Money plays the largest part in determining the course of history. Karl Marx More Quotes by Karl Marx More Quotes From Karl Marx The individual produces an object and, by consuming it, returns to himself, but returns as a productive and self reproducing individual. Consumption thus appears as a moment of production. Karl Marx return moments self The traditions of the dead generations weigh like a nightmare upon the living. Karl Marx nightmare generations tradition The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. Karl Marx hunting discovery america 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. … Slavery is therefore an economic category of paramount importance. Karl Marx southern mean america In short, competition has to shoulder the responsibility of explaining all the meaningless ideas of the economists, whereas it should rather be the economists who explain competition. Karl Marx competition responsibility ideas Very well then; emancipation from usury and money, that is, from practical, real Judaism, would constitute the emancipation of our time. Karl Marx usury judaism real Darwin has interested us in the history of nature's technology. Karl Marx funny-science technology science Work is external to the worker. . . . It is not part of his nature; consequently he does not fulfill himself in his work but denies himself. . . . The worker therefore feels himself at home only during his leisure time, whereas at work he feels homeless. Karl Marx leisure doe home When commercial capital occupies a position of unquestioned ascendancy, it everywhere constitutes a system of plunder. Karl Marx ascendancy plunder position The way people get their living determines their social outlook. Karl Marx communism people way When the labourer co-operates systematically with others, he strips off the fetters of his individuality, and develops the capabilities of his species. Karl Marx labourers capability individuality All that we want to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital , and allowed to live only so far as the interest to the ruling class requires it. Karl Marx want class character By the aristocracy of finance must here be understood not merely the great loan promoters and speculators in public funds, in regard to whom it is immediately obvious that their interests coincide with the interests of the state power. All modern finance, the whole of the banking business, is interwoven in the closest fashion with public credit. Karl Marx aristocracy banking fashion It is a bad thing to perform menial duties even for the sake of freedom; to fight with pinpricks, instead of with clubs. I have become tired of hypocrisy, stupidity, gross arbitrariness, and of our bowing and scraping, dodging, and hair-splitting over words. Consequently, the government has given me back my freedom. Karl Marx tired fighting hair Wherever the want of clothing forced them to it, the human race made clothes for thousands of years, without a single man becoming a tailor. Karl Marx race men years The world will be for the common people, and the sounds of Happiness will reach even the deepest springs. Karl Marx sound spring people In the domain of Political Economy, free scientific inquiry meets not merely the same enemies as in all other domains. The peculiar nature of the material it deals with, summons as foes into the field of battle the most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private interest. Karl Marx passion political mean As in private life one differentiates between what a man thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does, so in historical struggles one must still more distinguish the language and the imaginary aspirations of parties from their real organism and their real interests, their conception of themselves from their reality. Karl Marx party real life Parliamentary cretinism: that peculiar malady which since 1848 has raged all over the Continent, which holds those infected by it fast in an imaginary world and robs them of all sense, all memory, all understanding of the rude external world. Karl Marx rude understanding memories [T]he task of abolishing the essence of Jewry is in truth the task of abolishing Jewry in civil society, abolishing the inhumanity of today's practice of life, the summit of which is the money system. Karl Marx tasks essence practice