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Karl Marx Quotes

Browse 48 quotes about Karl Marx.

Karl Marx Quotes

“I was deeply concerned from my early teen days about the gulf between superfluous wealth and abject poverty, and my reading of Marx made me ever more conscious of this gulf. Although modern American capitalism had greatly reduced the gap through social reforms, there was still need for a better distribution of wealth. Moreover, Marx had revealed the danger of the profit motive as the sole basis of an economic system: capitalism is always in danger of inspiring men to be more concerned about making a living than making a life. We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles, rather than by the quality of our service and relationship to humanity—thus capitalism can lead to a practical materialism that is as pernicious as the materialism taught by communism.”

WealthCapitalismGreedProfitCommunismMaterialismConsumptionIncome InequalityKarl MarxWealth Distribution
Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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“Capitalism, as Marx observed—with surprising admiration for its dynamism—never promised stability, and it’s been a generation since blue-chip companies like IBM offered their white-collar workers a job for life. As the best-seller Who Moved My Cheese advises, dislocated professionals must learn to adapt to new flavors of cheese as the old ones are taken away. But when skilled and experienced people routinely find their skills unwanted and their experience discounted, then something has happened that cuts deep into the very social contract that holds us together.”

JobsWorkCapitalismWorkersBetrayalStabilityWorkingCompaniesKarl MarxProfessionals
Book:Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream
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“A use-value, or useful article, therefore, has value only because abstract human labour is objectified or materialized in it. How, then, is the magnitude of value to be measured? By means of the quantity of the "value-forming substance", the labour, contained in the article. This quantity is measured by its duration, and the labour-time is itself measured on the particular scale of hours, days etc.”

ValueCommodityCapitalKarl MarxAbstract LaborLabor TimeUse Value
Book:Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1
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“A use-value, or useful article, therefore, has value only because abstract human labour is objectified or materialized in it. How, then, is the magnitude of this value to be measured? By means of the quantity of the "value-forming substance", the labour, contained in the article. This quantity is measured by its duration, and the labour-time is itself measured on the particular scale of hours, days etc.”

ValueCommodityCapitalKarl MarxAbstract LaborLabor TimeUse Value
Book:Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1
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“Many millions of pregnancies—many if not most of which have each led to the birth of at least one child—were each used as nothing but a conspicuous means to a secret end called the evasion of abortion.”

ChildrenHumorKidsFunnyReligionQuotesSexChurchSecretHumourIndustryBirthHumorousQuoteProfoundPhilosopherQuote Of The DaySocialismCommunismThoughtfulAbortionSatireThought ProvokingPregnancyDeepInsightfulSecretsFactoriesChildAphorismPregnantSouth AfricaQuotationsAfricaMaximsSayingsAdagesManufacturingProverbsAphorismsMake You ThinkReproductionPro LifeAxiomsAdageProverbSatiricalSayingEpigramsAfricanQuotationGnomeEvasionSatiristMaximProcreationEpigramGnomesProvoke ThoughtMade Me ThinkKidIndustrializationAxiomDictumDictumsChurchesFamily PlanningSouth AfricanKarl MarxSexual IntercourseChildfreeSatiristsMeansChildlessFactoryManufactureReproduceUnprotected SexSelfish SelfishnessAbortEvadeProcreateAnti LifeConspicuousIndustrialize
Book:The Use and Misuse of Children
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“Of the Russian exiles, Lenin is the last I should have picked as a man of destiny. [Angelica] Balabanoff says that she cannot remember where she first met Lenin and that even when she became conscious of his existence he made no impression upon her. Many others would say the same, but I remember vividly my first meeting with him. It was at dinner in a small Greek restaurant in Soho, not far from the house which bears the tablet commemorating the fact that Karl Marx once lived there. I met him again at Stuttgart, [at the International Socialist Congress] in 1907. In the meantime he had acquired the reputation of being a brilliant student of Marxian economics, a dangerous antagonist in all intra-party controversies and a master of revolutionary tactics and sectarian conspiracies. At the conference he was usually surrounded by a small group of whispering disciples. … Some of Lenin's enemies believed that he was a paid emissary of the Russian police. His tactics and the dissensions which he promoted among the Russian socialists aroused suspicion. He was a fanatic, a disorganizer, a sectarian, who gave no indication in pre-war days of having the qualities of a national leader. He won his battles but they were always directed against his comrades.”

DestinyLondonExileRussian RevolutionKarl MarxLeninFanaticSectarianVladimir LeninBolshevik
Book:Revolution Why, How, When?
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“The world economy would collapse if a significant number of people were to realize and then act on the realization that it is possible to enjoy many if not most of the things that they enjoy without first having to own them.”

HumorFunnyQuotesEnjoyEconomyDemocracyHumourHumorousCapitalismQuoteProfoundPhilosopherCreditDebtQuote Of The DaySocialismRealizationCommunismConsumersThoughtfulSatireMaterialismThought ProvokingDeepInsightfulAphorismCollapseSouth AfricaOwnershipSocialistConsumerismQuotationsAfricaMaximsSayingsMarxismAdagesProverbsAphorismsMake You ThinkAxiomsAdageProverbSatiricalSayingEpigramsBuyersAfricanQuotationGnomeRealizeSatiristMaximEpigramOwnGnomesProvoke ThoughtMade Me ThinkAxiomDictumDictumsBuySouth AfricanKarl MarxChildfreeSatiristsChildlessConsumerSocialistsEconomiesSelfish SelfishnessBuyerWorld Economies
Book:The Use and Misuse of Children
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“The less you eat, drink and buy books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorise, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save – the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour – your capital. The less you are, the less you express your own life, the more you have, i.e., the greater is your alienated life, the greater is the store of your estranged being.”

BooksMarxismKarl Marx
Author:Karl Marx
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“To say that "the worker has an interest in the rapid growth of capital", means only this: that the more speedily the worker augments the wealth of the capitalist, the larger will be the crumbs which fall to him, the greater will be the number of workers than can be called into existence, the more can the mass of slaves dependent upon capital be increased.”

CapitalismCapitalistCapitalKarl MarxWage SlaveryWage LaborWage LabourFriedrich Engels
Book:Wage-Labour and Capital & Value, Price and Profit
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“They are parts of a single, overall, modern thought-world. According to the customary image socialists bear with them, Nationalism is the Mr. Hyde of that world. He is the Id of modernity, our revived and delirious archaism, the seductive, yet dangerous fellow from the forests who Marx pilloried back in 1843. 'Germano-maniacs' he called them, 'seeking our history of freedom beyond our history, in the primeval 'Teutonic forests'. Alas, the forests are not so easily disposed of as that, either in Germany or elsewhere. Nor are nationalists allowed to forget the fact. But what about Dr. Jekyll? This is the real question I am putting here, and it is all too rarely posed. We - 'on the left' - are assumed to be on his side. We disregard his oddities. He is a strangely Protestant figure, forever tensed up in an irreproachable piety punctuated with terrible nervous ticks. The slightest forest odour sets his forefinger wagging. Though he takes two baths a day to preserve his demeanour and sense of smell, the world remains permanenly unstatisfactory. This must be -one can hardly help feeling - because there is something unsatisfactory inside him somewhere, of which he may be only obscurely conscious.”

SocialismNationalismKarl MarxMr HydeDr Jekyll
Book:Faces of Nationalism: Janus Revisited
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“What does it mean to be a proletarian, really? [...] It means you are a cog in a process of production that relies on what you do and think, while excluding you from being anything but its product. It means the end of sovereignty, the conversion of all experiential value to exchange value, the final defeat of autonomy.”

CapitalismExploitationAlienationMarxismProletariatFrankensteinKarl MarxWage LaborCommodity FetishismSocialims
Book:Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present
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“Onder invloed van het marxisme ontstond in de wereldgeschiedenis ook nog een zesde vorm van arbeidsdeling, de nomisch technische arbeidsverdeling. Die werd voor het eerst in de Sovjet-Unie ingevoerd in 1917 en verdween er met de Val van de Muur in 1989. De werkende bevolking werd er wijsgemaakt dat het een vorm van nomische arbeidsverdeling was die spontaan was ontstaan en niet door de overheid werd afgedwongen. Maar in werkelijkheid ging het niet om communisme, wel integendeel om staatskapitalisme. Op papier heerst er nog steeds communisme in de Volksrepubliek China, maar dat komt dan enkel maar omdat papier er zeer gewillig is (geen wonder, want het papier werd juist in China uitgevonden). Harde vormen van communisme zijn na de Val van de Muur nog een korte tijd blijven voortbestaan in Cuba en in Albanië, maar zijn ondertussen ook daar verdwenen. Enkel in het totaal geïsoleerde Noord-Korea is de nomisch technische arbeidsverdeling tot op vandaag blijven voortbestaan. Tot een afsterven van de staat, zoals Marx voorspelde, heeft het zeker niet geleid, wel tot een verpletterend staatsapparaat gecontroleerd door de gewetenloze machtsclique rond de vereerde Leider.”

ChinaJean Pierre Van RossemKarl MarxRossemCommunismeMarxismePostmodernismeNoord KoreaSovjet Unie
Book:Postmoderniteit: Onzekerheid & Onveiligheid
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“The separation between the Man of Labour and the Instruments of Labout once established, such a state of things will maintain itself and reproduce itself upon a constantly increasing scale, until a new and fundamental revolution in the mode of production should again overturn it, and restore the original union in a new historical form.”

TheoryMarxismMarxKarl MarxHistorical MaterialismModes Of Production
Book:Wage-Labour and Capital & Value, Price and Profit
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“This false appearance distinguishes wages labour from other historical forms of labour. On the basis of the wages system even the unpaid labour seems to be paid labour. With the slave, on the contrary, even that part of his labour which is paid appears to be unpaid. Of course, in order to work the slave must live, and one part of his working day goes to replace the value of his own maintenance. But since no bargain is struck between him and his master, and no acts of selling and buying are going on between the two parties, all his labour seems to be given away for nothing.”

CapitalismSlaveryMarxismMarxKarl MarxWage LaborLabor Theory Of ValueMarxian Economics
Book:Wage-Labour and Capital & Value, Price and Profit
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“Ever increasing human knowledge is the ultimate cause of the development of human societies from hunter gathering to agrarian to industrial societies. However as human societies change from one form to another, there are substantial changes in the social and cultural institutions of those societies. The different types of societies tend to develop with different population structures, class systems, belief systems, government and legal systems, and different types of economies. The changes to these social and cultural systems are dependent on the prior changes to technological systems and so occur in a particular order as the technological changes occur in a particular order.”

Karl MarxTechnological ChangeCultural EvolutionPhilosophy Of HistoryKarl PopperHistoricismBig HistoryMacrohistoryMacrosociologyMetahistory
Author:Rochelle Forrester
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“1. Human beings meet their needs by using the resources in their environment. 2. Human beings have a limited knowledge of their environment. 3. Human beings have the ability to learn and remember so their knowledge of their environment increases over time. 4. As human knowledge of the environment increases, new ways of meeting human needs become available. 5. If the news ways of meeting human needs are better than the old ways of meeting human needs they will be adopted and the old ways discarded. 6. The adoption of new ways of meeting human needs constitutes social and cultural change in itself, but also leads to further social and cultural change. 7. The order of discovery of new means of meeting human needs follows a particular path from that which is most easily discovered to that which is more difficult to discover. Many discoveries require prior discoveries before the discovery can take place. This means there is a necessary order in the discoveries that constitute and cause social and cultural change. 8. The particular order in the discoveries, means social and cultural change occurs in a particular order, so that the sequence of social and cultural change is inevitable and is rationally understandable. All of the above statements appear to be obviously correct. If they are then the study of social and cultural history can be considered to be a science in the same way as biological evolution is considered to be a science. Social and cultural change derived from increasing human knowledge is not random and so can be scientifically understood. We can not predict the future of social and cultural change as we do not know what future discoveries we will make. This is analogous to biological evolution where changes in living species are unpredictable as we do not know what changes will occur in the environment of those species. However biological evolution does make changes in living species rationally understandable, just as an analysis of the order of discovery of the human environment makes social and cultural change rationally understandable.”

Karl MarxCultural EvolutionPhilosophy Of HistoryKarl PopperHistoricismMacrohistoryMacrosociology
Author:Rochelle Forrester
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“Changes in human knowledge causes changes in technology and through the effect that technology has on the social and cultural systems of a society, the change in human knowledge will affect all elements in that society. Changes in human knowledge may also directly affect the social and cultural systems in human society. Ideas such as biological evolution and cultural relativity have affected human society, without producing any technological innovations. Human history in all its elements will be effected by the increase in knowledge that gradually accumulates in human culture.”

Karl MarxTechnological ChangeCultural EvolutionPhilosophy Of HistoryKarl PopperHistoricismHistorical ChangeBig HistoryMacrohistoryMacrosociology
Author:Rochelle Forrester
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“The ultimate cause of much historical, social and cultural change is the gradual accumulation of human knowledge of the environment. Human beings use the materials in their environment to meet their needs and increased human knowledge of the environment enables human needs to be met in a more efficient manner. The human environment has a particular structure so that human knowledge of the environment is acquired in a particular order. The simplest knowledge is acquired first and more complex knowledge is acquired later. The order of discovery determines the course of human social and cultural history as knowledge of new and more efficient means of meeting human needs, results in new technology, which results in the development of new social and ideological systems. This means human social and cultural history, has to follow a particular course, a course that is determined by the structure of the human environment.”

Karl MarxTechnological ChangeCultural EvolutionHistoricismMacrohistoryMacrosociologyTheories Of History
Book:How Change Happens: A Theory of Philosophy of History, Social Change and Cultural Evolution
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“all societies have certain needs or desires and they meet these needs by utilizing the resources in their environments. The ability to utilize those resources changes as their knowledge of their environment changes. In particular they develop knowledge of the properties of the resources in their environment and how the resources in their environment can be used to meet human needs and desires. Human knowledge of the resources is dynamic; it changes over time. Greater knowledge of the properties of the resources in the environment allows new ways in which human needs can be meet by exploiting resources in the environment. Our knowledge of our environment grows in a particular order; certain knowledge will inevitably be discovered before other knowledge. The order of our discoveries about nature determines the order of technological change and scientific discoveries in human society. The order of our discoveries of both the properties and structure of nature depend upon the relationship between nature and us. We discover these things in an order from that which is closest to us, to that which is further away, or perhaps in an order from the simplest to the more complex. It is the structure of the universe and our place in it, which determines the order in which our knowledge of nature will grow and this determines what technological and scientific options are available to meet our needs and desires.”

Karl MarxTechnological ChangeCultural EvolutionHistoricismHistorical ChangeBig HistoryMacrohistoryMacrosociology
Book:How Change Happens: A Theory of Philosophy of History, Social Change and Cultural Evolution
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“I saw exactly one picture of Marx and one of Lenin in my whole stay, but it's been a long time since ideology had anything to do with it. Not without cunning, Fat Man and Little Boy gradually mutated the whole state belief system into a debased form of Confucianism, in which traditional ancestor worship and respect for order become blended with extreme nationalism and xenophobia. Near the southernmost city of Kaesong, captured by the North in 1951, I was taken to see the beautifully preserved tombs of King and Queen Kongmin. Their significance in F.M.-L.B. cosmology is that they reigned over a then unified Korea in the 14th century, and that they were Confucian and dynastic and left many lavish memorials to themselves. The tombs are built on one hillside, and legend has it that the king sent one of his courtiers to pick the site. Second-guessing his underling, he then climbed the opposite hill. He gave instructions that if the chosen site did not please him he would wave his white handkerchief. On this signal, the courtier was to be slain. The king actually found that the site was ideal. But it was a warm day and he forgetfully mopped his brow with the white handkerchief. On coming downhill he was confronted with the courtier's fresh cadaver and exclaimed, 'Oh dear.' And ever since, my escorts told me, the opposite peak has been known as 'Oh Dear Hill.' I thought this was a perfect illustration of the caprice and cruelty of absolute leadership, and began to phrase a little pun about Kim Jong Il being the 'Oh Dear Leader,' but it died on my lips.”

ReligionCrueltyIdeologyCommunismNationalismKoreaTotalitarianismNorth KoreaXenophobiaFarceConfucianismCapriceAbsolutismKarl MarxKim Jong IlKim Il SungVladimir Lenin14th CenturyQueen NogukTomb Of King KongminVeneration Of The Dead
Book:Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays
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“Revolutionary Islam is linked to the Koran, to be sure, just as Stalinism and Maoism were linked to Das Kapital, but to explain the horrors of China's man-made famines or the Soviet gulag solely by invoking the writings of Karl Marx would be to miss the main point. Messianic violence can attach itself to any creed.”

ReligionFaithIslamRevolutionaryKarl MarxMaoism
Book:Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance
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“Das, was der Begriff des "Kapitalismus" leisten sollte, war sehr viel - mehr sogar als die übrigen "Querschnitte". Man wollte mit ihm nicht bloß das "Wesen" der Erscheinungen darstellen, das jenseits der historischen Einzelerscheinungen liege und um das sich der Nationalökonom hauptsachlich zu bemühen habe. Das wollte man mit den übrigen Querschnitten - wie Stadtwirtschaft oder Hauswirtschaft - auch. Vielmehr sah und sieht man im Kapitalismus zugleich die wirkende Substanz der modernen Wirtschaft. Die einzelnen Erscheinungen - etwa die Zerstörung alter Handwerkszweige, die Bildung von Kartellen, die Ausdehnung des Welthandels, die Umgestaltung der sozialen Struktur der Länder - werden als Taten eines realen Wesens, eben des Kapitalismus, seine Krisis als ein Verfall dieses Wesens angesehen. Marx und seine Schüler haben in besonderem Maße dahin gewirkt, diese Denkform zu verbreiten. Bei vielen Marx-Schülern und bei anderen Schriftstellern wird der Kapitalismus sogar zur personifizierten Substanz oder zur Person. Es wird berichtet, was der Kapitalismus in Europa und sonstwo vollbracht habe, daß er sein Zerstorungswerk auf der Erde fortsetzen werde, daß der Hochkapitalismus in einem eigentümlichen Rhythmus von Aufstieg und Niedergang gelebt habe und daß er ruhiger, gesetzter, vernünftiger werde, wie es seinem zunehmenden Alter entspreche, daß er aber noch immer Vorräte von Waren zerstore oder Arbeiter ausbeute. Das mogen manchmal nur Eigenheiten der sprachlichen Formulierung sein; meist ist es mehr: den Kapitalismus als gestaltende Substanz oder als reales, lebendes Wesen aufzufassen, ist üblich geworden. Die Masse der Menschen liebt es im übrigen, in solchen Kategorien zu denken und ihnen noch eine besondere Gefiihlsbetonung zu verleihen.”

MarxKarl MarxKapitalismusWirtschaftMarxismusöKonomie
Book:Die Grundlagen der Nationalökonomie (Abteilung Staatswissenschaft)
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“Marx, concerning himself with a less remote time ("Critique of the Gotha Program"), declared with equal conviction that the one and only means of correcting offenders (true, he referred to criminals; he never even conceived that his pupils might consider politicals offenders) was not solitary contemplation, not moral soul-searching, not repentance, and not languishing (for all that was superstructures!)—but productive labor. He himself had never taken a pick in hand. To the end of his days he never pushed a wheelbarrow, mined coal, felled timber, and we don't even know how his firewood was split—but he wrote that down on paper, and the paper did not resist.”

HypocrisyMarxismPolitical PrisonersKarl MarxGulag1974Prison LaborFor Profit PrisonsWhat The Archipelago Stands On
Book:The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books III-IV
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“Despite the massive intellectual feat that Marx's Capital represents, the Marxian contribution to economics can be readily summarized as virtually zero. Professional economics as it exists today reflects no indication that Karl Marx ever existed. This neither denies nor denigrates Capital as an intellectual achievement, and perhaps in its way the culmination of classical economics. But the development of modern economics had simply ignored Marx. Even economists who are Marxists typically utilize a set of analytical tools to which Marx contributed nothing, and have recourse to Marx only for ideological, political, or historical purposes. In professional economics, Capital was a detour into a blind alley, however historic it may be as the centerpiece of a worldwide political movement. What is said and done in its name is said and done largely by people who have never read through it, much less followed its labyrinthine reasoning from its arbitrary postulates to its empirically false conclusions. Instead, the massive volumes of Capital have become a quasi-magic touchstone—a source of assurance that somewhere and somehow a genius "proved" capitalism to be wrong and doomed, even if the specifics of this proof are unknown to those who take their certitude from it.”

CapitalismEconomicsMarxismKarl MarxDas KapitalDevastating Criticism
Book:Marxism: Philosophy and Economics
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“The Marxist constituency has remained as narrow as the conception behind it. The Communist Manifesto, written by two bright and articulate young men without responsibility even for their own livelihoods—much less for the social consequences of their vision—has had a special appeal for successive generations of the same kinds of people. The offspring of privilege have dominated the leadership of Marxist movements from the days of Marx and Engels through Lenin, Mao, Castro, Ho Chi Minh, and their lesser counterparts around the world and down through history. The sheer reiteration of the "working class" theme in Marxism has drowned out this plain fact.”

CapitalismEconomicsMarxismKarl MarxDas KapitalDevastating Criticism
Book:Marxism: Philosophy and Economics
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“The key to understanding the course of history is to divide history into two parts. One part follows a predetermined direction and the other part is random and unpredictable. The part that follows a predetermined direction is the part that results from ever increasing human knowledge of the world we live in. The world we live in is structured and understandable and is explained by the laws of physics, chemistry and biology and the known properties of the particles, elements and compounds that make up our world. Our ever increasing knowledge of these laws and properties of matter comes to us in a predetermined and rational order from the easiest discoveries being made first to the more difficult discoveries being made later.”

Karl MarxTechnological ChangeCultural ChangeHistoricismBig HistoryMacro SociologyMacro HistoryMeta History
Author:Rochelle Forrester
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“The order of discovery concerning the materials in the human environment and of the technology that resulted from such discoveries was not haphazard or accidental. The order of discovery followed a logical order and an order that it had to follow. The easier discoveries were made before the harder discoveries; discoveries that were dependent upon prior discoveries being made, were only made after those discoveries; and inventions that were not economic or did not meet human needs were not made until they made economic sense or until a need arose. The course of human social and cultural history is written into the structure of the universe.”

Technological ProgressKarl MarxCultural ChangeHistoricismHistorical ChangeMacrohistoryMetahistoryMacro Sociology
Book:How Change Happens: A Theory of Philosophy of History, Social Change and Cultural Evolution
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“Of this economic Stoicism of the Classical world the exact antithesis is Socialism, meaning thereby not Marx's theory but Frederick William I's Prussian practice which long prededed Marx and will displace him – the socialism […] that comprehends and cares for permanent economic relations, trains the individual in his duty to the whole, and glorifies hard work as an affirmation of Time and Future.”

SocialismKarl MarxNational Socialism OriginFrederick William I
Book:The Decline of the West, Vol 1: Form and Actuality
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