Quotes About Marx

His Bolshevik revolution had not brought peace to Russia, but a terrible civil war in which 28 million Russians had lost their lives. The principles of socialism which Lenin had forced upon the people had not brought increased production as Marx had promised, but had reduced production to a point where even in normal times it would not adequately clothe nor feed half the people.

Marx and Engels thought all of these things could be traced to one root -- private property. If they used a final revolutionary class uprising to overthrow private property, it would mean that class struggle would become unnecessary because there would be nothing to fight over!

The letters of Karl Marx make frequent reference to the violent quarrels between himself and his parents; the letters from Karl's parents complain of his egoism, his lack of consideration for the family, his constant demands for money and his discourtesy in failing to answer most of their letters. MARX

a stateless society (a civilization without a government) which Marx and Engels vigorously advocated would be an unorganized mob. It would be no society at all.

In concluding this discussion of the basic fallacies in Communism we should perhaps make a summary comment on the most significant fallacy of them all. This is the Communist doctrine that problems can be solved by eliminating the institution from which the problems emanate. Even Marx and Engels may have been unaware that this was what they were doing, but the student will note how completely this approach dominates every problem they undertook to solve.

Marx and Engels visualized a day when there would be unity among men instead of opposition, peace instead of war. Such a hope, of course, violated their own theory of dialectics which says nothing in nature can be at rest—everything is a unity of opposing forces.

La actividad filosófica no es neutral. Desde la República de Platón hasta la íntima relación entre brahmino y ksatriya en las Upanisad la filosofía se encuentra íntimamente ligada con la política. No hace falta esperar a Marx para establecer esta conexión. Toda la historia de la filosofía es una confirmación de ello.

So capitalists, according to Marx, quite literally rob the proletariat of their freedom, their culture and their essentially human traits, and force them to work endlessly just to acquire the basic means of survival.

Contrary to the popular view, Marx did not predict the formation of communist countries, with which he is so closely identified. Rather, he predicted that capitalism would be utterly successful on a number of fronts.

Everybody could have everything they wanted, so there would no longer be any real need for class divisions. Capitalism was destined to create the conditions necessary for the coming of the true "end of history", in which all contradictions disappear. However, for the end of history to come, capitalism must first collapse and make room for true communism. This will necessarily happen, according to Marx, because of the inner workings of capitalism.

Marx thought that capitalism's essential urge to expand and look for further markets and cheaper labour was the driving force behind the European imperialism of the 19th century.

Karl Marx famously said that religion is "the opium of the people." What he meant is that religious sentiment could obscure the material deprivations that workers and other exploited people experience in their daily lives.

Marx was constrained to think within a horizon torn between the aleatory of the Encounter and the necessity of the Revolution.

The time has come in which the overriding preoccupation of bourgeois philosophers and littérateurs is the following question: 'What does the truth have to be for the Communists to be wrong? What does Marx have to be for the Communists to be wrong?' Thus it is that our bourgeois politicians and philosophers fabricate the truth and the events they need to condemn their adversary the more forcefully.

The Marxist dialectic is essentially word-fetishism. Every article of the faith is embodied in a word fetish whose double or even multiple meaning makes it possible to unite incompatible ideas and demands. The interpretation of these words, as intentionally ambiguous as the words of the Delphic Pythia, eventually brings the different parties to blows, and everyone quotes in his favour passages from the writings of Marx and Engels to which authoritative importance is attached.

In fact, "classes" don't exist in nature. It is our thinking—our arranging in categories—that constructs classes in our minds. The question is not whether social classes exist in the sense of Karl Marx; the question is whether we can use the concept of social classes in the way in which Karl Marx meant it. We can't.

Na filosofia de Comte, bem como na de Marx, não há espaço para Deus e sua infinita bondade.

As a forecaster, Marx shared the common destiny of all prophets: to be belied by events.

Marx made theory... Lenin applied it with his sense of large-scale social organization... And Henry Ford made the work of the socialist state possible.

American socialists have introduced a unique element—identity politics—that Marx would have repudiated and other socialists assiduously avoided. Consequently, American socialism deserves its own name, and the name I propose is "identity socialism.

When Mussolini "sold out" he became an outcast. He had neither money nor power. Nor did any of the first fascists embrace fascism for this reason. Rather, they became fascists because they saw fascism as the only way to rescue socialism and make it viable. In other words, their defection was within socialism—they sought to create a new type of socialism that would actually draw a mass following and produce the workers' revolution that Marx anticipated and hoped for.

What Marx considered a divisive ploy is now the avowed strategy of progressives and Democrats: to turn black and brown against white, female against male, gay and lesbian and transgender people against "heteronormativity." In 2020, Democrats intend to use these multiple lines of division to create the majority coalition that will implement their new form of identity socialism across the economic and cultural landscape.

Labor is a man crowning glory. Not this man's. I quote Marx I raised my hands. The pickaxe handle had been rough. I quote blisters.

Unfortunately Marx said that the important thing is not to understand the world but to change it. Poor man, he got it the wrong way round. The important thing is not to change the world too much until you understand it.