Karl Marx: 10 great quotes on his birthday

May 5 marks the birthday of Karl Marx, who provided intellectual foundation for an array of regimes that at one time governed nearly half of Earth's population.

7. On consumerism

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FILE - In this Oct. 2011 photo, a man holds up an iPhone 4S in front of an Apple Store location in Boston.

"Private property has made us so stupid and one-sided that an object is only ours when we have it – when it exists for us as capital, or when it is directly possessed, eaten, drunk, worn, inhabited, etc., – in short, when it is used by us. Although private property itself again conceives all these direct realisations of possession only as means of life, and the life which they serve as means is the life of private property – labour and conversion into capital." (From "Private Property and Communism," 1844)

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