Some timely quotes from the 'Old Man'.

[blindpig]

KARL MARX QUOTES


The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.

KARL MARX, The Communist Manifesto

The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.

KARL MARX, The Communist Manifesto

You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.

KARL MARX, The Communist Manifesto

Communism deprives no man of the ability to appropriate the fruits of his labour. The only thing it deprives him of is the ability to enslave others by means of such appropriations.

KARL MARX, The Communist Manifesto

The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.

KARL MARX, The Communist Manifesto

Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth -- the soil and the labourer.

KARL MARK, Capital

Hitherto, every form of society has been based ... on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes.

KARL MARX, The Communist Manifesto

The past lies like a nightmare upon the present.

KARL MARX, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another is put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to. In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end.

KARL MARX, The Communist Manifesto

Democracy is the road to socialism.

KARL MARX

Christian Socialism is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates the heart-burnings of the aristocrat.

KARL MARX, The Communist Manifesto

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

KARL MARX, Criticism of Hegel's "Philosophy of Right"

All great historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice ... the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

KARL MARX, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality.

KARL MARX, Capital

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

KARL MARX, Capital

I do not like money, money is the reason we fight.

KARL MARX

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

KARL MARX, Capital

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, Capital

[anonymous171]

1. I liked Marx up until I read about his "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" idea

Then I realized that he was a dumb ass. Or at least not as bright as I had previously thought he was.

[StarfarerBill]

5. Marx was far brighter than you and I put together.

He was among the first and possibly most brilliant analysts of capitalism, as well as an ardent advocate for the working class. Like many of his other ideas, the "dictatorship of the proletariat" was taken out of context by the Leninists to mean "dictatorship of the vanguard party".

[MSchreader]

34. Marx's definition of "dictatorship"

Is the Roman definition: unchallenged rule. Doesn't mean autocracy or lack of democracy. If anything, Marx's views on democracy would put most Democrats to shame.

[Goldstein1984]

2. "Democracy is the road to socialism."

That explains the war on democracy.

Thank you.

[Goldstein1984]

3. I don't understand why anybody would unrec this, except

to drive it down the page and keep it from being read.

Why not just take "Capital" and "The Communist Manifesto" out into the street and burn them.

I read somewhere that the flash point for paper is "Fahrenheit 451."

[tavalon]

7. I'm afraid I know little about Marx

But I'm kicking it because I want to read the comments.

[ellie]

4. kicking

[L0oniX]

6. K & R ...and add these for patriotism...

Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy. - Henry Kissinger

Blind obedience to authority is the enemy of the truth. - Albert Einstein

That worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor . . . This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism–how passionately I hate them! – Albert Einstein

Never was a patriot yet, but was a fool. – John Dryden

A patriot is a fool in ev’ry age. – Alexander Pope.

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. – Samuel Johnson

In Dr. Johnson’s famous dictionary, patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer, I beg to submit that it is the first. – Ambrose Bierce

Patriotism is as fierce as a fever, pitiless as the grave, blind as a stone, and irrational as a headless hen. – Ambrose Bierce

That pernicious sentiment, “Our country, right or wrong.” – James Russell Lowell

“My country right or wrong” is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, “My mother drunk or sober.” – G. K. Chesterton

Patriotism which has the quality of intoxication is a danger not only to its native land but to the world, and “My country never wrong” is an even more dangerous maxim than “My country, right or wrong.” – Bertrand Russell

Patrioism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it. – George Bernard Shaw

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious. – George Bernard Shaw

You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race. – George Bernard Shaw

Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy. – George Bernard Shaw

Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it. – Denis Diderot

To me, it seems a dreadful indignity to have a soul controlled by geography. – George Santayana

The Athenian democracy suffered much from that narrowness of patriotism which is the ruin of all nations. – H.G. Wells

Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. “Patriotism” is its cult. . . . Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one’s country which is not part of one’s love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship. – Erich Fromm

One of the great attractions of patriotism–it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat, Bully and cheat, what’s more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous. – Aldous Huxley

Many studies have discovered a close link between prejudice and “patriotism” . . . Extreme bigots are almost always super-patriots – Gordon Allport

It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the flag. – Elbert Hubband

Patriotism varies, from a noble devotion to a moral lunacy. – William Inge

Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts, as a last resource, pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and glad to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority. – Arthur Schopenhauer

Patriotism is the passion of fools and the most foolish of passions. – Arthur Schopenhauer

Patriotism corrupts history. – Goethe

Into the cultural and technological system of the modern world, the patriotic spirit fits like dust in the eyes and sand in the bearings. Its net contribution to the outcome is obscuration, distrust, and retardation at every point where it touches the fortunes of modern mankind. – Thorstein Veblen

The standardization of mass-production carries with it a tendency to standardize a mass-mind, producing a willing conformity, not merely to common ways of living, but to common ways of thinking and common valuations. The worst defect of patriotism is its tendency to foster and impose this common mind, and so to stifle the innumerable germs of liberty. – J.A. Hobson

2. Patriotism and War:

At the bottom of all patriotism is war: that is why I am no patriot. – Jules Renard

No other factor in history, not even religion, has produced so many wars as has the clash of national egotisms sanctified by the name of patriotism. – Preserved Smith

Naturally the common people don’t want war . . . Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders . . . All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism. – Hermann Goering.

That worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor . . . This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism–how passionately I hate them! – Albert Einstein

3. Patriotism and Religion:

Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched. – Guy de Maupassant

God and Country are an unbeatable team; they break all records for oppression and bloodshed. – Luis Buñuel

To be patriotic, hate all nations but your own; to be religious, all sects but your own; to be moral, all pretenses but your own. – Lionel Strachey

When a dog barks at the moon, then it is religion; but when he barks at strangers, it is patriotism! – David Starr Jordan

4. The American Syndrome:

If you have a weak candidate and a weak platform, wrap yourself up in the American flag and talk about the Constitution. – Matt Quay

How much longer are we going to think it necessary to be “American” before (or in contradistinction to) being cultivated, being enlightened, being humane, & having the same intellectual discipline as other civilized countries? It is really too easy a disguise for our shortcomings to dress them up as a form of patriotism. – Edith Wharton

The 100 percent American is 99 percent an idiot. – George Bernard Shaw

Treason is in the air around us everywhere. It goes by the name of patriotism. – Thomas Corwin

5. Three relatively positive assessments of patriotism:

A patriot is somebody who protects his country from his government. Or better yet: who has the guts to protect his country from its government. – Piotyr Dirk

Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism. – George Washington

Dissent is the highest form of patriotism. – Thomas Jefferson

[TBF]

8. "The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains"

That statement alone is worth the rec, the rest are icing on the cake.

[Starry Messenger]

9. kick. n/t

[blindpig]

10. Concerning economic crisis:

This is an excerpt from The Communists Manifesto. Beats the shit out of the talking heads explaining things.

"For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity — the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented. "

[blindpig]

11. Ecology

Marx and the Global Environmental Rift
by John Bellamy Foster

Ecology is often seen as a recent invention. But the idea that capitalism degrades the environment in a way that disproportionately affects the poor and the colonized was already expressed in the nineteenth century in the work of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Writing in Capital in 1867 on England's ecological imperialism toward Ireland, Marx stated: "For a century and a half England has indirectly exported the soil of Ireland, without even allowing its cultivators the means for replacing the constituents of the exhausted soil." Marx was drawing here on the work of the German chemist Justus von Liebig. In the introduction to the seventh (1862) edition of his Organic Chemistry in Its Applications to Agriculture and Physiology Liebig had argued that "Great Britain robs all countries of the conditions of their fertility" and singled out Britain's systematic robbing of Ireland's soil as a prime example. For Liebig a system of production that took more from nature than it put back could be referred to as a "robbery system," a term that he used to describe industrialized capitalist agriculture.1

Following Liebig and other analysts of the nineteenth-century soil crisis, Marx argued that soil nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium) were sent in the form of food and fiber sometimes hundreds and thousands of miles to the cities, where, instead of being recycled back to the land, these nutrients ended up polluting the urban centers, with disastrous results for human health. Meanwhile, faced with an increasingly impoverished soil, Britain, as Liebig pointed out, imported bones from Napoleonic battlefields and from Roman catacombs together with guano from Peru in a desperate attempt to restore nutrients to the fields. (Later on the invention of synthetic fertilizers was to help close the nutrient gap, but this was to lead to additional environmental problems, such as nitrogen runoff.)

In addressing these environmental issues Marx took over the concept of Stoffwechsel or metabolism from Liebig,2 describing the ecological contradiction between nature and capitalist society as "an irreparable rift in the interdependent process of social metabolism." Indeed, "capitalist production," Marx explained, "only develops the techniques and the degree of combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth -- the soil and the worker." This rift in the metabolic relation between humanity and nature could only be overcome, he argued, through the systematic "restoration" of the metabolism between humanity and nature "as a regulative law of social organization." But this required the rational regulation of the labor process (itself defined as the metabolic relation of human beings to nature) by the associated producers in line with the needs of future generations. "Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together," Marx stated, "are not owners of the earth. They are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations as boni patres familias ."3

Marx's ecological discussions, coupled with those of Engels, therefore went well beyond the general understanding of his time. Today the ecological issues that Marx and Engels addressed (albeit sometimes only in passing) read like a litany of many of our most pressing environmental problems: the division of town and country, the degradation of the soil, rural isolation and desolation, overcrowding in cities, urban wastes, industrial pollution, waste recycling in industry, the decline in nutrition and health, the crippling of workers, the squandering of natural resources (including fossil fuel in the form of coal), deforestation, floods, desertification, water shortages, regional climate change, conservation of energy, the dependence of species on changing environments, historically-conditioned overpopulation tendencies, and famine.

http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/foster281107.h...

[blindpig]

12. Crash

In every stockjobbing swindle every one knows that some time or other the crash must come, but every one hopes that it may fall on the head of his neighbour, after he himself has caught the shower of gold and placed it in safety. Après moi le déluge! is the watchword of every capitalist and of every capitalist nation. Hence Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the labourer, unless under compulsion from society.

[Moochy]

13. I always see this quote shortened to it's last phrase.

In full it has an entirely more humane context:

"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."

[cali]

14. What I find so interesting about Marx is his total lack of understanding

of human nature.

[Dhalgren]

16. Marx's grasp of human nature was better than anyone I have

ever read. And I would ask you to name someone with a better grasp. I have heard human nature called savage, greedy, petty, self-centered, etc. But I think human nature is more fair-minded, sharing, honest, just, compassionate, etc. We as a specie have evolved by sharing, working together, protecting each other and caring for others - that is the greatest part of our evolution - cooperation. Folks who push the other part are doing so for ulterior reasons...

[cali]

20. Human nature is both savage, greedy, petty, self-centered and fair minded

sharing, etc. I believe that the history of the world demonstrates more of the former than the latter. Oh, and there's no evidence whatsoever that humans have evolved in the last 10,000 years or so.

[blindpig]

24. Humans are capable of a wide range of behaviors

Which behaviors are expressed is dependent upon the social environment. Capitalism and class societies of the past reward those former behaviors and thus they are commonly expressed.

[Dhalgren]

27. While you're reading Marx you might brush up on your Darwin.

Evolution never stops. Your statement about human evolution is nonsensical - unless you are a creationist. :)

[blindpig]

18. So tell me, what is this 'human nature'?

I find this quote sufficient:

"It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness."

-Karl Marx's 1859 Preface to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy

It is a perfectly materialistic and ecological formulation.

[cali]

19. what is the evidence that that statement is factual?

[blindpig]

21. It is commonly observed in nature.

Animals adapt and respond to their habitat, why should the human animal be any different?

Again, what do you think this 'human nature' is?

[cali]

23. Humans do differ in many ways from other animals. That's been commonly

observed as well.

I think human nature is a paradox with many different competing traits- some of which served us well 30 thousand years ago and which doesn't serve us well now. I believe that we evolved to live most optimally in small tribal groups.

[blindpig]

25. Ain't no paradox, it's biology.

I don't know which traits you say do not serve us well now.

The evidence is that our species survived well as egalitarian hunter gathers for in excess of 200,000 years. Obviously we cannot do the small tribal group thing, and really wouldn't want to, given the material advances we have made. Therefore, as a species capable of modifying our social environment we should do so in order to bring it into harmony with what we are, our genome.

[blindpig]

15. Money, money

Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I, Chapter 3, page 86.

The function of money as the means of
payment implies a contradiction without a terminus medius. In so far as
the payments balance one another, money functions only ideally as money
of account, as a measure of value. In so far as actual payments have to
be made, money does not serve as a circulating medium, as a mere
transient agent in the interchange of products, but as the individual
incarnation of social labour, as the independent form of existence of
exchange value, as the universal commodity. This contradiction comes to
a head in those phases of industrial and commercial crises which are
known as monetary crises. *107 Such a crisis occurs only where the
ever-lengthening chain of payments, and an artificial system of
settling them, has been fully developed. Whenever there is a general
and extensive disturbance of this mechanism, no matter what its cause,
money becomes suddenly and immediately transformed, from its merely
ideal shape of money of account, into hard cash. Profane commodities
can no longer replace it. The use-value of commodities becomes
value-less, and their value vanishes in the presence of its own
independent form. On the eve of crisis, the bourgeois, with the
self-sufficiency that springs from intoxicating prosperity, declares
money to be a vain imagination. Commodities alone are money. But now
the cry is everywhere: money alone is a commodity! As the hart pants
after fresh water, so pants his soul after money, the only wealth. *108
In a crisis, the antithesis between commodities and their value-form,
money, becomes heightened into an absolute contradiction. Hence, in
such events, the form under which money appears is of no importance.
The money famine continues, whether payments have to be made in gold or
in credit money such as bank notes. *109


108."The sudden reversion from a system of credit to a system of
hard cash heaps theoretical fright on top of the practical panic; and
the dealers by whose agency circulation is affected, shudder before the
impenetrable mystery in which their own economical relations are
involved" (Karl Marx, l. c. p. 198).

[Dhalgren]

17. Thanks blindpig! If more people would actually read Marx

rather than just react to what they have been told, things might be different. The kind of thing you are doing here is well worth the effort.

[Book Lover]

22. +1

I was just typing up this very sentiment. Last year on Marx's birthday, I posted a link to marxists.org on my Facebook page: the resulting storm of comments proved to me that political education in this country is completely nonexistent. Someone told me that I was promoting anarchy. Marx an anarchist? Please!

[blindpig]

26. Why we are so confused

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas.

Marx, German Ideology (1845)

[Dhalgren]

28. Bump for the working class!

.

[MSchreader]

35. This quote, incidentally,

Answers those who like to whine about "human nature". We learn how to be greedy from a society that puts greed and the drive for profit above all else.

[leftstreet]

38. +1

[zeos3]

44. +1

[Book Lover]

29. kick

[maryf]

30. Kick...

sorry I missed this until now! Great selection!! Thanks!

[scarletwoman]

31. Thank you for this thread. I'm sorry I saw it too late to give it a rec.

So much of what Marx writes just seems like common sense. It's a great shame and loss for critical analysis that he's been so demonized for so long.

sw

[blindpig]

32. The democratic petty bourgeois....

The democratic petty bourgeois, far from wanting to transform the whole society in the interests of the revolutionary proletarians, only aspire to make the existing society as tolerable for themselves as possible. ... The rule of capital is to be further counteracted, partly by a curtailment of the right of inheritance, and partly by the transference of as much employment as possible to the state. As far as the workers are concerned one thing, above all, is definite: they are to remain wage labourers as before. However, the democratic petty bourgeois want better wages and security for the workers; in short, they hope to bribe the workers ...

Marx & Engels, Address to the Central Committee of the Communist League (1850)

[maryf]

33. as tolerable for themSELVES as possible

there's that self word....

Brilliant quote...

[MSchreader]

36. I hate to say this to you all

But this comment by Marx is an indictment of most of the liberal politics you espouse. But if you're cool with that, then I can at least appreciate your honesty.

[ret5hd]

41. Who is this "you all", "you", and "you're" of which you speak?

[blindpig]

43. If I might answer for the poster...

Liberals, the kinder, friendlier aspect of the ruling class.

[proteus_lives]

37. Too bad communism was DOA.

[MSchreader]

39. It hasn't arrived yet

Not even close.

We had some party-crashers (pun intended) with false invites calling themselves "communists" -- Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Mao, Ho, Kim, Castro, Hoxha, etc. -- but the real guests have yet to arrive for dinner.

[Common Sense Party]

46. So how do you envision Communism taking hold and being done right?

Whether it's here or in some other country...What will a working, functional, humane system of Communism look like, and how will that country get there?

[blindpig]

40. No men on white horses

For nearly 40 years we have raised to prominence the idea of the class struggle as the immediate driving force of history, and particularly the class struggle between bourgeois and the proletariat as the great lever of the modern social revolution; ... At the founding of the International, we expressly formulated the battle cry: The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself.

Marx and Engels, Strategy and Tactics of the Class Struggle (1879)

[Javaman]

42. Although Marx wrote during the times when monarchies ruled...

and democracy was still very much in it's infancy, the basic message I have always taken away from his writings is this: the ruling elite will always subjugate the worker class for their own ends. When elites power increases, so does the subjugation.

Communism is far from perfect and I have never been a fan of it, however, a healthy dose of well regulated socialism would do any society good. (I'm perfectly aware that communism and socialism are two different animals).

[anaxarchos]

45. The old guy doesn't exactly mince words...

You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.

In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.

From the moment when labour can no longer be converted into capital, money, or rent, into a social power capable of being monopolised, i.e., from the moment when individual property can no longer be transformed into bourgeois property, into capital, from that moment, you say, individuality vanishes.

You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.

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 appropriations.

It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property, all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us.
According to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness; for those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything do not work. The whole of this objection is but another expression of the tautology: that there can no longer be any wage-labour when there is no longer any capital.