Skip to content

Karl Marx on Money

1818–1883 Germany

← All quotes by Karl Marx

21 quotes

We see then, commodities are in love with money, but "the course of true love never did run smooth".

Das Kapital (Buch I) (1867)

The ancients therefore denounced money as subversive of the economic and moral order of things.

Das Kapital (Buch I) (1867)

The way to Hell is paved with good intentions, and he might just as easily have intended to make money, without producing at all.

Das Kapital (Buch I) (1867)

Emancipation from huckstering and money, consequently from practical, real Judaism, would be the self-emancipation of our time.

On the Jewish Question (1843)

Each piece of money is a mere coin, or means of circulation, only so long as it actually circulates.

Das Kapital (Buch I) (1867)

Money is the alienated essence of man’s work and existence, this essence dominates him and he worships it.

Marx-Engels Reader (1978)

The circulation of commodities is the original precondition of the circulation of money.

Grundrisse (1857)

Exchange value forms the substance of money, and exchange value is wealth.

Grundrisse (1857)

Money is therefore not only the object but also the fountainhead of greed.

Grundrisse (1857)

Gold is now money with reference to all other commodities only because it was previously, with reference to them, a simple commodity.

Das Kapital (Buch I) (1867)

Hence money may be dirt, although dirt is not money.

Das Kapital (Buch I) (1867)

It might otherwise appear paradoxical that money can be replaced by worthless paper; but that the slightest alloying of its metallic content depreciates it.

Grundrisse (1857)

Money is itself a product of circulation.

Grundrisse (1857)

Money is not a thing, but a social relation.

The Poverty of Philosophy (1847)

Money does not arise by convention, any more than the state does. It arises out of exchange, and arises naturally out of exchange; it is a product of the same.

Grundrisse (1857)

With money every form of intercourse, and intercourse itself, is considered fortuitous for the individuals.

I who can have, through the power of money, everything for which the human heart longs, do I not possess all human abilities? Does not my money, therefore, transform all my incapacities into their opposites?

Economical and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844)

Money plays the largest part in determining the course of history

Money, then, appears as this overturning power both against the individual and against the bonds of society, etc., which claim to be essences in themselves. It transforms fidelity into infidelity, love into hate, hate into love, virtue into vice, vice into virtue, servant into master, master into servant, idiocy into intelligence and intelligence into idiocy.

And his money he cannot eat.

Das Kapital (Buch I) (1867)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Karl Marx (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.