Historical Materialism Quotes

A Marxist could not open a newspaper without finding on every page confirming evidence for his interpretation of history; not only in the news, but also in its presentation — which revealed the class bias of the paper — and especially of course what the paper did not say.

Friedrich Engels’ first draft of the Communist Manifesto included a deliberate undermining of family bonds as part of the Marxian political agenda, though Marx himself was politically astute enough to leave that out of the final version.

I still think like a Marxist in many ways.

No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.

Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.

We can learn something from Marxist thinking, but we cannot follow Marxist methods.

The point, as Marx saw it, is that dreams never come true.

Marxian Socialism must always remain a portent to the historians of Opinion — how a doctrine so illogical and so dull can have exercised so powerful and enduring an influence over the minds of men, and, through them, the events of history.

The theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin is universally applicable. We should regard it not as a dogma, but as a guide to action. Studying it is not merely a matter of learning terms and phrases but of learning Marxism-Leninism as the science of revolution. It is not just a matter of understanding the general laws derived by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin from their extensive study of real life and revolutionary experience, but of studying their standpoint and method in examining and solving problems.

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

Marxism-Leninism is a worn-out dress that should be thrown away.

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.

I am a Marxist Leninist and I will be one until the last day of my life.

I would say I was still a Marxist - which is not to be confused with being a Communist. Despite its flaws, Marxism still seems to explain the material world better than anything else.

Marx, however imperfectly he worked out the details, set himself the task of discovering the law of motion of capitalism, and if there is any hope of progress in economics at all, it must be in using academic methods to solve the problems posed by Marx.

I would define myself as a Marxian, and that means of course also as a humanist.

The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history.

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.

Transcending class distinctions, the speaker [Stalin] portrays the relation between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat as a mere division of labor. The workers and soldiers achieve the revolution, Guchkov and Miliukov "fortify" it.[...] This superintendent's approach to the historical process is exactly characteristic of the leaders of Menshevism, this handing out of instructions to various classes and then patronizingly criticizing their fulfillment.

As far as social-economic theory is concerned, I am still a Marxist

Despite its flaws, Marxism still seems to explain the material world better than anything else.

Karl Marx was in favor of socialist and communist-socialist revolutions, but he had a pretty nuanced view about it.

Marxism does not make sense, and I am the first one to say this

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.

You may not be interested in the dialectic, but the dialectic is interested in you.