Zitate Karl Marx
„In demselben Maße, in dem die Widerwärtigkeit der Arbeit wächst, nimmt daher der Lohn ab.“
— Karl Marx, buch Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei
Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei, I. Marx/Engels, MEW 4, S. 469,
Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei (1848)
„Für die Welt arbeiten.“
Paul Lafargue in: Karl Marx, Persönliche Erinnerungen, 1890, Abschnitt 1
Zugeschrieben
„Wenn Widerstand gegen die Macht der Sklavenhalter die maßvolle Losung Ihrer ersten Wahl war, so ist Tod der Sklaverei! der triumphierende Schlachtruf Ihrer Wiederwahl. […] Die Arbeiter Europas […] betrachten es als ein Wahrzeichen der kommenden Epoche, daß Abraham Lincoln, dem starksinnigen, eisernen Sohn der Arbeiterklasse, das Los zugefallen ist, sein Vaterland durch den beispiellosen Kampf für die Erlösung einer geknechteten Race und für die Umgestaltung der sozialen Welt hindurchzuführen.“
An Abraham Lincoln, Präsident der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika, im Namen der Internationalen Arbeiterassoziation. In: "Der Social-Demokrat" Nr. 3 vom 30. Dezember 1864. MEW Bd. 16, S. 18 f. mlwerke.de http://www.mlwerke.de/me/me16/me16_018.htm
(engl.: "If resistance to the Slave Power was the reserved watchword of your first election, the triumphant war cry of your re-election is Death to Slavery. [...] The workingmen of Europe [...] consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world." - marxists.org http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/1864/lincoln-letter.htm; Papers relating to the Foreign Affairs ... Part I 1866 p. 64
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„Unser Wahlspruch muss also sein: Reform des Bewusstseins nicht durch Dogmen, sondern durch Analysirung des mystischen sich selbst unklaren Bewusstseins, trete es nun religiös oder politisch auf. Es wird sich dann zeigen, dass die Welt längst den Traum von einer Sache besitzt, von dem sie nur das Bewusstsein besitzen muss, um sie wirklich zu besitzen.“
Ein Briefwechsel von 1843: Brief an [[w:Arnold Ruge|Arnold
Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher (1844), Ein Briefwechsel von 1843
„Aber wir können nicht immer den Stand ergreifen, zu dem wir uns berufen glauben; unsere Verhältnisse in der Gesellschaft haben einigermaßen schon begonnen, ehe wir sie zu bestimmen imstande sind.“
Betrachtungen eines Jünglings bei der Wahl seines Berufes. (Abiturientenarbeit) MEW 40, S. 592
„Wilhelms [ Liebknecht ] in der Beilage abgedruckter Redeteil … zeigt innerhalb der Dummheit eine nicht zu leugnende Schlauheit, sich die Sache zurechtzumachen … Das Vieh glaubt an den zukünftigen 'Staat der Demokratie'! Unterderhand ist das bald das konstitutionelle England, bald die bürgerlichen Vereinigten Staaten, bald die elende Schweiz. Von revolutionärer Politik hat 'es' keine Ahnung.“
Brief an Friedrich Engels, 1869, MEW 32, S. 360
„Wenn du nur für einen Tag oder zwei dagewesen wärst, hättest du genug Material anlegen können um für ein ganzes Jahr zu lachen. Darum war ich so bestrebt dich hier zu haben. So eine Gelegenheit bekommt man nicht jeden Tag geboten.“
Über Ferdinand Lassalle, der bei Marx zu Besuch war, in einem Brief an Friedrich Engels, 1862. In selben Brief merkt Marx an, dass sich Lassalle seit seinem Aufenthalt in Zürich verändert habe. Übersetzung Wikiquote, Vgl. MEW 30, S. 257f.
engl.: "If you'd been here just for a day or two, you'd have been able to lay in enough material to keep you laughing for a whole year. That’s why I was so anxious to have you here. One doesn’t get an opportunity like that every day." - marxists.org http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1862/letters/62_07_30a.htm
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„Die Anarchie, das ist das große Paradepferd ihres Meisters Bakunin, der von allen sozialistischen Systemen nur die Aufschriften genommen hat.“
mit Friedrich Engels: Die angeblichen Spaltungen in der Internationale. Vertrauliches Zirkular des Generalrats der Internationalen Arbeiterassoziation, 1872. MEW 18: 50
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„Communism… is the genuine resolution of the antagonism between man and nature and between man and man; it is the true resolution of the conflict between existence and essence, objectification and self-affirmation, freedom and necessity, individual and species. It is the riddle of history solved and knows itself as the solution.“
— Karl Marx, buch Ökonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte aus dem Jahre 1844
Private Property and Communism, p. 43.
Paris Manuscripts (1844)
„The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament.“
Actually from State and Revolution by Vladimir Lenin, paraphrasing Marx in The Civil War in France.
Misattributed
„The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.“
Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretirt; es kommt aber darauf an, sie zu verändern.
http://books.google.com/books?id=xyc9AAAAYAAJ&q=%22Die+Philosophen+haben+die+Welt+nur+verschieden%22+%22es+kommt+aber+darauf+an+sie+zu+ver%C3%A4ndern%22&pg=PA72#v=onepage
"Theses on Feuerbach" (1845), Thesis 11, Marx Engels Selected Works,(MESW), Volume I, p. 15; these words are also engraved upon his grave.
First published as an appendix to the pamphlet Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy by Friedrich Engels (1886)
Quelle: Eleven Theses on Feuerbach
„When people speak of ideas that revolutionize society, they do but express the fact that within the old society, the elements of a new one have been created,“
Section 2, paragraph 58.
The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)
Kontext: When people speak of ideas that revolutionize society, they do but express the fact that within the old society, the elements of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence.
„The process is so complicated that it offers ever so many occasions for running abnormally.“
— Karl Marx, buch Das Kapital
Vol. II, Ch. XXI, p. 500.
Das Kapital (Buch II) (1893)
„Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.“
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)
Kontext: Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language. Thus Luther put on the mask of the Apostle Paul, the Revolution of 1789-1814 draped itself alternately in the guise of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, and the Revolution of 1848 knew nothing better to do than to parody, now 1789, now the revolutionary tradition of 1793-95. In like manner, the beginner who has learned a new language always translates it back into his mother tongue, but he assimilates the spirit of the new language and expresses himself freely in it only when he moves in it without recalling the old and when he forgets his native tongue.
When we think about this conjuring up of the dead of world history, a salient difference reveals itself. Camille Desmoulins, Danton, Robespierre, St. Just, Napoleon, the heroes as well as the parties and the masses of the old French Revolution, performed the task of their time – that of unchaining and establishing modern bourgeois society – in Roman costumes and with Roman phrases.
„In like manner, the beginner who has learned a new language always translates it back into his mother tongue, but he assimilates the spirit of the new language and expresses himself freely in it only when he moves in it without recalling the old and when he forgets his native tongue.“
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)
Kontext: Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language. Thus Luther put on the mask of the Apostle Paul, the Revolution of 1789-1814 draped itself alternately in the guise of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, and the Revolution of 1848 knew nothing better to do than to parody, now 1789, now the revolutionary tradition of 1793-95. In like manner, the beginner who has learned a new language always translates it back into his mother tongue, but he assimilates the spirit of the new language and expresses himself freely in it only when he moves in it without recalling the old and when he forgets his native tongue.
When we think about this conjuring up of the dead of world history, a salient difference reveals itself. Camille Desmoulins, Danton, Robespierre, St. Just, Napoleon, the heroes as well as the parties and the masses of the old French Revolution, performed the task of their time – that of unchaining and establishing modern bourgeois society – in Roman costumes and with Roman phrases.
„This social formation constitutes, therefore, the closing chapter of the prehistoric stage of human society.“
Preface to ' (1859).
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.
„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“
Preface to ' (1859).
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.
„When Engels and I first joined the secret Communist Society we made it a condition that everything tending to encourage superstitious belief in authority was to be removed from the statutes.“
Remarks against personality cults from a letter to W. Blos (10 November 1877).
Kontext: Neither of us cares a straw for popularity. A proof of this is for example, that, because of aversion to any personality cult, I have never permitted the numerous expressions of appreciation from various countries with which I was pestered during the existence of the International to reach the realm of publicity, and have never answered them, except occasionally by a rebuke. When Engels and I first joined the secret Communist Society we made it a condition that everything tending to encourage superstitious belief in authority was to be removed from the statutes.
