Preface
One of Karl Marx’s most famous quotes is actually inscribed on his tomb:
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.
I think this is a good place to start if you want to understand Marx and his ideas.
He’s clearly flipping traditional philosophy on its head here. He argues that earlier philosophers, by focusing on interpreting the world of ideas, were just treating the symptoms and not the disease itself.
For Marx, the foundational reality, the thing you have to interpret in order to change, is the material, economic organization of society (the “base”). So the only philosophy worth the name is one that ends in the revolutionary practice of transforming that material base.
His ideas are meant to be acted on in this specific, revolutionary sense. That’s what separates him from the Idealist tradition, which he saw as stuck in the abstract “clouds” of consciousness, even when it aimed for change.
Quotes
Communism is already acknowledged by all European Powers to be itself a Power.
By 1848, every government in Europe was actively persecuting communists and socialist movements by banning publications, exiling leaders and infiltrating worker groups. For Marx, that repression was the best possible proof of communism’s potency. Mobilizing against it meant acknowledging its power.
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
Marx is arguing that throughout recorded history, from ancient empires to modern nations, every society has been fundamentally shaped by conflict between social groups with opposing economic interests.
That might sound like common sense today, but there are plenty of alternative narratives. Some believe history is driven by “great men”, others that ideas shape the world as they spread, and some focus only on technological progress. What Marx does here is strip away the noise and focus on what he sees as the fundamental and contradictory engine of historical change: the struggle between those who control production and those whose labor they depend on.
It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless and indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom - Free Trade.
Marx is saying capitalism has turned personal worth into a price tag. It has replaced countless concrete, hard-won freedoms with the one dominant “freedom” of the market, which he sees as ruthless and unjust.
Marx is also calling out a philosophical bait‑and‑switch. Capitalism celebrates “negative freedom”, or freedom from state interference (embodied in Free Trade), as the highest good. But this single, dominant freedom for capital systematically destroys the possibility of “positive freedom” for the worker: the freedom to develop as a human being, not just a commodity. What liberals call “freedom”, Marx calls the “unconscionable freedom” to reduce all human worth to a price and all social relations to a transaction.
Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones.
In the past, stability was the key to survival. Under capitalism, constant chaos and change are the norm.
In place of the old wants, satisfied by the productions of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes.
Marx is saying capitalism doesn’t just satisfy local needs, it actively creates endless new desires that can only be met by pulling the whole world into its market. In other words, capitalism is unstable because it’s not self‑sufficient. It must keep expanding, and it creates powerful incentives to expand by any means.
Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labour, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex.
Under capitalism, workers aren’t seen as men, women, or children with social roles. They’re just tools, some cheaper (women, children), some more expensive (adult men), to be used up for profit.
Marx is saying that capitalism is inherently anti-traditionalist, and that over time it dissolves all values except market value. Isn’t it ironic that the post‑communist countries of Eastern Europe often seem more “based” today? Could it be that Marxism, in fact, shielded them from being fully dissolved into that “no values except for market value” system?
All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interests of minorities.
That’s a bold statement. Marx claims that every major change in history before the 19th century was driven by, and ultimately benefited, a small elite, never the majority.
It’s clear that both Marx and Mosca agree that history is minority rule. Marx calls them economic classes while Mosca calls them organized elites. Marx sees transition happening through revolutionary class struggle, while elite theory often sees it as a mere circulation of elites.
Bitcoin, in its current state, is also a minority movement. Marx would probably frame it as just another minority revolution waiting in the queue, hoping to dominate the majority.
In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.
The key here is understanding what “private property” actually means. The ultimate goal is to end the system where a minority class privately owns the productive assets that society depends on, things like factories, land, and machinery. Most personal possessions are out of scope. Your privately owned toothbrush doesn’t interest a typical Marxist because toothbrushes aren’t a basis for exploitation.
Since the proletariat is defined by having no property in the means of production and being forced to sell its labor, abolishing that property form abolishes the class relation itself.
To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a social status in production.
Marx is saying that being a capitalist means occupying a social office, not just a personal identity. Your private morals don’t really matter here, you become the “personification of capital”, an agent through which the impersonal logic of profit and accumulation operates. If you deviate from that logic, say, by prioritizing workers’ welfare or ethics over competitive survival, you stop being a capitalist. The result is a sterile, homogenous system where only one imperative is tolerated: expand or die.
The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!
This is a cool emotional rallying cry and the strategic conclusion of Marx’s whole argument. He’s meticulously shown how capitalism strips workers of any ownership or security (“nothing to lose”), binding them only by the wage system (“chains”). When the status quo offers you nothing but bondage, you have everything to gain by breaking free.
Conclusion
The Communist Manifesto is a short, straightforward read, and I think it’s a good introduction to Marxism. I’m not sure I’m ready to dive deeper right now, there are other ideas I want to explore first.
A lot of Marxist critiques hit close to home, similar to how behavioral economics challenges the idea of efficient markets. Criticism is important, but the hard part is building a sound and testable alternative model.
The reality is, we don’t have a single clear example of a country where the means of production aren’t largely in private hands. The modern state is a hybrid, some capitalist free‑for‑all mixed with bits of a communist “utopia”. One thing is certain though, it’s clearly impossible to deny Marx’s influence on how we think and how our everyday world is structured.