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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.

-Karl Marx

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Parliamentary Cretinism: That Peculiar

Karl Marx

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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.

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But There Is A Devil Of A Difference Between Barbarians Who Are Fit By Nature To Be Used For Anything, And Civilized People Who Apply Them Selves To Everything.

Workers Of The World Unite; You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains.

Communist Manifesto

[the Career A Young Man Should Choose Should Be] One That Is Most Consonant With Our Dignity, One That Is Based On Ideas Of Whose Truth We Are Wholly Convinced, One That Offers Us Largest Scope In Working For Humanity And Approaching That General Goal Towards Which Each Profession Offers Only One Of The Means: The Goal Of Perfection ... If He Works Only For Himself He Can Become A Famous Scholar, A Great Sage, An Excellent Imaginative Writer [ Dichter ], But Never A Perfected, A Truly Great Man.

We Know That Violent Measures Against Religion Are Nonsense; But This Is An Opinion: As Socialism Grows, Religion Will Disappear. Its Disappearance Must Be Done By Social Development, In Which Education Must Play A Part.

Civil Servants And Priests, Soldiers And Ballet-dancers, Schoolmasters And Police Constables, Greek Museums And Gothic Steeples, Civil List And Services List -- The Common Seed Within Which All These Fabulous Beings Slumber In Embryo Is Taxation.

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

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

Since Labour Is Motion, Time Is Its Natural Measure.

On A Level Plain, Simple Mounds Look Like Hills; And The Insipid Flatness Of Our Present Bourgeoisie Is To Be Measured By The Altitude Of Its Great Intellects.

Private Property Has Made Us So Stupid And One-sided That An Object Is Only Ours When We Have It

These Numerous Points At Which Money Is Withdrawn From Circulation And Accumulated In Numerous Individual Hoards Or Potential Money-capitals Appears As So Many Obstacles To Circulation, Because They Immobilise The Money And Deprive It Of Its Capacity To Circulate For A Certain Time.

The Consciousness Of The Past Weighs Like A Nightmare On The Brain Of The Living.

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

Each Pursues His Private Interest And Only His Private Interest; And Thereby Serves The Private Interests Of All, The General Interest, Without Willing It Or Knowing It. The Real Point Is Not That Each Individual's Pursuit Of His Private Interest Promotes The Totality Of Private Interests, The General Interest. One Could Just As Well Deduce From This Abstract Phrase That Each Individual Reciprocally Blocks The Assertion Of The Others' Interests, So That, Instead Of A General Affirmation, This War Of All Against All Produces A General Negation.

The Directing Motive, The End And Aim Of Capitalist Production, Is To Extract The Greatest Possible Amount Of Surplus Value, And Consequently To Exploit Labor-power To The Greatest Possible Extent.

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.

Go On, Get Out - Last Words Are For Fools Who Haven't Said Enough. To His Housekeeper, Who Urged Him To Tell Her His Last Words So She Could Write Them Down For Posterity.

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

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.

Under The Ideal Measure Of Values There Lurks The Hard Cash.

Social Consciousness

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.

We Cannot Tell By Looking At The Diamond That It Is A Commodity. When It Serves As A Use-value, Asthetic Or Mechanical, On The Breast Of A Harlot, Or In The Hand Of A Glasscutter, It Is A Diamond And Not A Commodity.

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.

The Ideas Of The Ruling Class Are In Every Epoch The Ruling Ideas, I.e. The Class Which Is The Ruling Material Force Of Society, Is At The Same Time Its Ruling Intellectual Force. The Class Which Has The Means Of Material Production At Its Disposal, Has Control At The Same Time Over The Means Of Mental Production, So That Thereby, Generally Speaking, The Ideas Of Those Who Lack The Means Of Mental Production Are Subject To It. The Ruling Ideas Are Nothing More Than The Ideal Expression Of The Dominant Material Relationships, The Dominant Material Relationships Grasped As Ideas.

While The Miser Is Merely A Capitalist Gone Mad, The Capitalist Is A Rational Miser.

If I Negate Powdered Wigs, I Am Still Left With Unpowdered Wigs.

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

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

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).

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.

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

Nothing Has Changed In Russias Policy. Her Methods, Her Tactics, Her Maneuvers May Change, But The Pole Starworld Dominationis Immutable.

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.

They Don't Know It, But They Are Doing It.

Medicine Heals Doubts As Well As Diseases.

Advances In Science Help To Delegitimize The Rule Of Kings And The Power Of The Church.

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

The Bureaucracy Takes Itself To Be The Ultimate Purpose Of The State

Men Can See Nothing Around Them That Is Not Their Own Image; Everything Speaks To Them Of Themselves. Their Very Landscape Is Alive.

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

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.

...the Realm Of Freedom Does Not Commence Until The Point Is Passed Where Labor Under The Compulsion Of Necessity And Of External Utility Is Required.

All Social Life Is Essentially Practical. All Mysterious Which Lead Theory To Mysticism Find Their Rational Solution In Human Practice And In The Comprehension Of The Practice.

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.

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

Every Emancipation Is A Restoration Of The Human World And Of Human Relationships To A Man Himself.

The Bourgeoisie Of The Whole World, Which Looks Complacently Upon The Wholesale Massacre After The Battle, Is Convulsed By Horror At The Desecration Of Brick And Mortar.

Bricks And Mortar

Men Make Their Own History, But They Do Not Make It Just As They Please; They Do Not Make It Under Circumstances Chosen By Themselves, But Under Circumstances Directly Encountered, Given And Transmitted From The Past. The Tradition Of All The Dead Generations Weighs Like A Nightmare On The Brain Of The Living.

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.

We Will Hang The Capitalists With The Rope That They Sell Us.

The More A Ruling Class Is Able To Assimilate The Most Prominent Men Of A Ruled Class, The More Solid And Dangerous Its Rule.

Nothing Is More Tedious Than The Dreaming Platitude.

Philosophy Stands In The Same Relation To The Study Of The Actual World As Masturbation To Sexual Love.

Language Comes Into Being, Like Consciousness, From The Basic Need, From The Scantiest Intercourse With Other Human.

The Individual Produces An Object And, By Consuming It, Returns To Himself, But Returns As A Productive And Self Reproducing Individual. Consumption Thus Appears As A Moment Of Production.

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

Labor Produces Marvels For The Rich But It Produces Deprivation For The Worker. It Produces Palaces, But Hovels For The Worker. It Produces Beauty, But Deformity For The Worker. It Replaces Labor By Machines, But It Throws One Section Of The Workers Back To Barbaric Labor, And It Turns The Remainder Into Machines.

A Specter Is Haunting Europe - The Specter Of Communism.

If The Labourer Consumes His Disposable Time For Himself, He Robs The Capitalist.

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

Criticism Has Plucked The Imaginary Flowers On The Chain Not In Order That Man Shall Continue To Bear That Chain Without Fantasy Or Consolation, But So That He Shall Throw Off The Chain And Pluck The Living Flower. The Criticism Of Religion Disillusions Man, So That He Will Think, Act, And Fashion His Reality Like A Man Who Has Discarded His Illusions And Regained His Senses, So That He Will Move Around Himself As His Own True Sun. Religion Is Only The Illusory Sun Which Revolves Around Man As Long As He Does Not Revolve Around Himself.

The Ruling Ideas Of Each Age Have Ever Been The Ideas Of Its Ruling Class.

As The Variable Capital Always Stays In The Hands Of The Capitalist In Some Form Or Other, It Cannot Be Claimed In Any Way That It Converts Itself Into Revenue For Anyone .

[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.

Take Away A Nation's Heritage And They Are More Easily Persuaded.

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.

The Most Violent, Mean And Malignant Passions Of The Human Breast, The Furies Of Private Interest.

Wherever The Want Of Clothing Forced Them To It, The Human Race Made Clothes For Thousands Of Years, Without A Single Man Becoming A Tailor.

The Executive Of The Modern State Is But A Committee For Managing The Common Affairs Of The Whole Bourgeoisie.

There Is One Great Fact, Characteristic Of This Our Nineteenth Century, A Fact Which No Party Dares Deny. On The One Hand, There Have Started Into Life Industrial And Scientific Forces Which No Epoch Of Former Human History Had Ever Suspected. On The Other Hand, There Exist Symptoms Of Decay, Far Surpassing The Horrors Recorded Of The Latter Times Of The Roman Empire. In Our Days Everything Seems Pregnant With Its Contrary.

The Product Of Mental Labor - Science - Always Stands Far Below Its Value, Because The Labor-time Necessary To Reproduce It Has No Relation At All To The Labor-time Required For Its Original Production.

The Only Antidote To Mental Suffering Is Physical Pain.

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.

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?

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.

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.

I Am Greatly Pleased With The Public, Authentic Isolation In Which We Two, You And I, Now Find Ourselves. It Is Wholly In Accord With Our Attitude And Our Principles.

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

Let The Ruling Classes Tremble At A Communist Revolution. The Proletarians Have Nothing To Lose But Their Chains. They Have A World To Win. Workingmen Of All Countries, Unite!

If Production Be Capitalistic In Form, So, Too, Will Be Reproduction.

In This Sense, The Theory Of The Communists May Be Summed Up In The Single Sentence: Abolition Of Private Property. - Manifesto Of The Communist Party

In Proportion As The Exploitation Of One Individual By Another Is Put An End To, The Exploitation Of One Nation By Another Will Also Be Put An End To. In Proportion As The Antagonism Between Classes Within The Nation Vanishes, The Hostility Of One Nation To Another Will Come To An End.

The Burgeoisie, By The Rapid Improvement Of All Instruments Of Production, By The Immensely Facilitated Means Of Communication, Draws All Nations Into Civilization.

There Are No Circumstances Imaginable, Not Even Victory, Under Which The Proletariat Should Give Up Its Possession Of Arms.

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

Modern Bourgeois Society With Its Relations Of Production, Of Exchange, And Of Property, A Society That Has Conjured Up Such Gigantic Means Of Production And Of Exchange, Is Like The Sorcerer, Who Is No Longer Able To Control The Powers Of The Nether World Whom He Has Called Up By His Spells.

If Emancipation Of The Working Classes Requires Their Fraternal Conncurrence, How Are They To Fulfill That Great Mission With A Foreign Policy In Pursuit Of Criminal Designs, Playing Upon National Prejudices, And Squandering In Piratical Wars The People's Blood And Treasure? It Was Not The Wisdom Of The Ruling Classes, But The Heroic Resistance To Their Criminal Folly By The Working Classes Of England, That Saved The West Of Europe From Plunging Headlong Into An Infamous Crusade For The Propagation Of Slavery On The Other Side Of The Atlantic.

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

Every Provisional Political Set-up Following A Revolution Requires A Dictatorship, And An Energetic Dictatorship At That.

Owners Of Capital Will Stimulate Working Class To Buy More And More Of Expensive Goods, Houses And Technology, Pushing Them To Take More And More Expensive Credits, Until Their Debt Becomes Unbearable. The Unpaid Debt Will Lead To Bankruptcy Of Banks Which Will Have To Be Nationalized And State Will Have To Take The Road Which Will Eventually Lead To Communism.

Be Careful To Trust A Person Who Does Not Like Wine.

The Worker Puts His Life Into The Object; But Now It No Longer Belongs To Him, It Belongs To The Object.

The Class Struggle Necessarily Leads To The Dictatorship Of The Proletariat.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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

All Science Would Be Superfluous If The Outward Appearance And The Essence Of Things Directly Coincided.

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.

The English Have All The Material Requisites For The Revolution. What They Lack Is The Spirit Of Generalization And Revolutionary Ardour.

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.

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.

Labor In The White Skin Can Never Free Itself As Long As Labor In The Black Skin Is Branded.

Misery Motivates, Not Utopia.

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

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

So In Jewry We Recognise A Contemporary Universal Anti-social Phenomenon, Which Has Reached Its Present Pitch Through A Process Of, Historical Development In Which The Jews Have Zealously Co-operated. And This Evil Anti-social Aspect Of Jewry Has Grown To A Stage At Which: It Must Necessarily Collapse.

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

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.

As The Chosen People Bore In Their Features The Sign Manual Of Jehovah , So The Division Of Labour Brands The Manufacturing Workman As The Property Of Capital .

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

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.

...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.

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

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.

We Have No Compassion And We Ask No Compassion From You. When Our Turn Comes, We Shall Not Make Excuses For The Terror.

In The Various Stages Of Development Which The Struggle Of Working Class Against The Bourgeoisie Has To Pass Through, They Always And Everywhere Represent The Interests Of The Movement As A Whole.

Machines Were, It May Be Said, The Weapon Employed By The Capitalists To Quell The Revolt Of Specialized Labor.

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.

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

...the Very Cannibalism Of The Counterrevolution Will Convince The Nations That There Is Only One Way In Which The Murderous Death Agonies Of The Old Society And The Bloody Birth Throes Of The New Society Can Be Shortened, Simplified And Concentrated, And That Way Is Revolutionary Terror.

The Religious World Is But A Reflex Of The Real World.

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 True Law Of Economics Is Chance, And We Learned People Arbitrarily Seize On A Few Moments And Establish Them As Laws.

Moments Are The Elements Of Profit

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.

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.

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

Existence Of God

Man Makes Religion, Religion Does Not Make Man

Criticism Of Religion

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.

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

The Weapon Of Criticism Can Never Replace The Criticism Of Weapons.

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.

The Writer Must Earn Money In Order To Be Able To Live And To Write, But He Must By No Means Live And Write For The Purpose Of Making Money.

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.

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.

There Is A Physical Relation Between Physical Things. But It Is Different With Commodities.

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

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

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.

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

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.

With Disdain I Will Throw My Gauntlet Full In The Fact Of The World And See The Collapse Of This Pygmy Giant. Then Will I Wander God-like And Victorious Through The Ruins Of The World. And Giving My Words An Active Force, I Will Feel Equal To The Creator.

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

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 Jews Of Poland Are The Smeariest Of All Races.

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.

The Bourgeoisie Cannot Exist Without Constantly Revolutionizing The Instruments Of Production, And Thereby The Relations Of Production, And With Them The Whole Relations Of Society.

Communist Manifesto

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

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 Communists Have No Need To Introduce Free Love; It Has Existed Almost From Time Immemorial.

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

Do Not Be Deluded By The Abstract Word Freedom. Whose Freedom? Not The Freedom Of One Individual In Relation To Another, But Freedom Of Capital To Crush The Worker.

It Has Drowned The Most Heavenly Ecstasies Of Religious Fervour, Of Chivalrous Enthusiasm, Of Philistine Sentimentalism, In The Icy Water Of Egotistical Calculation. It Has Resolved Personal Worth Into Exchange Value, And In Place Of Numberless Indefeasible Chartered Freedoms, It Has Set Up That Single, Unconscionable Freedom -- Free Trade. In One Word, For Exploitation, Veiled By Religious And Political Illusions, It Has Substituted Naked, Shameless, Direct, Brutal Exploitation.

Christ Represents Originally: 1) Men Before God; 2) God For Men; 3) Men To Man. Similarly, Money Represents Originally, In Accordance With The Idea Of Money: 1) Private Property For Private Property; 2) Society For Private Property; 3) Private Property For Society. But Christ Is Alienated God And Alienated Man. God Has Value Only Insofar As He Represents Christ, And Man Has Value Only Insofar As He Represents Christ. It Is The Same With Money.

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

A Heavy Progressive Or Graduated Income Tax.

Change The Economic Base And You Will Change Human Beings.

And As For The Jews, Who Since The Emancipation Of Their Sect Have Everywhere Put Themselves, At Least In The Person Of Their Eminent Representatives, At The Head Of The Counter-revolution -- What Awaits Them?

Revolutions Are The Locomotives Of History.

I Wish To Avenge Myself Against The One Who Rules Above.

Our Epoch, The Epoch Of The Bourgeoisie, Posses However, This Distinctive Feature; It Has Simplified The Class Antagonisms. Society As A Whole Is More And More Splitting Up Into Two Great Hostile Camps, Into Two Great Classes Directly Facing Each Other.

Capitalist Production Does Not Exist At All Without Foreign Commerce.

It Would Perhaps Be As Well If Things Were To Remain Quiet For A Few Years Yet, So That All This 1848 Democracy Has Time To Rot Away.

Democracies Have

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.

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.

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

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

The Development Of Civilization And Industry In General Has Always Shown Itself So Active In The Destruction Of Forests That Everything That Has Been Done For Their Conservation And Production Is Completely Insignificant In Comparison.

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.

...it Happens That Society Is Saved As Often As The Circle Of Its Ruling Class Is Narrowed, As Often As A More Exclusive Interest Asserts Itself Over The General. Every Demand For The Most Simple Bourgeois Financial Reform, For The Most Ordinary Liberalism, For The Most Commonplace Republicanism, For The Flattest Democracy Is Forthwith Punished As An Assault Upon Society And Is Branded As Socialism.

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 Ideas Of The Ruling Class Are In Every Epoch The Ruling Ideas, I.e., The Class Which Is The Ruling Material Force Of Society, Is At The Same Time Its Ruling Intellectual Force.

Merely Quantitative Differences, Beyond A Certain Point, Pass Into Qualitative Changes.

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

Those Dogs Of Democrats And Liberal Riff-raff Will See That We're The Only Chaps Who Haven't Been Stultified By The Ghastly Period Of Peace.

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

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

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

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

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

The Labour-power Is A Commodity , Not Capital, In The Hands Of The Labourer, And It Constitutes For Him A Revenue So Long As He Can Continuously Repeat Its Sale; It Functions As Capital After Its Sale, In The Hands Of The Capitalist, During The Process Of Production Itself.

An Organised System Of Machines, To Which Motion Is Communicated By The Transmitting Mechanism From A Central Automation, Is The Most Developed Form Of Production By Machinery.

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

Without Doubt, Machinery Has Greatly Increased The Number Of Well-to-do Idlers.

The Last Capitalist We Hang Shall Be The One Who Sold Us The Rope.

Music Is The Mirror Of Reality.

Each Piece Of Money Is A Mere Coin, Or Means Of Circulation, Only So Long As It Actually Circulates.

Under No Pretext Should Arms And Ammunition Be Surrendered; Any Attempt To Disarm The Workers Must Be Frustrated, By Force If Necessary.

An Increase In The Productivity Of Labour Means Nothing More Than That The Same Capital Creates The Same Value With Less Labour, Or That Less Labour Creates The Same Product With More Capital.

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.

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.

A People Without A Heritage Are Easily Persuaded.

The Unity Is Brought About By Force .

The Better Shaped His Product, The More Misshapen The Worker.

Religion Is The Opiate Of The People.

The French Need A Thrashing. If The Prussians Win, The Centralization Of State Power Will Be Useful For The Centralization Of The German Working Class. German Predominance Would Also Transfer The Center Of Gravity Of The Workers' Movement In Western Europe From France To Germany, And One Has Only To Compare The Movement In The Two Countries From 1866 Until Now To See That The German Working Class Is Superior To The French Both Theoretically And Organizationally.

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

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