How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Paragraph) or (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
Capital asks no questions about the length of life of labour-power. What interests it is purely and simply the maximum of labour-power that can be set in motion in a working day. It attains this objective by shortening the life of labour-power, in the same way as a greedy farmer snatches more produce from the soil by robbing it of its fertility. (10.5.1)
Marx says the capitalists in 19th-century Europe used their power so unjustly as to not care if their quest for profit shortened workers' lives. Brutal working conditions still exist today, as in the maquiladoras in Mexico or child mines in Africa.
Quote #8
By extending the working day, therefore, capitalist production, which is essentially the production of surplus-value, the absorption of surplus labour, not only produces a deterioration of human labour-power by robbing it of its normal moral and physical conditions of development and activity, but also produces the premature exhaustion and death of this labour-power itself. It extends the worker's production-time within a given period by shortening his life. (10.5.2)
Surplus labor has been absorbed or taken from the have-nots by the haves throughout history under many different modes of production, not just capitalism. Marx sees class struggle as the best lens through which to view history (take a look at the Communist Manifesto), so he might argue that the seizure of surplus labor is the most basic way in which unjust power is exercised.
Quote #9
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)
The horrible examples of exploitation in Chapter 10 notwithstanding, Marx emphasizes that he's most of all talking about unjust power being an impersonal force of capital, not something dependent on whether individual capitalists are good or bad people. What do you think? Is the exercise of unjust power to be blamed on systemic forces or on individual people?