Remembering Karl Marx

[May 5 this year marked the one hundred and ninetysecond birth anniversary of Karl Marx. On this occasion we remember that immortal revolutionary with the following excerpts from his unforgettable writings and speeches. —Editor]

“In direct contrast to German philosophy, which descends from heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven. That is to say, we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men, and on the basis of their real life-process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process.”

(The German Ideology)

“Bourgeois revolutions, like those of the eighteenth century, storm swiftly from success to success; their dramatic effects outdo each other; men and things seem set in sparkling brilliance; ecastasy is the everyday spirit; but they are shortlived; soon they have attained their zenith, and a long crapulent depression lays hold of society before it learns soberly to assimilate the results of its storm-and-stress period. On the other hand, proletarian revolutions, like those of the nineteenth century, criticise themselves constantly, interrupt them-selves continually in their own course, come back to the apparently accomplished in order to begin it afresh, deride with unmerciful thoroughness the inadequacies, weaknesses and paltrinesses of their first attempts, seem to throw down their adversary only in order that he may draw new strength from the earth and rise again, more gigantic before them, recoil ever and anon from the indefinite prodigiousness of their own aims, until a situation has been created which makes all turning back impossible, and the conditions themselves cry out: Hic rhodus, hic salta!”

(The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte)

“Hegel says somewhere that, upon the stage of universal history, all great events and personalities reappear in one fashion or another. He forgot to add that, on the first occasion, they appear as tragedy; the second, as farce.”

(On Louis Bonaparte outwitting his opponents to seize power in the coup d’etat of 1851 with the help of a host of persons like “vagabonds, disbanded soldiers,…pickpockets, gamesters, pimps, brothel-keepers, porters, men of letters….. knife-grinders and thinkers” in The Eighteenth

Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte)

“Working-man’s Paris, with its commune, will be for ever celebrated as the glorious harbinger of a new society. Its martyrs are enshrined in the great heart of the working class. Its exterminators history has already nailed to that eternal pillory from which all the prayers of their priests will not avail to redeem them.”

(Address to the General Council of the International

Workingmen’s Association, May 30, 1871)

“Accumulate! Accumulate! That is Moses and all the prophets! Industry furnishes the material which saving accumulates. Therefore you must save; you must reconvert the largest possible proportion of surplus value or surplus product into capital. Accumulation for accumulation’s sake. This was the formula by which the classical political economist gave expression to the historical mission of the bourgeois period.” (Capital I)

“The transformation of money into capital is to be explained on the basis of the laws immanent in the exchange of commodities, is to be explained in such a way that the starting-point is an exchange of equivalents (i.e. even if the price obtained is no more than the value of the commodity). Mr Money-bags, who is as yet only an embryo capitalist, must buy his commodities at their value, and must sell them at their value; and nevertheless at the end of the process he must draw more value out of circulation than he puts into into it at starting.” (Capital I)

“It is an old and historically established maxim that obsolete social forces still in possession of all the attributes of power and continuing to exist long after the basis of their existence has rotted away once more summon all their strength before the agony of death; pass from the defensive to the offensive, challenge instead of giving way, and seek to draw the most extreme conclusions from premises which have not only been put in question but already condemned.”

(Speech at Hyde Park, London, June 25, 1855)

…in contrast to old society, with its economical miseries and its political delirium, a new society is springing up, whose International rule will be Peace, because its national ruler will be everywhere the same—-Labour!”

(First Address to the General Council of the International Workingmen’s Association on the Franco-Prussian War)