Straight from the Horse's Mouth

Key Marxist concepts from Karl Marx

Why defer to experts on Marxism when you can read the original words yourself? When you explain Marxism to the uninitiated—the vast majority of Americans—an effective technique is to quote directly from the source. Here are the words of Karl Marx as published in 1848 in The Communist Manifesto. The 88-page book was first published in German and then translated into English.

What is communism about?

In a word, oppressors and oppressed.

On abolishing private property:

The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.

The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations. You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property.

You reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so: that is just what we intend.

On control of business and the means of production:

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie; to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State.

On abolishing freedom:

Abolition of individuality and freedom! The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.

By “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.

By freedom is meant free trade, free selling and free buying. …Communist abolition of buying and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of production, and of the bourgeoisie itself.

Don’t wrangle with us so long as you apply to our intended abolition of bourgeois property, the standard of your bourgeois notions of freedom, culture, law, etc.

On abolishing the old, traditional, historical and normal:

The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.

Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion and all morality. [This last quote is phrased as a criticism of communism, which The Manifesto does not refute.]

On abolishing the family:

Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.

But, you will say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social.

Marx’s views on women:

Workingmen of all countries unite! [Marx was a known sexist and racist.]

What the Communists might possibly be reproached with is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for hypocritically concealed, an openly legalized community of women. [The “community of women” is Marx’s euphemism for sex without commitment or marriage.]

On labor unions:

They [communists] labor everywhere for the union.

On abolishing nations:

The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality. [This last quote is phrased as a criticism of communism, which The Manifesto does not refute.]

On revolution and global conquest:

In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries unite!

On the necessity of dictatorship following a communist revolution:

Of course, in the beginning this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads.

Stay tuned for the 10 Directives of Karl Marx in a future issue of 2026.