Capitalist agricultural production prevents the return to the soil of its elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing; it therefore violates the conditions necessary to lasting fertility of the soil. By this action it destroys at the same time the health of the town labourer and the intellectual life of the rural labourer.

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

The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future.

If the labourer consumes his disposable time for himself, he robs the capitalist.

Money plays the largest part in determining the course of history.

We know that violent measures against religion are nonsense; but this is an opinion: as socialism grows, religion will disappear. Its disappearance must be done by social development, in which education must play a part.

But the more these conscious illusions of the ruling class are shown to be false and the less they satisfy common sense, the more dogmatically they are asserted and the more deceitful, moralizing and spiritual becomes the language of established society.