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It is not history which uses men as a means of achieving - as if it were an individual person - its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.
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Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite!
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If conquest constitutes a natural right on the part of the few, the many have only to gather sufficient strength in order to acquire the natural right of reconquering what has been taken from them.
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In a social order dominated by capitalist production even the non-capitalist producer is gripped by capitalist conceptions.
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Men's ideas are the most direct emanations of their material state.
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It is in this sense that Franklin says, 'war is robbery, commerce is generally cheating.'
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Landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed.
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It might otherwise appear paradoxical that money can be replaced by worthless paper; but that the slightest alloying of its metallic content depreciates it.
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In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour-time.
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Prometheus ist der vornehmste Heilige und Märtyrer im philosophischen Kalender.
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Der Philosoph legt sich – also selbst eine abstrakte Gestalt des entfremdeten Menschen – als den Maßstab der entfremdeten Welt an.
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A class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increase capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.
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The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society.
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Die Klasse, welche die herrschende materielle Macht der Gesellschaft ist, ist zugleich ihre herrschende geistige Macht. Die Klasse, die die Mittel zur materiellen Produktion zu ihrer Verfügung hat, disponiert damit zugleich über die Mittel zur geistigen Produktion.
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The object before us, to begin with, material production.
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Titles of property, for instance railway shares, may change hands every day, and their owner may make a profit by their sale even in foreign countries, so that titles to property are exportable, although the railway itself is not.
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There is a physical relation between physical things. But it is different with commodities.
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The English have all the material requisites for the revolution. What they lack is the spirit of generalization and revolutionary ardour.
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Only that position can impart dignity in which we do not appear as servile tools but rather create independently within our circle.
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Under the ideal measure of values there lurks the hard cash.
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Das Philosophisch-Werden der Welt ist zugleich ein Weltlich-Werden der Philosophie; ihre Verwirklichung ist zugleich ihr Verlust.
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Unlimited exploitation of cheap labour-power is the sole foundation of their power to compete.
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Money is a crystal formed of necessity in the course of the exchanges, whereby different products of labour are practically equated to one another and thus by practice converted into commodities.
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Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form.