Karl Marx: Trending quotes

Karl Marx trending quotes. Read the latest quotes in collection
Karl Marx: 580 quotes304 likes

“The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. Thus the first fact to be established is the physical organisation of these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature.”

Karl Marx

Source: The German Ideology (1845-1846), Volume I; Part 1; "Feuerbach. Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlook"; Section A, "Idealism and Materialism".

“Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets!”

Karl Marx

Vol. I, Ch. 24, Section 3, pg. 652.
(Buch I) (1867)

“It might otherwise appear paradoxical that money can be replaced by worthless paper; but that the slightest alloying of its metallic content depreciates it.”

Karl Marx

(1857/58)
Source: Notebook VII, The Chapter on Capital, p. 734.

“Catch a man a fish, and you can sell it to him. Teach a man to fish, and you ruin a wonderful business opportunity”

Karl Marx

Attributed to Marx (possibly in jest) in W. C. Privy's Original Bathroom Companion (2003).
Misattributed

“Something that is merely negative creates nothing.”

Karl Marx

(1857/58)
Source: Notebook VI, The Chapter on Capital, p. 532.

“As a beast of toil an ox is fixed capital. If he is eaten, he no longer functions as an instrument of labour, nor as fixed capital either.”

Karl Marx

Vol. II, Ch. VIII, p. 163.
(Buch II) (1893)

“Consumption is also immediately production, just as in nature the consumption of the elements and chemical substances is the production of the plant.”

Karl Marx

Grundrisse (1857-1858)
Source: Introduction, p. 10.

“As the variable capital always stays in the hands of the capitalist in some form or other, it cannot be claimed in any way that it converts itself into revenue for anyone.”

Karl Marx

Vol. II, Ch. XX, p. 452.
(Buch II) (1893)

“If we were to hang the last capitalist, another would appear to sell us the rope.”

Karl Marx

A variant of the above misquote, sometimes also attributed to Lenin. This gained popularity during the glasnost era when black market activity was at its most visible in the USSR; meant to show the profit motive was human nature and cannot be eradicated.
Misattributed

“The South has conquered nothing — but a graveyard.”

Karl Marx

Comments on the North American Events (1862)

“The worker's existence is thus brought under the same condition as the existence of every other commodity. The worker has become a commodity, and it is a bit of luck for him if he can find a buyer, And the demand on which the life of the worker depends, depends on the whim of the rich and the capitalists.”

Karl Marx book Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

Wages of Labor, p. 20.
Paris Manuscripts (1844)

“These numerous points at which money is withdrawn from circulation and accumulated in numerous individual hoards or potential money-capitals appears as so many obstacles to circulation, because they immobilise the money and deprive it of its capacity to circulate for a certain time.”

Karl Marx

Vol. II, Ch. XXI, p. 497.
(Buch II) (1893)

“It is in this sense that Franklin says, "war is robbery, commerce is generally cheating."”

Karl Marx

Vol. I, Ch. 5, pg. 182 (on Benjamin Franklin)
(Buch I) (1867)

“So far as living instruments of labour are concerned, for instance horses, their reproduction is timed by nature itself. Their average lifetime as instruments of labour is determined by the laws of nature. As soon as this term has expired they must be replaced by new ones. A horse cannot be replaced piecemeal; it must be replaced by another horse.”

Karl Marx

Vol. II, Ch. VIII, p. 174.
(Buch II) (1893)

“Every one knows that there are no real forests in England. The deer in the parks of the great are demurely domestic cattle, fat as London alderman.”

Karl Marx book Das Kapital

Vol. I, Ch. 27, pg. 803.
Das Kapital (Buch I) (1867)

“On the other hand one must not entertain any fantastic illusions on the productive power of the credit system, so far as it supplies or sets in motion money-capital.”

Karl Marx

Vol. II, Ch. XVII, p. 351.
(Buch II) (1893)

“Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriation.”

Karl Marx

Section 2, paragraph 30.
The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)

“Instead of deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the people, constituted in Communes, as individual suffrage serves every other employer in the search for the workmen and managers in his business.”

Karl Marx

The Civil War in France : "The Third Address" (May 1871) http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch05.htm

“From another side: is Achilles possible with powder and lead? Or the Iliad with the printing press, not to mention the printing machine? Do not the song and saga of themuse necessarily come to an end with the printer's bar, hence do not the necessary conditions ofepic poetry vanish?”

Karl Marx book Grundrisse

Grundrisse (1857/58)
Source: Introduction, p. 31.

“The increase in value of the world of things is directly proportional to the decrease in value of the human world.”

Karl Marx

Source: Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844/The Communist Manifesto