Background Image

...

Money Appears As Measure (in Homer, E.g. Oxen) Earlier Than As Medium Of Exchange, Because In Barter Each Commodity Is Still Its Own Medium Of Exchange. But It Cannot Be Its Own Or Its Own Standard Of Comparison.

-Karl Marx

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Money Appears As Measure

Karl Marx

...

Money Appears As Measure (in Homer, E.g. Oxen) Earlier Than As Medium Of Exchange, Because In Barter Each Commodity Is Still Its Own Medium Of Exchange. But It Cannot Be Its Own Or Its Own Standard Of Comparison.

Views: 11

Topic

More From Karl Marx

Music Is The Mirror Of Reality.

If One Wants To Be An Ox One Can Easily Turn One's Back On Hum Suffering And Look After One's Own Skin.

The Rule Of The Bourgeois Democrats [in Pre-federal Germany], From The Very First, Will Carry Within It The Seeds Of Its Own Destruction

The Fact That Labour Is External To The Worker, I.e., It Does Not Belong To His Intrinsic Nature; That In His Work, Therefore He Does Not Affirm Himself But Denies Himself, Does Not Feel Content But Unhappy, Does Not Develop Freely His Physical And Mental Energy But Mortifies His Body And His Mind. The Worker Therefore Only Feels Himself Outside His Work, And In His Work Feels Outside Himself.

The Leading Princes Are The Most Servile Tools Of English Despotism. . . . The Native Princes Are The Stronghold Of The Present Abominable English System.

In Bourgeois Society Capital Is Independent And Has Individuality, While The Living Person Is Dependent And Has No Individuality.

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.

Democracy Is The Road To Socialism.

The Traditions Of The Dead Generations Weigh Like A Nightmare Upon The Living.

In Proportion As Capital Accumulates, The Lot Of The Laborer, Be His Payment High Or Low, Must Grow Worse.

In Every Stockjobbing Swindle Every One Knows That Some Time Or Other The Crash Must Come, But Every One Hopes That It May Fall On The Head Of His Neighbor, After He Himself Has Caught The Shower Of Gold And Placed It In Safety.

It Appears Then, That Capitalist Production Comprises Conditions Independent Of Good Or Bad Will, Conditions Which Permit The Working-class To Enjoy That Relative Prosperity Only Momentarily, And At That Always Only As The Harbinger Of A Coming Crisis.

Darwin's Book Is Very Important And Serves Me As A Basis In Natural Science For The Class Struggle In History. One Has To Put Up With The Crude English Method Of Development, Of Course. Despite All Deficiencies Not Only Is The Death-blow Dealt Here For The First Time To 'teleology' In The Natural Sciences, But Their Rational Meaning Is Empirically Explained.

There Are, Besides, Eternal Truths, Such As Freedom, , Etc., That Are Common To All States Of Society. But Communism Abolishes Eternal Truths, It Abolishes All Religion, And All Morality, Instead Of Constituting Them On A New Basis; It Therefore Acts In Contradiction To All Past Historical Experience.

A Commodity Appears At First Sight An Extremely Obvious, Trivial Thing. But Its Analysis Brings Out That It Is A Very Strange Thing, Abounding In Metaphysical Subtleties And Theological Niceties.

So Far No Chemist Has Ever Discovered Exchange-value Either In A Pearl Or A Diamond.

From Each According To His Abilities, To Each According To His Needs.

Crack-brained Meddling By The Authorities [can] Aggravate An Existing Crisis.

Constant Labor Of One Uniform Kind Destroys The Intensity And Flow Of A Man's Animal Spirits, Which Find Recreation And Delight In Mere Change Of Activity.

Gold Is Now Money With Reference To All Other Commodities Only Because It Was Previously, With Reference To Them, A Simple Commodity.

The State Is The Executive Committee Of The Ruling Class.

The Bourgeoisie, Wherever It Has Got The Upper Hand, Has Put An End To All Feudal, Patriarchal, Idyllic Relations. It Has Pitilessly Torn Asunder The Motley Of Ties That Bound Man To His "natural Superiors," And Left Remaining No Other Nexus Between Man And Man Than Naked Self-interest, Than Callous "cash Payment.

...it Is All The More Clear What We Have To Accomplish At Present: I Am Referring To Ruthless Criticism Of All That Exists, Ruthless Both In The Sense Of Not Being Afraid Of The Results It Arrives At And In The Sense Of Being Just As Little Afraid Of Conflict With The Powers That Be.

Parliamentary Cretinism: That Peculiar Malady Which Since 1848 Has Raged All Over The Continent, Which Holds Those Infected By It Fast In An Imaginary World And Robs Them Of All Sense, All Memory, All Understanding Of The Rude External World.

The More Of Himself Man Attributes To God, The Less He Has Left In Himself.

Men Make Their Own History But Not In Circumstances Of Their Own Choosing.

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.

[t]he Task Of Abolishing The Essence Of Jewry Is In Truth The Task Of Abolishing Jewry In Civil Society, Abolishing The Inhumanity Of Today's Practice Of Life, The Summit Of Which Is The Money System.

In Capitalist Society Spare Time Is Acquired For One Class By Converting The Whole Life-time Of The Masses Into Labour-time.

Ideas Do Not Exist Separately From Language.

The Most Interesting Acquaintanceship I Have Struck Up Here Is That Of Colonel Lapinski. He Is Without Doubt The Cleverest Pole - Besides Being An Homme D'action [man Of Action] - That I Have Ever Met. His Sympathies Are All On The German Side, Though In Manners And Speech He Is Also A Frenchman. He Cares Nothing For The Struggle Of Nationalities And Only Knows The Racial Struggle. He Hates All Orientals, Among Whom He Numbers Russians Turks, Greeks, Armenians, Etc., With Equal Impartiality.... His Aim Now Is To Raise A German Legion In London.

Beauty Is The Main Positive Form Of The Aesthetic Assimilation Of Reality, In Which Aesthetic Ideal Finds It Direct Expression.

The Essence Of The Free Press Is The Reliable, Reasonable And Moral Nature Of Freedom.

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.

History Does Nothing; It Does Not Possess Immense Riches, It Does Not Fight Battles. It Is Men, Real, Living, Who Do All This.

If This Labourer Were In Possession Of His Own Means Of Production, And Was Satisfied To Live As A Labourer, He Need Not Work Beyond Beyond The Time Necessary For The Reproduction Of His Means Of Subsistence, Say 8 Hours A Day.

In Short, Competition Has To Shoulder The Responsibility Of Explaining All The Meaningless Ideas Of The Economists, Whereas It Should Rather Be The Economists Who Explain Competition.

The Need Of A Constantly Expanding Market For Its Products Chases The Bourgeoisie Over The Entire Surface Of The Globe. It Must Nestle Everywhere, Settle Everywhere, Establish Connections Everywhere. The Bourgeoisie Has, Through Its Exploitation Of The World Market, Given A Cosmopolitan Character To Production And Consumption In Every Country. To The Great Chagrin Of Reactionaries, It Has Drawn From Under The Feet Of Industry The National Ground On Which It Stood.

A Spectre Is Haunting Europe-the Spectre Of Communism. All The Powers Of Old Europe Have Entered Into Holy Alliance To Exorcise This Spectre: Pope And Czar, Metternich And Guizot, French Radicals And German Police-spies. Where Is The Party In Opposition That Has Not Been Decried As Communistic By Its Opponents In Power? Where The Opposition That Has Not Hurled Back The Branding Reproach Of Communism, Against The More Advanced Opposition Parties, As Well As Against Its Reactionary Adversaries?

Taxes Are The Source Of Life For The Bureaucracy, The Army And The Court, In Short, For The Whole Apparatus Of The Executive Power. Strong Government And Heavy Taxes Are Identical.

Religious Distress Is At The Same Time The Expression Of The Real Distress And Also The Protest Against Real Distress. Religion Is The Sigh Of The Oppressed Creature, The Heart Of A Heartless World, Just As It Is The Spirit Of The Spiritless Condition. It Is The Opium Of The People.

Necessity Is Blind Until It Becomes Conscious. Freedom Is The Consciousness Of Necessity.

Landlords, Like All Other Men, Love To Reap Where They Never Sowed.

Constant Revolutionizing Of Production, Uninterrupted Disturbance Of All Social Conditions, Everlasting Uncertainty And Agitation Distinguish The Bourgeosis Epoch From All Earlier Ones.

Communist Manifesto

The More Powerful The Work, The More Powerless The Worker.

Nothing Is Easier Than To Give Christian Asceticism A Socialist Tinge.

The Need Of A Constantly Expanding Market For Its Products Chases The Bourgeoisie Over The Entire Surface Of The Globe.

Communist Manifesto

Hitherto, Every Form Of Society Has Been Based ... On The Antagonism Of Oppressing And Oppressed Classes.

Consumption Is Also Immediately Production, Just As In Nature The Consumption Of The Elements And Chemical Substances Is The Production Of The Plant.

The State Is Based On This Contradiction. It Is Based On The Contradiction Between Public And Private Life, Between Universal And Particular Interests. For This Reason, The State Must Confine Itself To Formal, Negative Activities.

Change The Economic Base And You Will Change Human Beings.

The Materialist Doctrine That Men Are Products Of Circumstances And Upbringing, And That, Therefore, Changed Men Are Products Of Other Circumstances And Changed Upbrinding, Forgets That It Is Men That Change Circumstances And That The Educator Himself Needs Educating.

Reason Has Always Existed, But Not Always In A Reasonable Form.

Communist Manifesto

All Our Inventions Have Endowed Material Forces With Intellectual Life, And Degraded Human Life Into A Material Force.

Once The Inner Connection Is Grasped, All Theoretical Belief In The Permanent Necessity Of Existing Conditions Collapses Before Their Collapse In Practice -- Letter To Ludwig Kugelmann (july 11, 1868)

In Order To Arouse Sympathy, The Aristocracy Was Obliged To Lose Sight, Apparently, Of Its Own Interests, And To Formulate Its Indictment Against The Bourgeoisie In The Interest Of The Exploited Working Class Alone. Thus, The Aristocracy Took Their Revenge By Singing Lampoons On Their New Masters And Whispering In His Ears Sinister Prophesies Of Coming Catastrophe.

Is It A Misfortune That Magnificent California Was Seized From The Lazy Mexicans Who Did Not Know What To Do With It.

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.

There Is No Royal Road To Science, And Only Those Who Do Not Dread The Fatiguing Climb Of Its Steep Paths Have A Chance Of Gaining Its Luminous Summits. (preface To The French Edition).

Titles Of Property, For Instance Railway Shares, May Change Hands Every Day, And Their Owner May Make A Profit By Their Sale Even In Foreign Countries, So That Titles To Property Are Exportable, Although The Railway Itself Is Not.

In Reality, The Labourer Belongs To Capital Before He Has Sold Himself To Capital.

The Human Being Is In The Most Literal Sense A Political Animal, Not Merely A Gregarious Animal, But An Animal Which Can Individuate Itself Only In The Midst Of Society.

In All Of Human History No Country Or No People Have Suffered Such Terrible Slavery, Conquest And Foreign Oppression And No Country And No People Have Struggled So Strenuously For Their Emancipation Than Sicily And The Sicilians.

Price, Taken By Itself, Is Nothing But The Monetary Expression Of Value.

Anyone Wanting A New House Picks One From Among Those Built On Speculation Or Still In Process Of Construction. The Builder No Longer Works For His Customers But For The Market.

The Imaginary Flowers Of Religion Adorn Man's Chains. Man Must Throw Off The Flowers, And Also The Chains.

The Meaning Of Peace Is The Absence Of Opposition To Socialism.

The First Premise Of All Human History Is, Of Course, The Existence Of Living Human Individuals. Thus The First Fact To Be Established Is The Physical Organisation Of These Individuals And Their Consequent Relation To The Rest Of Nature.

When People Speak Of Ideas That Revolutionize Society, They Do But Express The Fact That Within The Old Society, The Elements Of A New One Have Been Created, And That The Dissolution Of The Old Ideas Keeps Even Pace With The Dissolution Of The Old Conditions Of Existence.

The Social Principles Of Christianity Preach Cowardice, Self-contempt, Abasement, Submission, Humility, In A Word All The Qualities Of The Canaille

In Communist Society, Where Nobody Has One Exclusive Sphere Of Activity But Each Can Become Accomplished In Any Branch He Wishes, Society Regulates The General Production And Thus Makes It Possible For Me To Do One Thing Today And Another Tomorrow, To Hunt In The Morning, Fish In The Afternoon, Rear Cattle In The Evening, Criticize After Dinner, Just As I Have A Mind, Without Ever Becoming Hunter, Fisherman, Shepherd Or Critic.

Capital Brings Forth Living Offspring, Or At The Least, Lays The Golden Eggs.

The Method Of Production Of The Material Things Of Life Generally Determines The Social, Political And Spiritual Currents Of Life.

When The Sufferers Learn To Think, Then The Thinkers Will Learn To Suffer.

Perseus Wore A Magic Cap That The Monsters He Hunted Down Might Not See Him. We Draw The Magic Cap Down Over Eyes And Ears As A Make-believe That There Are No Monsters.

Greek Philosophy Seems To Have Met With Something With Which A Good Tragedy Is Not Supposed To Meet, Namely, A Dull Ending.

You Will Have To Go Through 15, 20, 50 Years Of Civil Wars And National Struggles Not Only To Bring About A Change In Society But Also To Change Yourselves, And Prepare Yourselves For The Exercise Of Political Power.

Communism Begins Where Atheism Begins.

Every One Knows That There Are No Real Forests In England.the Deer In The Parks Of The Great Are Demurely Domestic Cattle, Fat As London Alderman.

It Is Absolutely Impossible To Transcend The Laws Of Nature. What Can Change In Historically Different Circumstances Is Only The Form In Which These Laws Expose Themselves.

Hegel Remarks Somewhere That All Great, World-historical Facts And Personages Occur, As It Were, Twice. He Has Forgotten To Add: The First Time As Tragedy, The Second As Farce.

The Bureaucracy Is A Circle From Which One Cannot Escape. Its Hierarchy Is A Hierarchy Of Knowledge. The Top Entrusts The Understanding Of Detail To The Lower Levels, Whilst The Lower Levels Credit The Top With Understanding Of The General, And So All Are Mutually Deceived.

In The United States Of North America, Every Independent Movement Of The Workers Was Paralysed So Long As Slavery Disfigured A Part Of The Republic. Labour Cannot Emancipate Itself In The White Skin Where In The Black It Is Branded.

We Know Only A Single Science, The Science Of History. History Can Be Contemplated From Two Sides, It Can Be Divided Into The History Of Nature And The History Of Mankind. However, The Two Sides Are Not To Be Divided Off; As Long As Men Exist The History Of Nature And The History Of Men Are Mutually Conditioned.

Religion Is The Sigh Of The Oppressed Creature, The Heart Of A Heartless World, And The Soul Of Soulless Conditions. It Is The Opium Of The People.

The Will Of The Capitalist Is Certainly To Take As Much As Possible. What We Have To Do Is Not To Talk About His Will, But To Enquire About His Power, The Limits Of That Power, And The Character Of Those Limits.

In The Bureaucracy, The Identity Of State Interest And Particular Private Aim Is Established In Such A Way That The State Interest Becomes A Particular Private Aim Over Against Other Private Aims.

Surplus-value And The Rate Of Surplus-value Are... The Invisible Essence To Be Investigated, Whereas The Rate Of Profit And Hence The Form Of Surplus-value As Profit Are Visible Surface Phenomena

As In Private Life One Differentiates Between What A Man Thinks And Says Of Himself And What He Really Is And Does, So In Historical Struggles One Must Still More Distinguish The Language And The Imaginary Aspirations Of Parties From Their Real Organism And Their Real Interests, Their Conception Of Themselves From Their Reality.

We Should Not Say That One Man's Hour Is Worth Another Man's Hour, But Rather That One Man During An Hour Is Worth Just As Much As Another Man During An Hour. Time Is Everything, Man Is Nothing: He Is At The Most Time's Carcass.

In A Word, The Free Trade System Hastens The Social Revolution. It Is In This Revolutionary Sense Alone, Gentlemen, That I Vote In Favor Of Free Trade.

Money Does Not Arise By Convention, Any More Than The State Does. It Arises Out Of Exchange, And Arises Naturally Out Of Exchange; It Is A Product Of The Same.

The Social Revolution...cannot Draw Its Poetry From The Past, But Only From The Future. It Cannot Begin With Itself Before It Has Stripped Itself Of All Superstitions Concerning The Past.

The Capitalist Knows That All Commodities, However Scurvy They May Look, Or However Badly They May Smell, Are In Faith And In Truth Money, Inwardly Circumcised Jews, And What Is More, A Wonderful Means Whereby Out Of Money To Make More Money.

As, In Religion, Man Is Governed By The Products Of His Own Brain, So In Capitalistic Production, He Is Governed By The Products Of His Own Hand.

Society Is A Sort Of Organism On The Growth Of Which Conscious Efforts Can Exercise Little Effect.

Social Reforms Are Never Carried Out By The Weakness Of The Strong; But Always By The Strength Of The Weak.

The Less You Eat, Drink And Read Books; The Less You Go To The Theatre, The Dance Hall, The Public House; The Less You Think, Love, Theorize, Sing, Paint, Fence, Etc., The More You Save-the Greater Becomes Your Treasure Which Neither Moths Nor Dust Will Devour-your Capital. The Less You Are, The More You Have; The Less You Express Your Own Life, The Greater Is Your Alienated Life-the Greater Is The Store Of Your Estranged Being.

The Values Of Commodities Are Directly As The Times Of Labor Employed In Their Production, And Are Inversely As The Productive Powers Of The Labor Employed.

If Anything Is Certain, It Is That I Myself Am Not A Marxist.

Communist Manifesto

Language Is As Old As Consciousness, Language Is Practical, Real Consciousness That Exists For Other Men As Well, And Only Therefore Does It Also Exist For Me; Language, Like Consciousness, Only Arises From The Need, The Necessity, Of Intercourse With Other Men.

May The Devil Take These Peoples Movements, Especially When They Are 'peaceful'.

Just As The Savage Must Wrestle With Nature To Satisfy His Wants, To Maintain And Reproduce Life, So Must Civilised Man, And He Must Do So In All Social Formations And Under All Possible Modes Of Production.

For The Bureaucrat, The World Is A Mere Object To Be Manipulated By Him.

The Economic Concept Of Value Does Not Occur In Antiquity .

History Calls Those Men The Greatest Who Have Ennobled Themselves By Working For The Common Good; Experience Acclaims As Happiest The Man Who Has Made The Greatest Number Of People Happy.

In The Eyes Of Dialectical Philosophy, Nothing Is Established For All Times, Nothing Is Absolute Or Sacred.

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.

Keep People From Their History, And They Are Easily Controlled.

Philosophy Is To Science As Masturbation Is To Sex.

Life Is Not Determined By Consciousness, But Consciousness By Life.

Labour Is ... Not The Only Source Of Material Wealth, I.e, Of The Use-values It Produces. As William Petty Says, Labour Is The Father Of Material Wealth, The Earth Is Its Mother.

Communism... Is The Genuine Resolution Of The Antagonism Between Man And Nature And Between Man And Man; It Is The True Resolution Of The Conflict Between Existence And Essence, Objectification And Self-affirmation, Freedom And Necessity, Individual And Species. It Is The Riddle Of History Solved And Knows Itself As The Solution.

Follow Your Own Path, No Matter What People Say.

There Are No Bigger Donkeys Than These Workers.... Look At Our 'craftsmen'; Sad That World History Should Be Be Made With Such People.

When The Train Of History Hits A Curve, The Intellectuals Fall Off.

No Sooner Is The Exploitation Of The Labourer By The Manufacturer, So Far, At An End, That He Receives His Wages In Cash, Than He Is Set Upon By The Other Portions Of The Bourgeoisie, The Landlord, The Shopkeeper, The Pawnbroker, Etc.

As A Beast Of Toil An Ox Is Fixed Capital. If He Is Eaten, He No Longer Functions As An Instrument Of Labour, Nor As Fixed Capital Either.

There Must Be Something Rotten In The Very Core Of A Social System Which Increases Its Wealth Without Diminishing Its Misery

Force Is The Midwife Of Every Old Society Pregnant With A New One.

A Man Cannot Become A Child Again, Or He Becomes Childish.

The Production Of Too Many Useful Things Results In Too Many Useless People.

Work Is External To The Worker. . . . It Is Not Part Of His Nature; Consequently He Does Not Fulfill Himself In His Work But Denies Himself. . . . The Worker Therefore Feels Himself At Home Only During His Leisure Time, Whereas At Work He Feels Homeless.

Bourgeois Society Ought Long Ago To Have Gone To The Dogs Through Sheer Idleness; For Those Of Its Members Who Work, Acquire Nothing, And Those Who Acquire Anything, Do Not Work.

The Aggregate Capital Appears As The Capital Stock Of All Individual Capitalists Combined. This Joint Stock Company Has In Common With Many Other Stock Companies That Everyone Knows What He Puts In, But Not What He Will Get Out Of It.

The Discovery Of Gold And Silver In America, The Extirpation, Enslavement And Entombment In Mines Of The Aboriginal Population, The Turning Of Africa Into A Warren For The Commercial Hunting Of Black-skins, Signalised The Rosy Dawn Of The Era Of Capitalist Production.

Accumulation Of Wealth At One Pole Is At The Same Time Accumulation Of Misery, Agony Of Toil, Slavery, Ignorance, Brutality, Mental Degradation, At The Opposite Pole

Religion Is The Opium Of The People Translated From The German Die Religion ... Ist Das Opium Des Volkessometimes Misquoted As Opiate Of The People.

Surround Yourself With People Who Make You Happy. People Who Make You Laugh, Who Help You When You’re In Need. People Who Genuinely Care. They Are The Ones Worth Keeping In Your Life. Everyone Else Is Just Passing Through.

I Am A Machine, Condemned To Devour Them And Then, Throw Them, In A Changed Form, On The Dunghill Of History.

The Criticism Of Religion Is The Beginning Of All Criticism

Criticism Of Religion

An Object Of Art Creates A Public Capable Of Finding Pleasure In Its Beauty. Production, Therefore, Not Only Produces An Object For The Subject, But Also A Subject For The Object.

What The Bourgeoisie Therefore Produces, Above All, Are Its Own Grave-diggers. Its Fall And The Victory Of The Proletariat Are Equally Inevitable.

There Is Only One Effective Antidote For Mental Suffering And That Is Physical Pain.

If Money Is The Bond Binding Me To Human Life, Binding Society To Me, Binding Me And Nature And Man, Is Not Money The Bond Of All Bonds? Can It Not Dissolve And Bind All Ties? Is It Not, Therefore, The Universal Agent Of Separation?

Religion Is The Opium Of The Masses.

The Capitalist Mode Of Production And Accumulation, And Therefore Capitalist Private Property, Have For Their Fundamental Condition The Annihilation Of Self-earned Private Property: In Other Words, The Expropriation Of The Labourer.

Experience Praises The Most Happy The One Who Made The Most People Happy.

...the First Step In The Revolution By The Working Class, Is To Raise The Proletariat To The Position Of Ruling Class, To Win The Battle For Democracy.

Art Is Always And Everywhere The Secret Confession, And At The Same Time The Immortal Movement Of Its Time.

The Democratic Concept Of Man Is False, Because It Is Christian. The Democratic Concept Holds That . . . Each Man Is A Sovereign Being. This Is The Illusion, Dream, And Postulate Of Christianity.

The Writer May Very Well Serve A Movement Of History As Its Mouthpiece, But He Cannot Of Course Create It.

No Production Without A Need. But Consumption Reproduces The Need.

Capital Is Dead Labor, Which, Vampire-like, Lives Only By Sucking Living Labor, And Lives The More, The More Labor It Sucks.

Division Of Labor

All History Is Nothing But A Continuous Transformation Of Human Nature.

Last Words Are For Those Fools Who Believe They Have Not Yet Said Enough.

All Forms Of The State Have Democracy For Their Truth, And For That Reason Are False To The Extent That They Are Not Democracy

One Of The Most Difficult Tasks Confronting Philosophers Is To Descend From The World Of Thought To The Actual World.

There Is Something In Human History Like Retribution; And It Is A Rule Of Historical Retribution That Its Instrument Be Forged Not By The Offended, But By The Offender Himself. The First Blow Dealt To The French Monarchy Proceeded From The Nobility, Not From The Peasants. The Indian Revolt Does Not Commence With The Ryots, Tortured, Dishonoured And Stripped Naked By The British, But With The Sepoys, Clad, Fed And Petted, Fatted And Pampered By Them.

Capitalist Production, Therefore, Develops Technology, And The Combining Together Of Various Processes Into A Social Whole, Only By Sapping The Original Sources Of All Wealth - The Soil And The Labourer.

The Theory Of Communism May Be Summed Up In One Sentence: Abolish All Private Property.

The Monopoly Of Capital Becomes A Fetter Upon The Mode Of Production, Which Has Sprung Up And Flourished Along With, And Under It. Centralisation Of The Means Of Production And Socialisation Of Labour At Last Reach A Point Where They Become Incompatible With There Capitalist Integument. This Integument Is Burst Asunder. The Knell Of Capitalist Private Property Sounds. The Expropriators Are Expropriated.

All Freed, Fast-frozen Relations, With Their Train Of Ancient And Venerable Prejudices And Opinions, Are Swept Away, All New-formed Ones Become Antiquated Before They Can Ossify. All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, All That Is Holy Is Profaned, And Man Is At Last Compelled To Face With Sober Senses, His Real Conditions Of Life, And His Relations With His Kind.

From The Outset, The Christian Was The Theorizing Jew, The Jew Is Therefore The Practical Christian, And The Practical Christian Has Become A Jew Again.

Hence Money May Be Dirt, Although Dirt Is Not Money.

The Education Of All Children, From The Moment That They Can Get Along Without A Mother's Care, Shall Be In State Institutions.

History Does Nothing, Possesses No Enormous Wealth, Fights No Battles. It Is Rather Man, The Real, Living Man, Who Does Everything, Possesses, Fights. It Is Not History, As If She Were A Person Apart, Who Uses Men As A Means To Work Out Her Purposes, But History Itself Is Nothing But The Activity Of Men Pursuing Their Purposes.

The Rich Will Do Anything For The Poor But Get Off Their Backs.

If We Have Chosen The Position In Life In Which We Can Most Of All Work For Mankind, No Burdens Can Bow Us Down, Because They Are Sacrifices For The Benefit Of All; Then We Shall Experience No Petty, Limited, Selfish Joy, But Our Happiness Will Belong To Millions, Our Deeds Will Live On Quietly But Perpetually At Work, And Over Our Ashes Will Be Shed The Hot Tears Of Noble People.

I Am Nothing And Should Be Everything.

So Long As The Product Is Sold, Everything Is Taking Its Regular Course From The Standpoint Of The Capitalist Producer.

It's Possible That I Shall Make An Ass Of Myself. But In That Case One Can Always Get Out Of It With A Little Dialectic. I Have, Of Course, So Worded My Proposition As To Be Right Either Way.

It Might Otherwise Appear Paradoxical That Money Can Be Replaced By Worthless Paper; But That The Slightest Alloying Of Its Metallic Content Depreciates It.

A Spider Conducts Operations That Resemble Those Of A Weaver, And A Bee Puts To Shame Many An Architect In The Construction Of Her Cells. But What Distinguishes The Worst Architect From The Best Of Bees Is This, That The Architect Raises His Structure In Imagination Before He Erects It In Reality.

Catch A Man A Fish, And You Can Sell It To Him. Teach A Man To Fish, And You Ruin A Wonderful Business Opportunity.

When Commercial Capital Occupies A Position Of Unquestioned Ascendancy, It Everywhere Constitutes A System Of Plunder.

But Capitalist Production Begets,with The Inexorability Of A Law Of Nature,its Own Negation. It Is The Negation Of Negation.

Although Usury Is Itself A Form Of Credit In Its Bourgeoisified Form, The Form Adapted To Capital , In Its Pre-bourgeois Form It Is Rather The Expression Of The Lack Of Credit .

In The Domain Of Political Economy, Free Scientific Inquiry Meets Not Merely The Same Enemies As In All Other Domains. The Peculiar Nature Of The Material It Deals With, Summons As Foes Into The Field Of Battle The Most Violent, Mean And Malignant Passions Of The Human Breast, The Furies Of Private Interest.

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.

The English Established Church... Will More Readily Pardon An Attack On 38 Of Its 39 Articles Than On 1/39 Of Its Income.

Religion Is Only The Illusory Sun Which Revolves Round Man As Long As He Does Not Revolve Round Himself.

You Are Horrified At Our Intending To Do Away With Private Property. But In Your Existing Society, Private Property Is Already Done Away With For Nine Tenths Of The Population; Its Existence For The Few Is Solely Due To Its Non-existence In The Hands Of Those Nine Tenths. You Reproach Us, Therefore, With Intending To Do Away With A Form Of Property, The Necessary Condition For Whose Existence Is The Non-existence Of Any Property For The Immense Majority Of Society.

2 Is A Proletariat Prime, But 4, 6 And 8 Are Also Composite Proletariats. Composites Of The World Unite; You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains!

Nothing To Lose

The World Will Be For The Common People, And The Sounds Of Happiness Will Reach Even The Deepest Springs.

A Commodity Has A Value Because It Is A Crystallization Of Social Labor. The Greatness Of Its Value, Or Its Relative Value, Depends Upon The Greater Or Less Amount Of That Social Substance Contained In It; That Is To Say, On The Relative Mass Of Labor Necessary For Its Production.

By Means Of The Banking System The Distribution Of Capital As A Special Business, A Social Function, Is Taken Out Of The Hands Of The Private Capitalists And Usurers. But At The Same Time, Banking And Credit Become The Most Effective Means Of Driving Captialist Production Beyond Its Own Limits And One Of The Most Effective Vehicles Of Crises And Swindle.

When The Labourer Co-operates Systematically With Others, He Strips Off The Fetters Of His Individuality, And Develops The Capabilities Of His Species.

Religion Is The Impotence Of The Human Mind To Deal With Occurrences It Cannot Understand.

The Working Men Have No Country. We Cannot Take Away From Them What They Have Not Got

My Object In Life Is To Dethrone God And Destroy Capitalism.

Darwin Has Interested Us In The History Of Nature's Technology.

The Task Is Not Just To Understand The World But To Change It.

A Heavy Or Progressive Or Graduated Income Tax Is Necessary For The Proper Development Of Communism.

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.

The Object Of Art Like Every Other Product Creates A Public Which Is Sensitive To Art And Enjoys Beauty.

The Bureaucracy Is A Circle From Which No One Can Escape. Its Hierarchy Is A Hierarchy Of Knowledge.

All That We Want To Do Away With Is The Miserable Character Of This Appropriation, Under Which The Labourer Lives Merely To Increase Capital , And Allowed To Live Only So Far As The Interest To The Ruling Class Requires It.

Medicine Heals Doubts As Well As Diseases.

The History Of All Previous Societies Has Been The History Of Class Struggles.

Since Only What Is Material Is Perceptible, Knowable, Nothing Is Known Of The Existence Of God.

Existence Of God

To Be Radical Is To Grasp Things By The Root.

The Policy Of Russia Is Changeless. Its Methods, Its Tactics, Its Maneuvers May Change, But The Polar Star Of Its Policy, World Domination, Is A Fixed Star. About Russia

Anyone Who Knows Anything Of History Knows That Great Social Changes Are Impossible Without Feminine Upheaval. Social Progress Can Be Measured Exactly By The Social Position Of The Fair Sex, The Ugly Ones Included.

All Social Rules And All Relations Between Individuals Are Eroded By A Cash Economy, Avarice Drags Pluto Himself Out Of The Bowels Of The Earth.

The Abolition Of Religion As The Illusory Happiness Of The People Is The Demand For Their Real Happiness. To Call On Them To Give Up Their Illusions About Their Condition Is To Call On Them To Give Up A Condition That Requires Illusions. The Criticism Of Religion Is, Therefore, In Embryo, The Criticism Of That Vale Of Tears Of Which Religion Is The Halo.

Under Private Property, Each Tries To Establish Over The Other An Alien Power, So As Thereby To Find Satisfaction Of His Own Selfish Need. The Increase In The Quantity Of Objects Is Therefore Accompanied By An Extension Of The Realm Of The Alien Powers To Which Man Is Subjected, And Every New Product Represents A New Potentiality Of Mutual Swindling And Mutual Plundering.

Very Well Then; Emancipation From Usury And Money, That Is, From Practical, Real Judaism, Would Constitute The Emancipation Of Our Time.

The Country That Is More Developed Industrially Only Shows, To The Less Developed, The Image Of Its Own Future.

Value, Therefore, Does Not Stalk About With A Label Describing What It Is.

Trending Author

Theodore Dalrymple

Timothy Geithner

Steve Prefontaine

Category