
“When you have an enemy in your power, deprive him of the means of ever injuring you.”
Source: Political Aphorisms, Moral and Philosophical Thoughts (1848), p. 30
Section 2, paragraph 30.
The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)
“When you have an enemy in your power, deprive him of the means of ever injuring you.”
Source: Political Aphorisms, Moral and Philosophical Thoughts (1848), p. 30
Fourth State of the Union Address (6 December 1880)
Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Problem of Industry, pp. 36–37
Source: Our Enemy, the State (1935), p. 59
Context: There are two methods, or means, and only two, whereby man's needs and desires can be satisfied. One is the production and exchange of wealth; this is the economic means. The other is the uncompensated appropriation of wealth produced by others; this is the political means. The primitive exercise of the political means was, as we have seen, by conquest, confiscation, expropriation, and the introduction of a slave-economy. The conqueror parcelled out the conquered territory among beneficiaries, who thenceforth satisfied their needs and desires by exploiting the labour of the enslaved inhabitants. The feudal State, and the merchant-State, wherever found, merely took over and developed successively the heritage of character, intention and apparatus of exploitation which the primitive State transmitted to them; they are in essence merely higher integrations of the primitive State.
The State, then, whether primitive, feudal or merchant, is the organization of the political means. Now, since man tends always to satisfy his needs and desires with the least possible exertion, he will employ the political means whenever he can – exclusively, if possible; otherwise, in association with the economic means.
Source: (1776), Book II, Chapter III, p. 377.
Grundrisse (1857-1858)
Source: Notebook VII, The Chapter on Capital, pp. 628–629.
Henri Lefebvre (1991; original French edition, 1974), as quoted in Fainstein The City Builders (2001), p. 272
Other quotes
General Security: The Liquidation of Opium (1925)
“Of the exercise of a right power may deprive me; of the right itself, never.”
The Economic Tendency of Freethought (1890)
Context: Note the difference between a right and a privilege. A right, in the abstract, is a fact; it is not a thing to be given, established, or conferred; it is. Of the exercise of a right power may deprive me; of the right itself, never. Privilege, in the abstract, does not exist; there is no such thing. Rights recognized, privilege is destroyed.
But, in the practical, the moment you admit a supreme authority, you have denied rights. Practically the supremacy has all the rights, and no matter what the human race possesses, it does so merely at the caprice of that authority.