Marxism is a Socio-Political-Economic Philosophy

[Petros Agapetos]

Marx: 1841 - 1849


Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy, Engels, 1843 (68k)

“Political economy came into being as a natural result of the expansion of trade, and with its appearance elementary, unscientific huckstering was replaced by a developed system of licensed fraud, an entire science of enrichment.”

Comments on James Mill, Marx, 1844 (62k)

“Our mutual value is for us the value of our mutual objects. Hence for us man himself is mutually of no value.”

Economic & Philosophical Manuscripts, Marx, 1844 (354k)

“Political Economy regards the proletarian ... like a horse, he must receive enough to enable him to work. It does not consider him, during the time when he is not working, as a human being. It leaves this to criminal law, doctors, religion, statistical tables, politics, and the beadle. ...
(1) What is the meaning, in the development of mankind, of this reduction of the greater part of mankind to abstract labor?
(2) What mistakes are made by the piecemeal reformers, who either want to raise wages and thereby improve the situation of the working class, or — like Proudhon — see equality of wages as the goal of social revolution? .”



Notes on Ricardo, Marx, 1845

“The disproportion ... springs from the multiplicity of capitals, their division and mutually hostile action.”

The Poverty of Philosophy, Marx, 1847 (332k)

“Economists explain how production takes place in the above-mentioned relations, but what they do not explain is how these relations themselves are produced, that is, the historical movement which gave them birth. M. Proudhon, taking these relations for principles, categories, abstract thoughts, has merely to put into order these thoughts, which are to be found alphabetically arranged at the end of every treatise on political economy. The economists' material is the active, energetic life of man; M. Proudhon's material is the dogmas of the economists.”

Wage Labour & Capital, Marx, 1847 (129k)

“We shall seek to portray this as simply and popularly as possible, and shall not presuppose a knowledge of even the most elementary notions of political economy. We wish to be understood by the workers.”

On the Question of Free Trade, Marx, 1848 (73k)

“The Repeal of the Corn Laws in England is the greatest triumph of free trade in the 19th century.”

Reflections on Money, Marx, March 1851

Economic Works - Marx: 1857 - 1865
The Grundrisse, Marx, 1857 (2130kb)

“The economists of the seventeenth century, e.g., always begin with the living whole, with population, nation, state, several states, etc.; but they always conclude by discovering through analysis a small number of determinant, abstract, general relations such as division of labour, money, value, etc. As soon as these individual moments had been more or less firmly established and abstracted, there began the economic systems, which ascended from the simple relations, such as labour, division of labour, need, exchange value, to the level of the state, exchange between nations and the world market. The latter is obviously the scientifically correct method. The concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence unity of the diverse. It appears in the process of thinking, therefore, as a process of concentration, as a result, not as a point of departure, even though it is the point of departure in reality and hence also the point of departure for observation [Anschauung] and conception. Along the first path the full conception was evaporated to yield an abstract determination; along the second, the abstract determinations lead towards a reproduction of the concrete by way of thought.”

Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, Marx, c. 1858

Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations is pp. 471 - 514 of the Grundrisse.

Second Draft of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx, 1858

Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx, 1857

Originally intended as a general introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx decided against it for the much shorter (and more often quoted) Preface, but is included in the A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy as an appendix.

A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx, 1859 (547k)

“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. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.”

The Production Process of Capital, Marx, 1861-3

“There will be about 30 sheets of print. It is a sequel to Part I, but will appear on its own under the title Capital, with A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy as merely the subtitle. In fact, all it comprises is what was to make the third chapter of the first part, namely ‘Capital in General’.” [Marx to Kugelmann, 28th Dec 1868]

Theories of Surplus Value, Marx, 1861 (188k)

“All economists share the error of examining surplus-value not as such, in its pure form, but in the particular forms of profit and rent.”

Results of the Direct Production Process, Marx, c. 1864

Results of the Direct Production Process was a draft for chapter six of Capital.

“functions which were surrounded with a halo, ... professionals, such as physicians and barristers ... are on the one hand converted directly into wage labour ... they become subject ... to the laws that regulate the price of wage labour.”

Value, Price and Profit, Marx, 1865 (126k)

“This false appearance distinguishes wages labour from other historical forms of labour. On the basis of the wages system even the unpaid labour seems to be paid labour. With the slave, on the contrary, even that part of his labour which is paid appears to be unpaid. Of course, in order to work the slave must live, and one part of his working day goes to replace the value of his own maintenance. But since no bargain is struck between him and his master, and no acts of selling and buying are going on between the two parties, all his labour seems to be given away for nothing.”

[Petros Agapetos]

If we have chosen the position in life in which we can most of all work for mankind, no burdens can bow us down, because they are sacrifices for the benefit of all; then we shall experience no petty, limited, selfish joy, but our happiness will belong to millions, our deeds will live on quietly but perpetually at work, and over our ashes will be shed the hot tears of noble people.

Marx, Reflections of a Young Man (1835)

History calls those men the greatest who have ennobled themselves by working for the common good; experience acclaims as happiest the man who has made the greatest number of people happy.

Marx, Reflections of a Young Man (1835)



As Prometheus, having stolen fire from heaven, begins to build houses and to settle upon the earth, so philosophy, expanded to be the whole world, turns against the world of appearance. The same now with the philosophy of Hegel.

Marx, Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy, 1839)



Real talers have the same existence that the imagined gods have. Has a real taler any existence except in the imagination, if only in the general or rather common imagination of man? Bring paper money into a country where this use of paper is unknown, and everyone will laugh at your subjective imagination.

Marx, Doctoral Thesis, Appendix (1841)



Greek philosophy seems to have met with something with which a good tragedy is not supposed to meet, namely, a dull ending.

Marx, Doctoral Thesis, Chapter 1 (1841)



What is genuine is proved in the fire, what is false we shall not miss in our ranks. The opponents must grant us that youth has never before flocked to our colours in such numbers, ... in the end, one will be found among us who will prove that the sword of enthusiasm is just as good as the sword of genius.

Engels, Anti-Schelling (1841)



The representation of private interests ... abolishes all natural and spiritual distinctions by enthroning in their stead the immoral, irrational and soulless abstraction of a particular material object and a particular consciousness which is slavishly subordinated to this object.

Marx, On the Thefts of Wood, in Rheinische Zeitung (1842)



“atheism” ... reminds one of children, assuring everyone who is ready to listen to them that they are not afraid of the bogy man.

Marx, Letter to 30 November 1842



In the year 1842-43, as editor of the Rheinische Zeitung, I first found myself in the embarrassing position of having to discuss what is known as material interests. ... the debates on free trade and protective tariffs caused me in the first instance to turn my attention to economic questions. ... When the publishers of the Rheinische Zeitung conceived the illusion that by a more compliant policy on the part of the paper it might be possible to secure the abrogation of the death sentence passed upon it, I eagerly grasped the opportunity to withdraw from the public stage to my study.

Marx, Preface to the Critique of Political Economy (1859)



Political economy came into being as a natural result of the expansion of trade, and with its appearance elementary, unscientific huckstering was replaced by a developed system of licensed fraud, an entire science of enrichment.

Engels, Outlines of Political Economy (1844)



The bureaucracy is a circle from which no one can escape. Its hierarchy is a hierarchy of knowledge.

Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1843)



The bureaucrat has the world as a mere object of his action.

Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1843)



This is a kind of mutual reconciliation society... Actual extremes cannot be mediated with each other precisely because they are actual extremes. But neither are they in need of mediation, because they are opposed in essence.

Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1843)



All forms of the state have democracy for their truth, and for that reason are false to the extent that they are not democracy.

Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1843)



We develop new principles for the world out of the world’s own principles. We do not say to the world: Cease your struggles, they are foolish; we will give you the true slogan of struggle. We merely show the world what it is really fighting for, and consciousness is something that it has to acquire, even if it does not want to.

Marx, Letter from the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher to Ruge (1843)



Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form.

Marx, Letter from the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher to Ruge (1843)



But, if constructing the future and settling everything for all times are not our affair, it is all the more clear what we have to accomplish at present: I am referring to ruthless criticism of all that exists, ruthless both in the sense of not being afraid of the results it arrives at and in the sense of being just as little afraid of conflict with the powers that be.

Marx, Letter from the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher (1843)



The weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism of the weapon, material force must be overthrown by material force; but
theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses.
Theory is capable of gripping the masses as soon as it demonstrates ad hominem, and it demonstrates ad hominem as soon as it becomes radical. To be radical is to grasp the root of the matter. But, for man, the root is man himself.

Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Introduction (1843)



Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. 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.

Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Introduction (1843)



The state is based on this contradiction. It is based on the contradiction between public and private life, between universal and particular interests. For this reason, the state must confine itself to formal, negative activities

Marx, Critical Notes on the Article ‘The King of Prussia and Social Reform. By a Prussian’ (1844)



When communist artisans associate with one another, theory, propaganda, etc., is their first end. But at the same time, as a result of this association, they acquire a new need — the need for society — and what appears as a means becomes an end. ... the brotherhood of man is no mere phrase with them, but a fact of life, and the nobility of man shines upon us from their work-hardened bodies.

Marx, Human Needs & the division of Labour (1844)



Do I obey economic laws if I extract money by offering my body for sale,... — Then the political economist replies to me: You do not transgress my laws; but see what Cousin Ethics and Cousin Religion have to say about it. My political economic ethics and religion have nothing to reproach you with, but — But whom am I now to believe, political economy or ethics? — The ethics of political economy is acquisition, work, thrift, sobriety — but political economy promises to satisfy my needs. ... It stems from the very nature of estrangement that each sphere applies to me a different and opposite yardstick — ethics one and political economy another; for each is a specific estrangement of man and focuses attention on a particular field of estranged essential activity, and each stands in an estranged relation to the other.

Marx, Human Needs & the division of Labour (1844)



The only intelligible language in which we converse with one another consists of our objects in their relation to each other. We would not understand a human language and it would remain without effect. By one side it would be recognised and felt as being a request, an entreaty, and therefore a humiliation

Marx, Comment on James Mill (1844)



Our mutual value is for us the value of our mutual objects.
Hence for us man himself is mutually of no value.

Marx, Comment on James Mill (1844)



Political Economy regards the proletarian ... like a horse, he must receive enough to enable him to work. It does not consider him, during the time when he is not working, as a human being. It leaves this to criminal law, doctors, religion, statistical tables, politics, and the beadle.

Marx, Wages of Labour (1844)



Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution.

Marx, Private Property and Communism (1844)



The entire movement of history, as simply communism’s actual act of genesis — the birth act of its empirical existence — is, therefore, for its thinking consciousness the comprehended and known process of its becoming.

Marx, Private Property and Communism (1844)



But also when I am active scientifically, etc. – an activity which I can seldom perform in direct community with others – then my activity is social, because I perform it as a man. Not only is the material of my activity given to me as a social product (as is even the language in which the thinker is active): my own existence is social activity, and therefore that which I make of myself, I make of myself for society and with the consciousness of myself as a social being.

Private Property and Communism (1844)



Natural science will in time incorporate into itself the science of man, just as the science of man will incorporate into itself natural science: there will be one science.

Marx, Private Property and Communism (1844)



Natural science has invaded and transformed human life all the more practically through the medium of industry; and has prepared human emancipation, although its immediate effect had to be the furthering of the dehumanisation of man. Industry is the actual, historical relationship of nature, ....

Marx, Private Property and Communism (1844)



Subjectivity and objectivity, spirituality and materiality, activity [Tätigkeit] and suffering, lose their antithetical character, and – thus their existence as such antitheses only within the framework of society;
Marx, Private Property and Communism (1844)



In general it is always empirical businessmen we are talking about when we refer to political economists, (who represent) their scientific creed and form of existence.

Marx, Human Requirements and Division of Labour (1844)



Under private property ... Each tries to establish over the other an alien power, so as thereby to find satisfaction of his own selfish need. The increase in the quantity of objects is therefore accompanied by an extension of the realm of the alien powers to which man is subjected, and every new product represents a new potentiality of mutual swindling and mutual plundering.

Marx, Human Requirements and Division of Labour (1844)



Man is directly a natural being. As a natural being and as a living natural being he is on the one hand endowed with natural powers, vital powers — he is an active natural being. These forces exist in him as tendencies and abilities — as instincts. On the other hand, as a natural, corporeal, sensuous objective being he is a suffering, conditioned and limited creature, like animals and plants. ... A being which does not have its nature outside itself is not a natural being, and plays no part in the system of nature. A being which has no object outside itself is not an objective being.

Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy in General (1844)



A few days in my old man’s factory have sufficed to bring me face to face with this beastliness, which I had rather overlooked. ..., it is impossible to carry on communist propaganda on a large scale and at the same time engage in huckstering and industry.

Engels, Letter to Marx. January 20 1845)



Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.

Marx, German Ideology (1845)



The premises from which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises from which abstraction can only be made in the imagination. They are the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live, both those which they find already existing and those produced by their activity. These premises can thus be verified in a purely empirical way.

Marx, German Ideology (1845)



Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking.

Marx, German Ideology (1845)



We know only a single science, the science of history. One can look at history from two sides and divide it into the history of nature and the history of men. The two sides are, however, inseparable; the history of nature and the history of men are dependent on each other so long as men exist. The history of nature, called natural science, does not concern us here; but we will have to examine the history of men, since almost the whole ideology amounts either to a distorted conception of this history or to a complete abstraction from it. Ideology is itself only one of the aspects of this history.

Marx, German Ideology (1845)



In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.

Marx, German Ideology (1845)



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)



For each new class which puts itself in the place of one ruling before it, is compelled, merely in order to carry through its aim, to represent its interest as the common interest of all the members of society, that is, expressed in ideal form: it has to give its ideas the form of universality, and represent them as the only rational, universally valid ones.

Marx, German Ideology (1845)



As far as Feuerbach is a materialist he does not deal with history, and as far as he considers history he is not a materialist.

Marx, German Ideology (1845)



Both for the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and ... the alteration of men on a mass scale is, necessary, ... a revolution; this revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.

Marx, German Ideology (1845)



The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. Thus the first fact to be established is the physical organisation of these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature....Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organisation. By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their actual material life

Marx, German Ideology (1845)



The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question.

Marx, Theses On Feuerbach: Thesis 2 (1845)



The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbringing forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that it is essential to educate the educator himself. This doctrine must, therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society.

Marx, Theses On Feuerbach: Thesis 3 (1845)



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

Marx, Theses On Feuerbach: Thesis 11 (1845)



One of the most difficult tasks confronting philosophers is to descend from the world of thought to the actual world. Language is the immediate actuality of thought. Just as philosophers have given thought an independent existence, so they were bound to make language into an independent realm.

Marx, German Ideology, Chapter 3 (1846)



History does nothing, it ‘possesses no immense wealth’, it ‘wages no battles’. It is man, real, living man who does all that, who possesses and fights; ‘history’ is not, as it were, a person apart, using man as a means to achieve its own aims; history is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his aims..

Marx, The Holy Family, Chapter 6 (1846)



The productive forces are the result of man’s practical energy, but that energy is in turn circumscribed by the conditions in which man is placed by the productive forces already acquired, by the form of society which exists before him, which he does not create, which is the product of the preceding generation.

Marx, 1846 Letter to Annenkov (1846)



The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill society with the industrial capitalist.

Marx, Poverty of Philosophy (1847)



Economists explain how production takes place in the above-mentioned relations, but what they do not explain is how these relations themselves are produced, that is, the historical movement which gave them birth. M. Proudhon, taking these relations for principles, categories, has merely to put into order these thoughts.

Marx, Poverty of Philosophy (1847)



Machines were, it may be said, the weapon employed by the capitalist to quell the revolt of specialized labor.

Marx, Poverty of Philosophy (1847)



The working class, in the course of its development, will substitute for the old civil society an association which will exclude classes and their antagonism, and there will be no more political power properly so-called, since political power is precisely the official expression of antagonism in civil society.

Marx, Poverty of Philosophy (1847)



But in the measure that history moves forward, and with it the struggle of the proletariat assumes clearer outlines, they no longer need to seek science in their minds; they have only to take note of what is happening before their eyes and to become its mouthpiece. So long as they look for science and merely make systems, so long as they are at the beginning of the struggle, they see in poverty nothing but poverty, without seeing in it the revolutionary, subversive side, which will overthrow the old society. From this moment, science, which is a product of the historical movement, has associated itself consciously with it, has ceased to be doctrinaire and has become revolutionary.

Marx, Poverty of Philosophy (1847)



The slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private property, he abolishes only the relation of slavery and thereby becomes a proletarian; the proletarian can free himself only by abolishing private property in general.

Engels, Principles of Communism (1847)



What is Communism? Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat. What is the proletariat? The proletariat is that class in society which lives entirely from the sale of its labor and does not draw profit from any kind of capital; whose weal and woe, whose life and death, whose sole existence depends on the demand for labor....

Engels, Principles of Communism (1847)



A nation cannot become free and at the same time continue to oppress other nations. The liberation of Germany cannot therefore take place without the liberation of Poland from German oppression.

Engels, Speech on Poland (1847)



Under the freedom of trade the whole severity of the laws of political economy will be applied to the working classes. Is that to say that we are against Free Trade? No, we are for Free Trade, because by Free Trade all economical laws, with their most astounding contradictions, will act upon a larger scale, upon a greater extent of territory, upon the territory of the whole earth; and because from the uniting of all these contradictions into a single group, where they stand face to face, will result the struggle which will itself eventuate in the emancipation of the proletarians.

Engels, To Free Trade Congress at Brussels (1847)



And this life activity [the worker] sells to another person in order to secure the necessary means of life. ... He works that he may keep alive. He does not count the labor itself as a part of his life; it is rather a sacrifice of his life. It is a commodity that he has auctioned off to another.

Marx, Wage Labour and Capital (1847)



What is a Negro slave? A man of the black race. ... A Negro is a Negro. Only under certain conditions does he become a slave. A cotton-spinning machine is a machine for spinning cotton. Only under certain conditions does it become capital. Torn away from these conditions, it is as little capital as gold is itself money, or sugar is the price of sugar

Marx, Wage Labour and Capital (1847)



A house may be large or small; as long as the neighboring houses are likewise small, it satisfies all social requirement for a residence. But let there arise next to the little house a palace, and the little house shrinks to a hut. The little house now makes it clear that its inmate has no social position at all to maintain.

Marx, Wage Labour and Capital (1847)



What is free trade, what is free trade under the present condition of society? It is freedom of capital. When you have overthrown the few national barriers which still restrict the progress of capital, you will merely have given it complete freedom of action. ...



But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade.

Marx & Engels, On Free Trade (1848)

[Petros Agapetos]

A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism.

Marx & Engels, Communist Manifesto (1848)



All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned ...

Marx & Engels, Communist Manifesto (1848)



In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.

Marx & Engels, Communist Manifesto (1848)



In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

Marx & Engels, Communist Manifesto (1848)



The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.
Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution.
The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
Working Men of All Countries, Unite!

Marx & Engels, Communist Manifesto (1848)



We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror. But the royal terrorists, the terrorists by the grace of God and the law, are in practice brutal, disdainful, and mean, in theory cowardly, secretive, and deceitful, and in both respects disreputable..

Marx, Editorial in Final edition of Neue Rheinische Zeitung (1849)



It will be the workers, with their courage, resolution and self-sacrifice, who will be chiefly responsible for achieving victory. The petty bourgeoisie will hesitate as long as possible and remain fearful, irresolute and inactive; but when victory is certain it will claim it for itself and will call upon the workers to behave in an orderly fashion, and it will exclude the proletariat from the fruits of victory. ... the rule of the bourgeois democrats, from the very first, will carry within it the seeds of its own destruction, and its subsequent displacement by the proletariat will be made considerably easier..

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



The revolution made progress, not by its immediate tragicomic achievements but by the creation of a powerful, united counter-revolution, an opponent in combat with whom the party of overthrow ripened into a really revolutionary party.

Marx, Class Struggle in France (1850)



Revolutions are the locomotives of history.

Class Struggle in France (1850)



The worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to take over a government in an epoch when the movement is not yet ripe for the domination of the class which he represents and for the realisation of the measures which that domination would imply ...

Engels, The Peasant War in Germany (1850)



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)

[Petros Agapetos]

[Petros Agapetos]

[Petros Agapetos]

When and why capitalism will end

[Hexachordia]

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.
Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution.
The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
Working Men of All Countries, Unite!

Marx & Engels, Communist Manifesto (1848)


Marxists have a lot to hide, secret bank accounts, international affliliates, kindred business, sex slave harem, pedophiliac tendecies etc. Puke...

[Petros Agapetos]

Communism, political and economic doctrine that aims to replace private property and a profit-based economy with public ownership and communal control of at least the major means of production (e.g., mines, mills, and factories) and the natural resources of a society. Communism is thus a form of socialism—a higher and more advanced form, according to its advocates. Exactly how communism differs from socialism has long been a matter of debate, but the distinction rests largely on the communists’ adherence to the revolutionary socialism of Karl Marx.

[Petros Agapetos]

The origin of, estrangement, or “self-alienation” was religious in nature and later became metaphysical. The ideas prevailing in the society, where Marx developed his thought process were that, man is alienated from God due to man’s original sin; salvation is the process by which the self-alienation is overcome. For Hegel, the process of self-alienation is a progression toward fulfillment with the Absolute.” Hegel is best known for his view of history a result of the gradual development of consciousness, a progressive self-realization of spirit. Marx strongly felt that Hegel’s view of history failed to address the all-important and recurrent issue of class struggle. As a student, Marx was strongly influenced by Hegel’s philosophy. The concept of alienation is the continuation of Hegel’s concept of self realization which was put forward by Hegel which one needs to understand to find its relation with the concept of alienation put forward by Marx later on.

Self realization is not just recognizing human self but rather social self because all our ideas and sentiments come to us from society. Self realization is to give a coherent unity to one’s own life i.e. a dominant aim gives shape to life. Other independent interests are then integrated into one’s life by being brought into relation to this central concern. The concept of self realization realizes the need for identity. Human beings need to have a sense of existing as persons in their own right, with a life of their own and with aims and ideas of their own. The need for recognition by others is a major theme in Hegel’s philosophy. The consciousness as a distinct individual, as one whose actions make a difference in the world. The need for self expression through work also gives a sense of identity. One must strive for achievement, choosing activities which make full use of our faculties. Certain kinds of life, like life on assembly line, working at screwing nuts on bolts, make it impossible for us to do that. Marx sees self realization trough work and productivity. Work should be meaningful, creative and self expressive

Alienation as a conceptual legacy of Marx is derived from some of his early unpublished writings which have subsequently been published and received interest and acclaim. The early stage of Marx’s thought was fraught with terminology inherited from Hegel and Feuerbach.The usage of the term alienation by Karl Marx is associated with the ideas of “estrangement “and “reification.” The word “estrangement” is a socio psychological condition in which the individual has a feeling of distance or separateness from community and society. A person feels that he does not belong to the society. The term “reification,” implies depersonalization, that the individual is treated as an object or thing and has, therefore, lost his identity.

Man is helpless before the social forces, the conditions of modern factory with the workers appearing as trapped animals. In modern industrial society, man is unhappy with himself due to lack of expression, and fewer opportunities for meaningful activities and leisure.

The theme of alienation in Marx’s early writing, is basic to his sociology and his prescriptions for the good world. The early use of the term “alienation” is a legacy of Marx and Engels ‘association with the first circle of the Young Hegelians and Feuerbachians; an association which they severed after coming to a consciousness of the struggle of the working man. The two senses appearing in this early writing include the idea of reification of labor in product and idea of the self-alienation of the laborer as a man: The relationship of the worker to his own activity as something alien and not belonging to him, activity as suffering (passivity), strength as powerlessness, creation as emasculation, the personal physical and mental energy of the worker, his personal life, as an activity which is directed against himself, independent of him and not belonging to him.

In contrast with this early view of self-alienation, the use of the term in the later work shows significant differences. Marx seems to express his view of alienation as alienation of the individual’s private labor from himself by means of a capitalist exchange system involving exchange value rather than the true value of human labor. In addition, man cannot see the reasonable and intelligible relations with his fellows and nature because the productive process renders him impotent – the productive process has mastery over man, instead of being controlled by him Because man does not understand his relation to production, he views the object of his labor as a mere commodity.

The idea of alienation in later writings is not the “self alienation”, but rather the idea of reification of labor manifested in the laborer’s product. Thus it seems that there is a distinct difference between the early and later employment of the term in Marx.

A third characteristic of alienation – alienation of man “from the species

life of the universal and free being that is man.

Similar to the three aspects of self-realization, when work is meaningful, creative, and self-expressive, it constitutes the organizing centre of a person’s life, it gives the individual a sense of his or her own identity, recognized and confirmed by others, person realizes his potentials. Alienated labour lacks these qualities when it is simply the earning of a wage, with no intrinsic significance for the worker, an activity over which he has no say and into which he puts nothing of himself in an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production. Society is then divided into two main classes, those who own capital and therefore own the means of production, and those who own only their labour-power. For the latter, work must necessarily take the form of work for another, work for the capitalist, as a means of earning a wage. It is therefore alienated labour. Marx distinguishes four aspects of this alienation.

The worker is alienated from his product.
The product does not belong to him,
and its particular qualities are of no concern for him.
He could be producing absolutely any-thing so long as it provided him with a wage.
He is alienated from his own productive activity.
He has no control over that activity, it is not the expression of his
own ideas and projects, it is something imposed on him,
which he is simply ordered to perform.

This phenomenon is called "ALIENATION". The extreme case of this is mechanized labour in the factory.

He is alienated from his species-being, that is, from those of his qualities, distinctively human. The human species is distinguished from other species. Human species have a capacity for free, conscious, and creative productive activity.

He is alienated from other human beings. Everyone is earning his own individual wage, so there is no concept of combine projects.

The quality of work is central to self-realization. The idea that one’s work determines one’s identity, and the stimulus to invest one’s energies in that work, are so deeply embedded in our culture that no one could now find full satisfaction in a life which did not contain meaningful work.

To satisfy the need of meaningful work and to overcome the alienation of labour ,Marx presents the idea of a fully human life by pursuing intensely absorbing activities to compensate for boring work. Self-realization through work can be made possible only by a radical change in the economic structure of society. Alienation is linked with the existence of private property in the means of production. ‘If the product of labour does not belong to the worker but stands over against him as an alien power, this is only possible in that it belongs to another man apart from the worker. Consequently, work can lose its alienated character only when the means of production are brought under the ownership and control of the workers themselves. Only then can work be experienced by the workers as the fulfillment of their aspirations

[Ancap]

It's the same thing as nazism.