Marx Quotes

All quotes from the top half are taken from the book “The Marx-Engels Reader” (1978). This contains much of the writings of “young Marx”. 

All quotes from the bottom half are taken from Marx’s book “Capital: Volume 1” (introduced by Ernest Mandel, Translated by Ben Fowkes)

On the Jewish Question

“In France, which is a constitutional state, The Jewish question is a question of constitutionalism, of the incompleteness of political emancipation. Since the semblance of a state religion is maintained there, if only the insignificant and self-contradictory formula of religion of the majority, The relation of the Jews to the state also maintains a semblance of religious, theological opposition.” pg. 30 (Italics Original)

“To be politically emancipated from religion is not to be finally and completely emancipated from religion, because political emancipation is not the final and absolute form of human emancipation” Pg. 32

“Civil society in opposition to this political state, is recognized as necessary because the political state is recognized as necessary” pg. 35

“The state which acknowledges the Bible as its charter and Christianity as its supreme rule must be assessed according to the words of the Bible; for even the language of the Bible is sacred. Such a state, as well as the human rubbish up one which it is based, finds itself involved in painful contradiction, which is insoluble from the standpoint of religious consciousness, when it is referred to those words of the Bible “with which it does not conform and cannot conform unless it wishes to dissolve itself entirely” pg 38

“the members of the political state are religious because of the dualism between individual life and species-life (our human nature), between the life of civil society and political life. They are religious in the sense that man treats political life, which is remote from his own individual existence, as if it were his true life; and in the sense that religion is here the spirit of civil society, and expresses the separation and withdrawal of man from man.” pg. 39 (stuff in parenthesis I added) 

“Liberty as a right of man is not founded upon the relations between man and man, but rather upon the separation of man from man. It is the right of such separation. The right of the circumscribed individual, withdrawn into himself” pg. 42

“The right of property is, therefore, the right to enjoy one’s fortune and to dispose of it as one will; without regard for other men and independently of society. It is the right of self-interest…It leads every man to see in other mean, not the realization, but rather the limitation of his own liberty.” pg. 42

“The term “equality” has here no political significance. It is only the equal right to liberty as defined above; namely that every man is equally regarded as a self-sufficient monad” pg. 42

“Security is, rather, the assurance of its egoism” (that is, security in capitalistic societies is security of one’s own self interest and wealth, so that others may not take it away) pg. 43

“freedom of the Press is completely destroyed, since “the freedom of the Press should not be permitted when it endangers public liberty”” pg. 44

“What is the profane (worldly) existence of Judaism? practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly cult of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly god? Money.” (I share this quote to show that despite his genius, even great thinkers like Marx are prone to prejudice, if that is indeed what we take this to be) pg. 48

Philosophy of Right: Introduction

“man makes religion; religion does not make man” pg. 53

“the struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly, a struggle against aworld whose spiritual aroma is religion” pg. 54

“The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of men, is a demand for their real happiness. The call to abandon their illusions about their condition is a call to abandon a condition which requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefor, the embryonic criticism of this vale of tears of which religion is the halo. Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers from the chain, not in order that man shall bear the chain without caprice or consolation but so that he shall cast of the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man so that he can think, act and fashion his reality as a man who has lost his illusions and regained his reason; so that he will revolve about himself as his own true sun. Religion is only the illusory sun about which man revolves so long as he does not revolve around himself” Pg. 54

Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

“The worker sinks to the level of a commodity and becomes indeed the most wretched of commodities; that the wretchedness of the worker is in inverse proportion to the power and magnitude of his production” pg. 70

“The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces” pg. 71 (since in a capitalistic economy the capitalist gets richer off of the workers cheap labor, so in comparison, he is forever getting poorer, as the rich get richer) 

“The more civilized the his object, the more barbarous becomes the worker” pg. 73

“His labor is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labor. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it. Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labour is shunned like the plague” pg. 74

“As a result, therefore, man (the worker) no longer feels himself to be freely active in any but his animal functions—eating, drinking, procreating, or at most in his dwelling and in dressing-up, etc.;and in his human functions (labor) he no longer feels himself to be anything but animal. What is animal becomes human and what is human becomes animal” pg. 74

The German Ideology: Part 1

“The production of life, both of one’s own in labour and of fresh life in procreation, now appears a double relationship: on the one hand as a natural, on the other as a social relationship” pg. 157

“These three aspects of social activity are not of course to be taken as three different stages, but just as three aspects or, to make it clear to the Germans, three ‘moments’” pg. 157. (only posted for satire towards Germans)

“Language, like consciousness, only arises from the need, the necessity, of intercourse with other men” pg. 158

“Or how does it happen that trade, which after all is nothing more than exchange of products of various individuals and countries, rules the world through the relation of supply and demand—a relation which, as an English economist says, hovers over the earth like the fate of the ancients, and with invisible hand allots fortune and misfortune to men, sets up empires and overthrows empires, causes nations to rise and to disappear” pg. 162

“Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, anideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself” pg. 162

Speaking of how historians have looked at history thus far

“Instead we get a narrative based not on research but on arbitrary constructions and literary gossip, such as Saint Bruno provided in his now forgotten history of the eighteenth century. These high-falutin and haughty huckers of ideas, who imagine themselves infinitely exalted above all national prejudices, are thus in practice far more national than the beer-quaffing philistines who dream of a united Germany” pg. 167

“serfdom cannot be abolished without improved agriculture, and that, in general, people cannot be liberated as long as they are unable to obtain food and drink, housing and clothing in adequate quality and quantity. ‘liberation’ is a historical and not a mental act and it is brought about by historical conditions, the [development] of industry, commerce, [agri]culture, the [conditions of intercourse]” pg. 169

“The whole semblance, that the rule of a certain class is only the rule of certain ideas, comes to a natural end, of course, as soon as class rule in general ceases to be the form in which society is organised” pg. 174

“the separate individuals form a class only insofar as they have to carry on a common battle against another class; otherwise they are on hostile terms with each other as competitors” pg. 179

“The competition of the nations among themselves was excluded as far as possible by tarrifs, prohibitions and treaties; and in the last resort the competitive struggle was carried on and decided by wars” pg. 183

“To this modern private property corresponds the modern State, which purchased gradually by the owners of property by means of taxation has fallen entirely into their hands though the national debt, and its existence has become wholly dependent on the commercial credit which the owners of property, the bourgeois, extend to it, as reflected in the rise and fall of State funds on the stock exchange” pg. 187

“State has become a separate entity, beside and outside civil society; but it is nothing more than the form of organisation which the bourgeois necessarily adopt both for internal and external purposes, for the mutual guarantee of their property and interests.” pg. 187

“Civil law develops simultaneously with private property out of the disintegration of the natural community.” pg. 187

“Thus in imagination, individuals seem freer under the dominance of the bourgeoisie than before, because their conditions of life seem accidental” pg. 199

CAPTIAL: VOLUME 1

“The [capitalist] smirks self-importantly and is intent on business; the [worker] is timid and holds back, like someone who has brought his own hide to market and now has nothing else to expect but - a tanning.” pg. 280

(in a footnote) “The ‘undersellers’, who sell [bread] at less than its value…sell bread adulterated with alum, soap, pearl-ash, chalk, Derbyshire stone-dust and other similar agreeable, nourishing and wholesome ingredients” pg. 278