Marxism
From Wikiquote
Marxism is a political and social philosophy derived from the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
Quotes[edit]
- Marx and Engels themselves can never be taken simply at their word: the errors of their writings on the past should not be evaded or ignored, but identified and criticized. To do so is not to depart from historical materialism, but to rejoin it. (...) To take 'liberties' with the signature of Marx is in this sense merely to enter into the freedom of Marxism.
- Perry Anderson, Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism (Verso, 1996), p. 9.
- We are all Marxists now
- Ernest Belfort Bax, The Zurich Resolutions (1893). Full text online Later used by J. K. Galbraith.
- One of the intellectual charms of Marxism is that it explains the injustice or philistinism of the people in such a way as to exculpate the people, who are said to be manipulated by corrupt elites.
- Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: 1988), p. 249.
- If you say that this is an old, badly painted wall you're judging it metaphysically, extracting the current moment. If you however say: it's shiny, nice, new wall, then you're wrong from current moment's point of view, because the wall is not yet like that. But from dialectical point of view you're right, because it will be like that tomorrow. If you said that Soviet people are living in old hovels, full of worms, you would be lying, even if usually they look like this. But if you say that Soviet people like in new, nice houses, you're saying truth, even if today very few live like that. See today what will happen tomorrow - is to think dialectically
- Józef Maria Bocheński, Lewica, religia, sowietologia, 1996.
- As I noted earlier, when we look back at the scientific and public climates of discussion 50 years ago, the prevailing mindset was socialist in its underlying presupposition that government offered the solution to social problems. But there was a confusing amalgam of Marxism and ideal political theory involved: Governments, as observed, were modeled and condemned by Marxists as furthering class interests, but governments which might be installed 'after the revolution', so to speak, would become both omniscient and benevolent.
In some of their implicit modeling of political behavior aimed at furthering special group or class interests, the Marxists seemed to be closet associates of public choice, even as they rejected methodological individualism. But how was the basic Marxist critique of politics, as observed, to be transformed into the idealized politics of the benevolent and omniscient superstate? This question was simply left glaringly unanswered. And the debates of the 1930s were considered by confused economists of the time to have been won by the socialists rather than by their opponents, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. Both sides, to an extent, neglected the relevance of incentives in motivating human action, including political action.- James M. Buchanan, "Public Choice: The Origins and Development of a Research Program", Center for Study of Public Choice at George Mason University (2003)
- M Is For Marx,
And Movement of Masses,
And Massing of Arses,
And Clashing of Classes.- Cyril Connolly, "Where Engels Fears To Tread", cited in Gyles Brandreth, The Oxford Dictionary of Humourous Quotations", Oxford University Press, 2013.
- As for their [Marxists'] argument for revolution-the argument that we must do evil now so that good may come of it in the long run-it seems to me to have nothing in it. Not because I am too nice to do evil, but because I don't believe the Communists know what leads to what.
- E. M. Forster, "The Long Run" (Review of Studies in a Dying Culture by Christopher Caudwell), The New Statesman and Nation, December 10, 1938. Reprinted in The Prince's Tale and other uncollected writings, London, Andre Deutsch, 1998.
- Marxian Socialism must always remain a portent to the historians of Opinion — how a doctrine so illogical and so dull can have exercised so powerful and enduring an influence over the minds of men, and, through them, the events of history.
- John Maynard Keynes, The End of Laissez-faire (1926). Full text online
- With the demise of Marxism, the illusion that we can finally dispense with the notion of antagonism has become widespread. This belief is fraught with danger, since it leaves us unprepared in the face of unrecognized manifestations of antagonism.
- Chantal Mouffe, The Return of the Political (Verso, 2005), p. 2.
- Obviously, Tony never became a Marxist even when he soon after decided to champion social democracy as his last act. But these comments were a far cry from his former dismissal of Marxism as a delusional politics with theory playing only the role of indefensible apologetics for terror. All the same, Tony did not feel that his standard bearing for social democracy required much more than moralistic rhetoric in its defense. His grudging admission of Marxism’s relevance for social democracy in the past did not lead him to insist on some new theory justifying his politics now. (In fact, Tony feared that given continuing injustice the most likely outcome for the foreseeable future was Marxism’s revival in theoretical debates.) Tony doesn’t appear to have contemplated that his struggle to reinvent the model of the intellectual committed him, if only to ward off Marxism, to some other return to the tradition of social thought that had defined “theory” until postmodern intellectuals gave the word a different meaning and bad name.
- Samuel Moyn, "Intellectuals, Reason, and History: In Memory of Tony Judt", H-France Salon (2012)
- It is not the truth of Marxism that explains the willingness of intellectuals to believe it, but the power that it confers on intellectuals, in their attempts to control the world. And since, as Swift says, it is futile to reason someone out of a thing that he was not reasoned into, we can conclude that Marxism owes its remarkable power to survive every criticism to the fact that it is not a truth-directed but a power-directed system of thought.
- Roger Scruton, Political Philosophy: Arguments for Conservatism (Continuum International Publishing Group 2006).
- First of all I’d like to thank The Struggle and the IMT for giving me a chance to speak last year at their Summer Marxist School in Swat and also for introducing me to Marxism and Socialism. I just want to say that in terms of education, as well as other problems in Pakistan, it is high time that we did something to tackle them ourselves. It’s important to take the initiative. We cannot wait around for any one else to come and do it. Why are we waiting for someone else to come and fix things? Why aren’t we doing it ourselves? I would like to send my heartfelt greetings to the congress. I am convinced Socialism is the only answer and I urge all comrades to take this struggle to a victorious conclusion. Only this will free us from the chains of bigotry and exploitation.
- Malala Yousafzai quoted on the website of the IMT: Statement to the 32nd congress of Pakistani Marxists
