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Capital Quotes
Capital
by
Karl Marx259 ratings, 3.94 average rating, 22 reviews
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Capital Quotes
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“Truly comical is M. Bastiat,
who imagines that the ancient Greeks and Romans lived by plunder alone. But
when people plunder for centuries, there must always be something at hand for
them to seize; the objects of plunder must be continually reproduced. It would
thus appear that even Greeks and Romans had some process of production,
consequently, an economy, which just as much constituted the material basis of
their world, as bourgeois economy constitutes that of our modern world. Or
perhaps Bastiat means, that a mode of production based on slavery is based on a
system of plunder. In that case he treads on dangerous ground. If a giant
thinker like Aristotle erred in his appreciation of slave labour, why should a
dwarf economist like Bastiat be right in his appreciation of wage labour? I
seize this opportunity of shortly answering an objection taken by a German
paper in America, to my work, “Zur Kritik der Pol. Oekonomie, 1859.” In the
estimation of that paper, my view that each special mode of production and the
social relations corresponding to it, in short, that the economic structure of
society, is the real basis on which the juridical and political superstructure
is raised and to which definite social forms of thought correspond; that the
mode of production determines the character of the social, political, and
intellectual life generally, all this is very true for our own times, in which
material interests preponderate, but not for the middle ages, in which
Catholicism, nor for Athens and Rome, where politics, reigned supreme. In the
first place it strikes one as an odd thing for any one to suppose that these
well-worn phrases about the middle ages and the ancient world are unknown to
anyone else. This much, however, is clear, that the middle ages could not live
on Catholicism, nor the ancient world on politics. On the contrary, it is the
mode in which they gained a livelihood that explains why here politics, and
there Catholicism, played the chief part. For the rest, it requires but a
slight acquaintance with the history of the Roman republic, for example, to be
aware that its secret history is the history of its landed property. On the
other hand, Don Quixote long ago paid the penalty for wrongly imagining that
knight errantry was compatible with all economic forms of society.”
― Capital
who imagines that the ancient Greeks and Romans lived by plunder alone. But
when people plunder for centuries, there must always be something at hand for
them to seize; the objects of plunder must be continually reproduced. It would
thus appear that even Greeks and Romans had some process of production,
consequently, an economy, which just as much constituted the material basis of
their world, as bourgeois economy constitutes that of our modern world. Or
perhaps Bastiat means, that a mode of production based on slavery is based on a
system of plunder. In that case he treads on dangerous ground. If a giant
thinker like Aristotle erred in his appreciation of slave labour, why should a
dwarf economist like Bastiat be right in his appreciation of wage labour? I
seize this opportunity of shortly answering an objection taken by a German
paper in America, to my work, “Zur Kritik der Pol. Oekonomie, 1859.” In the
estimation of that paper, my view that each special mode of production and the
social relations corresponding to it, in short, that the economic structure of
society, is the real basis on which the juridical and political superstructure
is raised and to which definite social forms of thought correspond; that the
mode of production determines the character of the social, political, and
intellectual life generally, all this is very true for our own times, in which
material interests preponderate, but not for the middle ages, in which
Catholicism, nor for Athens and Rome, where politics, reigned supreme. In the
first place it strikes one as an odd thing for any one to suppose that these
well-worn phrases about the middle ages and the ancient world are unknown to
anyone else. This much, however, is clear, that the middle ages could not live
on Catholicism, nor the ancient world on politics. On the contrary, it is the
mode in which they gained a livelihood that explains why here politics, and
there Catholicism, played the chief part. For the rest, it requires but a
slight acquaintance with the history of the Roman republic, for example, to be
aware that its secret history is the history of its landed property. On the
other hand, Don Quixote long ago paid the penalty for wrongly imagining that
knight errantry was compatible with all economic forms of society.”
― Capital
