Karl Marx Quotes on Nature
Karl Marx was a 19th-century German philosopher, economist, historian, and revolutionary socialist whose work founded the tradition of thought that bears his name. This page collects quotes attributed to Karl Marx on the topic of nature, drawn from across the philosopher's works.
Quotes
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“If conquest constitutes a natural right on the part of the few, the many have only to gather sufficient strength in order to acquire the natural right of reconquering what has been taken from them.”
1860s | The Abolition of Landed Property Letter to Robert Applegarth (3 December 1869) -
“Consumption is also immediately production, just as in nature the consumption of the elements and chemical substances is the production of the plant.”
Grundrisse(1857-1858) | Introduction, p. 10. -
“But capitalist production begets,with the inexorability of a law of Nature,its own negation. It is the negation of negation.”
Das Kapital(Buch I)(1867) | Vol. I, Ch. 32, p. 837. -
“The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. Thus the first fact to be established is the physical organisation of these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature.”
The German Ideology(1845-1846) | Volume I; Part 1; "Feuerbach. Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlook"; Section A, "Idealism and Materialism ". -
“But there is a devil of a difference between barbarians who are fit by nature to be used for anything, and civilized people who apply them selves to everything.”
Grundrisse(1857-1858) | Introduction, p. 25. -
“Of all the animals kept by the farmer, the labourer, the instrumentum vocale, was,thenceforth, the most oppressed, the worst nourished, the most brutally treated.”
Das Kapital(Buch I)(1867) | Vol. I, Ch. 25, Section 4(e), pg. 742. -
“The entire process seems simple and natural, i.e., possesses the naturalness of a shallow rationalism.”
Das Kapital(Buch II)(1893) | Vol. II, Ch. III, p. 95.