Karl Marx Quotes

All science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided.

Labor in the white skin can never free itself as long as labor in the black skin is branded.

An increase in the productivity of labour means nothing more than that the same capital creates the same value with less labour, or that less labour creates the same product with more capital.

Finally, there came a time when everything that men had considered as inalienable became an object of exchange, of traffic and could be alienated. This is the time when the very things which till then had been communicated, but never exchanged; given, but never sold; acquired, but never bought – virtue, love, conviction, knowledge, conscience, etc. – when everything, in short, passed into commerce. It is the time of general corruption, of universal venality, or, to speak in terms of political economy, the time when everything, moral or physical, having become a marketable value, is brought to the market to be assessed at its truest value.

Everything great glitters, glitter begets ambition, and ambition can easily have caused the inspiration or what we thought to be inspiration. But reason can no longer restrain one who is lured by the fury of ambition. He tumbles where his vehement drive calls him; no longer does he choose his position, but rather chance and luster determine it.

Something that is merely negative creates nothing.

We have just seen that, apart from money-capital, circulating capital is only another name for commodity-capital. But to the extent that labour power circulates in the market,it is not capital, no form of commodity-capital. It is not capital at all; the labourer is not a capitalist, although he brings a commodity to market, namely his own skin.

In reality, the laborer belongs to capital before he has sold himself to capital. His economic bondage is both brought about and concealed by the periodic sale of himself, by his change of masters, and by the oscillation in the market price of labor power. Capitalist production, therefore, under its aspect of a continuous connected process, of a process of reproduction, produces not only commodities, not only surplus value, but it also produces and reproduces the capitalist relation; on the one side the capitalist, on the other the wage-laborer.

It is well known how the monks wrote silly lives of Catholic Saints over the manuscripts on which the classical works of ancient heathendom had been written.

These labourers, who must sell themselves piece-meal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.

Denn der Kapitalismus ist schon in der Grundlage aufgehoben durch die Voraussetzung, daß der Genuß als treibendes Motiv wirkt, nicht die Bereicherung selbst.

The real point at issue always is Turkey in Europe – the great peninsula to the south of the Save and Danube. This splendid territory [the Balkans] has the misfortune to be inhabited by a conglomerate of different races and nationalities, of which it is hard to say which is the least fit for progress and civilization. Slavonians, Greeks, Wallachians, Arnauts, twelve millions of men, are all held in submission by one million of Turks, and up to a recent period, it appeared doubtful whether, of all these different races, the Turks were not the most competent to hold the supremacy which, in such a mixed population, could not but accrue to one of these nationalities.

yürekten sevdiğim,

sana gene yazıyorum çünkü yalnızım ve çünkü kafamın içinde seninle konuşurken senin bunu bilmiyor, ya da bana karşılık veremiyor olmana katlanamıyorum.

kısa süreli ayrılıklar iyi oluyor, çünkü hep bir arada olununca her şey hiç ayırt edilemeyecek kadar birbirine benzemeye başlıyor. yan yana durduklarında kuleler bile cüceleşirken, alelade ve ufak tefek şeyler yakından bakınca kocamanlaşır. küçük tedirginlikler onlara yol açan nesneler göz önünden kaldırıldığında yok olabilir. yan yanalık dolayısıyla sıradanlaşan tutkularsa mesafenin büyüsüyle yeniden büyüyüp doğal boyutlarına dönerler. aşkım da öyle. zamanın aşkımı tıpkı güneş ve yağmurun bitkileri büyüttüğü gibi büyütmüş olduğunu anlamam için senin bir an, sırf rüyada bile olsa, benden koparılman yetiyor. senden ayrılır ayrılmaz sana olan aşkım bütün gerçekliğiyle kendini gösteriyor: o, ruhumun bütün enerjisiyle yüreğimin bütün kişiliğini bir araya getiren bir dev. böylece yeniden insan olduğumu hissediyorum çünkü içim tutkuyla doluyor. araştırma ve çağdaş eğitimin bizi kucağına attığı belirsizlikler ve bütün nesnel ve öznel izlenimlerimizde kusur bulmaya iten kuşkuculuk bizi küçük, zayıf ve mızmız kılıyor. ama aşk -feurbachvari insana aşk değil, metabolizmaya aşk değil, proletaryaya aşk değil- sevdiğine aşk, yani sana aşk, insanı yeniden insanlaştırıyor...

dünyada çok dişi var, kimileri de çok güzel. ama ben, her bir hattı, hatta her bir kırışığı bana hayatımın en büyük ve en tatlı anılarını hatırlatan bir yüzü bir daha nerede bulabilirim? senin tatlı çehrende sonu gelmez acılarımı, yeri doldurulmaz kayıplarımı bile okuyabilir ve senin tatlı yüzünü öptüğümde acıyı öperim.

hoşça kal canım. seni ve çocukları binlerce kere öperim.
senin, karl
manchester, 21 haziran, 1865

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 appropriation.

...to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, [and] criticise after dinner...