The fact that labour is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself.
alienation capitalism dialectical-materialism economy freedom philosophy political-economy socialism work
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About Karl Marx

Karl Marx was a 19th-century German philosopher and socialist theorist. Karl Marx was a German philosopher, social and political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet The Communist Manifesto, and his three-volume Das Kapital (1867–1894), a critique of classical political economy which employs his theory of historical materialism in an analysis of capitalism, in the culmination of his life's work. Read more on Wikipedia →

Themes

  • Freedom — The value of liberty, independence, and self-determination
  • Philosophy — Deep thoughts on existence, knowledge, and the nature of reality
  • Work — The value of effort, discipline, and meaningful labour

More quotes by Karl Marx

“Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society: all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labor of others by means of such appropriation.It has...”
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“In proportion therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases.”
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labor wage work

“Capital is dead labour, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.”
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alienation exploitation work

“The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to ...”
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happiness illusions irreligion metaphor

“Then the world will be for the common people, and the sounds of happiness will reach the deepest springs. Ah! Come! People of every land, how can you not be roused.”
— Karl Marx
common-people communism equality happiness

“In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanish...”
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communism division-of-labor labor life
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“Every emancipation is a restoration of the human world and of human relationships to a man himself.”
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