How we cite our quotes: (Section.Paragraph)
Quote #4
[The proletariat is] a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market. (Section1.30)
In Marx's view, people must sell their labor to survive. But everything being bought and sold is subject to the ups and downs of the market. As capitalism increases in its complexities, some workers will find that no one wants their labor, either because they're unskilled, they're sick, or they're old. As a society, what should we do about these so-called powerless workers?
Quote #5
No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far, at an end, and he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc. (Section1.34)
Marx is saying that your employer is just one bar of the cage of capitalism, and that other members of the bourgeoisie—your landlord, the grocery store owners, and more—are other bars. What invisible bars might there be? In other words, what under capitalism might be exploiting the workers that these workers usually cannot perceive?
Quote #6
The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible. (Section2.68)
Marx argues that workers will come together to take back the product of their labor (capital) from the owners. In what ways is the proletariat politically more powerful than the bourgeoisie? What might the best (and worst) ways be for workers to leverage their strengths to alter how the means of production (such as factories) get used?