Grundrisse Quotes

“Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.”
― Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy

“These contradictions, of course, lead to explosions, crises, in which momentary suspension of all labour and annihilation of a great part of the capital violently lead it back to the point where it is enabled [to go on] fully employing its productive powers without committing suicide. Yet, these regularly recurring catastrophes lead to their repetition on a higher scale, and finally to its violent overthrow. There are moments in the developed movement of capital which delay this movement other than by crises; such as e.g. the constant devaluation of a part of the existing capital: the transformation of a great part of capital into fixed capital which does not serve as agency of direct production; unproductive waste of a great portion of capital etc.”
― Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy

“For real wealth is the developed productive power of all individuals. The measure of wealth is then not any longer, in any way, labour time, but rather disposable time.”
― Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy

“Economy of time, to this all economy ultimately reduces itself.”
― Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy

“Cuanto más lejos nos remontamos en la historia, tanto más aparece el individuo - y por consiguiente también el individuo productor - como dependiente y formando parte de un todo mayor: en primer lugar y de una manera todavía muy enteramente natural, de la familia y de esa familia ampliada que es la tribu; más tarde, de las comunidades en sus distintas formas, resultado del antagonismo y de la fusión de las tribus. Solamente al llegar el Siglo XVIII, con la" sociedad civil ", las diferentes formas de conexión social aparecen ante el individuo como un simple medio para lograr sus fines privados, como una necesidad exterior. Pero la época que genera este punto de vista, esta idea del individuo aislado, es precisamente aquella en la cual las relaciones sociales (universales según este punto de vista) han llegado al más alto grado de desarrollo alcanzado hasta el presente. El hombre es, en el sentido más literal, un zoon politikon, no solamente un animal social, sino un animal que sólo puede individualizarse en la sociedad. La producción por parte de un individuo aislado, fuera de la sociedad - hecho raro que bien puede ocurrir cuando un civilizado, que potencialmente posee ya en sí las fuerzas de la sociedad, se extravía accidentalmente en una comarca salvaje - no es menos absurda que la idea de un desarrollo del lenguaje sin individuos que vivan juntos y hablen entre sí.”
― Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy

“Nothing can emerge at the end of the process which did not appear as a presupposition and precondition at the beginning.”
― Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy

“In bourgeois political economy – and in the epoch of production to which it corresponds this complete elaboration – what lies within man, appears as the total alienation, and the destruction of all lived, one-sided purposes as the sacrifice of the end in itself to a wholly external compulsion (...) For the fact that the worker finds the objective conditions of his labour as something separate from him, as capital, and the fact that the capitalist finds the workers propertyless, as abstract laborers (…) this historic process, as we have seen, is the evolutionary history of both capital and wage-labour.”
― Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy

“It has been said and may be said that this is precisely the beauty and greatness of it: this spontaneous interconnection, this material and mental metabolism which is independent of the knowing and willing individuals, and which presupposes their reciprocal independence and indifference. And, certainly, this objective connection is preferable to the lack of any connection, or to a merely local connection resting on blood ties, or on primeval, natural or master-servant relations. Equally certain is it that individuals cannot gain mastery over their own social interconnections before they have created them.”
― Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy