When people speak of ideas that revolutionize society, they do but express the fact that within the old society, the elements of a new one have been created.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Marx notes that ideas that seem revolutionary actually arise from elements of the new society already present within the old.
- In plain terms
- Revolutionary ideas are seeded in the existing system.
- What can you take from it?
- Look for emerging trends that foreshadow larger change.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- How can we identify which ideas will become transformative?
- What factors hinder revolutionary potential?
Another view
Not all nascent ideas lead to full revolutions.
More from Karl Marx
All that we want to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and allowed to li…
Permalink to quote #40 The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involves the most radical rupture with…
Permalink to quote #42 Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.
Permalink to quote #39
Related quotes
The hippies, who had never really believed they were the wave of the future anyway, saw the election results as brutal confirmation of the futility of fighting…
Hunter S. ThompsonHunter S. Thompson quote #1 We are sleeping on a volcano... A wind of revolution blows, the storm is on the horizon.
Alexis de TocquevilleAlexis de Tocqueville quote #2 The worst of revolutions is a restoration.
Charles James FoxCharles James Fox quote #2