Karl Marx
German philosopher, economist and revolutionary (1818 to 1883); co-author of The Communist Manifesto and author of Capital.
Karl Marx did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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Their wordsThe history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles.
↗Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848; English edition of 1888)gutenberg.org All 36 from this book
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Their wordsThe executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.
↗Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848; English edition of 1888)gutenberg.org All 36 from this book
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Their wordsThe bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
↗Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848; English edition of 1888)gutenberg.org All 36 from this book
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Their wordsOwing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him.
↗Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848; English edition of 1888)gutenberg.org All 36 from this book
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Their wordsWhat the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.
↗Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848; English edition of 1888)gutenberg.org All 36 from this book
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Their wordsIn this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.
↗Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848; English edition of 1888)gutenberg.org All 36 from this book
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Their wordsBut 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.
↗Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848; English edition of 1888)gutenberg.org All 36 from this book
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Their wordsCommunism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriation.
↗Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848; English edition of 1888)gutenberg.org All 36 from this book
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Their wordsThe working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got.
↗Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848; English edition of 1888)gutenberg.org All 36 from this book
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Their wordsThe ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.
↗Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848; English edition of 1888)gutenberg.org All 36 from this book
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Their wordsThe proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.
↗Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848; English edition of 1888)gutenberg.org All 36 from this book
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Our reading
Political power in the proper sense is the organised power of one class to oppress another
Their wordsPolitical power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another.
↗Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848; English edition of 1888)gutenberg.org All 36 from this book
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Their wordsIn 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.
↗Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848; English edition of 1888)gutenberg.org All 36 from this book
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Their wordsChristian Socialism is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates the heart-burnings of the aristocrat.
↗Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848; English edition of 1888)gutenberg.org All 36 from this book
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Their wordsThey desire the existing state of society minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat.
↗Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848; English edition of 1888)gutenberg.org All 36 from this book
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Their wordsIn proportion as the modern class struggle develops and takes definite shape, this fantastic standing apart from the contest, these fantastic attacks on it, lose all practical value and all theoretical justification.
↗Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848; English edition of 1888)gutenberg.org All 36 from this book
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Our reading
Communist aims can be reached only by forcibly overthrowing all existing social conditions
Their wordsThe Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.
↗Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848; English edition of 1888)gutenberg.org All 36 from this book
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Their wordsThe proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
↗Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848; English edition of 1888)gutenberg.org All 36 from this book