Karl Marx

Engels was always sending Marx money; when he finally retired from the family firm, he made Marx an annuity of ?350—several times more than the average family lived on but not enough for Marx, who always adjusted his spending to a level above what his benefactors supplied.

Nor is it the irrationality of the form which is taken as characteristic. On the contrary, one overlooks the irrational.

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

Everyone who knows anything of history also knows that great social revolutions are impossible without the feminine ferment. Social progress may be measured precisely by the social position of the fair sex (plain ones included).

Against anarchists Marx and Engles were in the position of defending the “authority of the majority over the minority.” Marxian passages defending the use of state power against individuals in this connection were later avidly quoted by Lenin in defense of an autocratic power which Marx had not contemplated.

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.

[M]odern capitalism has managed to avert, without changing its fundamental characteristics, practically all the consequences which Marx predicted would result from the basic contradiction between the forces and the relations of production. […] Marx predicted an increasing frequency and gravity of "realization" crises, a spectacular decline of the rate of profit, rising unemployment, Verelendung [impoverishment] of the working class, etc., culminating in an increasingly bitter class struggle that would eventually lead to the overthrow of the entire system by a proletarian revolution. These developments would demonstrate, according to Marx, that production for private gain is inherently contradictory rather than merely the cause of some, in principle resolvable, conflicts and problems. Now, none of these predictions (except perhaps a certain amount of economic concentration) has actually occurred […] there is no independent evidence, apart from Marx's word, to support the claim that capitalism remains contradiction ridden.

Marx's father became a Christian when Marx was a little boy, and some, at least, of the dogmas he must have then accepted seem to have born fruit in his son's psychology.

The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralisation of the means of production and socialisation of labour at last reach a point where they become incompatible with there capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.

[M]ost of Marx' theories which are not mistaken are meaningless. Marx remained influential, however: his influence never was based on the scientific truth-content of his theories but on their psychological appeal.

Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.

Is a fixed income not a good thing? Does not everyone love to count on a sure thing? Especially every petty-bourgeois, narrow-minded Frenchman? the 'ever needy' man?

In capitalist society however where social reason always asserts itself only post festum great disturbances may and must constantly occur.

So long as the product is sold, everything is taking its regular course from the standpoint of the capitalist producer.

The national debt has given rise to joint stock companies, to dealings in negotiable effects of all kinds, and to agiotage, in a word to stock-exchange gambling and the modern bankocracy.

Something that is merely negative creates nothing.

In Marx’s class analysis, it is the employer who is the ruler and the employee the ruled. This of course makes no sense economically or in any other way. However, what is wrong with Marxist class analysis is not the class analysis, but rather the Marxism.

Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class.

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.