QuoteProject
Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange, and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.
Karl Marx
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Modern society has created powerful systems that we cannot fully control.

In this quote, Karl Marx describes how the advancements and complexities of bourgeois society—rooted in production, exchange, and property—have resulted in forces beyond our control, akin to a sorcerer summoning powers that ultimately overwhelm him. This metaphor warns us of the unforeseen consequences and loss of control that can arise from our own creations and societal structures.

Themes

SocietyControlProductionExchangePropertyPower

In practice

Example use cases

During a lecture on capitalism, this quote can illustrate the unforeseen consequences of industrialization.

More from Karl Marx

I am nothing but I must be everything.
Karl MarxRead
Religion is the opiate of the people.
Karl MarxRead
It is absolutely impossible to transcend the laws of nature. What can change in historically different circumstances is only the form in which these laws expose themselves.
Karl MarxRead
Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.
Karl MarxRead
To be radical is to grasp things by the root.
Karl MarxRead
Men's ideas are the most direct emanations of their material state.
Karl MarxRead

Similar quotes

An organizer working in and for an open society is in an ideological dilemma to begin with, he does not have a fixed truth - truth to him is relative and changing; everything to him is relative and changing.... To the extent that he is free from the shackles of dogma, he can respond to the realities of the widely different situations.
Saul AlinskyRead
Our civilization is still in a middle stage, scarcely beast, in that it is no longer wholly guided by instinct; scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly guided by reason.
Theodore DreiserRead
When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.
Charles DickensRead
Most of the time you don't even know they're there. Now, that's the scary thing. It's really strange and invading, but I'm still working it all out. I try to not let it bother me. And if I want to swim naked in my pool, I'm still going to do it. I certainly don't want to feel that I have to change everything in my life that I do to cater to them. I just won't let it happen.
Heath LedgerRead
There is an hour of the afternoon when the plain is on the verge of saying something. It never says, or perhaps it says it infinitely, or perhaps we do not understand it, or we understand it and it is untranslatable as music.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead
Few can believe that suffering, especially by others, is in vain. Anything that is disagreeable must surely have beneficial economic effects.
John Kenneth GalbraithRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.