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Karl
Marx. Born May 5th 1818, died
March 14th 1883
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I apologize for the late hour
as I have been busy and I also unable to write much about Marx on his birthday. So all I have to offer is a few of my
favorite Marx quotes.
The first is one of my all
time favorites, not in the way that a celebrity’s song or role is a favorite,
but it hit me like a ton of bricks when I first read it. An explanation in a
nutshell of how the real world works that corresponded with objective reality as I
lived it. My added emphasis in the quote below. Richard Mellor
**************
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. At a certain stage of
development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with
the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing
in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they
have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces
these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social
revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the
transformation of the whole immense superstructure.
In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic – in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.
Capitalism, Labor, capitalists
Use-values must therefore
never be looked upon as the real aim of the capitalist; [neither
must the profit on any single transaction. The restless never-ending process of
profit-making alone is what he aims at. This boundless greed after riches, this
passionate chase after exchange-value is common to the capitalist and the
miser; but while the miser is merely a capitalist gone mad, the capitalist is a
rational miser. The never-ending augmentation of exchange-value, which the
miser strives after, by seeking to save his money from circulation, is attained
by the more acute capitalist, by constantly throwing it afresh into
circulation.
The
writer must earn money in order to be able to live and to write, but he must by
no means live and write for the purpose of making money.
Without
doubt, machinery has greatly increased the number of well-to-do idlers.
The
time during which the labourer works, is the time during which the capitalist
consumes the labour-power he has purchased of him.
a
schoolmaster is a productive labourer when, in addition to belabouring the
heads of his scholars, he works like a horse to enrich the school proprietor.
That the latter has laid out his capital in a teaching factory, instead of in a
sausage factory, does not alter the relation.
Landlords, like all other
men, love to reap where they never sowed.
Environmental catastrophe
The development of
civilization and industry in general has always shown itself so active in the
destruction of forests that everything that has been done for their
conservation and production is completely insignificant in comparison.
Science/Nature
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.
It
is absolutely impossible to transcend the laws of nature. What can change in
historically different circumstances is only the form in which these laws
expose themselves.
Religion
Religion is the impotence of
the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand.
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.
Class Struggle/Consciousness
In bourgeois society capital
is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and
has no individuality.
Revolutions
are the locomotives of history.
The
way people get their living determines their social outlook.
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
history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.
Social progress can be
measured by the social position of the female sex.
If
anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist.
Society
does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the
relations within which these individuals stand.
Democracy
is the road to socialism.
The
workers of the world have nothing to lose but their chains, workers of the
world unite
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