He proves that the civilized stage raises every vice practiced by
barbarism in a simple fashion, into a form of existence, complex,
ambiguous, equivocal, hypocritical…That civilization moves in a ‘vicious
circle’, in contradictions which it constantly reproduces without being
able to solve them; hence it constantly arrives at the very opposite to
that which it wants to attain, or pretends to want to attain, so that,
‘under civilization poverty is born of superabundance itself’. –
Friedrich Engels (speaking of Fourier)
Active social forces work exactly like natural forces: blindly, forcibly, destructively, so long as we do not understand, and reckon with them. But when once we understand them, when once we grasp their action, their direction, their effects, it depends only upon ourselves to subject them more and more to our own will, and by means of them to reach our own ends. And this hold quite especially of the mighty productive forces of today. As long as we obstinately refuse to understand the naure and the character of these social means of action- and this understanding goes againstthe grain of the capitalist mode of production and it’s defenders-so long these forces are at work in spite of us, in opposition to us, so long they master us… -Friedrich Engels (socialism utopian and scientific)
The state in no way constitutes a force imposed on society from outside. Nor is state “the reality of the Moral Idea”, or the “image and reality of reason”
as Hegel asserted. The state is he product of society at a certain stage of its development. The state is to an acknowledgment that the given society has become entangled in an insoluble contridiciton with itself, that it has broken up into irreconcilable antagonisms, of wihich it is powerless to rid itself. And in order that these antagonisms, these classes with their opposing economic interests may not devour one another and society itselfin their sterile struggle, some force standing, seemingly above society, becomes necessary so as to moderate the force of their collisions and to keep them within the bounds of “order”. And this force arising from society, but placing itself above it, which gradually seperates itself from it…this is the force of the state. –Friedrich Engels (The origins of the family, private property and the state)
Active social forces work exactly like natural forces: blindly, forcibly, destructively, so long as we do not understand, and reckon with them. But when once we understand them, when once we grasp their action, their direction, their effects, it depends only upon ourselves to subject them more and more to our own will, and by means of them to reach our own ends. And this hold quite especially of the mighty productive forces of today. As long as we obstinately refuse to understand the naure and the character of these social means of action- and this understanding goes againstthe grain of the capitalist mode of production and it’s defenders-so long these forces are at work in spite of us, in opposition to us, so long they master us… -Friedrich Engels (socialism utopian and scientific)
The state in no way constitutes a force imposed on society from outside. Nor is state “the reality of the Moral Idea”, or the “image and reality of reason”
as Hegel asserted. The state is he product of society at a certain stage of its development. The state is to an acknowledgment that the given society has become entangled in an insoluble contridiciton with itself, that it has broken up into irreconcilable antagonisms, of wihich it is powerless to rid itself. And in order that these antagonisms, these classes with their opposing economic interests may not devour one another and society itselfin their sterile struggle, some force standing, seemingly above society, becomes necessary so as to moderate the force of their collisions and to keep them within the bounds of “order”. And this force arising from society, but placing itself above it, which gradually seperates itself from it…this is the force of the state. –Friedrich Engels (The origins of the family, private property and the state)
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