its last will and testament before the eyes of all the world and declare in the name of the people itself: Everything that exists has this much worth, that it will perish.”

RevolutionConstitutionSocialismFranceFascismDictatorshipDictatorMagicianMonarchyBourgeoisAuthoritarianismSuffrageRepublicansDynastySpellPressNapoleonAuthoritarianThird RepublicCoup D EtatFrench RepublicBrumaireCipollaLouis BonaparteMario And The MagicianMountebank
Book:The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
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“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
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“A radical social revolution depends on certain definite historical conditions of economic development as its precondition. It is also only possible where with capitalist production the industrial proletariat occupies at least an important position among the mass of the people. And if it is to have any chance of victory, it must be able to do immediately as much for the peasants as the French bourgeoisie, mutatis mutandis, did in its revolution for the French peasants of that time. A fine idea, that the rule of labour involves the subjugation of land labour! But here Mr Bakunin's innermost thoughts emerge. He understands absolutely nothing about the social revolution, only its political phrases. Its economic conditions do not exist for him. As all hitherto existing economic forms, developed or undeveloped, involve the enslavement of the worker (whether in the form of wage-labourer, peasant etc.), he believes that a radical revolution is possible in all such forms alike. Still more! He wants the European social revolution, premised on the economic basis of capitalist production, to take place at the level of the Russian or Slavic agricultural and pastoral peoples, not to surpass this level [...] The will, and not the economic conditions, is the foundation of his social revolution.”

RevolutionMarxismAnarchismCritiqueSocial RevolutionHistorical MaterialismDialectical MaterialismMikhail Bakunin
Book:Conspectus of Bakunin’s Statism and Anarchy
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“Die Gesamtheit dieser Produktionsverhältnisse bildet die ökonomische Struktur der Gesellschaft, die reale Basis, worauf sich ein juristischer und politischer Überbau erhebt und welcher bestimmte gesellschaftliche Bewußtseinsformen entsprechen. Die Produktionsweise des materiellen Lebens bedingt den sozialen, politischen und geistigen Lebensprozeß überhaupt. Es ist nicht das Bewußtsein der Menschen, das ihr Sein, sondern umgekehrt ihr gesellschaftliches Sein, das ihr Bewußtsein bestimmt. Auf einer gewissen Stufe ihrer Entwicklung geraten die materiellen Produktivkräfte der Gesellschaft in Widerspruch mit den vorhandenen Produktionsverhältnissen oder, was nur ein juristischer Ausdruck dafür ist, mit den Eigentumsverhältnissen, innerhalb deren sie sich bisher bewegt hatten.”

RevolutionZeitgeistMarxGesellschaftP2pSoziologieProduktionsverhältnisse
Book:A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
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“England has to fulfill a double mission in India: one destructive, the other regenerating - the annihilation of old Asiatic society, and the laying the material foundations of Western society in Asia... When a great social revolution shall have mastered the results of the bourgeois epoch... and subjected them to the common control of the most advanced peoples, then only will human progress cease to resemble that hideous, pagan idol, who would not drink the nectar but from the skulls of the slain.”

HumansSocialResultsCommonProgressMaterialsRevolutionDrinkIndiaEnglandFoundationWesternMissionsCeaseDestructiveIdolsAsiaPaganSkullsBourgeoisHideousAnnihilationEpochHuman ProgressNectarSocial RevolutionWestern Society
Author:Karl Marx
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“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
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“Both for the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is necessary, an alteration which can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution; this revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.”

MenWayAgeFoundCausesConsciousnessClassMovementRevolutionSucceedMassProductionsScalesPracticalsCommunistRulingAlterations
Book:The Communist Manifesto: A Road Map to History's Most Important Political Document
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“...the French Revolution gave rise to ideas which led beyond the ideas of the entire old world order. The revolutionary movement which began in 1789... gave rise to the communist idea which Babeuf's friend Buonarroti re-introduced in France after the Revolution of 1830. This idea, consistently developed, is the idea of the new world order.”

WorldIdeasOrderMovementCommunicationRevolutionFranceRevolutionaryCommunistNew WorldConsistentlyNew World OrderWorld OrderFrench RevolutionOld World
Book:Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: 1844-45
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“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.”

MenYearsFirstsDifferentGovernmentPastEvilForceSidesWaterKnownInfluenceHonestyMovementRevolutionTraditionMereInsightReputationAgentsSurvivorSheerStampsRebelliousDevoteeDeclamation
Book:Karl Marx: Selected Writings
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“Society is undergoing a silent revolution, which must be submitted to, and which takes no more notice of the human existences it breaks down than an earthquake regards the houses it subverts. The classes and the races, too weak to master the new conditions of life, must give way.”

WayGivingHumansHouseRaceExistenceClassBreakConditionsMastersRevolutionWeakRegardSilentBreaking DownEarthquakesHuman Existence
Book:Karl Marx and Frederick Engels on Britain
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