674 Quotes by Karl Marx

A use-value, or useful article, therefore, has value only because abstract human labour is objectified or materialized in it. How, then, is the magnitude of this value to be measured? By means of the quantity of the "value-forming substance", the labour, contained in the article. This quantity is measured by its duration, and the labour-time is itself measured on the particular scale of hours, days etc.

The increase in value of the world of things is directly proportional to the decrease in value of the human world.

La tradición de todas las generaciones muertas oprime como una pesadilla el cerebro de los vivos.

The bourgeoisie, in truth, is bound to fear the stupidity of the masses so long as they remain conservative, and the insight of the masses as soon as they become revolutionary.

No revolution is made out of shame. I reply: Shame is already revolution of a kind

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

...it happens that "society is saved" as often as the circle of its ruling class is narrowed, as often as a more exclusive interest asserts itself over the general. Every demand for the most simple bourgeois financial reform, for the most ordinary liberalism, for the most commonplace republicanism, for the flattest democracy is forthwith punished as an "assault upon society" and is branded as "Socialism.

La classe des ouvriers modernes, qui ne vivent qu'à la condition de trouver du travail, et qui n'en trouvent plus dès que leur travail cesse d'agrandir le capital. Les ouvriers, contraints de se vendre au jour le jour, sont une marchandise comme tout autre article de commerce ; ils subissent, par conséquent, toutes les vicissitudes de la concurrence, toutes fluctuations du marché.

The introduction of free competition is thus public declaration that from now on the members of society are unequal only to the extent that their capitals are unequal, that capital is the decisive power, and that therefore the capitalists, the bourgeoisie, have become the first class in society.