Friedrich Engels Quotes
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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.
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Since the communists cannot enter upon the decisive struggle between themselves and the bourgeoisie until the bourgeoisie is in power, it follows that it is in the interest of the communists to help the bourgeoisie to power as soon as possible in order the sooner to be able to overthrow it.
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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.
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From the first day to this, sheer greed was the driving spirit of civilization.
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How do you think the transition from the present situation to community of Property is to be effected?The first, fundamental condition for the introduction of community of property is the political liberation of the proletariat through a democratic constitution.
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Freedom does not consist in any dreamt-of independence from natural laws, but in the knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility this gives of systematically making them work towards definite ends.
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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.
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By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor. By proletariat, the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live.
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What each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one willed.
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La Terreur, das sind großenteils nutzlose Grausamkeiten, begangen von Leuten, die selbst Angst haben, zu ihrer Selbstberuhigung. 2
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How is it possible that the poorer classes can remain healthy and have a reasonable expectation of life under such conditions? What can one expect but that they should suffer from continual outbreaks of epidemics and an excessively low expectation of life? The physical condition of the workers shows a progressive deterioration.
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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.
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The class of big capitalists, who, in all civilized countries, are already in almost exclusive possession of all the means of subsistance and of the instruments (machines, factories) and materials necessary for the production of the means of subsistence. This is the bourgeois class, or the bourgeoisie.
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Everything must justify its existence before the judgment seat of Reason, or give up existence.
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The way in which the vast mass of the poor are treated by modern society is truly scandalous. They are herded into great cities where they breathe a fouler air than in the countryside which they have left.
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Ireland still remains the Holy Isle whose aspirations must on no account be mixed with the profane class-struggles of the rest of the sinful world … the Irish peasant must not on any account know that the Socialist workers are his sole allies in Europe.
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All history has been a history of class struggles between dominated classes at various stages of social development.
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It is no longer a question anywhere of inventing interconnections from out of our brains, but of discovering them in the facts.
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It is a universal revolution and will, accordingly, have a universal range.
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The slave is outside competition; the proletarian is in it and experiences all its vagaries.
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Die Nachfrage des Ökonomen ist nicht die wirkliche Nachfrage, seine Konsumtion ist eine künstliche. Dem Ökonomen ist nur der ein wirklich Fragender, ein wirklicher Konsument, der für das, was er empfängt, ein Äquivalent zu bieten hat.
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Das Merkantilsystem hatte noch eine gewisse unbefangene, katholische Geradheit und verdeckte das unsittliche Wesen des Handels nicht im mindesten. ... Als aber der ökonomische Luther, Adam Smith, die bisherige Ökonomie kritisierte, hatten sich die Sachen sehr geändert. ... An die Stelle der katholischen Geradheit trat protestantische Gleisnerei.
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The slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private property, he abolishes only the relation of slavery and thereby becomes a proletarian; the proletarian can free himself only by abolishing private property in general.
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Big industry, competition and generally the individualistic organization of production have become a fetter which it must and will shatter.