How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Paragraph) or (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
The preliminary campaign of capital thus came to grief, and the Ten Hours' Act came into force on 1 May 1848. Meanwhile, however, the fiasco of the Chartist party, whose leaders had been imprisoned and whose organization dismembered, had shattered the self-confidence of the English working class. Soon after this the June insurrection in Paris and its bloody suppression united, in England as on the Continent, all fractions of the ruling classes, landowners and capitalists, stock-exchange sharks and small-time shopkeepers, Protectionists and Freetraders, government and opposition, priests and free-thinkers, young whores and old nuns, under the common slogan of the salvation of property, religion, the family and society. (10.6.20)
The working-class movement successfully got the Ten Hours' Act passed to limit the length of the working day. But the Chartist movement—to win universal suffrage for men—failed, and its leaders were imprisoned. Then the bloody outcome of the June Revolution in Paris in 1848 united seemingly everyone against what came to be seen as the dangerous working-class movement. Its opponents thought it would overturn cherished traditions that communists had other ideas about: property, religion, family, society.
Quote #8
But what was the point of summoning the manufacturers to appear before the courts when the courts, in this case the county magistrates, acquitted them? In these tribunals the manufacturers sat in judgment on themselves. (10.6.29)
Fighting for justice in the courts does no good if the judges are corrupt. Marx is saying that the judges were comprised of manufacturers in many cases when the question of working conditions entered the judicial system. Talk about a conflict of interest.
Quote #9
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)
The strength of the working class is its size. Workers outnumber capitalists by the millions. However, workers are often too busy fighting one another—men versus women, Democrats versus Republicans, religions versus religions—to recognize common economic interests.