Första maj

The bourgeois period of history has to create the material basis of the new world - one the one hand universal intercourse founded upon the mutual dependency of mankind, and the means of that intercourse; on the other hand the development of the productive powers of man and the transformation of material production into a scientific domination of natural agencies. Bourgeois industry and commerce create these material conditions of a new world in the same way as geological revolutions have created the surface of the earth.

When a great social revolution shall have master the results of the bourgeois epoch, the market of the world and the modern powers and production, and subject them to the common control of the most advanced peoples, then only will human progress cease to resemble the hideous pagan idol, who would not drink the nectar but from the sculls of the slain.

(Karl Marx, 1853)