Quotes from Karl Marx

The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. … what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?

Indudablemente, la voluntad del capitalista consiste en embolsarse lo más que pueda. Y lo que hay que hacer no es discurrir acerca de lo que quiere, sino investigar su poder, los límites de este poder y el carácter de estos límites.

Whoever controls Germany, controls Europe.

La burguesía … ha creado fuerzas productivas mucho más colosales y masivas que todas las pasadas generaciones juntas, …¿Cuál de los pasados siglos pudo sospechar siquiera que en el seno del trabajo social dormitasen tantas y tales fuerzas productivas?

To revenge the misdeeds of the ruling class, there existed in the middle ages, in Germany, a secret tribunal, called the "Vehmgericht." If a red cross was seen marked on a house, people knew that its owner was doomed by the "Vehm." All the houses of Europe are now marked with the mysterious red cross. - Speech at anniversary of the People's Paper, April 1856

Freedom is so much the essence of man that even its opponents implement it while combating its reality; they want to appropriate for, themselves as a most precious ornament what they have rejected as an ornament of human nature. No man combats freedom; at most he combats the freedom of others. Hence every kind of freedom has always existed, only at one time as a special privilege, at another as a universal right.

History is the judge — its executioner, the proletarian. - Speech at anniversary of the People's Paper, April 1856

The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world...

A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of Communism

La historia de todas las sociedades, hasta nuestros días es la historia de la lucha de las clases. Hombres libres y esclavos, patricios y plebeyos, señores y siervos, maestros y oficiales, en una palabra: opresores y oprimidos se enfrentaron siempre, mantuvieron una lucha constante, velada unas veces y otras franca y abierta, lucha que terminó siempre con la transformación revolucionaria de toda la sociedad o el hundimiento de las clases en pugna.

The social revolution of the nineteenth century cannot take its poetry from the past but only from the future.

There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, 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.

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it. - Theses On Feuerbach (1845)

La época de la burguesía se caracteriza y distingue de todas las demás por el constante y agitado desplazamiento de la producción, por la conmoción ininterrumpida de todas las relaciones sociales, por una inquietud y una dinámica incesantes.

capital collapses because it cannot exist alongside shared knowledge

Es incapaz de gobernar, porque es incapaz de garantizar a sus esclavos la existencia ni aun dentro de su esclavitud, porque se ve forzada a dejarlos llegar hasta una situación de desamparo en que no tiene más remedio que mantenerles, cuando son ellos quienes debieran mantenerla a ella.

A machine condemned to devour books and then throw them , in a changed form , on the dunghill of history .

The standpoint of the old materialism is civil society; the standpoint of the new is human society, or social humanity. - Theses On Feuerbach (1845)

Wie niet liever met eigen krachten een eigen wereld bouwt, de schepper van een wereld is, dan eeuwig in zijn eigen schulp te blijven, die is door de geest met een banvloek getroffen, met een interdict, maar in omgekeerde betekenis: hij is verjaagd uit het heiligdom van de geest, verstoken van de eeuwige luxe van de geest, en gedoemd om wiegeliedjes te zingen over zijn eigen privé-gelukzaligheid en daar 's nachts van zichzelf te dromen.

Our view, which we have found confirmed by long practice, is that the correct tactics in propaganda are not to entice away a few individuals and local groups here and there from one's opponent, but to work on the great mass, which is not yet taking part in the movement. A single individual whom one has oneself reared from the raw is worth more than ten Lassallean turncoats...

The highest point reached by contemplative materialism, that is, materialism which does not comprehend sensuousness as practical activity, is contemplation of single individuals and of civil society. - Theses On Feuerbach (1845)

In the so-called Christian State it is true that alienation counts, but not the individual. The only individual who counts, the king, is a being specially distinguished from other individuals, who is also religious and directly connected with heaven, with God. The relations which here prevail are still relations of faith. The religious spirit is therefore not yet really secularized.

All social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice. - Theses On Feuerbach (1845)

Feuerbach, not satisfied with abstract thinking, wants contemplation; but he does not conceive sensuousness as practical, human-sensuous activity. - Theses On Feuerbach (1845)