How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Paragraph) or (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
As the conscious bearer of this movement, the possessor of money becomes a capitalist. His person, or rather his pocket, is the point from which the money starts, and to which it returns. The objective content of the circulation we have been discussing—the valorization of value—is his subjective purpose, and it is only in so far as the appropriation of ever more wealth in the abstract is the sole driving force behind his operations that he functions as a capitalist, i.e. as capital personified and endowed with consciousness and a will. (4.18)
In Das Kapital, Marx tends to focus on capitalists in terms of the class role they play, not their individual personalities. That's why he speaks of capital as a personified force. Here he says that insofar as capitalists are capitalists, their purpose is to accumulate more and more wealth. It's their class function that Marx is interested in.
Quote #2
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)
Here, Marx is being sarcastic and saying that the working class in capitalism is free—free of the means of production that would otherwise enable them to realize the fruits of their labor. It's the capitalist class that owns the means of production—and that can therefore make the working class sell its labor-power in exchange for pay, the ability to buy the means of sustenance and other commodities.
Quote #3
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)
The basic class divide throughout history has been between the haves, who control the means of production, and the have-nots, who are forced to produce surplus labor. Under the specific mode of production called capitalism, the have-nots are workers who sell their labor-power and produce both the value of the commodities required to sustain themselves—the necessary labor that must be conducted in all societies—and the surplus-value that the owners of the means of production get to put in their own wallets.
Quote #4
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)
Because members of the capitalist class control the means of production, they can afford to smirk, in Marx's depiction. And the working class is left with no choice but to sell its labor-power. That means they're ripe to be abused, since they're selling their own hides, at least for the duration of the working day.
Quote #5
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)
According to what Marx would call bourgeois economics—the theories that unapologetically promote capitalism—the capitalist class and the working class are on equal footing when it comes to making contracts for the sale and purchase of labor-power. But Marx believes it's force—whoever is stronger—that decides which class actually gets the upper hand in these contracts. The capitalist class is strong in that they own the means of production and therefore control the means of sustenance that keep people alive. On the other hand, there are many more workers, so the working class has strength in numbers.
Quote #6
These 'small thefts' of capital from the workers' meal-times and recreation times are also described by the factory inspectors as 'petty pilferings of minutes', 'snatching a few minutes' or, in the technical language of the workers, 'nibbling and cribbling at meal-times'. (10.2.14)
A central focus of class struggle is the fight over the length of the working day. In chapter 10, Marx paints a vivid picture of capitalists trying to seize time away from workers' meal times and breaks. Are you given the full time off you're supposed to have at work or school? How might the working class fight for more time off?
Quote #7
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)
A key force governing the capitalist system is competition. Whereas capitalist economists such as Adam Smith see competition as a force that benefits all, Marx sees it as a pressure on capitalists that causes them to exploit workers. He argues that if an individual capitalist decides to exploit his or her workers less, that capitalist will be out-competed by other capitalists. Thus, in Marx's view, there will always be injustice against and exploitation of the working class, at least until capitalism ends.
Quote #8
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)
Solidarity among the working class allows workers to join together, as in unions, to further their interests, such as forcing laws to be passed that improve working conditions. Marx also talks about class struggle in the Communist Manifesto.
Quote #9
The one-sidedness and even the deficiencies of the specialized individual worker become perfections when he is part of the collective worker. The habit of doing only one thing converts him into an organ which operates with the certainty of a force of nature, while his connection with the whole mechanism compels him to work with the regularity of a machine. (14.3.12)
Manufacture organizes work in such a way as to create a collective worker. Does this weaken the working class, since workers become overly specialized, or does it strengthen the working class, since workers can gain solidarity from their proximity to one another?
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 depicts the capitalist class as hypocritical, for on the one hand it advocates planning for production inside workshops, but on the other hand it opposes society at large planning all production. Is this truly hypocritical? Is there a fundamental difference between a business planning its own operations and society (say, through a government) planning all its production?