251 Quotes About Marxism

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.

Caution in handling generally accepted opinions that claim to explain whole trends of history is especially important for the historian of modern times, because the last century has produced an abundance of ideologies that pretend to be keys to history but are actually nothing but desperate efforts to escape responsibility.

Historical determinism is a recipe for political quietism.

Successful revolutions are those which end up by erasing all traces of themselves.

The world economy would collapse if a significant number of people were to realize and then act on the realization that it is possible to enjoy many if not most of the things that they enjoy without first having to own them.

Maximum awareness and respect for the scholarship of historians outside the boundaries of Marxism is not incompatible with rigorous pursuit of a Marxist historical enquiry: it is a condition of it. Conversely, Marx and Engels themselves can never be taken simply at their word: the errors of their writings on the past should not be evaded or ignored, but identified and criticized. To do so is not to depart from historical materialism, but to rejoin it.

Records blurt out trapped moments of rapture, fear, love, anguish, despair, excitement, and insanity. When an album plays, it is a ghost wailing, imprisoned in the moment, rattling its chains.

If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Tsar himself.

It is capitalism, not Marxism, that trades in futures.