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.

It is no longer a question anywhere of inventing interconnections from out of our brains, but of discovering them in the facts.

...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.

By the same right under which France took Flanders, Lorraine and Alsace, and will sooner or later take Belgium — by that same right Germany takes over Schleswig; it is the right of civilisation as against barbarism, of progress as against stability.

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.

I have learned more [from Balzac] than from all the professional historians, economists, and statisticians put together.

The proletariat uses the State not in the interests of freedom but in order to hold down its adversaries, and as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedom the State as such ceases to exist.