The social revolution...cannot draw its poetry from the past, but only from the future. It cannot begin with itself before it has stripped itself of all superstitions concerning the past.

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.

You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.

Machines were, it may be said, the weapon employed by the capitalists to quell the revolt of specialized labor.

It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.

The method of production of the material things of life generally determines the social, political and spiritual currents of life.

The entire so-called history of the world is nothing but the creation of man through human labor.