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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 14h

Labour is ... not the only source of material wealth, ie of the use-values it produces. As William Petty says, labour is the father of material wealth, the earth is its mother.

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 17h

The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 20h

It is with man as with commodities. Since he comes into the world neither with a looking glass in his hand, nor as a Fichtean philosopher, to whom ‘I am I’ is sufficient, man first sees and recognises himself in other men. Peter only establishes his own identity as a man by first comparing

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form.

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

For example, when the peasant takes a wandering tailor, of the kind that existed in times past, into his house, and gives him the material to make clothes with. ... The man who takes the cloth I supplied to him and makes me an article of clothing out of it gives me a use value. But instead of

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

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 communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

... defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Nature is the proof of dialectics, and it must be said for modern science that it has furnished this proof with very rich materials increasingly daily, and thus has shown that, in the last resort, Nature works dialectically and not metaphysically; that she does not move in the eternal oneness of a

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I do not proceed from “concepts,” hence neither from the “concept of value,” and am therefore in no way concerned to “divide” it. What I proceed from is the simplest social form in which the product of labour presents itself in contemporary society, and this is the “commodity.” This

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

It is, therefore, from the history of nature and human society that the laws of dialectics are abstracted. For they are nothing but the most general laws of these two aspects of historical development, as well as of thought itself. And indeed they can be reduced in the main to three: The law of

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Greek philosophy seems to have met with something with which a good tragedy is not supposed to meet, namely, a dull ending.

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The separation of public works from the state, and their migration into the domain of the works undertaken by capital itself, indicates the degree to which the real community has constituted itself in the form of capital.

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The working class, in the course of its development, will substitute for the old civil society an association which will exclude classes and their antagonism, and there will be no more political power properly so-called, since political power is precisely the official expression of antagonism in

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

To my mind, the so-called ‘socialist society’ is not anything immutable. Like all other social formations, it should be conceived in a state of constant flux and change. It’s crucial difference from the present order consists naturally in production organized on the basis of common ownership

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to take over a government in an epoch when the movement is not yet ripe for the domination of the class which he represents and for the realisation of the measures which that domination would imply ...

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different,

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

What is genuine is proved in the fire, what is false we shall not miss in our ranks. The opponents must grant us that youth has never before flocked to our colours in such numbers, ... in the end, one will be found among us who will prove that the sword of enthusiasm is just as good as the sword of

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Man’s reflections on the forms of social life, and consequently, also, his scientific analysis of those forms, take a course directly opposite to that of their actual historical development. He begins, post festum, with the results of the process of development ready to hand before him.

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

We know only a single science, the science of history. One can look at history from two sides and divide it into the history of nature and the history of men. The two sides are, however, inseparable; the history of nature and the history of men are dependent on each other so long as men exist. The

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

To save the Russian commune, a Russian revolution is needed.

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

What we understand by the economic conditions which we regard as the determining basis of the history of society are the methods by which human beings in a given society produce their means of subsistence and exchange the products among themselves (in so far as division of labour exists). Thus the

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror. But the royal terrorists, the terrorists by the grace of God and the law, are in practice brutal, disdainful, and mean, in theory cowardly, secretive, and deceitful, and in both

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

But the revolution is thoroughgoing. It is still traveling through purgatory. It does its work methodically. ... And when it has accomplished this second half of its preliminary work, Europe will leap from its seat and exult: Well burrowed, old mole!

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

a schoolmaster is a productive labourer when, in addition to belabouring the heads of his scholars, he works like a horse to enrich the school proprietor. That the latter has laid out his capital in a teaching factory, instead of in a sausage factory, does not alter the relation.

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Under private property ... Each tries to establish over the other an alien power, so as thereby to find satisfaction of his own selfish need. The increase in the quantity of objects is therefore accompanied by an extension of the realm of the alien powers to which man is subjected, and every new

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Instead of deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the people, ....

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Instead of deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the people, ....

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

I have tried to dispel the misunderstanding arising out of the impression that by ‘party’ I meant a ‘League’ that expired eight years ago, or an editorial board that was disbanded twelve years ago. By party, I meant the party in the broad historical sense.

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

The history of the decline of primitive communities (it would be a mistake to place them all on the same level; as in geological formations, these historical forms contain a whole series of primary, secondary, tertiary types, etc.) has still to be written. All we have seen so far are some rather

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Communism now no longer meant the concoction, by means of the imagination, of an ideal society as perfect as possible, but insight into the nature, the conditions and the consequent general aims of the struggle waged by the proletariat.

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

The doctrine of Hegel, taken as a whole, left plenty of room for giving shelter to the most diverse practical party views. And in the theoretical Germany of that time, two things above all were practical: religion and politics. Whoever placed the chief emphasis on the Hegelian system could be

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Man is directly a natural being. As a natural being and as a living natural being he is on the one hand endowed with natural powers, vital powers — he is an active natural being. These forces exist in him as tendencies and abilities — as instincts. On the other hand, as a natural, corporeal,

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned ...

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

It will be the workers, with their courage, resolution and self-sacrifice, who will be chiefly responsible for achieving victory. The petty bourgeoisie will hesitate as long as possible and remain fearful, irresolute and inactive; but when victory is certain it will claim it for itself and will

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

The pay of the common soldier is also reduced to a minimum — determined purely by the production costs necessary to procure him. But he exchanges the performance of his services not for capital, but for the revenue of the state. In bourgeois society itself, all exchange of personal services for

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

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.

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic – in short, ideological

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

In the year 1842-43, as editor of the Rheinische Zeitung, I first found myself in the embarrassing position of having to discuss what is known as material interests. ... the debates on free trade and protective tariffs caused me in the first instance to turn my attention to economic questions. ...

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labor at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. Thus integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Is your wife also active in the German ladies' great emancipation campaign? I think that German women should begin by driving their husbands to self-emancipation.

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Only sound common sense, respectable fellow that he is, in the homely realm of his own four walls, has very wonderful adventures directly he ventures out into the wide world of research.

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

It is precisely the alteration of nature by men, not solely nature as such, which is the most essential and immediate basis of human thought.

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society. Production by an isolated individual outside society ... is as much of an absurdity as is the development of language without

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Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels @kmfe.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

A philosopher produces ideas, a poet poems, a clergyman sermons, a professor compendia and so on. A criminal produces crimes. If we take a closer look at the connection between this latter branch of production and society as a whole, we shall rid ourselves of many prejudices. The criminal produces

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