Karl Marx on Work
1818–1883 Germany
← All quotes by Karl Marx
5 quotes
Capital is dead labor, that vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.
Das Kapital (Buch I) (1867)
The worker puts his life into the object; but now it no longer belongs to him, it belongs to the object.
As the chosen people bore in their features the sign manual of Jehovah, so the division of labour brands the manufacturing workman as the property of capital.
Das Kapital (Buch I) (1867)
The better shaped his product, the more mis-shapen the worker; the more civilized his object, the more barbaric the worker; the more powerful the work, the more powerless the worker.
When we have weighed everything, and when our relations in life permit us to choose any given position, we may take that one which guarantees us the greatest dignity, which is based on ideas of whose truth we are completely convinced, which offers the largest field to work for mankind and approach the universal goal for which every position is only a means: perfection.
Reflections of a Youth on Choosing an Occupation (1835)