Marxism Quotes- Single

Marx quote on the inversion of Hegel’s Dialectic, text

‘It [the dialectic] must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel in the mystical shell’, Afterword to the Second German Edition of Capital Volume One

Marx quote on praxis

‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it’

Lenin quote on Hegel

‘It is impossible completely to understand Marx’s Capital, and especially its first chapter, without having thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel’s Logic’

Mao description of the metaphysical worldview, text

‘isolated, static and one-sided’, On Contradiction

Marx praise for Feuerbach in 1844 text

‘true conqueror of the old philosophy’

Marx quote on alienation from product, text

‘the worker relates to the product of his labour as to an alien object’, 1844 Manuscripts

Marx quote on alienation from labour

‘does not confirm himself in his work, he denies himself, feels miserable instead of happy, deploys no free physical and intellectual energy, but mortifies his body and ruins his mind’

Marx quote on what alienated labour produces

‘labour does not only produce commodities; it produces itself and the labourer as a commodity and that to the extent to which it produces commodities in general’

Marx quote comparing religious and capitalist alienation, text

‘As, in religion, man is governed by the products of his own brain, so in capitalist production, he is governed by the products of his own hand’, Capital Volume One

Marx quote rejecting Christian view of work as a necessary evil

‘might also require a normal portion of work, and of cessation from rest’.

Marx quote on the uniqueness of human labour, text

‘What distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is that the architect builds the cell in his mind before he constructs it in wax’, Capital Volume One

6th Thesis on Feuerbach- Marx quote rejecting human nature potentially.

‘the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In reality, it is the ensemble of the social relations.’

Quote in the 1844 text that seems to align with, rather than contradict, the 6th thesis

‘In the real practical world self-estrangement can only become manifest through the real practical relationship to other men’

marx quote on alienation from natrue and species-being

‘In estranging from man (1) nature, and (2) himself, his own active functions, his life activity, estranged labor estranges the species from man.’

marx detailed quote describing his theory of history in 1859 preface

‘in the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness.’

Marx shorter quote on historical materialism in Preface, text

‘The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life’, ·       1859 Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy

Marx quote indicating necessity of process of struggle, text

‘in order to work out their own emancipation… they will have to pass through long struggles, through a series of historic processes, transforming circumstances and men’, The Paris Commune

Marx quote indicating that the following stage of history already has its roots in the previous stage

‘they have no ideals to realise, but to set free the elements of the new society with which old collapsing bourgeois society is itself pregnant.’

Marx quote on pregnancy metaphor in Capital Volume One

‘Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one’

Marx quote indicating the necessity of the capitalist stage through the pregnancy metaphor

‘can neither clear by bold leaps, nor remove by legal enactments, the obstacles offered by the successive phases of its normal development. But it can shorten and lessen the birth-pangs.’

Marx quote highlighting that the material products of labour cannot be conceived entirely materially, threatening base-superstructure distinction, text

‘natural material transformed into organs of the human will over nature, or of human participation in nature’, Grundrisse

Marx quote suggesting that the relations influence the forces of production, reversing primacy thesis

‘the bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production’

Marx praise for Darwin’s work

‘Darwin’s work is most important and suits my purpose in that it provides a basis in natural science for the historical class struggle’

Engels’ interpretation in response to the base-superstructure distinction, text

‘the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. Neither Marx nor I have ever asserted more than this. Therefore, if somebody twists this into saying that the economic factor is the only determining one, he is transforming that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, absurd phrase.’ Letter to Joseph Bloch

Marx quote that shows he predicts relative, not absolute, immiseration, text

‘If capital grows rapidly, wages may rise, but the profit of capital rises disproportionately faster. The material position of the worker has improved, but at the cost of his social position. The social chasm that separates him from the capitalist has widened’, Wage Labour and Capital

Marx environmental quote

‘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.’

Engels quote on history proving them wrong, text

‘history has proved us wrong, and all who thought like us. It has made it clear that the state of economic development on the Continent at that time was not, by a long way, ripe for the elimination of capitalist production’, Introduction to The Class Struggles in France, written in 1895

Marx quote on development in Russia skipping capitalism

‘Precisely because it is contemporaneous with capitalist production, the rural commune may appropriate all its positive achievements without undergoing its frightful vicissitudes’

Marx quote on restriction of predictions to europe

‘The ‘historical inevitability’ of this course is therefore expressly restricted to the countries of Western Europe’

Marx and Engel quote on condition for skipping capitalism in Russia

‘if the Russian revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the west’

Engel’s preface to 1883 German Edition of Manifesto illustrates compatibility of economic deterministic sections and class struggle as the driver

‘economic production, and the structure of society of every historical epoch necessarily arising therefrom, constitute the foundation for the political and intellectual history of that epoch; that consequently…all history has been a history of class struggles’

marx quote what determines the consciousness of men

‘It is not consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness’,1859 Preface

Engels quote on history proving us wrong, text

‘history has proved us wrong, and all who thought like us. It has made it clear that the state of economic development on the Continent at that time was not, by a long way, ripe for the elimination of capitalist production’ 1895 Introduction to The Class Struggles in France

Engels quote on the consequence of history proving us wrong, text

‘the old tactics must be revised’,1895 Introduction to The Class Struggles in France

engels quote what else has history done other than prove us wrong about the ripeness of conditions for revolution

history ‘has not merely dispelled the erroneous notions we then held; it has also completely transformed the conditions under which the proletariat has to fight’

Bernstein quote on lack of contradictions in relations of production, text

‘The intensification of social relations has not in fact occurred as the Manifesto depicts it’, The Preconditions of Socialism

Bernstein quote on the middle class

‘the middle classes are changing in character, but they are not disappearing from the social spectrum’

Luxemburg quotes on credit

‘a particularly mighty instrument for the formation of crises’, as it ‘melts away’ when a crisis first starts to appear

Luxemburg quote on the reform route

‘do not really choose a more tranquil, calmer and slower road to the same goal, but a different goal’’

Marx quote on the use of the state, text

‘the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.’ The Paris Commune

Lenin quote on the spontaneous element of the working class movement, text

‘consciousness in an embryonic form’, What Is to Be Done

Lenin quote on consciousness through spontaneity

‘The working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness’

Lenin quote on the limits of trade union consciousness

workers recognise ‘the awakening antagonisms between workers and employers; but the workers, were not, and could not be, conscious of the irreconcilable antagonism of their interests to the whole of the modern political and social system’

Marx quote on class in vs for itself, text

‘The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends become class interests’, The Poverty of Philosophy

Marx and Engels on The Communists

‘are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all the others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement’

Luxemburg quote on tactics, text

‘there are no ‘detailed sets of tactics which a Central Committee can teach the party membership in the same way as troops are instructed in their training camps’, Organisational Questions of the Russian Social Democracy

Luxemburg quote on the essence of Lenin’s centralism

‘The ultra-centralism that Lenin advocates seems to us, in its whole essence, to be imbued, not with a positive creative spirit but with the sterile spirit of the night-watchman state’

Luxemburg quote on errors of movement

‘historically, the errors committed by a truly revolutionary movement are infinitely more fruitful than the infallibility of the cleverest Central Committee’’

Luxemburg quote on between the economic and political struggle

‘there is the most complete reciprocal action’'

Luxemburg quote on freedom of speech

‘Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently’

Luxemburg quote on knowledge of practical realisation of socialism

‘Far from being a sum of ready-made prescriptions which have only to be applied, the practical realization of socialism as an economic, social and juridical system is something which lies completely hidden in the mists of the future.’