How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Paragraph) or (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
The value-form of the product of labour is the most abstract, but also the most universal form of the bourgeois mode of production; by that fact it stamps the bourgeois mode of production as a particular kind of social production of a historical and transitory character. If then we make the mistake of treating it as the eternal natural form of social production, we necessarily overlook the specificity of the value-form, and consequently of the commodity-form together with its further developments, the money form, the capital form, etc. (1.4.17)
It often seems as if capitalism has always been here and will always be here, but in this passage, Marx is saying that this is false, and that this erroneous interpretation of reality prevents us from correctly analyzing the true reality of capitalism.
Quote #8
My view is that each particular mode of production, and the relations of production corresponding to it at each given moment, in short 'the economic structure of society', is 'the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness', and that 'the mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life'. (1.4.17)
What causes what? Marx says that economic reality determines the rest of life. This is sometimes called his base-superstructure argument: economics is the base, and all the other ideas are the superstructure on top.
Quote #9
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)
Capitalism isn't forever, Marx says. It isn't a permanent reality. But what would happen if you went around saying that buying and selling should be abolished? Would people think you're not living in reality, because reality is always about capitalist economics?