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“You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.
In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so: that is just what we intend.”
― The Communist Manifesto
In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so: that is just what we intend.”
― The Communist Manifesto
“Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.”
― German Ideology
― German Ideology
“Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.”
― Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy
― Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy
“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language.”
― The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
― The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
“For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.”
― The German Ideology / Theses on Feuerbach / Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy
― The German Ideology / Theses on Feuerbach / Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy
Jonathan’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Jonathan’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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494 books
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136 books
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106 books
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170 books
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818 books
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66 books
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