Karl Marx: Zitate auf Englisch (seite 3)
Karl Marx war deutscher Philosoph, Ökonom und Journalist. Zitate auf Englisch.“To be radical is to grasp things by the root.”
Quelle: Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (1843)
Kontext: It is clear that the arm of criticism cannot replace the criticism of arms. Material force can only be overthrown by material force, but theory itself becomes a material force when it has seized the masses. Theory is capable of seizing the masses when it demonstrates ad hominem, and it demonstrates ad hominem as soon as it becomes radical. To be radical is to grasp things by the root. But for man the root is man himself. What proves beyond doubt the radicalism of German theory, and thus its practical energy, is that it begins from the resolute positive abolition of religion. The criticism of religion ends with the doctrine that man is the supreme being for man. It ends, therefore, with the categorical imperative to overthrow all those conditions in which man is an abased, enslaved, abandoned, contemptible being—conditions which can hardly be better described than in the exclamation of a Frenchman on the occasion of a proposed tax upon dogs: 'Wretched dogs! They want to treat you like men!
Preface to ' (1859).
Quelle: A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
Kontext: In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material forces of production. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society — the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life determines the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness. [Es ist nicht das Bewußtsein der Menschen, das ihr Sein, sondern umgekehrt ihr gesellschaftliches Sein, das ihr Bewusstsein bestimmt. ] At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces in society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or — what is but a legal expression for the same thing — with the property relations within which they have been at work before. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations a distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic — in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so we can not judge of such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained rather from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social productive forces and the relations of production. No social order ever disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have been developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself. Therefore, mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, we will always find that the task itself arises only when the material conditions necessary for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation. In broad outlines we can designate the Asiatic, the ancient, the feudal, and the modern bourgeois modes of production as so many progressive epochs in the economic formation of society. The bourgeois relations of production are the last antagonistic form of the social process of production — antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism, but of one arising from the social conditions of life of the individuals; at the same time the productive forces developing in the womb of bourgeois society create the material conditions for the solution of that antagonism. This social formation constitutes, therefore, the closing chapter of the prehistoric stage of human society.
“If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist”
Marx quoted and translated by Engels (in an 1882 letter to Eduard Bernstein) about the peculiar Marxism which arose in France 1882. Original: "Ce qu'il y a de certain c'est que moi, je ne suis pas Marxiste" http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1882/letters/82_11_02.htm#356
Original: Ce qu'il y a de certain c'est que moi, je ne suis pas Marxiste.
Quelle: Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844/The Communist Manifesto
“The proletarians have nothing to loose but their chains. They have a world to win.”
Section 4, paragraph 11 (last paragraph)
Variant translation: Workers of the world, unite!
The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)
Variante: The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!
Quelle: The Communist Manifesto
Kontext: The 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. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!
Quelle: Capital, Vol 1: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production
“In proportion therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases.”
Quelle: The Communist Manifesto
“Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution.”
Quelle: Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844/The Communist Manifesto
(1857/58)
Quelle: MEW Vol. 42, p. 176.
Quelle: Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy
Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Introduction..., p. 1 (1843).
Kontext: Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.
Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower.
“Labour cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded.”
Vol. I, Ch. 10, Section 7, pg. 329.
Das Kapital (Buch I) (1867)
Quelle: Das Kapital/Das kommunistische Manifest
Kontext: In the United States of North America, every independent movement of the workers was paralysed so long as slavery disfigured a part of the Republic. Labour cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded.
Quelle: Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844/The Communist Manifesto
Grundrisse (1857/58)
Quelle: Introduction, p. 31.
The Civil War in France : "The Third Address" (May 1871) http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch05.htm
Section 2, paragraph 30.
The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)