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Karl Marx Quotes
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290 Quotes on Communism, Religion, Love, and the Human Condition

Discover the profound and thought-provoking words of Karl Marx, the renowned philosopher and economist. Explore his famous quotes that delve into the essence of communism, religion, love, and the human condition. Uncover the revolutionary ideas that have shaped our understanding of society and its structures.

Karl Marx was a renowned German philosopher, economist, and political theorist who made significant contributions to various fields. He is best known for his works, The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital, which analyze capitalism using his theory of historical materialism. These ideas, collectively known as Marxism, have had a profound impact on intellectual, economic, and political history.

Born in Trier, Germany, Marx studied philosophy at prestigious universities before receiving his doctorate in 1841. Influenced by the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, he critiqued and expanded upon Hegelian ideas in his writings. In Paris, Marx met Friedrich Engels with whom he formed a lifelong friendship and collaboration. They actively participated in the Communist League and authored The Communist Manifesto in 1848. Facing expulsion from Belgium and Germany, Marx moved to London where he wrote influential works like The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and Das Kapital. In his Critique of the Gotha Programme, he discussed revolution, the transition to communism, and the role of the state. Marx played a critical role in founding the International Workingmen's Association but died stateless in 1883.

Marx's theories emphasize class conflict as a driving force behind societal development. According to him, capitalists and workers are engaged in constant struggle due to opposing interests in control over production means versus labor power exchange for wages within capitalism. Using historical materialism as an analytical tool, Marx predicted that tensions within capitalism would eventually lead to its downfall and replacement by socialism. He advocated for organized revolutionary action by the working class to bring about socio-economic emancipation and establish a communist society free from class divisions. Marx's work has faced both praise and criticism but has undeniably influenced socialist thought, political movements worldwide, and modern social sciences.

✵ 5. May 1818 – 14. March 1883   •   Other names Karol Marx
Karl Marx photo
Karl Marx: 290   quotes 304   likes

Karl Marx Quotes

“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

People , Search , Communication , Business

“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)

Communication

“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)

Money

“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)

“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)

Law , Nature , Time , Horse

“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)

War , Sense , Cheating

“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)

Money , Appearance , Time

“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)

Life , Dependency

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

Karl Marx

Comments on the North American Events (1862)

“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

Appearance

“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)

Way

“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.

Nature

“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)

“Something that is merely negative creates nothing.”

Karl Marx

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

“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

Business , Fish

“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.

Money , Appearance

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

Karl Marx

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

“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".

History , Nature

“An increase in the productivity of labour means nothing more than that the same capital creates the same value with less labour, or that less labour creates the same product with more capital.”

Karl Marx

Grundrisse (1857-1858)
Source: Notebook IV, The Chapter on Capital, p. 308.

“Lincoln’s place in the history of the United States and of mankind will, nevertheless, be next to that of Washington!”

Karl Marx

Comments on the North American Events (1862)

History

“Capital is money, capital is commodities. … By virtue of it being value, it has acquired the occult ability to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs.”

Karl Marx

Vol. I, Ch. 4, pp. 171–172
(Buch I) (1867)

Money

“In a constantly revolving circle every point is simultaneously a point of departure and a point of return. If we interrupt the rotation, not every point of departure is a point of return.”

Karl Marx

Vol. II, Ch. IV, p. 104.
(Buch II) (1893)

Departure

“No production without a need. But consumption reproduces the need.”

Karl Marx

Grundrisse (1857-1858)
Source: Introduction, p. 12.

“What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.”

Karl Marx

Section 1, paragraph 53, lines 11-13.
The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)

Victory

“The capitalist cannot store labour-power in warehouses after he has bought it, as he may do with the raw material.”

Karl Marx

Vol. II, Ch. XV, p. 285.
(Buch II) (1893)

“The circulation of capital realizes value, while living labour creates value.”

Karl Marx

(1857/58)
Source: Notebook V, The Chapter on Capital, p. 463.

“Each pursues his private interest and only his private interest; and thereby serves the private interests of all, the general interest, without willing it or knowing it. The real point is not that each individual's pursuit of his private interest promotes the totality of private interests, the general interest. One could just as well deduce from this abstract phrase that each individual reciprocally blocks the assertion of the others' interests, so that, instead of a general affirmation, this war of all against all produces a general negation.”

Karl Marx

Grundrisse (1857-1858)
Source: Notebook I, The Chapter on Money, p. 76.

War

“Money does not arise by convention, any more than the state does. It arises out of exchange, and arises naturally out of exchange; it is a product of the same.”

Karl Marx

Grundrisse (1857-1858)
Source: Notebook I, The Chapter on Money, p. 85.

Money , Nature

“The aggregate capital appears as the capital stock of all individual capitalists combined. This joint stock company has in common with many other stock companies that everyone knows what he puts in, but not what he will get out of it.”

Karl Marx

Vol. II, Ch. XX, p. 437.
(Buch II) (1893)

Appearance

“The national debt has given rise to joint stock companies, to dealings in negotiable effects of all kinds, and to agiotage, in a word to stock-exchange gambling and the modern bankocracy.”

Karl Marx

Vol. I, Ch. 31, pg. 827.
(Buch I) (1867)

“The philosopher, who is himself an abstract form of alienated man, sets himself up as the measure of the alienated world.”

Karl Marx book Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

Der Philosoph legt sich – also selbst eine abstrakte Gestalt des entfremdeten Menschen – als den Maßstab der entfremdeten Welt an.
Paris Manuscripts (1844)

World

“Let us consider the actual, worldly Jew — not the Sabbath Jew, as Bauer does, but the everyday Jew. … What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money… Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man — and turns them into commodities. The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange. The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money in general.”

Karl Marx book On the Jewish Question

On the Jewish Question (1843)

Money , God , Religion

“The unity is brought about by force.”

Karl Marx

Grundrisse (1857-1858)
Source: Notebook I, The Chapter on Money, p. 70.

“A great deal of capital, which appears to-day in the United States without any certificate of birth, was yesterday, in England, the capitalised blood of children.”

Karl Marx

Vol. I, Ch. 31, pg. 829.
(Buch I) (1867)

Children , Birth , Appearance

“One capitalist always kills many.”

Karl Marx

Vol. I, Ch. 32, p. 836.
(Buch I) (1867)

“man's heart is a wonderful thing, especially when carried in the purse”

Karl Marx book Das Kapital

Vol. I, Ch. 9, pg. 252.
Das Kapital (Buch I) (1867)

Heart

“Money is a crystal formed of necessity in the course of the exchanges, whereby different products of labour are practically equated to one another and thus by practice converted into commodities.”

Karl Marx

Vol. I, Ch. 2, pg. 99.
(Buch I) (1867)

Money

“Technology discloses the active relation of man towards nature, as well as the direct process of production of his very life, and thereby the process of production of his basic societal relations, of his own mentality, and his images of society, too.”

Karl Marx

Vol. I, Ch. 13: "Machinery and Big Industry".
(Buch I) (1867)

Life , Nature

“The law of gravity thus asserts itself when a house falls about our ears.”

Karl Marx

Vol. I, Ch. 1, Section 4, pg. 86.
(Buch I) (1867)

Law , Housing

“Since the working-class lives from hand to mouth, it buys as long as it has the means to buy.”

Karl Marx book Das Kapital

Vol. II, Ch. XX, p. 449.
Das Kapital (Buch II) (1893)

“But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negation. It is the negation of negation.”

Karl Marx book Das Kapital

Vol. I, Ch. 32, p. 837.
Das Kapital (Buch I) (1867)

Law , Nature

“Since property here exists in the form of stock, its movement and transfer become purely a result of gambling on the stock exchange, where the little fish are swallowed by the sharks and the lambs by the stock exchange wolves.”

Karl Marx book Das Kapital

Vol. III, Ch. XXVII, The Role of Credit, p. 440.
Das Kapital (Buch III) (1894)

Fish

“For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic and must remain so if he does not wish to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, to fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have in mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.”

Karl Marx

Source: The German Ideology (1845-1846), Vol. 1, Part 1.

Fish

“Everyone who knows anything of history also knows that great social revolutions are impossible without the feminine ferment. Social progress may be measured precisely by the social position of the fair sex (plain ones included).”

Karl Marx

Letter to Ludwig Kugelmann http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1868/letters/68_12_12.htm, dated 12 December 1868.

Sex , History

“In capitalist society however where social reason always asserts itself only post festum great disturbances may and must constantly occur.”

Karl Marx

Vol. II, Ch. XVI, p. 319.
(Buch II) (1893)

“Every commodity is compelled to chose some other commodity for its equivalent.”

Karl Marx

Vol. I, Ch. 1, Section 3, pg. 65.
(Buch I) (1867)

“There is a physical relation between physical things. But it is different with commodities.”

Karl Marx

Vol. I, Ch. 1, Section 4, pg. 83.
(Buch I) (1867)

“b>[T]he very cannibalism of the counterrevolution will convince the nations that there is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror.</b”

Karl Marx

“The Victory of the Counter-Revolution in Vienna,” Neue Rheinische Zeitung, 07 November 1848.

Death , Way , Birth

“The way to Hell is paved with good intentions, and he might just as easily have intended to make money, without producing at all.”

Karl Marx

Vol. I, Ch. 7, pg. 213.
(Buch I) (1867)

Money , Way , Hell

“Gold is now money with reference to all other commodities only because it was previously, with reference to them, a simple commodity.”

Karl Marx

Vol. I, Ch. 1, Section 3, pg. 81.
(Buch I) (1867)

Money