Marxism - Ideas and Quotes

I would like to be able to bring in Marxism to support the arguments of how our society isn't built to favour and work effectively with supporting the older generations, but I am struggling with how! I've only just got my head around what Marxism really is (and still feel like I could easily get the wrong end of the stick with it.) However, it is theory and you can bend theory pretty far in most directions to back up any point (to a point). 

I need to find quotes that can support the dehumanisation of the elderly and why this is bad; why they are still valuable to society and why we should aim to support everyone we can; everyone is equal, why and how a capitalist society does not support them as they fall to the bottom of the list of priorities. However, I do need to avoid going a bit too communist. 

I could also link Marx to the ideas about the devaluation of reproductive work in todays society and why people would be less inclined to go and work as a carer/support the old. 


"Reflections of a Young Man on the Choice of a Profession" (Karl Marx, 1835, First published in the yearly Archiv für die Geschichte des Sozalismas und der Arbeiterbewegung, Ed. K. Grünberg, Leipzig, 1925)

"History calls those men the greatest who have ennobled themselves by working for the common good; experience acclaims as happiest the man who has made the greatest number of people happy; religion itself teaches us that the ideal being whom all strive to copy sacrificed himself for the sake of mankind, and who would dare to set at nought such judgments?" (pg.7)

"The high regard we have for the ideas on which our profession is based gives us a higher standing in society, enhances our own worth, and makes our actions un-challengeable." (pg.6)


"A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy" (Karl Marx, 1859, Progress Publishers, Moscow, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Marx_Contribution_to_the_Critique_of_Political_Economy.pdf, accessed 31.10.16)

"It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness." (pg. 4)


"A Marxist Approach to Problems of the Ageing" (Louis Proyect, 2011, Swans.com, http://www.swans.com/library/art17/lproy68.html, accessed 31/10/16)

"You are confronted with major economic challenges, since the costs of care for the elderly are enormous in a capitalist society racing to eradicate the last vestiges of the welfare state."(pg.1)

"Capitalist society is very good at turning people into individual economic actors but even better at destroying traditional bonds of solidarity and support." (pg.1)

"It is not surprising that Marxism has had little to say about the problems of ageing since it is imbued with "productivist" conceptions that absorbed from bourgeois economics in the nineteenth century". (pg.4)

"We should think about ways that elders can be reintegrated into society rather than dumped in institutions far from sight." (pg.5)