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About this quote

What does it mean?
Marx sees communism not as a future ideal but as an ongoing movement that abolishes current conditions, emerging from existing premises.
In plain terms
Communism is a real process that removes today’s conditions.
What can you take from it?
Recognize communism as a current transformative movement.

Where it applies

  • political activism
  • social analysis

Putting it to work

  • study existing material conditions
  • organize collective action

Questions to consider

  • What present conditions must be changed for communism?
  • Is communism inevitable or contingent?

Another view

It downplays the role of conscious planning in shaping outcomes.

More from Karl Marx

  1. Very well then! Emancipation from huckstering and money, consequently from practical, real Judaism, would be the self-emancipation of our time. An organization…

    Permalink to quote #22
  2. The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. Thus the first fact to be established is the physical organisa…

    Permalink to quote #24
  3. What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money.

    Permalink to quote #21

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