How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Paragraph) or (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Labour, then, as the creator of use-values, as useful labour, is a condition of human existence which is independent of all forms of society; it is an eternal natural necessity which mediates the metabolism between man and nature, and therefore human life itself. (1.2.6)
Marx doesn't often say that something is a universal condition always present in all times and places. Usually, he goes on about how capitalism or feudalism or other modes of production—and the ideas that go along with them—are just temporary phases in history. But here he says the need to work is something common to all societies, whether they're communist or capitalist or something else.
Quote #2
Use-values like coats, linen, etc., in short, the physical bodies of commodities, are combinations of two elements, the material provided by nature, and labour. If we subtract the total amount of useful labour of different kinds which is contained in the coat, the linen, etc., a material substratum is always left. This substratum is furnished by nature without human intervention. When man engages in production, he can only proceed as nature does herself, i.e. he can only change the form of the materials. Furthermore, even in this work of modification he is constantly helped by natural forces. Labour is therefore not the only source of material wealth, i.e. of the use-values it produces. As William Petty says, labour is the father of material wealth, the earth is its mother. (1.2.7)
Labor needs raw material to work with. That's why natural resources, such as oil or coltan (necessary for the increasing quantity of cell phones), play such a crucial role in world events, including war. A society can't create wealth unless it has raw material to work with. And if a society can't create wealth, people aren't occupied with work, and, jobless and despairing, they might cause civil unrest or revolt (source).
Quote #3
The value-form of the product of labour is the most abstract, but also the most universal form of the bourgeois mode of production; by that fact it stamps the bourgeois mode of production as a particular kind of social production of a historical and transitory character. If then we make the mistake of treating it as the eternal natural form of social production, we necessarily overlook the specificity of the value-form, and consequently of the commodity-form together with its further developments, the money form, the capital form, etc. (1.4.17)
Marx is saying there's nothing natural about capitalism or any other mode of production. Societies can change economic systems. If we mistakenly think capitalism is eternal and natural, as other economists of Marx's day did, we start making errors in how we analyze it.
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)
Marx is emphasizing once again that the division between the rich and the working class isn't natural. In about the 16th century, the capitalists, a small segment of society that made trading assets for surplus-value their life-work began to gain power. They eventually seized political power away from the landed aristocracy in Europe and expanded markets across the globe. But we're so used to capitalism today that we imagine it has always been here.
Quote #5
Given the existence of the individual, the production of labour-power consists in his production of himself or his maintenance. (6.11)
On the other hand, labor-power (the capacity to work) and necessary labor (the amount of time it takes to produce means of sustenance such as food, clothing and shelter) are natural to all life, to any individual's existence. No matter the society, people have to work to maintain themselves and keep themselves alive.
Quote #6
Labour is, first of all, a process between man and nature, a process by which man, through his own actions, mediates, regulates and controls the metabolism between himself and nature. He confronts the materials of nature as a force of nature. He sets in motion the natural forces which belong to his own body, his arms, legs, head and hands, in order to appropriate the materials of nature in a form adapted to his own needs. Through this movement he acts upon external nature and changes it, and in this way he simultaneously changes his own nature. He develops the potentialities slumbering within nature, and subjects the play of its forces to his own sovereign power. (7.1.2)
This passage shows Marx using dialectical reasoning to discuss people's relationship with nature. The dialectic is that people change external nature through work, and at the same time, nature changes them. In Marx, it's not linear cause-and-effect: not that nature causes people to change or that people cause nature to change. Instead, both change together. So Marx wouldn't partition off environmental concerns from other political or activist issues; he'd say that all human work is interaction with nature.
Quote #7
Man not only effects a change of form in the materials of nature; he also realizes his own purpose in those materials. And this is a purpose he is conscious of, it determines the mode of his activity with the rigidity of a law, and he must subordinate his will to it. This subordination is no mere momentary act. Apart from the exertion of the working organs, a purposeful will is required for the entire duration of the work. This means close attention. The less he is attracted by the nature of the work and the way in which it has to be accomplished, and the less, therefore, he enjoys it as the free play of his own physical and mental powers, the closer his attention is forced to be. (7.1.2)
The idea here is that it's natural for work on a project to eventually take control of the worker. Workers must subordinate their will long-term to the requirements of their projects. The more they care about a project, the more they'll be okay with the commitment required to work on something. But under capitalism, many workers become so specialized that they don't develop a relationship with the entire commodity they're producing. Their job might have them simply standing on a production line turning the same screw over and over, since that's what might be most efficient and therefore most profitable.
Quote #8
The labour process, as we have just presented it in its simple and abstract elements, is purposeful activity aimed at the production of use-values. It is an appropriation of what exists in nature for the requirements of man. It is the universal condition for the metabolic interaction between man and nature, the everlasting nature-imposed condition of human existence, and it is therefore independent of every form of that existence, or rather it is common to all forms of society in which human beings live. (7.1.21)
Marx is somewhat romantic about the labor process. He sees work as the purposeful use of nature in order to sustain life. He opposes capitalism, but sees nothing inherently degrading about the labor process—only in what the labor process becomes under the capitalist mode of production.
Quote #9
On the other hand, the working day does have a maximum limit. It cannot be prolonged beyond a certain point. This maximum limit is conditioned by two things. First by the physical limits to labour-power. Within the 24 hours of the natural day a man can only expend a certain quantity of his vital force. Similarly, a horse can work regularly for only 8 hours a day. During part of the day the vital force must rest, sleep; during another part the man has to satisfy other physical needs, to feed, wash and clothe himself. Besides these purely physical limitations, the extension of the working day encounters moral obstacles. The worker needs time in which to satisfy his intellectual and social requirements, and the extent and the number of these requirements is conditioned by the general level of civilization. The length of the working day therefore fluctuates within boundaries both physical and social. (10.1.4)
Capitalists and workers fight over the length of the working day, but nature has something to say about it as well. By nature, people have to rest a certain number of hours in order to function at all. So the working day has to include time for rest if capitalists want their workers to stay alive.
Quote #10
Within a family and, after further development, within a tribe, there springs up naturally a division of labour caused by differences of sex and age, and therefore based on a purely physiological foundation. (14.4.3)
Marx thinks the earliest division of labor arose from differences between male and female, young and old. He might say that young men are stronger and more likely to work as hunters than old women, for example.