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If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from the physical life-process.

Friedrich Engels

Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
FRIEDRICH ENGELS

Philosophy Rule
We find two great gangs of political speculators, who alternately take possession of the state power and exploit it by the most corrupt ends — the nation is powerless against these two great cartels of politicians who are ostensibly its servants, but in reality dominate and plunder it.
FRIEDRICH ENGELS

Nation Poltics Power Reality
Some laws of state aimed at curbing crime are even more criminal.
FRIEDRICH ENGELS

Crime Law Philosophy
The state is nothing but an instrument of opression of one class by another – no less so in a democratic republic than in a monarchy.
FRIEDRICH ENGELS

Class Democracy Oppression Politics Republic States
I have learned more [from Balzac] than from all the professional historians, economists, and statisticians put together.
FRIEDRICH ENGELS

Balzac History Learning Togetherness
Freedom is the recognition of necessity.
FRIEDRICH ENGELS

Freedom Necessary One Liner Recognition
Three hundred years after its appearance Christianity was the recognized state religion in the Roman World Empire, and in barely sixty years socialism has won itself a position which makes its victory absolutely certain.
FRIEDRICH ENGELS

Appearance Religion Victory World Years
The proletariat uses the State not in the interests of freedom but in order to hold down its adversaries, and as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedom the State as such ceases to exist.
FRIEDRICH ENGELS

Existence Freedom Order Speak Use
The slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private property, he abolishes only the relation of slavery and thereby becomes a proletarian; the proletarian can free himself only by abolishing private property in general.
FRIEDRICH ENGELS

Freedom Relationship Slave
Bare-faced covetousness was the moving spirit of civilization from its first dawn to the present day; wealth, and again wealth, and for the third time wealth; wealth, not of society, but of the puny individual, was its only and final aim.
FRIEDRICH ENGELS

Civilization Money Morning Moving
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.
FRIEDRICH ENGELS

Appearance Development Nature Poltics Revolution
Freedom does not consist in any dreamt-of independence from natural laws, but in the knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility this gives of systematically making them work towards definite ends.
FRIEDRICH ENGELS

Dream End Freedom Independence Knowledge Law Possibilty
Ireland still remains the Holy Isle whose aspirations must on no account be mixed with the profane class-struggles of the rest of the sinful world. The Irish peasant must not on any account know that the Socialist workers are his sole allies in Europe.
FRIEDRICH ENGELS

Class Struggle World
Hegel was the first to state correctly the relation between freedom and necessity. To him, freedom is the insight into necessity.
FRIEDRICH ENGELS

Firsts Freedom Hegel Necessary States
And what is impossible to science?
FRIEDRICH ENGELS

Impossible One Liner Science
In 10 years, this sleepy Canada will be ripe for annexation – the farmers in Manitoba, etc., will demand it themselves. Besides, the country is half annexed already socially – hotels, newspapers, advertising, etc., all on the American pattern.
FRIEDRICH ENGELS

Country Nation Years

If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from the physical life-process.

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If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from the physical life-process.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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