Karl Marx Essence Quotations

Communism... is the genuine resolution of the antagonism between man and nature and between man and man; it is the true resolution of the conflict between existence and essence, objectification and self-affirmation, freedom and necessity, individual and species. It is the riddle of history solved and knows itself as the solution.

Surplus-value and the rate of surplus-value are... the invisible essence to be investigated, whereas the rate of profit and hence the form of surplus-value as profit are visible surface phenomena

All science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided.

[T]he task of abolishing the essence of Jewry is in truth the task of abolishing Jewry in civil society, abolishing the inhumanity of today's practice of life, the summit of which is the money system.

The essence of the free press is the reliable, reasonable and moral nature of freedom.

Money is the alienated essence of man's work and existence; this essence dominates him and he worships it.