How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Paragraph) or (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
My view is that each particular mode of production, and the relations of production corresponding to it at each given moment, in short 'the economic structure of society', is 'the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness', and that 'the mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life'. (1.4.17)
Marx's view that economic life dictates (or mostly dictates) social, political, and intellectual life—the laws, people's ideas, religions, everything—is sometimes called historical materialism and sometimes called dialectical materialism. And sometimes it's called both.
Quote #2
The simple circulation of commodities—selling in order to buy—is a means to a final goal which lies outside circulation, namely the appropriation of use-values, the satisfaction of needs. As against this, the circulation of money as capital is an end in itself, for the valorization of value takes place only within this constantly renewed movement. The movement of capital is therefore limitless. (4.17)
When you as a non-capitalist buy a commodity and consume it, the product falls out of the sphere of circulation (the market) and is done with. But if you're a capitalist selling commodities in order to make more money, nothing intrinsic to that specific circulation act is going to bring you to a halt. Of course, other things might bring capitalism to a halt, such as climate change or running out of raw material.
Quote #3
For the transformation of money into capital, therefore, the owner of money must find the free worker available on the commodity-market; and this worker must be free in the double sense that as a free individual he can dispose of his labour-power as his own commodity, and that, on the other hand, he has no other commodity for sale, i.e. he is rid of them, he is free of all the objects needed for the realization of his labour-power. (6.6)
Ol' Karl is being a little ironic here. For capitalism to function, the worker must be free to sell his labor-power, which people are under capitalism, but weren't in other modes of production, such as feudalism. The worker must also be free of—that is, must not have—any stuff he or she would want to sell instead. Of course, if Karl had his way, workers would share the means of production in common, and the economic situation wouldn't require them to get exploited by selling labor-power. He's being sarcastic about the word free. Oh, Karl.
Quote #4
One thing, however, is clear: nature does not produce on the one hand owners of money or commodities, and on the other hand men possessing nothing but their own labour-power. This relation has no basis in natural history, nor does it have a social basis common to all periods of human history. It is clearly the result of a past historical development, the product of many economic revolutions, of the extinction of a whole series of older formations of social production. (6.7)
Sometimes people born into a particular religion are convinced that specific religion conveniently happens to be true. To them, the viewpoint of that religion is just the way life is. Similarly, people born under capitalism tend to think capitalism is just the way life is, so much so that they imagine it has always been here and always will be here. But Marx is saying the division between rich people and working class people is a specific phase in history that can change.
Quote #5
When we leave this sphere of simple circulation or the exchange of commodities, which provides the 'free-trader vulgaris' with his views, his concepts and the standard by which he judges the society of capital and wage-labour, a certain change takes place, or so it appears, in the physiognomy of our dramatis personae. He who was previously the money-owner now strides out in front as a capitalist; the possessor of labour-power follows as his worker. The one smirks self-importantly and is intent on business; the other is timid and holds back, like someone who has brought his own hide to market and now has nothing else to expect but—a tanning. (6.23)
What's up with all these words in italics? Well, by free-trader vulgaris, Marx means the pop economists of his day who promoted capitalism. By dramatis personae, he means stage actors. Basically, in this passage, Marx is saying that in Das Kapital, he's leaving behind the discussion of the sphere of circulation, where commodities and money move around in those goofy C-M-C and M-C-M' processes, and delving into the sphere of production, where we actually see capitalists abusing workers in factories and the like.
Quote #6
But what is a working day? At all events, it is less than a natural day. How much less? The capitalist has his own views of this point of no return, the necessary limit of the working day. As a capitalist, he is only capital personified. His soul is the soul of capital. But capital has one sole driving force, the drive to valorize itself, to create surplus-value, to make its constant part, the means of production, absorb the greatest possible amount of surplus labour. (10.1.5)
Here Marx is arguing that we don't need to get bogged down in arguments over whether individual billionaires are meanies or nice people. Rather, they have to play the role of capitalists, and so the system keeps going regardless of their personalities. He thinks they have to play the role of seeking out surplus-value because if they don't, their competitors surely will, and in the process will put them out of business by being more ruthless.
Quote #7
The capitalist maintains his rights as a purchaser when he tries to make the working day as long as possible, and, where possible, to make two working days out of one. On the other hand, the peculiar nature of the commodity sold implies a limit to its consumption by the purchaser, and the worker maintains his right as a seller when he wishes to reduce the working day to a particular normal length. There is here therefore an antinomy, of right against right, both equally bearing the seal of the law of exchange. Between equal rights, force decides. Hence, in the history of capitalist production, the establishment of a norm for the working day presents itself a a struggle over the limits of that day, a struggle between collective capital, i.e. the class of capitalists, and collective labour, i.e. the working class. (10.1.8)
The buying and selling of labor-power (not to mention the exploitation of it) is what makes capitalism tick, and it's all legal. Workers have the right to sell their labor-power, and capitalists have their right to buy it. Their rights are equal—so rights don't decide who gets a leg up on someone else. Rather, force decides: the stronger side gets to call the shots on the length of the working day, for example. When workers go on strike—when they simply refuse to work—they might win better conditions.
Quote #8
Capital therefore takes no account of the health and the length of life of the worker, unless society forces it to do so. Its answer to the outcry about the physical and mental degradation, the premature death, the torture of over-work, is this: Should that pain trouble us, since it increases our pleasure (profit)? But looking at these things as a whole, it is evident that this does not depend on the will, either good or bad, of the individual capitalist. Under free competition, the immanent laws of capitalist production confront the individual capitalist as a coercive force external to him. (10.5.8)
Thinkers such as Adam Smith had argued before Marx that each individual pursuing his or her own advantage/pleasure/profit would result in a just system. But Marx says that capitalists don't care about the well-being of workers (they only rarely recognize that it's in their own interest to have happier employees) and will just seek their own self-interest to the max—and this will create injustice.
Quote #9
For 'protection' against the serpent of their agonies, the workers have to put their heads together and, as a class, compel the passing of a law, an all-powerful social barrier by which they can be prevented from selling themselves and their families into slavery and death by voluntary contract with capital. (10.7.7)
Marx is best known as a revolutionary calling for the overthrow of capitalist governments, but he also advocated for reform measures, as here.
Quote #10
The same bourgeois consciousness which celebrates the division of labour in the workshop, the lifelong annexation of the worker to a partial operation, and his complete subjection to capital, as an organization of labour that increases its productive power, denounces with equal vigour every conscious attempt to control and regulate the process of production socially, as an inroad upon such sacred things as the rights of property, freedom and the self-determining 'genius' of the individual capitalist. It is very characteristic that the enthusiastic apologists of the factory system have nothing more damning to urge against a general organization of labour in society than that it would turn the whole of society into a factory. (14.4.7)
Marx thinks it's hypocritical for capitalists to advocate planning in production for the insides of workshops but to oppose it when the government does it. As he explains in the Communist Manifesto, he wanted a revolutionary vanguard (temporary) government to take power and programmatically transition the economy to communism (where workers own the means of production in common). Then, production under communism would also require social planning. This is opposed to the lack of planning he saw in capitalism, where businesses compete with each other instead of cooperating.