# quotes from Karl Marx

{#OJQ}
## from _On the Jewish Question_{as=cite}[^Easton1967]

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(Regarding this essay…)

I think it’s pretty clear, when you take it in context, that what Marx
  is doing here is effectively saying “ah, you who think you hate the
  Jews! you fools! what you really hate is capitalism!”, but it’s still
  very uncomfortable at times reading him effectively arguing with
  proto·Nazis using their own language and arguments.
This is unfortunate because the first section otherwise has a number of
  choice critiques of the liberal state and its limitations, reproduced
  below.
If you plan on reading this essay, I do recommend sticking to that
  section, and skipping the second part (which has little to offer and
  is more overt in its anti·Semitic rhetoric). [][@:Lady]{.sig}
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> Only in the free states of North America—or at least in some of
>   them—does the Jewish question lose its _theological_ significance
>   and become a truly _secular_ question.
> Only where the political state exists in its complete development can
>   the relation of the Jew, and generally speaking the religious man,
>   to the political state, that is, the relation of religion to state,
>   appear in its characteristic and pure form.
> Criticism of this relation ceases to be theological once the state
>   abandons a _theological_ posture toward religion, once it relates
>   itself to religion as a state, that is, _politically_.
> Criticism then becomes _criticism of the political state_.
> Where the question here ceases to be _theological_, Bauer’s criticism
>   ceases to be critical.
> “_In the United States there is neither a state religion, nor a
>   religion declared to be that of the majority, nor a pre‐eminence of
>   one faith over another.
> The state is foreign to all faiths._”
> (Gustave de Beaumont, _Marie ou l’esclavage aux
>   Etats‐Unis_:nbsp:.:nbsp:.:nbsp:. [Brussels, 1835], p. 214.)
> There are even some states in North America where “_the constitution
>   imposes no religious beliefs or sectarian practice as the condition
>   of political rights_” (_loc. cit._{as=i} p. 225).
> Yet “_no one in the United States believes that a man without
>   religion can be an honest man_” (_loc. cit._{as=i} p. 224).
> And North America is pre‐eminently the land of religiosity as
>   Beaumont, Tocqueville, and the Englishman Hamilton assure us
>   unanimously.
> The North American states, however, serve only as an example.
> The question is:
> What is the relation of _complete_ political emancipation to
>   religion?
> {=If we find even in a country with full political emancipation that
>   religion not only _exists_ but is _fresh_ and _vital_, we have
>   proof that the existence of religion is not incompatible with the
>   full development of the state.=}
> But since the existence of religion implies a defect, the source of
>   this defect must be sought in the _nature_ of the state itself.
> We no longer take religion to be the _basis_ but only the
>   _manifestation_ of secular narrowness.
> Hence we explain religious restriction of free citizens on the basis
>   of their secular restriction.
> We do not claim that they must trancend their religious resriction in
>   order to trancend their secular limitations.
> We do claim that they will trancend their religious restriction once
>   they have trancended their secular limitations.
> We do not convert secular questions into theological ones.
> We convert theological questions into secular questions.
> {=History has long enough been resolved into superstition, but now we
>   can resolve superstition into history.=}
> The question of the _relation of political emancipation to religion_
>   becomes for us a question of the _relation of political
>   emancipation to human emancipation_.
> We criticize the religious weaknesses of the political state by
>   criticizing the political state in its _secular_ construction
>   _apart from_ the religious defects.
> In human terms we resolve the contradiction between the state and a
>   _particular religion_ such as _Judaism_ into the contradiction
>   between the state and _particular secluar_ elements, the
>   contradiciton bewteen the state and _religion generally_ into the
>   contradiction between the state and its _presuppositions_.
>
> The _political_ emancipation of the Jew, the Christian, or the
>   _religious_ man generally is the _emancipation of the state_ from
>   Judaism, from Christianity, from _religion_ in general.
> In a form and manner corresponding to its nature, the _state_ as such
>   emancipates itself from religion by emancipating itself from the
>   _state religion_, that is, by recognizing no religion and
>   recognizing itself simply as the state.
> _Political_ emancipation from religion is not complete and consistent
>   emancipation from religion because {=political emancipation is not
>   the complete and consistent form of _human_ emancipation=}.
>
> The limits of political emancipation are seen at once in the fact
>   that {=the _state_ can free itself from a limitation without man
>   _actually_ being free from it=}, in the fact that {=a state can be
>   a _free state_ without men becoming _free men_=}.
> Bauer himself tacitly admits this in setting the following condition
>   of political emancipation:
> “Every religious privilege, including the monopoly of a privileged
>   church, would have to be abolished. If a few or many or even the
>   _overwhelming majority still felt obliged to fulfill their
>   religious duties_, such a practice should be left to them as a
>   _purely private matter_.”
> The _state_ can thus emancipate itself from religion even though the
>   _overwhelming majority_ is still religious.
> And the overwhelming majority does not cease being religious by being
>   religious _in private_.
>
> But the attitude of the state, particularly the _free state_, toward
>   religion is still only the attitude of the _men_ who make up the
>   state.
> Hence it follows that man frees himself from a limitation
>   politically, through the state, by overcoming the limitation in an
>   _abstract_, _limited_, and partial manner, in contradiction with
>   himself.
> Further, when man frees himself _politically_, he does so
>   _indirectly_, through an _intermediary_, even if the _intermediary_
>   is _necessary_.
> Finally, even when man proclaims himself an atheist through the
>   medium of the state—that is, when he declares the state to be
>   atheistic—he is still captive to religion since he only recognizes
>   his atheism indirectly through an intermediary.
> Religion is merely the indirect recognition of man through a
>   _mediator_.
> The state is the mediator between man and the freedom of man.
> As Christ is the mediator on whom man unburdens all his own divinity
>   and all his _religious ties_, so is the state the mediator to which
>   man transfers all his unholiness and all his _human freedom_.
>
> The _political_ elevation of man above religion shares all the
>   defects and all the advantages of any political elevation.
> If the state as state, for example, abolishes _private property_, man
>   proclaims private property is _overcome politically_ once he
>   abolishes the property qualification for active and passive voting
>   as has been done in many North American states.
> _Hamilion_ interprets this fact quite correctly in political terms:
> “_The great majority of the people have gained a victory over
>   property owners and financial wealth._”^[*]^
> Is not private property ideally abolished when the have‐nots come to
>   legislate for the haves?
> The _property qualification_ is the last _political_ form for
>   recognizing private property.
>
> Yet {=the political annulment of private property not only does not
>   abolish it but even presupposes it.=}
> The state abolishes distinctions of _birth_, _rank_, _education_, and
>   _occupation_ in its fashion when it declares them to be
>   _non‐political_ distinctions, when it proclaims that every member
>   of the community _equally_ participates in popular sovereignty
>   without regard to these distinctions, and when it deals with all
>   elements of the actual life of the nation from the standpoint of
>   the state.
> {=Nevertheless the state permits private property, education, and
>   occupation to _act_ and manifest their _particular_ nature as
>   private property, education, and occupation in their _own_ ways.=}
> Far from overcoming these _factual_ distinctions, the state exists
>   only by presupposing them; it is aware of itself as a _political
>   state_ and makes its _universality_ effective only in opposition to
>   these elements.
>
> [[*Thomas Hamilton, _Men and Manners in America_{as=cite} (2 vols;
>   Edinburgh: Willam Blackwood, 1833).
> Marx quotes from the German translation, _Die Menschen und die Sitten
>   in den Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika_{as=cite lang=de}
>   (Mannheim: Hoff, 1834), Vol Ⅰ, p. 146.]]{as=small}

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The liberal state frames aspects of human life as “nonpolitical” as a
  way of _upholding_, not _challenging_ them.
A proper liberatory state must frontally grapple with human life in all
  its complexities, rather than simply writing off such things as
  property ownership as an “apolitical” distinction.

Either the personal is political, or politics is insufficient for
  human liberation.
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> According to Baeur man must sacrifice the “_privilege of faith_” to
>   be able to acquire the universal rights of man.
> Let us consider for a moment these so‐called rights and indeed in
>   their most authentic form, the form they have among their
>   _discoverers_, the North Americans and the French.
> In part these rights are _political_ rights that can be exercised
>   only in community with others.
> _Participation_ in the _community_, indeed the _political_ community
>   or _state_, constitutes their substance.
> They belong in the category of _political freedom_, of _civil
>   rights_, which by no means presupposes the consistent and positive
>   trancendence of religion and thus of Judaism, as we have seen.
> There is left for consideration the other part, the _rights of man_
>   as distinct from the _rights of the citizen_.
>
> Among these is freedom of conscience, the right to practice one’s
>   chosen religion.
> The _privilege of faith_ is expressly recognized either as a _right
>   of man_ or as a consequence of a right of man, freedom.
>
> > _Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen_{as=cite},
> >   1791, Art. 10:
> > “No one is to be disturbed on account of his beliefs, even
> >   religious beliefs.”
> > In Title Ⅰ of the Constitution of 1791 there is guaranteed as a
> >   human right:
> > “The liberty of every man to practice the _religious worship_ to
> >   which he is attached.”
> >
> > The _Declaration of the Rights of Man_{as=cite}, etc., 1793,
> >   includes among human richts, Art. 7:
> > “Freedom of worship.”
> > Moreover, it even maintains in regard to the right to express views
> >   and opinions, to assemble, and to worship:
> > “The need to proclaim these _rights_ assumes either the presence or
> >   recent memory of despotism.”
> > Compare the Constitution of 1795, Title ⅩⅠⅤ, Art. 354.
> >
> > _Constitution of Pennsylvania_{as=cite}, Art. 9, § 3:
> > “All men have a natural and indefeasible _right_ to worship
> >   Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences;
> >   no man can of right be compelled to attend, erect, or support any
> >   place of worship, or to maintain any ministry against his
> >   consent; no human authority can, in any case whatever, interfere
> >   with the rights of conscience and control the prerogatives of the
> >   soul.”
> >
> > _Constitution of New Hampshire_{as=cite}, Arts. 5 and 6:
> > “Among the natural rights, some are in their very nature
> >   unalienable, because no equivalent can be conceived for them.
> > Of this kind are the _rights_ of conscience.”
> > (Beaumont, _loc. cit._{as=i}, pp. 213, 214.)
>
> The incompatibility between religion and the rights of man is so
>   little implied in the concept of the rights of man that the _right
>   to be religious_ according to one’s liking and to practice a
>   particular religion is explicitly included among the rights of man.
> The _privilege of faith_ is a universal human right.
>
> The _rights of man_ as such are distinguished from the _rights of the
>   citizen_.
> Who is this _man_ distinguished from the _citizen_?
> None other than the _member of civil society_.
> {=Why is the member of the civil society called “man,” man without
>   qualification, and why are his rights called the _rights of man_?=}
> How can we explain this?
> By the relation of the political state to civil society and by the
>   nature of political emancipation.
>
> Let us note first of all that the so‐called _rights of man_ as
>   distinguished from the _rights of the citizen_ are only the rights
>   of the _member of civil society_, that is, of egoistic man, man
>   separated from other men and from the community.
> The most radical constitution, the Constitution of 1793, may be
>   quoted:
>
> > _Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen._{as=i}
> >
> > _Art. 2._{as=i}
> > “These rights (the natural and imprescriptible rights) are:
> >   _equality_, _liberty_, _security_, _property_.”
>
> What is this _liberty_?
>
> > _Art 6._{as=i}
> > “Liberty is the power belonging to each man to do anything which
> >   does not impair the rights of others,” or according to the
> >   Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1791:
> > “Liberty is the power to do anything which does not harm others.”
>
> Liberty is thus the right to do and perform anything that does not
>   harm others.
> {=The limits within which each can act _without harming_ others is
>   determined by law just as the boundary between two fields is marked
>   by a stake.=}
> This is the liberty of man viewed as an isolated monad, withdrawn
>   into himself.
> Why, according to Bauer, is the Jew not capable of acquiring human
>   rights?
> “As long as he remains a Jew the limited nature which makes him a Jew
>   must triumph over the human nature which should link him as a man
>   with others and must separate him from non‐Jews.”
> {=But liberty as a right of man is not based on the association of
>   man with man but rather on the separation of man from man.=}
> It is the _right_ of this separation, the right of the _limited_
>   individual limited to himself.
>
> The practical application of the right of liberty is the right of
>   _private property_.
>
> What is property as one of the rights of man?
>
> > _Art. 16_{as=i} (Constitution of 1793):
> >
> > “The right of _property_ is that belonging to every citizen to
> >   enjoy and dispose of his goods, his revenues, the fruits of his
> >   labor and of his industry as he wills.”
>
> The right of property is thus the right to enjoy and dispose of one’s
>   possessions as one wills, without regard for other men and
>   independently of society.
> It is the right of self‐interest.
> This individual freedom and its application as well constitutes the
>   basis of civil society.
> It lets every man find in other men not the _realization_ but rather
>   the _limitation_ of his own freedom.
> It proclaims above all the right of man “to enjoy and dispose of his
>   goods, his revenues, the fruits of his labor and of his industry
>   _as he wills_.”
>
> There still remain the other rights of man, equality and security.
>
> “Equality”—here used in its non‐political sense—is only the equal
>   right to _liberty_ as described above, viz., that every man is
>   equally viewed as a self‐sufficient monad.
> The Constitution of 1705 defines the concept of equality with this
>   significance:
>
> > _Art. 3_{as=i} (Constitution of 1795):
> > “Equality consists in the fact that the law is the same for all,
> >   whether it protects or whether it punishes.”
>
> And security?
>
> > _Art. 8_{as=i} (Constitution of 1793):
> > “Security consists in the protection accorded by society to each of
> >   its members for the preservation of his person, his rights and
> >   his property.”
>
> {=_Security_ is the supreme social concept of civil society, the
>   concept of the _police_, the concept that the whole society exists
>   only to guarantee to each of its members the preservation of his
>   person, his rights, and his property.=}
> In this sense Hegel calls civil society “the state as necessity and
>   rationality.”
>
> Civil society does not raise itself above its egoism through the
>   concept of security.
> Rather, security is the _guarantee_ of the egoism.
>
> {=Thus none of the so‐called rights of men goes beyond the egoistic
>   man, the man withdrawn into himself, his private interest and his
>   private choice, and separated from the community as a member of
>   civil society.=}
> Far from viewing man here in his species‐being, his species‐life
>   itself—society—rather appears to be an external framework for the
>   individual, limiting his original independence.
> The only bond between men is natural necessity, need and private
>   interest, the maintenance of their property and egoistic persons.
>
> It is somewhat curious that a nation just beginning to free itself,
>   tearing down all the barriers between different sections of the
>   people and founding a political community, should solemnly proclaim
>   (Declaration of 1791) the justification of the egoistic man, man
>   separated from his fellow men and from the community, and should
>   even repeat this prose lamation at a moment when only the most
>   heroic sacrifice can save the nation and hence is urgentity
>   required, when the sacrifice of all the interests of civil society
>   is highly imperaive and egoism must be punished as crime
>   (Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1793).
> This becomes even more curious when we observe that the political
>   liberators reduce citizenship, the _political community_, to a mere
>   _means_ for preserving these so‐called rights of man and that the
>   citizen thus is proclaimed to be the servant of the egoistic man,
>   the sphere in which the man acts as a member of the community is
>   degraded below that in which he acts as a fractional being, and
>   finally man as bourgeios rather than man as citizen is considered
>   to be _proper_ and _authentic_ man.
>
> “The _goal_ of all _political association_ is the _preservation_ of
>   the natural and imprescriptible rights of man.”
> (Declaration of the Rights of Man, etc., of 1791, Art. 2.)
> “_Government_ is instituted to guarantee man’s enjoyment of his
>   natural and imprescriptible rights.”
> (Declaration, etc., of 1793, Art. 1.)
> Thus even at the time of its youthful enthusiasm fired by the urgency
>   of circumstances political life is proclaimed to be a mere _means_
>   whose end is life in civil society.
> To be sure, {=revolutionary practice flagrantly contradicts its
>   theory=}.
> While security, for example, is proclaimed to be one of the rights of
>   man, the violation of the privacy of correspondance is publicly
>   established as the order of the day.
> While the “_unlimited_ freedom of the press” (Constitution of 1973,
>   Art. 122) as a consequence of the rights of man and individual
>   freedom is guaranteed, freedom of the press is completely abolished
>   because “freedom of the press should not be permitted to compromise
>   public liberty.”
> (“Robespierre jeune,” _Parliamentary History of the French
>   Revolution_{as=cite}, by Buchez and Roux, Vol. 28, p. 159.)
> This means that the human right of liberty ceases to be a right when
>   it comes into conflict with _political_ life while theoretically
>   political life is only the guarantee of the rights of man, the
>   rights of individual man, and should be abandoned once it
>   contradicts its _end_, these rights of man.
> But the practice is only the exception, the theory is the rule.
> Even if we choose to regard revolutionary practice as the correct
>   expression of this relationship, the problem still remains
>   unsettled as to why the relationship is inverted in the
>   consciousness of the political liberators so that the end appears
>   as means and the means as the end.
> This optical illusion of their consciousness would always be the same
>   problem, though a psychological, a theoretical problem.

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“Civil” (bourgeois, liberal) society seeks to uphold the rights of
  the individual at the expense of the collective, which not only is
  nonpractice·able from a revolutionary standpoint (as revolution
  depends on collective action at the expense of individual liberty)
  but also, and more importantly, forms a reductive model of humanity
  which negates social forces, interactions, and community (including
  political community [hence the contradiction]).

Socialist society, in contrast, upholds the rights of humanity _as
  members of society_ over their rights as individuals; this is what
  distinguishes left socialism from left liberalism (and leaves
  socialism and libertarianism fundamentally at odds with each other).
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> This _man_, the member of civil society, is now the basis and
>   presupposition of the _political state_.
> He is recognized as such by the state in the rights of man.
>
> {=But the freedom of egoistic man and the recognition of this freedom
>   is rather the recognition of the _unbridled_ movement of the
>   sprirtual and material elements forming the content of his life.=}
>
> {=Thus man was not freed from religion; he received religious
>   freedom.
> He was not freed from property.
> He received freedom of property.
> He was not freed from the egoism of trade but received freedom to
>   trade.=}
>
> The _constitution_ of the _political state_ and the dissolution of
>   civil society into independent _individuals_—whose relation is
>   _law_ just as the relation of estates and guilds was
>   _privilege_—is accomplished in _one and the same act_.
> As a member of civil society man is the _non‐political man_ but
>   necessarily appears to be _natural_ man.
> The _rights of man_ appear to be _natural rights_ because
>   _self‐conscious activity_ is concentrated on the _political act_.
> The _egoistic_ man is the _passive_ and _given_ result of the
>   dissolved society, an object of _immediate certainty_ and thus a
>   _natural_ object.
> {=The _political revolution_ dissolves civil life into its constituent
>   elements without _revolutionizing_ these elements themselves and
>   subjecting them to criticism.=}
> It regards civil society—the realm of needs, labor, private
>   interests, and private right—as the _basis of its existence_, as a
>   _presupposition_ needing no ground, and thus as its _natural
>   basis_.
> Finally, man as a member of civil society is regarded as _authentic_
>   man, _man_ as distinct from _citizen_, since he is man in his
>   sensuous, individual, and _most intimate_ existence while
>   _political_ man is only the abstract and artificial man, man as an
>   _allegorical_, _moral_ person.
> Actual man is recognized only in the form of an _egoistic_
>   individual, _authentic_ man, only in the form of _abstract
>   citizen_.

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The creation and conceptualization of the political state has
  politicized community, afflicting it with the veneer of artificiality
  and cementing individualistic, egoistic, asocial life as “natural”.
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(This quote is interesting as it seems to predict and also complicate
  Foucault’s analysis of the state as an imposition of regulatory and
  normativising knowledge on a sensual world of pleasures.
In fact the sensual world of pleasures Foucault imagines is, ⅌ Marx, a
  _product of_ the existence of a liberal state order which views, and
  depends _in its very essence_ on such a view, “private” acts as
  natural and beyond critique.
It does not precede it.
[][@:Lady]{.sig})

## from _On Proudhon_{as=cite}[^DSD161718]

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> But in spite of all his apparent iconoclasm one already finds in
>   Qu’est-ce que la propriété’?  the contradiction that Proudhon is
>   criticising society, on the one hand, from the standpoint and with
>   the eyes of a French small-holding peasant (later petit bourgeois)
>   and, on the other, that he measures it with the standards he
>   inherited from the socialists.
>
> The deficiency of the book is indicated by its very title.
>   The question is so badly formulated that it cannot be answered
>   correctly.
> Ancient “property relations” were superseded by feudal property
>   relations and these by “bourgeois” property relations.
>   Thus history itself had expressed its criticism upon past property
>   relations.
> What Proudhon was actually dealing with was modern bourgeois
>   property as it exists today.
> The question of what this is could have only been answered by a
>   critical analysis of “political economy,” embracing the totality of
>   these property relations, considering not their legal aspect as
>   relations of volition but their real form, that is, as relations of
>   production.
> But as Proudhon entangled the whole of these economic relations in
>   the general legal concept of “property,” “la propriété,” he could
>   not get beyond the answer which, in a similar work published before
>   1789, Brissot had already given in the same words: “La propriété
>   c’est le vol.”
>
> The upshot is at best that the bourgeois legal conceptions of
>   “theft” apply equally well to the “honest” gains of the bourgeois
>   himself.
> On the other hand, since “theft” as a forcible violation of
>   property presupposes the existence of property, Proudhon entangled
>   himself in all sorts of fantasies, obscure even to himself, about
>   true bourgeois property.
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“What is property?” is a bad question;
Proudhon’s answer, “Property is theft!”, presupposes property.
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When writing _Oppenheimer_{as="cite"}, Christopher Nolan apparently
  believed that two people who have both ostensibly read the entirety
  of _Capital_{as="cite"} would both attribute “Property is theft!” to
  Marx.
[][@:Aescling]{.sig}

[^Easton1967]:
  Translated by Loyd D Easton and Kurt H Guddat, © 1967.

[^DSD161718]:
  From _Der Social-Demokrat_ Nos. 16, 17, and 18; as
  [republished][https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/letters/65_01_24.htm]
  by Marxists.org