The proletarians, driven to despair, will seize the torch which Stephens has preached to them; the vengeance of the people will come down with a wrath of which the rage of 1795 gives no true idea. The war of the poor against the rich will be the bloodiest ever waged.

Friedrich Engels

Categorized in : Ideas War Wrath

All history has been a history of class struggles, of struggles between exploited and exploiting, between dominated and dominating classes at various stages of social development.

Friedrich Engels

development struggle class

What is Communism? Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat. What is the proletariat? The proletariat is that class in society which lives entirely from the sale of its labor and does not draw profit from any kind of capital; whose weal and woe, whose life and death, whose sole existence depends on the demand for labor.

Friedrich Engels

life-and-death doe class

The state is nothing but an instrument of opression of one class by another - no less so in a democratic republic than in a monarchy.

Friedrich Engels

republic states class

Freedom does not consist in any dreamt-of independence from natural laws, but in the knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility this gives of systematically making them work towards definite ends.

Friedrich Engels

independence law giving

By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor. By proletariat, the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live.

Friedrich Engels

class order mean

We find two great gangs of political speculators, who alternately take possession of the state power and exploit it by the most corrupt ends -- the nation is powerless against these two great cartels of politicians who are ostensibly its servants, but in reality dominate and plunder it.

Friedrich Engels

political two reality

Terror consists mostly of useless cruelties perpetrated by frightened people in order to reassure themselves.

Friedrich Engels

useless order people

In a political struggle of class against class, organization of trade unions is the most important weapon.

Friedrich Engels

organization struggle class

Without analysis, no synthesis.

Friedrich Engels

analysis synthesis science

Freedom is the recognition of necessity.

Friedrich Engels

recognition freedom

Everything must justify its existence before the judgment seat of Reason, or give up existence.

Friedrich Engels

giving-up philosophy art

The emancipation of woman will only be possible when woman can take part in production on a large, social scale, and domestic work no longer claims anything but an insignificant amount of her time.

Friedrich Engels

scales social claims

...it was always our view that in order to attain this [proletarian revolution] and the other far more important aims of the future social revolution, the working class must first take possession of the organised political power of the state and by its aid crush the resistance of the capitalist class and organise society anew.

Friedrich Engels

crush communication views

Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.

Friedrich Engels

philosophical criminals law

From the first day to this, sheer greed was the driving spirit of civilization.

Friedrich Engels

philosophical greed civilization

People think they have taken quite an extraordinarily bold step forward when they have rid themselves of belief in hereditary monarchy and swear by the democratic republic. In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy.

Friedrich Engels

taken reality thinking

No nation can be free if it oppresses other nations.

Friedrich Engels

nations ifs

The society that will organize production on the basis of a free and equal association of the producers will put the whole machinery of the state where it will then belong: into the museum of antiquities, by the side of the spinning wheel and the bronze axe.

Friedrich Engels

spinning association museums

Thus at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature - but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly.

Friedrich Engels

law mean blood

Ideas often kindle each other, like electrical sparks.

Friedrich Engels

electrical sparks ideas