23 quotes
The capitalists soon had everything in their hands and nothing remained to the workers.
Principles of Communism (1847)
Big industry, competition and generally the individualistic organization of production have become a fetter which it must and will shatter.
Principles of Communism (1847)
Abolish competition and replace it with association.
Principles of Communism (1847)
Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat.
Principles of Communism (1847)
Bourgeoisie and proletariat have become the decisive classes, and the struggle between them the great struggle of the day.
Principles of Communism (1847)
It is a universal revolution and will, accordingly, have a universal range.
Principles of Communism (1847)
Prostitution is based on private property and falls with it.
Principles of Communism (1847)
Industry controlled by society as a whole, and operated according to a plan, presupposes well-rounded human beings, their faculties developed in balanced fashion, able to see the system of production in its entirety.
Principles of Communism (1847)
There have always been poor and working classes; and the working class have mostly been poor. But there have not always been workers and poor people living under conditions as they are today.
Principles of Communism (1847)
The abolition of private property has become not only possible but absolutely necessary. ... The outcome can only be the victory of the proletariat.
Principles of Communism (1847)
Everywhere the proletariat develops in step with the bourgeoisie. In proportion, as the bourgeoisie grows in wealth, the proletariat grows in numbers.
Principles of Communism (1847)
The slave is outside competition; the proletarian is in it and experiences all its vagaries.
Principles of Communism (1847)
Democracy would be wholly valueless to the proletariat if it were not immediately used as a means for putting through measures directed against private property and ensuring the livelihood of the proletariat.
Principles of Communism (1847)
The class of the wholly propertyless, who are obliged to sell their labor to the bourgeoisie in order to get, in exchange, the means of subsistence for their support. This is called the class of proletarians, or the proletariat.
Principles of Communism (1847)
The costs of production of labor consist of precisely the quantity of means of subsistence necessary to enable the worker to continue working, and to prevent the working class from dying out. The worker will therefore get no more for his labor than is necessary for this purpose; the price of labor, or the wage, will, in other words, be the lowest, the minimum, required for the maintenance of life.
Principles of Communism (1847)
Community of women is a condition which belongs entirely to bourgeois society and which today finds its complete expression in prostitution. But prostitution is based on private property and falls with it. Thus, communist society, instead of introducing community of women, in fact abolishes it.
Principles of Communism (1847)
All religions so far have been the expression of historical stages of development of individual peoples or groups of peoples. But communism is the stage of historical development which makes all existing religions superfluous and brings about their disappearance.
Principles of Communism (1847)
It makes unavoidably necessary an entirely new organization of society in which production is no longer directed by mutually competing individual industrialists but rather by the whole society operating according to a definite plan and taking account of the needs of all.
Principles of Communism (1847)
The abolition of private property is, doubtless, the shortest and most significant way to characterize the revolution in the whole social order which has been made necessary by the development of industry – and for this reason it is rightly advanced by communists as their main demand.
Principles of Communism (1847)
In all probability, the proletarian revolution will transform existing society gradually and will be able to abolish private property only when the means of production are available in sufficient quantity. What will be the course of this revolution? Above all, it will establish a democratic constitution, and through this, the direct or indirect dominance of the proletariat.
Principles of Communism (1847)