KARL MARX

The big successful Communist revolutions occurred in poor agrarian societies–Russia in 1917 and China in 1949–not in industrialized societies, as Marx had predicted.

George Brown ... represents the theory of Marxism in the House of Commons - but that of Groucho, not Karl.

Under the tousled boyish haircut it is still old Karl Marx

Mrs Thatcher was a mirror-image Marxist. Everything that Marx abhorred she thought was good

Pat Buchanan ... could give Karl Marx lessons in class warfare.

Just as Darwin discovered the law of evolution in organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of evolution in human history.

For [Karl] Marx, science was a creative, historic and revolutionary force.

… the most hated and calumniated man of his times.

[Referring to Karl Marx:] ... the prince of muddleheads.

Bob Dylan was more important for my political orientation than Karl Marx.

Marx never saw an electric light bulb.

The doctrines of Karl Marx are a destroyer of all mortals.

It has happened, in all ages of the world, that some have labored and others have, without labor, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong and should not continue. To secure to each laborer the whole product of his labor, or as nearly as possible, is a worthy object of any good government. That's my platform, but when the average Republican leader in the East hears it, he thinks I am quoting from Karl Marx. I did quote it, but not from Karl Marx. I quoted it from Abraham Lincoln.

The theory of Socialism grew out of the philosophic, historical and economic theories that were elaborated by the educated representatives of the propertied classes, the intellectuals. The founders of modern scientific Socialism, Marx and Engels, belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia.

If anyone believes that our smiles involve abandonment of the teaching of Marx, Engels and Lenin he deceives himself. Those who wait for that must wait until a shrimp learns to whistle.

Heads will fall, heads will be chopped off, of course. But just think how good communism is! The state won’t bother us anymore, you women will be free, marriage problems won’t plague you anymore.

If I was asked to define socialism, I would not seek its definition in the texts of Marx or Lenin. I would rather say: it is the religion of life, and the triumph of life over death. By opening the door of employment for everyone, and allowing the gifts and virtues of all human beings to blossom, flower and be fruitful, it preserves what rightfully belongs to life, leaving death nothing but dried meat and rotten bones.

The student body of the University of Freiburg announces that it is determined to carry the fight against Jewish-Marxist undermining of Germany to the bitter end, to the complete annihilation of the foe. The public burnings of Jewish-Marxist writings on May 10, 1933, served as a symbol of this fight. Germans, rally to this fight! Make your participation public! From the publishers and bookstores send us all books and writings that deserve burning. Let each one bring what he finds, or tell us about it so that we may go get it. The fire of destruction is to us like a blazing up of the German spirit and German custom and practice.

One of those leaders of what they call the social revolution has said that religion is the opiate of the people. Opium...opium...opium, yes. Let us give them opium so that they can sleep and dream.

State Socialism … may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by the government, regardless of individual choice. Marx, its founder, concluded that the only way to abolish the class monopolies was to centralize and consolidate all industrial and commercial interests, all productive and distributive agencies, in one vast monopoly in the hands of the State. The government must become banker, manufacturer, farmer, carrier, and merchant, and in these capacities must suffer no competition.

It was at this point — the necessity of striking down monopoly — that came the parting of their ways [of Socialists and Anarchists]. Here the road forked. They found that they must turn either to the right or to the left, — follow either the path of Authority or the path of Liberty. Marx went one way; Warren and Proudhon the other. Thus were born State Socialism and Anarchism.

Karl Marx is not a very popular figure any more but once in a while he said something very sensible.

Marx is the prophet of globalized capitalism.

For about 20 years we have had practically no collective leadership; there flourished the cult of the individual which was [earlier] condemned first by Marx and then by Lenin

Of course we were communists. The Czar’s Secret Police and the newspapers said anyone who was against the Czar was a communist. So we were. Most of us revolutionaries in the early 1900s were young and had little idea of who Karl Marx was, much less his historical and economic theories. Communists wanted the people to be free and control the government and not the Czar. Today we call that democracy. Communism became something else in Russia..

As for Marx, his economic value, apart from occasional … flashes of insight, is nil.

Stealing from capitalism is not like stealing out of our own pockets. Marx and Lenin have taught us that anything is ethical, so long as it is in the interest of the proletarian class and its world revolution.

He [Karl Marx] forgot that man always remains man. He forgot man and he forgot man's freedom. He forgot that freedom always remains also freedom for evil. He thought that once the economy had been put right, everything would automatically be put right. His real error is materialism: man, in fact, is not merely the product of economic conditions, and it is not possible to redeem him purely from the outside by creating a favorable economic environment.

Labor in white skin cannot be free so long as labor in a black skin is branded.

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

Accuse your enemy of what you are doing as you are doing to create confusion.

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.

We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.

The less you eat, drink and read books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save-the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor dust will devour-your capital. The less you are, the more you have; the less you express your own life, the greater is your alienated life-the greater is the store of your estranged being.

The whole proletariat must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition, and the revival of the old-style citizens militia, directed against the workers, must be opposed.

In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed - a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.

The English Established Church... will more readily pardon an attack on 38 of its 39 articles than on 1/39 of its income.