Karl Heinrich Marx (5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist and socialist revolutionary.
Born in Trier, Germany, Marx studied law and philosophy at university. He married Jenny von Westphalen in 1843. Due to his political publications, Marx became stateless and lived in exile with his wife and children in London for decades, where he continued to develop his thought in collaboration with German thinker Friedrich Engels and publish his writings, researching in the reading room of the British Museum. His best-known titles are the 1848 pamphlet, The Communist Manifesto, and the three-volume Das Kapital. His political and philosophical thought had enormous influence on subsequent intellectual, economic and political history, and his name has been used as an adjective, a noun and a school of social theory.
Marx’s critical theories about society, economics and politics – collectively understood as Marxism – hold that human societies develop through class struggle. In capitalism, this manifests itself in the conflict between the ruling classes (known as the bourgeoisie) that control the means of production and the working classes (known as the proletariat) that enable these means by selling their labour power in return for wages. Employing a critical approach known as historical materialism, Marx predicted that, like previous socio-economic systems, capitalism produced internal tensions which would lead to its self-destruction and replacement by a new system known as socialism.
For Marx, class antagonisms under capitalism, owing in part to its instability and crisis-prone nature, would eventuate the working class’ development of class consciousness, leading to their conquest of political power and eventually the establishment of a classless, communist society constituted by a free association of producers. Marx actively pressed for its implementation, arguing that the working class should carry out organised revolutionary action to topple capitalism and bring about socio-economic emancipation.
Marx has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history, and his work has been both lauded and criticised. His work in economics laid the basis for much of the current understanding of labour and its relation to capital, and subsequent economic thought. Many intellectuals, labour unions, artists and political parties worldwide have been influenced by Marx’s work, with many modifying or adapting his ideas. Marx is typically cited as one of the principal architects of modern social science.
Karl Marx Inspirational Quotes
Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form.
Karl Marx
The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.
Karl Marx
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.
Karl Marx
Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite!
Karl Marx
Inspirational Quotes by Karl Marx
Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity.
Karl Marx
Democracy is the road to socialism.
Karl Marx
The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.
Karl Marx
History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.
Karl Marx
Motivational by Karl Marx
Natural science will in time incorporate into itself the science of man, just as the science of man will incorporate into itself natural science: there will be one science.
Karl Marx
Men’s ideas are the most direct emanations of their material state.
Karl Marx
Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains.
Karl Marx
Karl Marx Motivational Quotes
The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs.
Karl Marx
If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist.
Karl Marx
For the bureaucrat, the world is a mere object to be manipulated by him.
Karl Marx
Religion is the opium of the masses.
Karl Marx
Karl Marx Greatest Quotes
From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.
Karl Marx
Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth – the soil and the labourer.
Karl Marx
Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.
Karl Marx
Capital is money, capital is commodities. By virtue of it being value, it has acquired the occult ability to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs.
Karl Marx
A specter is haunting Europe – the specter of communism.
Karl Marx
Karl Marx Life Changing Quotes
In a higher phase of communist society… only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be fully left behind and society inscribe on its banners: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
Karl Marx
Experience praises the most happy the one who made the most people happy.
Karl Marx
In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.
Karl Marx
While the miser is merely a capitalist gone mad, the capitalist is a rational miser.
Karl Marx
A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.
Karl Marx
The product of mental labor – science – always stands far below its value, because the labor-time necessary to reproduce it has no relation at all to the labor-time required for its original production.
Karl Marx