Quotes About Power

The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles.

The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.

The history of all hitherto existing society2 is the history of class struggles.

The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth — i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking that is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question.

It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.

The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage laborers.

Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.

The values of commodities are directly as the times of labour employed in their production, and are inversely as the productive powers of the labour employed.

The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.

Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.

Le communisme n'enlève à personne le pouvoir de s'approprier sa part des produits sociaux, il n'ôte que le pouvoir d'assujettir, à l'aide de cette appropriation, le travail d'autrui

By buying the power of the workman, the capitalist has, therefore, acquired the right to use of make that labouring power during the whole day or week.

Le pouvoir politique, à proprement parler, est le pouvoir organisé d'une classe pour l'oppression d'une autre.

One must force the frozen circumstances to dance, by singing to them their own melody.

Man makes religion, religion does not make Man

Ist die Konstruktion der Zukunft und das Fertigwerden für alle Zeiten nicht unsere Sache, so ist desto gewisser, was wir gegenwärtig zu vollbringen haben, ich meine die rücksichtslose Kritik alles Bestehenden, rücksichtslos sowohl in dem Sinne, daß die Kritik sich nicht vor ihren Resultaten fürchtet und ebensowenig vor dem Konflikte mit den vorhandenen Mächten.

The history of all hitherto existing society1 is the history of class struggles.

The introduction of free competition is thus public declaration that from now on the members of society are unequal only to the extent that their capitals are unequal, that capital is the decisive power, and that therefore the capitalists, the bourgeoisie, have become the first class in society.

From the moment when labour can no longer be converted into capital, money, or rent, into a social power capable of being monopolised, i.e., from the moment when individual property can no longer be transformed into bourgeois property, into capital, from that moment, you say individuality vanishes.

every class struggle is a political struggle.

The history of all hitherto existing society8 is the history of class struggles.

grands dignitaires de l'armée, de l'Université, de l'Église, du barreau, de l'Académie et de la presse étaient partagés, bien qu'en proportion inégale, entre les deux courants. Ils avaient trouvé dans la République bourgeoise, qui ne portait ni le nom de Bourbon, ni celui d'Orléans, mais celui de Capital, la forme d'État dans laquelle ils pouvaient régner en commun.

No eunuch flatters his tyrant more shamefully or seeks by more infamous means to stimulate his jaded appetite, in order to gain some favor, than does the eunuch of industry, the entrepreneur, in order to acquire a few silver coins or to charm the gold from the purse of his dearly beloved neighbor.

That social revolution, it is true, was no novelty invented in 1848. Steam, electricity, and the self-acting mule were revolutionists of a rather more dangerous character than even citizens Barbés, Raspail and Blanqui. - Speech at anniversary of the People's Paper, April 1856