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 More Quotes by Friedrich Engels More Quotes From Friedrich Engels People have learned by bitter experience that the "European fraternal union of peoples" cannot be achieved by mere phrases and pious wishes, but only by profound revolutions and bloody struggles; they have learned that the question is not that of a fraternal union of all European peoples under a single republican flag, but of an alliance of the revolutionary peoples against the counter-revolutionary peoples, an alliance which comes into being not on paper, but only on the battlefield. Friedrich Engels communication struggle people Naturally, the workers are perfectly free; the manufacturer does not force them to take his materials and his cards, but he says to them..'If you don't like to be frizzled in my frying- pan, you can take a walk into the fire. Friedrich Engels frying-pans fire doe But the most horrible spot .... lies....immediately south west of Oxford Road and is known as Little Ireland. The race that lives in these ruinous cottages, behind broken windows, mended with oilskin, sprung doors, and rotten door-posts, or in dark, wet cellars, in measureless filth and stench....must surely have reached the lowest stage of humanity. Friedrich Engels race dark lying The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of societythe taking possession of the means of production in the name of societythis is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not abolished. It dies out. Friedrich Engels independent government mean The slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private property, he abolishes only the relation of slavery and thereby becomes a proletarian; the proletarian can free himself only by abolishing private property in general. Friedrich Engels property slavery relation Firstly, the farmers, the most stupid set of people in existence, who, clinging to feudal prejudices, burst forth in masses, ready to die rather than cease to obey those whom they, their fathers and grandfathers, had called their masters; and submitted to be trampled on and horse-whipped by. Friedrich Engels horse stupid father Hegel was the first to state correctly the relation between freedom and necessity. To him, freedom is the insight into necessity. Friedrich Engels hegel states firsts Just as Marx used to say about the French Marxists of the late 'seventies: All I know is that I am not a Marxist. Friedrich Engels marxist late used The British Labour movement is today, and for many years has been, working in a narrow circle of strikes that are looked upon, not as an expedient, and not as a means of propaganda, but as an ultimate aim. Friedrich Engels labour-movement circles mean Bare-faced covetousness was the moving spirit of civilization from its first dawn to the present day; wealth, and again wealth, and for the third time wealth; wealth, not of society, but of the puny individual, was its only and final aim. Friedrich Engels dawn civilization moving Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Friedrich Engels philosophical paris looks The anarchists put the thing upside down. They declare that the proletarian revolution must begin by doing away with the political organization of the state. But to destroy it at such a moment would be to destroy the only organism by means of which the victorious proletariat can assert its newly-conquered power, hold down its capitalist adversaries, and carry out that economic revolution of society without which the whole victory must end in a new defeat and a mass slaughter of the workers similar to those after the Paris commune. Friedrich Engels paris organization mean If there were no Frenchwomen, life wouldn't be worth living. Friedrich Engels perfect-woman worth-living ifs Ireland still remains the Holy Isle whose aspirations must on no account be mixed with the profane class-struggles of the rest of the sinful world ... the Irish peasant must not on any account know that the Socialist workers are his sole allies in Europe. Friedrich Engels struggle class europe It is no longer a question anywhere of inventing interconnections from out of our brains, but of discovering them in the facts. Friedrich Engels discovering brain facts Political economy came into being as a natural result of the expansion of trade, and with its appearance elementary, unscientific huckstering was replaced by a developed system of licensed fraud, an entire science of enrichment. Friedrich Engels expansion political appearance It would appear that the natural frontier of Russia runs from Dantzic or perhaps Stettin to Trieste. Friedrich Engels russia natural running If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from the physical life-process. Friedrich Engels cameras historical men And what is impossible to science? Friedrich Engels accounts impossible science How do you think the transition from the present situation to community of Property is to be effected? The first, fundamental condition for the introduction of community of property is the political liberation of the proletariat through a democratic constitution. Friedrich Engels political community thinking
