Quotessence
Home / Topics / Marx Quotes

Marx Quotes

Browse 78 quotes about Marx.

Marx Quotes

“I think I have a very good idea why it is that anti-Semitism is so tenacious and so protean and so enduring. Christianity and Islam, theistic though they may claim to be, are both based on the fetishizing of human primates: Jesus in one case and Mohammed in the other. Neither of these figures can be called exactly historical but both have one thing in common even in their quasi-mythical dimension. Both of them were first encountered by the Jews. And the Jews, ravenous as they were for any sign of the long-sought Messiah, were not taken in by either of these two pretenders, or not in large numbers or not for long. If you meet a devout Christian or a believing Muslim, you are meeting someone who would give everything he owned for a personal, face-to-face meeting with the blessed founder or prophet. But in the visage of the Jew, such ardent believers encounter the very figure who did have such a precious moment, and who spurned the opportunity and turned shrugging aside. Do you imagine for a microsecond that such a vile, churlish transgression will ever be forgiven? I myself certainly hope that it will not. The Jews have seen through Jesus and Mohammed. In retrospect, many of them have also seen through the mythical, primitive, and cruel figures of Abraham and Moses. Nearer to our own time, in the bitter combats over the work of Marx and Freud and Einstein, Jewish participants and protagonists have not been the least noticeable. May this always be the case, whenever any human primate sets up, or is set up by others, as a Messiah.”

HumansReligionJesusChristianityAtheismIslamMythMosesMuhammadAbrahamMessiahChristiansTheismJewsEinsteinFreudMuslimsAntisemitismMarxProphets
Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir
Create image

“I'm not fucking fighting to defend women's right to wear the veil, the hijab, the niqab, whatever," she declaimed. "All these young women these days who describe the veil as a signifier of their identity. I tell them they are suffering from what that presently unfashionable philosopher Karl Marx would have called false consciousness. In most of the world the veil is not a free choice. Women are forced into invisibility by men. These girls in the West making their quote-unquote free choices are legitimizing the oppression of their sisters in the parts of the world where the choice is not free. That's what I tell them and they're very shocked. They tell me they find my remarks offensive. I tell them I feel the same way about the veil. It's exhausting. I've become embittered.”

AmericaMarxHijabFalse Consciousness
Book:Quichotte
Create image

“Klingender's book, striking notes both desperate and defiant, is not typical of the long British tradition of Marxist and Marxist-inspired histories of art that would extend into the 1980s. The so-called social history of art interpreted art as the expression of the interests of communities or classes. In the past, art was paid for and shaped by the elite and the powerful. In the future, art would express the vision and will of democratic collectivities. The reality that art delivered was the reality of economic relations. There was no need for any other origin.”

ArtMarxSocial History
Book:A History of Art History
Create image

“Being doped is a pleasure you pay for. There was always opium there for the people -- in the end it tainted their whole faith. If the Church had not always stood so watchfully behind the ruling powers, there would not have been such attacks against everything it stood for -- although of course it may have been competing with them for the first place among the rulers, as in the Middle Ages. Whenever it was a question of keeping the serfs, and then the paid slaves down, the dope-dealers came unfailingly to the help of the oppressors.”

ReligionChristianityBorn AgainMarxFundementalism
Author:Ernst Bloch
Create image

“Kessler depicts his developing intimacy with a handful of dairy goats and offers an enviable glimpse of the pastoral good life. Yet he also cautions, "Wherever the notion of paradise exists, so does the idea that it was lost. Paradise is always in the past." The title Goat Song is a literal rendering of the Greek word traghoudhia, tragedy. Reading it, I was reminded of Leo Marx's analysis of Thoreau's Walden. In The Machine in the Garden, Marx names Thoreau a tragic, if complex pastoralist. After failing to make an agrarian living raising beans for commercial trade (although his intent was always more allegorical than pecuniary), Thoreau ends Walden by replacing the pastoral idea where it originated: in literature. Paradise, Marx concludes, is not ultimately to be found at Walden Pond; it is to be found in the pages of Walden.”

LostNatureParadiseMarxThoreauWaldenPastoralWalden PondPastoralist
Book:Life of Cheese: Crafting Food and Value in America (California Studies in Food and Culture)
Create image

“Agama, sebaliknya tidak mengklaim untuk jadi petunjuk praktis pengubah dunia. Semangat agama yang paling dasar menimbang hidup sebagai yang masih terdiri dari misteri, memang ada orang agama yang seperti kaum Marxis, menyombong bahwa “segala hal sudah ada jawabnya pada kami”; tapi pernyataan itu menantang makna doa—dan mematikan ruh religius itu sendiri. Sebab dalam doa, kita tahu, kita hanya debu”

HidupDuniaMarxAgamaDoaDiaDebuMisteriPraktis
Author:Goenawan Mohamad
Create image

“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)
Create image

“In diesen »Randglossen zum Programm der deutschen Arbeiterpartei« (so Marx' eigentlicher Titel dieser Schrift) spricht er von einer kommunistischen Gesellschaft, von einer Gesellschaft, in der das Privateigentum abgeschafft ist. Das meint nicht den persönlichen Besitz von geliebten Dingen, sondern das Eigentum an Produktionsmitteln in einer Produktionsweise, in der unabhängig voneinander betriebene und miteinander konkurrierende Privatarbeiten zur maß- und endlosen Kapitalvermehrung um ihrer selbst Willen und damit zur Produktivitätssteigerung gezwungen sind.”

MarxKommunismusBesitzen
Book:Die unsichtbare Hand des Plans: Koordination und Kalkül im digitalen Kapitalismus
Create image

“تغيَّرت الصورة قليلاً في الفترة من 1932 – 1944 إذ هاجر 265 ألف يهودي، وهو أعلى رقم بلغته أفواج المهاجرين أثناء الانتداب. وهذا لا يعود إلى العروق الأزلية إياها، وإنما إلى وصول هتلر إلى السلطة، ولذا قال أحدهم إنه إذا كان هرتزل هو ماركس الحركة الصهيونية، أي منظّرها، فإن هتلر هو لينين الصهيونية، أي من وضعها موضع التنفيذ.”

HitlerZionismMarxPolitical IdeologyLeninBritish MandateHerzl
Book:انهيار إسرائيل من الداخل
Create image

“Gli dobbiamo [a Marx] quest'idea che fa la disperazione del nostro tempo – ma qui la disperazione vale più di qualsiasi speranza – che quando il lavoro è avvilimento, non è vita, sebbene occupi tutto il tempo della vita. Chi, nonostante le pretese di questa società, può dormirvi in pace, sapendo ormai che essa trae i suoi mediocri piaceri dal lavoro di milioni d'anime morte? Esigendo per il lavoratore la vera ricchezza, che non è quella del denaro, ma quella degli svaghi o della creazione, egli ha rivendicato, nonostante le apparenze, la qualità dell'uomo. Facendo questo, lo possiamo affermare con forza, non ha voluto la degradazione supplementare che è stata, in suo nome, imposta all'uomo. Una frase, per una volta chiara e tagliente, rifiuta per sempre ai suoi discepoli trionfanti la grandezza e l'umanità che gli erano proprie. “Un fine che ha bisogno di mezzi ingiusti, non è un fine giusto”.”

MarxismMarxMarxismo
Book:The Rebel
Create image

“Egli [Marx] ha posto il lavoro, il suo avvilimento ingiusto e la sua dignità profonda, al centro della sua riflessione. È insorto contro la riduzione del lavoro a merce e del lavoratore a cosa. Ha ricordato ai privilegiati che i loro privilegi non erano divini, né la proprietà un diritto eterno. Ha dato inquietudine alla coscienza di coloro che non avevano il diritto di serbarla tranquilla e ha denunciato, con profondità senza pari, una classe il cui delitto sta non tanto nell'aver avuto il potere, quanto nell'averne usato ai fini di una società mediocre e senza vera nobiltà.”

MarxismMarxMarxismo
Book:The Rebel
Create image

“Bakunin's warnings about the "Red bureaucracy" that would institute "the worst of all despotic governments" were long before Lenin, and were directed against the followers of Mr. Marx. There were, in fact, followers of many different kinds; Pannekoek, Luxemburg, Mattick and others are very far from Lenin, and their views often converge with elements of anarcho-syndicaIism. Korsch and others wrote sympathetically of the anarchist revolution in Spain, in fact. There are continuities from Marx to Lenin, but there are also continuities to Marxists who were harshly critical of Lenin and Bolshevism. Teodor Shanin's work in the past years on Marx's later attitudes towards peasant revolution is also relevant here. I'm far from being a Marx scholar, and wouldn't venture any serious judgement on which of these continuities reflects the "real Marx," if there even can be an answer to that question.”

SocialismMarxismMarxistMarxLeninLeninismMarxist Leninism
Book:Chomsky On Anarchism
Create image

“People spoke to foreigners with an averted gaze, and everybody seemed to know somebody who had just vanished. The rumors of what had happened to them were fantastic and bizarre though, as it turned out, they were only an understatement of the real thing. Before going to see General Videla […], I went to […] check in with Los Madres: the black-draped mothers who paraded, every week, with pictures of their missing loved ones in the Plaza Mayo. (‘Todo mi familia!’ as one elderly lady kept telling me imploringly, as she flourished their photographs. ‘Todo mi familia!’) From these and from other relatives and friends I got a line of questioning to put to the general. I would be told by him, they forewarned me, that people ‘disappeared’ all the time, either because of traffic accidents and family quarrels or, in the dire civil-war circumstances of Argentina, because of the wish to drop out of a gang and the need to avoid one’s former associates. But this was a cover story. Most of those who disappeared were openly taken away in the unmarked Ford Falcon cars of the Buenos Aires military police. I should inquire of the general what precisely had happened to Claudia Inez Grumberg, a paraplegic who was unable to move on her own but who had last been seen in the hands of his ever-vigilant armed forces [….] I possess a picture of the encounter that still makes me want to spew: there stands the killer and torturer and rape-profiteer, as if to illustrate some seminar on the banality of evil. Bony-thin and mediocre in appearance, with a scrubby moustache, he looks for all the world like a cretin impersonating a toothbrush. I am gripping his hand in a much too unctuous manner and smiling as if genuinely delighted at the introduction. Aching to expunge this humiliation, I waited while he went almost pedantically through the predicted script, waving away the rumored but doubtless regrettable dematerializations that were said to be afflicting his fellow Argentines. And then I asked him about Senorita Grumberg. He replied that if what I had said was true, then I should remember that ‘terrorism is not just killing with a bomb, but activating ideas. Maybe that’s why she’s detained.’ I expressed astonishment at this reply and, evidently thinking that I hadn’t understood him the first time, Videla enlarged on the theme. ‘We consider it a great crime to work against the Western and Christian style of life: it is not just the bomber but the ideologist who is the danger.’ Behind him, I could see one or two of his brighter staff officers looking at me with stark hostility as they realized that the general—El Presidente—had made a mistake by speaking so candidly. […] In response to a follow-up question, Videla crassly denied—‘rotondamente’: ‘roundly’ denied—holding Jacobo Timerman ‘as either a journalist or a Jew.’ While we were having this surreal exchange, here is what Timerman was being told by his taunting tormentors: Argentina has three main enemies: Karl Marx, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of society; Sigmund Freud, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of the family; and Albert Einstein, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of time and space. […] We later discovered what happened to the majority of those who had been held and tortured in the secret prisons of the regime. According to a Navy captain named Adolfo Scilingo, who published a book of confessions, these broken victims were often destroyed as ‘evidence’ by being flown out way over the wastes of the South Atlantic and flung from airplanes into the freezing water below. Imagine the fun element when there’s the surprise bonus of a Jewish female prisoner in a wheelchair to be disposed of… we slide open the door and get ready to roll her and then it’s one, two, three… go!”

ChristianityArgentinaEinsteinFreudMarxJorge Rafael VidelaDeath SquadsJacobo Timerman
Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir
Create image

“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
Create image

“It is the fate of great achievements, born from a way of life that sets truth before security, to be gobbled up by you and excreted in the form of shit. For centuries great, brave, lonely men have been telling you what to do. Time and again you have corrupted, diminished and demolished their teachings; time and again you have been captivated by their weakest points, taken not the great truth, but some trifling error as your guiding principal. This, little man, is what you have done with Christianity, with the doctrine of sovereign people, with socialism, with everything you touch. Why, you ask, do you do this? I don't believe you really want an answer. When you hear the truth you'll cry bloody murder, or commit it. … You had your choice between soaring to superhuman heights with Nietzsche and sinking into subhuman depths with Hitler. You shouted Heil! Heil! and chose the subhuman. You had the choice between Lenin's truly democratic constitution and Stalin's dictatorship. You chose Stalin's dictatorship. You had your choice between Freud's elucidation of the sexual core of your psychic disorders and his theory of cultural adaptation. You dropped the theory of sexuality and chose his theory of cultural adaptation, which left you hanging in mid-air. You had your choice between Jesus and his majestic simplicity and Paul with his celibacy for priests and life-long compulsory marriage for yourself. You chose the celibacy and compulsory marriage and forgot the simplicity of Jesus' mother, who bore her child for love and love alone. You had your choice between Marx's insight into the productivity of your living labor power, which alone creates the value of commodities and the idea of the state. You forgot the living energy of your labor and chose the idea of the state. In the French Revolution, you had your choice between the cruel Robespierre and the great Danton. You chose cruelty and sent greatness and goodness to the guillotine. In Germany you had your choice between Goring and Himmler on the one hand and Liebknecht, Landau, and Muhsam on the other. You made Himmler your police chief and murdered your great friends. You had your choice between Julius Streicher and Walter Rathenau. You murdered Rathenau. You had your choice between Lodge and Wilson. You murdered Wilson. You had your choice between the cruel Inquisition and Galileo's truth. You tortured and humiliated the great Galileo, from whose inventions you are still benefiting, and now, in the twentieth century, you have brought the methods of the Inquisition to a new flowering. … Every one of your acts of smallness and meanness throws light on the boundless wretchedness of the human animal. 'Why so tragic?' you ask. 'Do you feel responsible for all evil?' With remarks like that you condemn yourself. If, little man among millions, you were to shoulder the barest fraction of your responsibility, the world would be a very different place. Your great friends wouldn't perish, struck down by your smallness.”

JesusFreedomResponsibilityMarriageChristianityCorruptionSocialismDictatorshipHitlerFrench RevolutionNietzscheCelibacyInquisitionFreudMarxStalinLeninGalileoSubhuman
Book:Listen, Little Man!
Create image