Quotes from Karl Marx

It is easy to imagine a society which, having reached a certain level of consumption, consciously decides to give absolute priority to a single goal: reduction of the work load.

El gobierno del Estado moderno no es más que una junta que administra los negocios comunes de toda la clase burguesa (...) para no dejar subsistir otro vinculo entre los hombres que el frío interés, el cruel 'pago al contado' (...) Ha hecho de la dignidad personal un simple valor de intercambio (...) ha establecido una explotación abierta, descarada, directa y brutal.

The utility of a thing makes it a use value.[14] But this utility is not a thing of air. Being limited by the physical properties of the commodity, it has no existence apart from that commodity. A commodity, such as iron, corn, or a diamond, is therefore, so far as it is a material thing, a use value, something useful. This property of a commodity is independent of the amount of labour required to appropriate its useful qualities.

The formula for the circuit of capital: M-C...P...C'-M', is the self-evident form of the circuit of capital only on the basis of already developed capitalist production, because it presupposes the availability of the class of wage-labourers in sufficient numbers throughout society.

Consciousness does not determine life, but life determines consciousness

The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East Indian and Chinese markets, the colonization of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.

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.

Philosophers have hitherto interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it

The devaluation of the world of men is in direct proportion to the increasing value of the world of things.

For real wealth is the developed productive power of all individuals. The measure of wealth is then not any longer, in any way, labour time, but rather disposable time.

Volume 2 of Capital has indeed been not only a 'sealed book', but also a forgotten one. To a large extent, it remains so to this very day.

T]he emancipation of the workers contains universal human emancipation — and it contains this because the whole of human servitude is involved in the relation of the worker to production, and all relations of servitude are but modifications and consequences of this relation.

Az biraz tarih bilen herkes büyük sosyal devrimlerin kad?nlar?n kat?l?m? olmadan gerçekleÅŸemeyeceÄŸini bilir. Toplumsal geliÅŸim bizzat daha güzel olan bu cinsiyetin (çirkinler dahil) toplumsal konumuna bak?larak ölçülebilir.

The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.

Government hears only its own voice … It knows it hears only its own voice and yet it deceives itself that it hears the people's voice.

In every stock jobbing 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 neighbour, after he himself has caught the shower of gold and placed it in safety. Apres moi le déluge! is the watchword of every capitalist and of every capitalist nation. Hence capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the labourer, unless under compulsion from society.

When the commodity owners are not capitalists, but rather independent direct producers, the time they spend on buying and selling is a deduction from their labour time, and they therefore always seek (in antiquity, as also in the Middle Ages: F.E.) to defer such operations to feast days.

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.

Economy of time, to this all economy ultimately reduces itself.

Franklin says, "war is robbery, commerce is generally cheating."[164] If the transformation of merchants' money into capital is to be explained otherwise than by the producers being simply cheated, a long series of intermediate steps would be necessary, which, at present, when the simple circulation of commodities forms our only assumption, are entirely wanting.

The peculiar nature of the materials 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.

the forming of the five senses is a labour of the entire history of the world down to the present

T]he various stages and interests are never completely overcome, but only subordinated to the prevailing interest and trail along beside the latter for centuries afterwards.

They do not signify that tomorrow a miracle will happen. They show that, within the ruling-classes themselves, a foreboding is dawning, that the present society is no solid crystal, but an organism capable of change, and is constantly changing.