Quotes from book
Das Kapital

Das Kapital
Karl Marx Original title Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (German, 1867)

Das Kapital, also called Capital. A Critique of Political Economy , is a foundational theoretical text in materialist philosophy, economics and politics by Karl Marx. Marx aimed to reveal the economic patterns underpinning the capitalist mode of production in contrast to classical political economists such as Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say, David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill. While Marx did not live to publish the planned second and third parts, they were both completed from his notes and published after his death by his colleague Friedrich Engels. Das Kapital is the most cited book in the social sciences published before 1950.


Karl Marx photo
Karl Marx photo
Karl Marx photo
Karl Marx photo

“In a social order dominated by capitalist production even the non-capitalist producer is gripped by capitalist conceptions.”

Vol. III, Ch. I, Cost Price and Profit, p. 39.
Das Kapital (Buch III) (1894)

Karl Marx photo
Karl Marx photo
Karl Marx photo
Karl Marx photo
Karl Marx photo
Karl Marx photo
Karl Marx photo

“We see then, commodities are in love with money, but "the course of true love never did run smooth."”

Vol. I, Ch. 3, Section 2, pg. 121.
Das Kapital (Buch I) (1867)

Karl Marx photo

“Capital is dead labor, that vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.”

Vol. I, Ch. 10, Section 1, p. 257.
Das Kapital (Buch I) (1867)

Karl Marx photo
Karl Marx photo
Karl Marx photo
Karl Marx photo

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

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

Karl Marx photo

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

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

Karl Marx photo
Karl Marx photo

“Labour cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded.”

Vol. I, Ch. 10, Section 7, pg. 329.
Das Kapital (Buch I) (1867)
Source: Das Kapital/Das kommunistische Manifest
Context: In the United States of North America, every independent movement of the workers was paralysed so long as slavery disfigured a part of the Republic. Labour cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded.

Karl Marx photo

“The process is so complicated that it offers ever so many occasions for running abnormally.”

Vol. II, Ch. XXI, p. 500.
Das Kapital (Buch II) (1893)

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