Karl Marx Quotes
A commodity has a value because it is a crystallization of social labor. The greatness of its value, or its relative value, depends upon the greater or less amount of that social substance contained in it; that is to say, on the relative mass of labor necessary for its production.
Marx, Karl. Value, Price and Profit. Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: Collected Works, Vol. 20. International Publishers, 1985, p. 121.
He appears to be the first person to understand and write this important economic principle about science. Even in the 21st century, many economists are not aware of this critical principle.
This quotation is important because so many modern conservatives regard Keynes as a Marxist economist. Those who do, generally have not read neither the one or the other—possibly neither.
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist and socialist revolutionary. Born in Trier, Germany, Marx studied law and philosophy at university. He married Jenny von Westphalen in 1843. Due to his political publications, Marx became stateless and lived in exile with his wife and children in London for decades, where he continued to develop his thought in collaboration with German thinker Friedrich Engels and publish his writings, researching in the reading room of the British Museum. His best-known titles are the 1848 pamphlet The Communist Manifesto and the three-volume Das Kapital (1867–1883). Marx's political and philosophical thought had enormous influence on subsequent intellectual, economic and political history. His name has been used as an adjective, a noun, and a school of social theory.
