Karl Marx citáty

page 5

„Potlačeným je raz za niekoľko rokov dovolené rozhodnúť sa, ktorých konkrétnych predstaviteľov utláčanej triedy si zvolia, aby ich reprezentovali a potláčali v parlamente.“

„Umenie je najvyššia radosť, ktorú človek dáva sám sebe.“

„Skúsenosť nám ukazuje, že najnešťastnejší je ten, kto priniesol šťastie najväčšiemu počtu ľudí.“

„Akí sú ľudia, taká je aj diskusia.“

„Iba ten národ je slobodný, ktorý neberie slobodu iným národom.“

„Náboženstvo je ópium ľudstva.“

„Vo voľnom čase ľudia jednak oddychujú a jednak sa venujú vznešenejším záľubám, ktoré, pochopiteľne, robia z človeka nový subjekt.“

„Zdá sa, že takou mierou, akou si človek podrobuje prírodu, je podrobovaný inými ľuďmi alebo vlastnou nízkosťou.“

„Ľudské dejiny sú dejinami individuálneho vývoja ľudí.“

„Pravdy nepoznajú hranice politického zemepisu.“

„Bolo by, pravda, veľmi pohodlné robiť svetové dejiny, keby sa zápas podstupoval len s podmienkou neklamne priaznivých vyhliadok.“

„Každý začiatok je ťažký - táto pravda platí pre všetky veky.“

„Pravdivý má byť nielen výsledok skúmania, ale aj cesta k nemu. Samé skúmanie pravdy musí byť pravdivé.“

„Boh nie je nič iné, než povýšenie ľudských vlastností do dokonalých rozmerov, je to len výplod fantázie.“

„Účel, ktorý potrebuje nesprávne prostriedky, nemôže byť správny.“

„Muž je len taký starý ako žena, do ktorej je zaľúbený.“

„Filozofi doteraz svet vysvetľovali, ide však o to: zmeniť ho.“

„Sloboda je poznaná nutnosť.“

„Človek by mal byť tým, čím by mohol byť.“

„Blahobyt spoločnosti má dva zdroje - prácu a prírodu.“

„Ak človek pracuje len pre seba, môže sa stať znamenitým učencom, veľkým mudrcom, slávnym básnikom, ale nikdy sa nemôže stať veľkým človekom.“

„Ak použijem na dobrý cieľ zlé prostriedky, prestáva byť cieľ dobrý.“

„Byrokracia miluje iracionálnosť a v tom je sestrou teológie.“

„Proletári všetkých krajín, spojte sa!“

„Keby nebolo tých, ktorí tvoria hodnoty, nebolo by ani čo kradnúť.“

„Robotnícka trieda v revolúcii nemôže nič stratiť. Len až svoje okovy, ale získať môže celý svet.“

„Manželstvo sa nemôže podriaďovať zvôli, ale zvôľa sa musí podriaďovať manželstvu.“

„Tvorivá práca je ako plameň, je vážnym a veľmi zaujímavým napätím.“

„Triedny boj nevyhnutne vedie k diktatúre proletariátu.“

„Nešťastie nikdy nechodí samo.“

„Byrokracia miluje iracionálnosť.“

„Byť radikálny znamená uchopiť vec u koreňa. Koreňom človeka je však sám človek.“

„Dočasné odlúčenie je dobré. Aj veže sa zdajú z blízka prikrčené, pričom malé a všedné veci príliš narastajú ak ich pozorujeme bez odstupu. Aj s citmi je to tak.“

„Filozofi tento svet len interpretovali, čo je však rozhodujúce, to je jeho premena.“

„Najväčším životným nebezpečenstvom pre každú bytosť je, že stráca seba samého. Preto je nesloboda vlastným smrteľným nebezpečenstvom pre človeka.“

„Nestačí, keď myšlienka usiluje o uskutočnenie, skutočnosť sama musí usilovať o myšlienku.“

„Poslaním umenia je nielen zjemňovať existujúce zmysly človeka, ale vytvárať zmysly nové.“

„Pre byrokrata je svet obyčajným objektom jeho úradného výkonu.“

„Rozvod nie je nič iného než vyhlásenie - toto manželstvo je zosnulé manželstvo, jeho existencia je len zdanie a klam.“

„Trápia nás nielen živí, ale i mŕtvi.“

„Žena musí byť predovšetkým pekná a muž silný.“

“Owners of capital will stimulate working class to buy more and more of expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks which will have to be nationalized and State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to communism.”

“The theory of Communism may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.”

“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, or but a very insignificant one; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilization, if the neighboring palace rises in equal or even in greater measure, the occupant of the relatively little house will always find himself more uncomfortable, more dissatisfied, more cramped within his four walls.”

“And his money he cannot eat.”

“The religious world is but the reflex of the real world.”

“Bourgeois society continuously brings forth the Jew from its own entrails.”

“Every emancipation is a restoration of the human world and of human relationships to a man himself.”

“Perseus wore a magic cap that the monsters he hunted down might not see him.
We draw the magic cap down over eyes and ears as a make-believe that there are no monsters.”

“A man cannot become a child again, or he becomes childish.”

“So long as the product is sold, everything is taking its regular course from the standpoint of the capitalist producer.”

“The circulation of commodities is the original precondition of the circulation of money.”

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

“Very well then! Emancipation from huckstering and money, consequently from practical, real Judaism, would be the self-emancipation of our time. An organization of society [such as communism] which would abolish the preconditions for huckstering, and therefore the possibility of huckstering, would make [this] Jew impossible. His religious consciousness would be dissipated like a thin haze in the real, vital air of society. On the other hand, if the Jew recognizes that this practical nature of his is futile and works to abolish it, he extricates himself from his previous development and works for human emancipation as such and turns against the supreme practical expression of human self-estrangement.”

“Association, applied to land, shares the economic advantage of large-scale landed property, and first brings to realization the original tendency inherent in land-division, namely, equality. In the same way association also re-establishes, now on a rational basis, no longer mediated by serfdom, overlordship and the silly mysticism of property, the intimate ties of man with the earth, since the earth ceases to be an object of huckstering, and through free labour and free enjoyment becomes once more a true personal property of man.”

“The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs.”

“A spectre is haunting Europe; the spectre of Communism.”

“The entire revolutionary movement necessarily finds both its empirical and its theoretical basis in the movement of private property – more precisely, in that of the economy. This material, immediately perceptible private property is the material perceptible expression of estranged human life. Its movement – production and consumption – is the perceptible revelation of the movement of all production until now, i. e., the realisation or the reality of man. Religion, family, state, law, morality, science, art, etc., are only particular modes of production, and fall under its general law. The positive transcendence of private property as the appropriation of human life, is therefore the positive transcendence of all estrangement – that is to say, the return of man from religion, family, state, etc., to his human, i. e., social, existence. Religious estrangement as such occurs only in the realm of consciousness, of man’s inner life, but economic estrangement is that of real life; its transcendence therefore embraces both aspects. It is evident that the initial stage of the movement amongst the various peoples depends on whether the true recognised life of the people manifests itself more in consciousness or in the external world – is more ideal or real. Communism begins where atheism begins (Owen), but atheism is at the outset still far from being communism; indeed it is still for the most part an abstraction. The philanthropy of atheism is therefore at first only philosophical, abstract philanthropy, and that of communism is at once real and directly bent on action.”

“We cannot always choose the vocation to which we believe we are called. Our social relations, to some extent, have already begun to form before we are in a position to determine them.”

“The Tories in England long imagined that they were enthusiastic about monarchy, the church, and the beauties of the old English Constitution, until the day of danger wrung from them the confession that they are enthusiastic only about ground rent.”

“The Irish famine of 1846 killed more than 1,000,000 people, but it killed poor devils only. To the wealth of the country it did not the slightest damage.”

“Although usury is itself a form of credit in its bourgeoisified form, the form adapted to capital, in its pre-bourgeois form it is rather the expression of the lack of credit.”

“In its beginnings, the credit system sneaks in as a modest helper of accumulation and draws by invisible threads the money resources scattered all over the surface of society into the hands of individual or associated capitalists. But soon it becomes a new and formidable weapon in the competitive struggle, and finally it transforms itself into an immense social mechanism for the centralisation of capitals.”

“The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.”

“The industrial peak of a people when its main concern is not yet gain, but rather to gain.”

“But take a brief glance at real life. In present-day economic life you will find, not only competition and monopoly, but also their synthesis, which is not a formula but a movement. Monopoly produces competition, competition produces monopoly. That equation, however, far from alleviating the difficulties of the present situation, as bourgeois economists suppose, gives rise to a situation even more difficult and involved. Thus, by changing the basis upon which the present economic relations rest, by abolishing the present mode of production, you abolish not only competition, monopoly and their antagonism, but also their unity, their synthesis, the movement whereby a true balance is maintained between competition and monopoly.

Let me now give you an example of Mr Proudhon's dialectics. Freedom and slavery constitute an antagonism. There is no need for me to speak either of the good or of the bad aspects of freedom. As for slavery, there is no need for me to speak of its bad aspects. The only thing requiring explanation is the good side of slavery. I do not mean indirect slavery, the slavery of proletariat; I mean direct slavery, the slavery of the Blacks in Surinam, in Brazil, in the southern regions of North America. Direct slavery is as much the pivot upon which our present-day industrialism turns as are machinery, credit, etc. Without slavery there would be no cotton, without cotton there would be no modern industry. It is slavery which has given value to the colonies, it is the colonies which have created world trade, and world trade is the necessary condition for large-scale machine industry. Consequently, prior to the slave trade, the colonies sent very few products to the Old World, and did not noticeably change the face of the world. Slavery is therefore an economic category of paramount importance. Without slavery, North America, the most progressive nation, would he transformed into a patriarchal country. Only wipe North America off the map and you will get anarchy, the complete decay of trade and modern civilisation. But to do away with slavery would be to wipe America off the map. Being an economic category, slavery has existed in all nations since the beginning of the world. All that modern nations have achieved is to disguise slavery at home and import it openly into the New World. After these reflections on slavery, what will the good Mr Proudhon do? He will seek the synthesis of liberty and slavery, the true golden mean, in other words the balance between slavery and liberty. Mr Proudhon understands perfectly well that men manufacture worsted, linens and silks; and whatever credit is due for understanding such a trifle! What Mr Proudhon does not understand is that, according to their faculties, men also produce the social relations in which they produce worsted and linens. Still less does Mr Proudhon understand that those who produce social relations in conformity with their material productivity also produce the ideas, categories, i. e. the ideal abstract expressions of those same social relations. Indeed, the categories are no more eternal than the relations they express. They are historical and transitory products. To Mr Proudhon, on the contrary, the prime cause consists in abstractions and categories. According to him it is these and not men which make history. The abstraction, the category regarded as such, i. e. as distinct from man and his material activity, is, of course, immortal, immutable, impassive. It is nothing but an entity of pure reason, which is only another way of saying that an abstraction, regarded as such, is abstract. An admirable tautology! Hence, to Mr Proudhon, economic relations, seen in the form of categories, are eternal formulas without origin or progress. To put it another way: Mr Proudhon does not directly assert that to him bourgeois life is an eternal truth; he says so indirectly, by deifying the categories which express bourgeois relations in the form of thought. He regards the products of bourgeois society as spontaneous entities, endowed with a life of their own, eternal, the moment these present themselves to him in the shape of categories, of thought. Thus he fails to rise above the bourgeois horizon. Because he operates with bourgeois thoughts and assumes them to be eternally true, he looks for the synthesis of those thoughts, their balance, and fails to see that their present manner of maintaining a balance is the only possible one.”

“Ideas do not exist separately from language.”

“There is something in human history like retribution; and it is a rule of historical retribution that its instrument be forged not by the offended, but by the offender himself. The first blow dealt to the French monarchy proceeded from the nobility, not from the peasants. The Indian revolt does not commence with the ryots, tortured, dishonoured and stripped naked by the British, but with the sepoys, clad, fed and petted, fatted and pampered by them.”

“Society is undergoing a silent revolution, which must be submitted to, and which takes no more notice of the human existences it breaks down than an earthquake regards the houses it subverts. The classes and the races, too weak to master the new conditions of life, must give way.</b”

“Surplus value is exactly equal to surplus labour; the increase of the one [is] exactly measured by the diminution of necessary labour.”