We cannot tell by looking at the diamond that it is a commodity. When it serves as a use-value, asthetic or mechanical, on the breast of a harlot, or in the hand of a glasscutter, it is a diamond and not a commodity. Karl Marx More Quotes by Karl Marx More Quotes From Karl Marx [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 The economic concept of value does not occur in antiquity . Karl Marx concepts economic doe The true law of economics is chance, and we learned people arbitrarily seize on a few moments and establish them as laws. Karl Marx chance law people The French need a thrashing. If the Prussians win, the centralization of state power will be useful for the centralization of the German working class. German predominance would also transfer the center of gravity of the workers' movement in Western Europe from France to Germany, and one has only to compare the movement in the two countries from 1866 until now to see that the German working class is superior to the French both theoretically and organizationally. Karl Marx winning mean country Although usury is itself a form of credit in its bourgeoisified form, the form adapted to capital , in its pre-bourgeois form it is rather the expression of the lack of credit . Karl Marx usury credit expression But, you will say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social.... The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class. Karl Marx home class character The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of other circumstances and changed upbrinding, forgets that it is men that change circumstances and that the educator himself needs educating. Karl Marx doctrine men needs Once the inner connection is grasped, all theoretical belief in the permanent necessity of existing conditions collapses before their collapse in practice -- Letter to Ludwig Kugelmann (July 11, 1868) Karl Marx july connections practice The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas. Karl Marx expression class mean The animal is one with its life activity. It does not distinguish the activity from itself. It is its activity. But man makes hislife activity itself an object of his will and consciousness. He has a conscious life activity. It is not a determination with which he is completely identified. Karl Marx determination animal men No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far, at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc. Karl Marx bourgeoisie cash wages On a level plain, simple mounds look like hills; and the insipid flatness of our present bourgeoisie is to be measured by the altitude of its great intellects. Karl Marx levels intelligent simple We know only a single science, the science of history. History can be contemplated from two sides, it can be divided into the history of nature and the history of mankind. However, the two sides are not to be divided off; as long as men exist the history of nature and the history of men are mutually conditioned. Karl Marx nature men science All forms of the state have democracy for their truth, and for that reason are false to the extent that they are not democracy Karl Marx democracy states reason Exchange value forms the substance of money, and exchange value is wealth. Karl Marx wealth form substance It might otherwise appear paradoxical that money can be replaced by worthless paper; but that the slightest alloying of its metallic content depreciates it. Karl Marx paradoxical paper might Consumption is also immediately production, just as in nature the consumption of the elements and chemical substances is the production of the plant. Karl Marx elements plant substance All I know is I'm not a Marxist. Karl Marx marxist communism knows Gold is now money with reference to all other commodities only because it was previously, with reference to them, a simple commodity. Karl Marx commodity simple gold In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all. Karl Marx development association class
