The Wisdom of Frederick Engels

~~ posted for collectivist action ~~

 The Wisdom of Frederick Engels        

"Thus at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature - but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly."

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"An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory".

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"The free development of each is the condition for the free development of all."

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"The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie."

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"The first class antagonism appearing in history coincides with the development of the antagonism of man and wife in monogamy, and the first class oppression with that of the female by the male sex."

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"According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life."

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"It was always our view that in order to attain this [proletarian revolution] and the other far more important aims of the future social revolution, the working class must first take possession of the organised political power of the state and by its aid crush the resistance of the capitalist class and organise society anew."

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"The anarchists put the thing upside down. They declare that the proletarian revolution must begin by doing away with the political organization of the state. But to destroy it at such a moment would be to destroy the only organism by means of which the victorious proletariat can assert its newly-conquered power, hold down its capitalist adversaries, and carry out that economic revolution of society without which the whole victory must end in a new defeat and a mass slaughter of the workers similar to those after the Paris Commune."

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"Political economy came into being as a natural result of the expansion of trade, and with its appearance elementary, unscientific huckstering was replaced by a developed system of licensed fraud, an entire science of enrichment."

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"Just as Marx used to say about the French Marxists of the late 'seventies: All I know is that I am not a Marxist."