“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.”

Source: "Some Social and Psychological Consequences of the Long Wall Method of Coal-Getting", 1951, p. 14

Preface to ' (1859).
Source: A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
Context: 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.

Source: 1970s, Economics As a Science, 1970, p. 147

Source: (1932), p.2

Source: Principles of industrial organization, 1913, p. 47

Source: Man's Moral Nature (1879), Ch. 1 : Lines of Cleavage

Source: Man for Himself (1947), Ch. 4 "Problems of Humanistic Ethics"

[Ghatak, Ritwik, Cinema and I, 1987, Ritwik Memorial Trust, 45]

"On some questions in understanding the Juche philosophy" http://www.korea-dpr.com/lib/Kim%20Jong%20Il%20-%203/ON%20SOME%20QUESTIONS%20IN%20UNDERSTANDING%20THE%20JUCHE%20PHILOSOPHY.pdf, speech delivered to theoretical propagandists of the Party, April 2, 1974
Context: Independence is an attribute of man, the social being; it should not be viewed as the development to perfection of a natural, biological attribute of living matter. This is, in essence, an evolutionary viewpoint. Of course, we do not deny evolutionism itself. Science has long established the fact that man is a product of ages of evolution. Man is a product of evolution, but not his independence. Independence is a social product. Independence is an attribute given to man by society, not nature; it is not a natural gift, but has been formed and developed socially and historically.