Das Kapital Power Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Paragraph) or (Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #4

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)

When capitalists overpower workers, the bosses are able to unfairly take promised mealtimes away from their employees. Necessary components of human existence—eating, resting—are at risk when a powerful class gets to call the shots over them.

Quote #5

Hence it is self-evident that the worker is nothing other than labour-power for the duration of his whole life, and that therefore all his disposable time is by nature and by right labour-time, to be devoted to the self-valorization of capital. Time for education, for intellectual development, for the fulfillment of social functions, for social intercourse, for the free play of the vital forces of his body and his mind, even the rest time of Sunday (and that in a country of Sabbatarians!)—what foolishness! (10.5.1)

In 19th-century Europe, powerful capitalists, bent on squeezing as much productivity out of workers as possible, didn't want to allow time for education, social functions, rest, or the other things listed by Marx in this passage.

Quote #6

But in its blind and measureless drive, its insatiable appetite for surplus labour, capital oversteps not only the moral but even the merely physical limits of the working day. It usurps the time for growth, development and healthy maintenance of the body. It steals the time required for the consumption of fresh air and sunlight. It haggles over the meal-times, where possible incorporating them into the production process itself [...] It reduces the sound sleep needed for the restoration, renewal and refreshment of the vital forces to the exact amount of torpor essential to the revival of an absolutely exhausted organism. (10.5.1)

This is another depiction of the exploitation of workers by the powerful capitalists. They go so far as to take time away that's needed for health. In Chapter 10, Marx describes how the owners wanted the factories to run 24 hours a day, and how they'd keep workers from getting enough sleep.